Colby Magazine vol. 91, no. 4

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colby fall 2002   vol. 91 no. 4

Reporting from Islamabad Colby’s World Widens  •  Ted Snyder is All Business  •  Island Teaching John Hedman’s Legacy  •  Posthumous Honor for Daniel Pearl Traci Speed’s Scientific Search


it’s what we do... A little criticism can take you far in this world—just ask Chip Smith ’91. Chip was Echo restaurant critic while at Colby. During his junior year he met one of his fans, Professor of Government Tony Corrado. Chip went on to take classes with Tony and the two became friends. Shortly after graduating, Chip was speaking with Tony and told him he was interested in working for Bob Kerry’s 1992 presidential campaign. Tony knew Kerry’s campaign manager, Tad Devine, and put in a word for Chip, who not only went to work for the campaign, but eventually became Tad’s assistant.

After working on a senatorial campaign, Chip moved on to be the deputy campaign manager and chief of staff for Al Gore’s 2000 campaign. In charge of the campaign’s finances, Chip often turned to Tony, one of only a handful of experts in campaign finance at the time, for advice and counsel.

In his relationship with Chip, Tony has been teacher, mentor, advisor, and colleague. Chip Smith is now a partner in a Democratic media consulting firm with Tad Devine. It all began with that phone call from Tony.

it’s what alumni do The Colby Alumni Fund 800-311-3678  www.colby.edu/afgift Every Gift Counts


fall 2002  vol. 91 no. 4

Features 6 A Global Forum The Davis-United World College program is bringing the world to Colby, and everyone stands to gain; a Q&A with Shelby Davis. 12

On Terror’s Trail Boston Globe reporter Brian Mac-

Quarrie ’74 searches for answers in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the wake of September 11.

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All Business Ted Snyder ’75 adds value to the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

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Music Across the Bay Kristine Davidson Young ’87 is moored to her island students.

Dispatches 2 editor’s desk 3 letters 4 periscope Gleanings from the campus newsletter, FYI.

From the Hill 24 on campus 2002 Oak Fellow Ushari Mahmud works

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JIM EVANS

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Moving Day

for victims of slavery and child soldiering; Lovejoy Award to Daniel Pearl; Colby’s environmental efforts recognized; new Museum of Art director Dan Rosenfeld; Colby scientists get to the bottom of Belgrade Lakes; CSI Colby; faculty research; first-year remarks; a Mule makeover. sports Ski coach Tracey Cote excels in the rarified world of extreme sports. students Traci Speed ’03 looks to unravel chemical puzzles that may defeat cancer; the facts on ’06ers. media First-year reading reveals how diverse backgrounds color the college experience; Linda Greenlaw ’83 chronicles lives, not lobsters. faculty A century ago John Hedman brought romance to languages at Colby; new faculty on the hill; Q&A with Terry Arendell (sociology). alumni Waterville’s festival reputation grows; future takes shape: annual fund reaches goal.

Alumni @ Large 39 class notes profiles 44 50 56 60

Emilia Tjernstrom ’06, left, and Linda Dungan, a visiting student from Ireland, move a mirror into the Anthony-Mitchell-Schupf residence halls at the start of the school year. 62

Janet Grout Williams ’63 Kathy McKechnie ’79 Julia McDonald ’99 Todd Miner ’01

obituaries

The Last Page 64 The Spirit of India Between poverty and plenty, On the Cover: A nomad child in the Nahre-Saraj desert in Afghanistan. Nomadic people in Afghanistan have been forced to cope with both war and drought. In this issue, Boston Globe reporter Brian MacQuarrie ’74 explores the cultures of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

India’s spirit flickers.


