can I sort records in a table when the sort requested is not alphabetical?

It's quite possible that this is impossible.. but here goes...

I have some personnel data that is being reported in a table and in that table I have a field that holds a person's "title". Let's say the returned "title" results are "President", "Vice President", "Assistant To The President" and "Assistant to the Vice President". There are not more than four of them. Does anybody have any idea if I could sort the returned results based on the above hierarchy - which is not alphabetical?

Here is my beginner's code:

echo "<center>\n";
echo "<H2>Roster</H2>\n";
echo "<table border='1'>
   <tr>
<th>Title</th>
<th>First Name</th>
<th>Last Name</th>

</tr>";

if (mysql_num_rows($query)) {
    while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($query)) {
$variable1=$row["title"];
$variable2=$row["firstname"];
$variable3=$row["lastname"];
       
//table layout
       
print("<tr>");
echo "<tr align=\"center\" bgcolor=\"#EFEFEF\">\n";
echo "<td class=\"td_id\">$variable1</td>\n";
echo "<td class=\"td_id\">$variable2</td>\n";
echo "<td class=\"td_id\">$variable3</td>\n";
print("</tr>");

Thanks for looking at it!