Jul. 13--ASHTABULA TOWNSHIP ï¿? When Louise F. Bucci started her microcomputer consulting and training service, TV sets were used as monitors, data were stored on 5 1/4-inch floppy discs, and a big hard drive had 20 megabytes of storage ï¿? and most users wondered how they would ever fill it.

No wonder sheï¿?s retiring.

Bucci, the wife of Ashtabula Township Trustee Sam Bucci, last month powered down her LF Bucci Microcomputer Consulting after 27 years of computing. Bucci is pushing the reset button on her life so she can spend more time with her husband, four children, 11 grandchildren and sister Stella Battles, who has leukemia.

ï¿?I think Iï¿?d like to get a big quilting machine and put it in here,ï¿? Bucci said of her plans for the computer training center in their Silvieus Street home. ï¿?This is not the end for me, just a new beginning.ï¿?

That quest for a new beginning is what got Bucci into personal computers back in 1982. She had been an executive secretary and raised four children when Bucci decided to enter college at the same time her son Tom was graduating from high school.

ï¿?He said: ï¿?Mom, computers are the future, and you are going to be put out of a job. Typewriters are done,ï¿?ï¿? Bucci said.

Bucci was in her late 30s when she headed off to Kent State-Ashtabula campus classrooms with her son. She still recalls a young male student standing up in a technical writing course and asking the professor why he didnï¿?t kick Bucci, and the other three adults, out of the program.

ï¿?He said: ï¿?These older people have skills already in the work environment. They are getting their degree, and I suggest you be friends with them, because they are going to be employed before you will,ï¿?ï¿? Bucci said.

Indeed, Bucci found herself working in the branchï¿?s computer lab and occasionally filling in for an instructor while still a student. She earned her associateï¿?s in computer technology in 1982 and completed the basic microcomputer certification from Lakeland Community College in 1984. She has continued bachelorï¿?s degree studies at Kent State since then, sandwiching courses between her work for others and her own business.

Bucci quickly discovered a niche in teaching people how to implement computer technology in their businesses, churches and personal lives.

Kent State hired her to work in the continuing education department as an instructor. Between 1982 and 1988, she spent 9,000 hours, instructing clients in software titles like Lotus 123, WordPerfect, Word Star and Display Writer, applications that have gone the way of ZIP drives and monochrome CRTs.