Dispatches editorial From the Editor’s Desk

volume 91  •  number 4

It wasn’t planned, and perhaps that makes the convergence of stories in this issue of Colby even more significant. In these pages you’ll find a feature article on philanthropist Shelby Davis and his commitment to bring deserving students from around the world to Colby. In its first three years that program has significantly changed the makeup of the student body here and has enhanced the education the College provides both American and international students. Another feature article was written by Brian MacQuarrie ’74, a reporter for the Boston Globe who, in the wake of September 11, was dispatched to Pakistan and Afghanistan. His assignment: to help us better understand the forces that shaped those countries and had such horrific implications for the United States as well as for Pakistan and Afghanistan. The third piece is the announcement that the late Daniel Pearl will be the posthumous recipient of the Lovejoy Award. Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter, will be recognized for a career spent defending the freedom of the press by consistently engaging in the pursuit of what is true. It is a tragic irony that Pearl died at the hands of Muslim extremists as he tried to wrest his readers from the simplistic view that all Muslims are terrorists. What we’re offering here, serendipitously, are three stories about ways people work to shake us from our preconceived notions of the world, of other cultures, of the forces that shape global events. We’ve been doing a lot of that in this country of late. September 11 and the looming war with Iraq have forced us to revise, yet again, the “new world order.” Our beliefs about our place in the world have been rearranged as we try to understand and respond to the shifting political and cultural landscape. It’s a discomfiting process. But education—whether it be the kind that results from reading the reports of Daniel Pearl or Brian MacQuarrie (who both hired the same Pakistani driver) or from having your beliefs challenged by someone from another part of the world who sits in the same classroom, eats at the same dining-hall table or sleeps in the same dormitory room—isn’t always easy. Journalists have brought the world—including disturbing developments in dangerous places— closer to their readers. Programs like Davis’s and the United World College’s alliance with Colby bring students from around the world to Mayflower Hill and that can be heartening, inspiring and even unsettling to all concerned. But that sometimes-bumpy road leads to new insights and leaves all of us better equipped to consider, appreciate and understand the myriad cultures that make up the increasingly global society in which we live. Despite the tragedy and conflict that seem to be permanent fixtures in our world, these efforts are reason to be encouraged.

Gerry Boyle ’78 Managing Editor

Staff

Gerry Boyle ’78 managing editor Brian Speer art director Robert Gil­lespie alumni at large editor Stephen Collins ’74 executive editor Leo Pando illustrator Alicia Nemiccolo MacLeay ’97 media editor Joanne Lafreniere production coordinator Karen Oh ’93 online coordinator Brian Speer, Fred Field, Chris Volk, Jim Evans, David Leeming contributing photographers Brian MacQuarrie ’74, Grant Pick, Lynn Ascrizzi, Sally Baker, Pat Burdick, Luis Millones, Doug Rooks ’76, Braxton Williams ’99, Colleen Creeden ’02, Yvonne Sui ’03, Neha Sud ’05, Gavin O’Brien ’04 contributing writers Administration William D. Adams, president; Sally Baker, executive assistant to the president; Peyton R. Helm, vice president for college relations; Margaret Felton Viens ’77, director of alumni rela­tions Alumni Council Executive Committee Lou Richardson ’67, chair; Frank A. Wilson ’73, vice chair; Rebecca Birrell ’92, Hope Palmer Bramhall ’56, Shawn P. Crowley ’91, Heather M. Daur ’00, Karl Dornish Jr. ’54, Todd W. Halloran ’84, Linda Mitchell Potter ’66, Wendy Kennedy Ralph ’90, Eric F. Rolfson ’73, Patricia Valavanis Smith ’80, Philip Wysor ’70 Colby is published four times yearly. To contact Colby: Managing Editor, Colby 4181 Mayflower Hill Waterville, ME 04901-8841 e-mail to: mag@colby.edu 207-872-3226 visit us on the internet: www.colby.edu/colby.mag To contact the Alumni Office: 207-872-3190

Contributors

Grant Pick (All Business, p.20) is a staff writer at Brian MacQuarrie ’74 (On Terror’s Trail, p.12)

the Chicago Reader, the city’s alternative weekly.

has worked at the Boston Globe since 1987.

He also contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune

A native of Norwood, Mass., he also has

Magazine, People and Catalyst, a school reform

held reporting and editing positions at The

newsletter. He and his wife, a photographer, live in

Philadelphia Inquirer, The Providence Journal,

Chicago and have two grown children.

The Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and The Middlesex News in Framingham, Mass.

