WATERLOO - Close your eyes and think "vegetarian."

What comes to mind? Tie-dye, sandals, tofu, PETA?

Open your eyes and meet Mildred Pierce.

No tie-dye, just a simple blue sweater. Her shoes are comfortable, but they aren't Birkenstocks; and she's not real fond of tofu. She's also a former butcher with a sentimental attachment to hot dogs (more about that later).

Pierce is spiritual, but not proselytizing; committed but not strident. You won't hear a speech or detect so much as a raised eyebrow if you sit down next to her at the Unitarian Universalist Church potluck and bite into a piece of fried chicken.

And no questions, please, about whether it's a healthy lifestyle. She's 94.

Though never fond of meat, Pierce became a vegetarian about 20 years ago. Since then, she said, "I never ate anything that ran from me when I tried to catch it."

Her decision to eschew meat at age 74 is grounded more in health and environmental reasons than animal activism. She agrees with Francis Moore Lappe, author of "Diet for a Small Planet," that if people ate lower on the food chain - consuming the plants fed to animals - "we could feed everybody in this world."

Healthwise, she had a cholesterol level of 300 before giving up meat and making other dietary changes. It's now 150. "I've got some heart problems," she confesses, "but my heart is old."

Pierce firmly believes her healthy diet - "I live on fruits and vegetables" - staved off heart problems until later in life.

She also has osteoporosis. Again, she attributes that to age, not diet. When younger, she consumed plenty of dairy products, though in recent years has favored fortified soymilk and soy cheeses.

Her only problem, her two children tell her, is she "goes" and "does" too much.

There's the monthly Cedar Prairie Vegetarians meeting and potluck, an outgrowth of the vegetarian cooking classes she used to teach at Hawkeye Community College. She's active in the Unitarian Universalist Church, including the Conscious Living Group, and she participates in four book groups. Only recently, she stepped down as head of the Friends of the Library book group and retired after decades as a volunteer at the Western Home. She still is involved with choosing titles and developing programs for the Cedar Falls chapter of the American Association of University Women's Diversity Book Group and for the fourth Sunday afternoon book group at her church.

Pierce believes her food choices give her the energy to stay active and involved. (During a physician's visit, a doctor, observing her health and vitality, once asked her advice on vegetarianism.). She's not obsessed with her diet. "'I just find it very easy not to eat meat. I've never tried to talk anyone into being a vegetarian."

Pierce's "live and let live" attitude extends not only to animals in the feedlot, but to people and the world around her. A retired elementary principal and instructor at the University of Northern Iowa, she exhibits traits of curiosity and tolerance that would make her stand out in a crowd of any age.

"I've always been that way," she said. Her father, a railroad engineer, was the reader in the family. "He was always asking me questions and trying to get me to think about things … I was always challenged."

Pierce describes herself as an "addicted" reader. "If I can't find something … I just read the writing on a cereal package.

She shares her home with "Susie," a white poodle, and an extensive library. She tries to live simply, but parting with books isn't easy. "I've got books everyplace … my bedroom has stacks of them; I have stacks in the kitchen."

Bill Moyers' "Healing and the Mind" is atop a neat pile on the coffee table. She reads about environmental issues to keep up on topics for her Conscious Living group - like how to save water and electricity. The group has set up a recycling program at the church, and they compost all food scraps. Pierce also takes a turn at writing "Conscious Living Corner" for the church newsletter.

Her Sunday afternoon book group is reading "What are People For," a book of essays on agrarianism, environmental issues and political issues by poet, novelist and critic Wendell Berry. "It's a mixed group," said Pierce, "I'm the oldest. We have some really intense arguments … but it's in fun, no meanness."

When reading for pleasure, Pierce enjoys Jacqueline Mitchard and "loves" Elizabeth Berg and Anne Tyler. Of Tyler's most recent book, "The Amateur Marriage," Pierce said, "You'd assume it was about a marriage, but you can't depend on Ann Tyler."

Pierce is a student of everything. When she decided to give up meat, she made an in-depth study of it, reading all the books and newsletters she could find. She became somewhat of an expert, which led to her stint teaching vegetarian cooking classes at HCC.

After retirement, she did a lot of traveling with her late husband, Robert, a professional musician who went to work in the florist industry when rock 'n' roll's popularity eclipsed that of dance bands. "We had a VW bus and went all over the United States," she said.

"My husband always wanted to stop at A&W Root Beer stands. I didn't like root beer, but I liked hot dogs."

At one time, Pierce admits, she also was quite fond of liverwurst.

It was during World War II and she worked in a grocery store on College Hill. "I was the butcher," she said. "I cut up pork chops and all that stuff. You do what the job calls for."

As of yet, she's found no vegetarian substitute for liverwurst.

While a meatless diet isn't as radical as it once was, there's still a stereotype when it comes to vegetarians, Pierce said.

She believes it's because the roots of today's vegetarian lifestyle were born of the hippie counter-culture of the '60s. A quirky stereotype resulted. "That's part of the problem we face … people don't have an open mind.

"It's true there were a lot of kids who … didn't know where they were going, but then there were people like Francis Moore Lappe and Michael Jacobson from the Center for Science in the Public Interest … the influence that group had on culture and the food industry is amazing … much good came out of it."

Besides, Pierce teases, "it doesn't bother me at all that people think I'm a little strange."