Lynn Ascrizzi (Cancer Clues, p.30) has been an editor and feature

He lives in the Savin Hill neighborhood of Dorchester, Mass., and has a

writer for 22 years and works at Central Maine Newspapers where

15-year-old daughter, Fiona.

she also writes the syndicated column “Dreams” under the byline Hannah Seymour. She lives with her husband in the home they built on six acres in Freedom, Maine.

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letters Dispatches

Letters Good News for Gay Alumni I just received my copy of Colby and I was thrilled to read that students and faculty are exploring the idea of a gay and lesbian alumni association. My partner just helped start one at her alma mater (Hood College, Frederick, Md.). There was much concern about it initially as Hood is a small, women’s college, but once the idea took hold, it was a great success and there was little, if any, resistance from the other alums. I also read recently that Colby got a high rating from the Princeton Review for “gay community accepted.” That’s great news too. “Accepted” is only half the battle, but far superior to its alternative.  Keep up the good work.

Diane Smith ’86 New Market, Md.

Were Safety Rules Followed? How sad to read of a promising life snuffed out in a canoe accident (Editor’s Desk, summer 2002 Colby). You observe that it was “a freak accident, a flick of nature’s hand.” Now I don’t know the circumstances of Kyawswar Win’s canoe trip, but if it was a college-owned canoe—the Outing Club’s?—I can’t help but wonder if proper safety rules were not followed. Was he qualified to take out a canoe solo? Was he wearing a life preserver? It should be required of all those using college boats. Did he let others know he was going out? Did he check weather reports? Messalonskee Lake is big but relatively shallow. Standing waves can pick up very quickly. Perhaps all these conditions were fulfilled, but most boating accidents happen because people are not prepared.

William C. Winslow ’57 Public Affairs officer Flotilla 5-3 U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary New York City

“Silent Woman” Has English Roots I was quite amused at the account by Susan Sterling (Last Page, summer 2002 Colby) about the “Silent Woman.” I don’t think the “Silent Woman” sign in the 1970s was intended as a social statement. It was, in fact, a copy of an English pub that served the 95th Bomb Group (8th USAAF) in Horham, Suffolk, England 1942 to 1945. It is pictured in the book One Last Look, pg. 68. I remember the “Pub” from my tour as a pilot in the 95th and was surprised to see it in the book. I don’t think what Susan Sterling implies was ever intended. Anyhow it was a great place to go for a dinner. Waterville has not seen the same quality since!!

H. Stanley Palmer Director of Physical Plant (retired) China, Maine

Gillum’s Lessons Remembered I took Survey of Modern European History (1500-present) as a freshman from Gillum (he was known by only this one-word name then) in 1955-56. To my complete surprise, I aced the mid-year exam, which consisted of a one-hour essay, three 20minute essays, three 10-minute essays, and the remainder “identifications.” We included self-addressed stamped postcards when we handed in the blue books, so that we could get the results quickly, and we were told that “if we had any questions” about the grade, we could see him. I decided to ask. When I opened the door to his office, he greeted me with, “I know why you’re here; you want to know what you did right! Well, you answered the questions!” I didn’t even have to sit down to understand what he meant. Some of my short “essays” amounted to only three sentences. No beginning, middle, end; they were all middle. I was too rushed in that taxing exam to do anything else. Most day-to-day writing requires this of us. I learned it from Gillum. I remember the course title, time it met, and exam outline, and learned how to get to the point.

The Cosby Chair Serves the Cause I submitted a letter to the editor regarding the piece on Colby students’ service in the community (spring 2002 Colby) and how my initial involvement in Colby’s Big/Little Program led me to my current position as E.D. of a youth mentoring organization. I just wanted to add to the “irony.” At my 10-year reunion, our class president, Anne Bowie ’92, organized an impromptu auction at our class dinner on Saturday night. We raffled off the lawn chair that Bill Cosby sat in as our commencement speaker, as well as (unplanned) some of our classmates’ pants! The organization that had been chosen to receive the money was a youth-oriented group in the Waterville area. I was very excited about this, and wished I’d known about it ahead of time, but at any rate, I just wanted to add this information on to my previous letter. My class has now contributed to the cause I hold most dear to my heart!

Mary Beth Heiskell ’92 Cornish, N.H.

Good Story, Wrong Kids Thank you for your piece (summer 2002 Colby) on my role in the struggle for reform in Massachusetts. I enjoyed the piece. Unfortunately you got both of my children’s names wrong. They are Benjamin, who just turned 4 in August, and Carson, who is 2. Since I did the interview with Colby last spring, I moved on to working for reform at the national level. After five years, I stepped down as director of Mass Voters for Clean Elections on July 12th, and am now running a national issue campaign for Reform Voter Project (www.reformvoter.org).

David Donnelly ’91 Jamaica Plain, Mass.

Helen Payson Seager ’58 Nantucket, Mass.

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Dispatches periscope Gleaned from the campus newsletter, FYI

Good Food, Good Word

as a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, wrote a section of the Freedom of Information Act request. The release was delayed twice by the Bush administration, and Ariel calls the recent development a “big time declassification.” The New York Times reported that the documents detail widespread summary executions, torture and kidnappings from 1976 through 1983.

Each year when parents drop their first-year students off on Mayflower Hill, Dining Services has a display that includes the “Send a Sweet” table, where moms and dads can arrange to have treats sent to students for birthdays, exams, whatever. This year a Class of ’06 mother who approached the table said she wasn’t interested in sending sweets to her daughter. She had heard that Colby’s food service was so good, she wanted her daughter to send food home instead.

Best of the Best Best Buddies promotes oneto-one friendships between college student volunteers and individuals with intellectual disabilities. This summer the Colby Chapter received Best Buddies International’s highest honor at the organization’s annual leadership conference in Houston. Congrats and thanks to Laura Shufelt ’03 and Jill Wentzell ’03, who are carrying the torch for the “Outstanding Chapter” this year, and to Monika Thiele ’97, who founded Colby’s Best Buddies chapter, Maine’s first, in 1995-96.

Turnaround Credit Chris Arnold ’92 got kicked out of honors English in high school but credits “an incredibly strong English department at Colby” for motivating him, according to a profile in the Scarsdale Inquirer. Arnold, now one of 80 correspondents worldwide who report for National Public Radio, took to writing in English classes at the same time he was getting his on-air start at WMHB.

Wherewolves of London Lost in London, alums Scott Bixby ’01 and Tim Wiswell

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Walking with Whitman

Mink Frogs Go a-Courtin’ For three years Cathy Bevier (biology) has been studying the calling, territorial behavior and physiology of the small, mottled, mink frogs in a Mercer pond. This summer, she and four students have visited them at 1 a.m. armed with headlamps, chest waders and bug spray. “We want to learn how persistent they are in their aggressive behavior,” she said about the male frogs in an August 4 Morning Sentinel/Kennebec Journal profile. “One would assume that the more times they’re out in the pond, the better chance they have of finding a female—just like the more nights a guy hangs out at a singles’ bar, the greater his chances of picking up a date.”

’01 asked directions from a stranger. The stranger turned out to be Dave Mitchell ’04, in the English capital on the CBBLondon program. Not only did Dave get them oriented, he put them in touch with economics program faculty director Patrice Franko, who invited them to a CBB Night at the Pub, with host Steve Reed ’85. Bixby then resumed his travels around Europe; Wiswell proceeded to Moscow for job interviews.

Strongest Link September 12’s Morning Sentinel revealed what we already knew: Patricia Crandlemire Murphy (PPD) is not the weakest link. In fact she was the strongest when she won a round of the television show The Weakest Link. The show aired on September 13 on the daytime version of the program, with host George Gray.

Kash, on a Lack of Cash With the headline “Budget deficit outlook only gets worse,” Kashif Mansori (economics) might be credited with helping keep the “dismal” in the dismal science with his September 5 op-ed in the Bangor Daily News. Kash gives a lucid overview of how the federal budget is likely to play out over the next 10 years and concludes: “The bitter truth is that we are probably going to have to scale back the untouchable spending items, as well as reverse recent tax cuts.”

Shedding Light on Dirty War Ariel Armony (government) had a hand in the State Department’s August release of thousands of classified documents that shed light on the grim period in Argentine history known as The Dirty War. Ariel, who is spending this year

“There is something about the poetry of Walt Whitman that simply defies a classroom,” Karen Karbiener (English) told The Christian Science Monitor in an August 6 article. That’s why “Whitman and New York,” the class she has taught at Columbia University the past two summers, uses the city as a classroom. On Mondays, Karbiener holds a traditional class on the Columbia campus. On Wednesdays, she roams the city with her students, stopping at landmarks from Whitman’s life to read his poetry aloud. “He embraced all of New York,” Karbiener says. “He was fascinated with the dirty and the clean.”

Hear, Hear Since getting its frequency straightened out a couple of years ago, WMHB has been on a steady upward trajectory. The station recently passed an independent FCC inspection “with flying colors” according to General Manager Lee L’Heureux ’03, who has provided much of the leadership for recent growth and improvements. WMHB is in 100-percent compliance with all FCC rules and regulations, he says. And that’s just the technical, regulatory side. With more applicants than slots, the station can be pickier about talent. Profs who made the cut are Cheryl


Townsend Gilkes (sociology), gospel music; Jeff Kasser (philosophy), jazz; Karen Karbiener (English), “West End Rock;” and “Jazz with Chas” ­—Charlie Bassett, that is.

Building Complex When the renowned architect Benjamin Thompson, designer of Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston and Harborside in Baltimore, passed away recently, obituaries in papers across the country noted that he had designed buildings at Harvard, Brandeis, Amherst and Colby. His contribution to Colby was the Hillside residence halls. “It is a wonderful example of its type and time and greatly under-

appreciated at Colby,” said Joe Feely (PPD). “Possibly the most skillfully sited complex of buildings on the campus.”

CCAK Is Model Program Not only does Colby Cares About Kids provide positive role models for area children, the program is now a national role model for other mentoring partnerships between college students and communities. America’s Promise features CCAK’s training manuals, guidelines and more at www.americaspromise.org/ HigherEducation/ tools2002.cfm. “Attachments such as a brochure to market the program to students,

applications and background check forms, a mentor training guide and evaluation forms make this a robust tool for any community wanting to solidify its relationship with a neighboring college,” the group says.

Sign of the Pranksters August 27, the day that first-year students headed to campus for the rites of orientation, travelers headed north on Route 95 were greeted by a hand-painted banner tied to the Brunswick exit sign. The sign directs motorists to that town’s liberal arts college. The banner said: “Colby—the Way Bowdoin Should Be.”

Moosecellaneous Leo Pando (communications) not only draws pretty well, the cover story in issue four of Illustration magazine carries his byline as an author. The piece he wrote is a profile of Sam Savitt, one of the great American horse illustrators of the 20th century. . . . Anyone notice the “beauty mark” on Larissa Taylor’s (history) neck in the summer Colby magazine? It’s a black fly, actually. She remembers attending to a bite following the photo shoot. . . . The Phishing Manual, a history of the famous jam band, says, “Phish first performed the woeful story that is ‘Poor Heart’ on May 10, 1991 at the Colby College Student Center.”

Colby Update: Alex Quigley

Second-grade students at Carver Lower Elementary School in Indianola, Miss., pose with their teacher, Alex Quigley ’99. Alex Quigley has found his calling. Visited in winter 2001 when he was teaching kindergarten in an elementary school in Lambert, Miss. (spring 2001 Colby) in conjunction with the Teach for America program, Quigley ’99 has left Lambert, but he hasn’t left the classroom or the Mississippi Delta. Quigley moved south to Indianola, a town of 10,000 best known as the birthplace of B.B. King. More important to Quigley, it is the home of Carver Lower Elementary School, which is attended by 500 children in grades K-2. Quigley, known as Mr. Quigley to his students, teaches second grade.

“It’s going wonderfully, actually,” he said. “I was much better last year than I was my first year. Just the experience. I’m doing a lot of things similarly, but I’m just doing them much better.” Quigley credits an inspiring principal for creating a motivating atmosphere for students and staff at the Indianola school, something that didn’t exist at his previous school. He also points to the contrast between economically depressed Lambert and the more vibrant town where he now works and lives. With his wife, the former Ashley Slate, Quigley bought a house in Indianola. Massachusetts raised, he’s put down roots in the Delta—and he hopes he’s influencing its future. He teaches math, reading and writing, but Quigley has also added to his educational mission. His goal, he said, is to have his students learn ways to solve disagreements, “interacting with each other in a peaceful way at all times.” While the Indianola area is less troubled than Lambert and surrounding Quitman County, still it is plagued by crime. “I see a lot of the violence,” Quigley said. “I hear about people getting shot around here, boys especially committing violent crimes. . . . In my classroom we are not going to solve problems in a violent way.” That may not be what some children are used to, and it has required their teacher to regulate his manner as well. He isn’t stern, he said. He doesn’t shout. “I hug them every day,” Quigley said. “I say good morning and I smile all the time, which I didn’t use to do.” His teaching methods are evolving, and a Fulbright Fellowship promises to add to his breadth as an educator. Quigley’s fellowship will allow him to travel to Japan in November to observe the schools there and confer with his Japanese counterparts. “I never expected,” he said with a laugh, “that it would be this exciting in rural Mississippi.”

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Davis-United World College program brings the world’s students to Colby It’s late morning and students in the front row of Kenneth Rodman’s class on international relations lean forward in their seats as Rodman, William R. Cotter Distinguished Teaching Professor of Government, lectures about a troubling question: who wins and who loses in an increasingly globalized economy? From their rapt expressions, you might think these students in Waterville had a stake in the fate of developing nations They do. The class includes Igor Gnyp ’04 from Ukraine and Andras Rozmer ’05 of Hungary. Megha Kapoor ’05 is from Indonesia. Justinas Pelenis ’05 is from Lithuania and Emma James ’05 from New Zealand via India. It’s a world of experience, and the class knows it. So when Karin Shankar ’05, a student from India, explains how developing countries that step up export of raw materials may actually punish themselves by depressing the prices they get for their product, everybody listens. They know Shankar’s interest is more than academic. More and more this is the scene at Colby, primarily due to an aggressive recruitment effort. It’s also a consequence of an unusual alliance among the College, the United World Colleges (UWC)—a private college preparatory program open to students from all over the world—and a generous donor who has put up millions of dollars to support students at both institutions. Shelby Davis, founder of a $30-billion mutual fund and money management firm, is a $55-million backer of UWC, an international college preparatory school with 2,000 students from 140 countries on 10 campuses around the world. In 1998 Davis donated $45 million to UWC to fund 100 scholarships for American students. Two years ago Davis and his family, including Andrew Davis ’85, a Colby trustee, added a commitment to underwrite up to the full cost of a four-year college education for any graduate of the UWC program admitted to one of five American universities and colleges—Colby, Middlebury and Wellesley colleges, College of the Atlantic, and Princeton University. In the wake of terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Davis also pledged $5 million in matching contributions for general support of United World College, and his funding of

college-level scholarships for UWC graduates grew substantially as that program entered its third year. Colby’s ongoing efforts to “bring the world” to campus made it a natural partner for UWC, and Colby’s international student population has boomed, the numbers doubling in the past four years, largely because of the Davis-UWC scholarship program. “What Shelby Davis has done is to create a private-sector Fulbright program for kids from all over the world,” said Philip Geier, president of the UWC school in New Mexico. Geier says that since many UWC graduates come from families with extremely limited incomes, they wouldn’t be able to attend UWC in the first place, much less go on to college in the United States, without scholarship support. (International students are not eligible for most financial aid programs at U.S. colleges and universities.) The Davis financial commitment ought to be a model for other philanthropists and the universities and colleges they support, Geier says. “Shelby Davis wanted to establish these programs, but he also wanted to challenge schools to realize that it’s in their own strategic interest to transform themselves. As they’ve seen at Colby, you can leverage quite a bit of change over a short period of time by bringing these enormously qualified students to small and mediumsized colleges.” After three years in the program Colby has 67 Davis-UWC scholars, including 29 who started classes this fall. Studying at Colby has clear benefits for the international students—and their American classmates. “These international students, especially the UWC kids, make a considerable contribution to the intellectual caliber of discussion in my classes,” said Rodman. “They expose American students to quite diverse points of view and challenge the stale liberal-conservative split that dominates American political thought.” Such as? “I had a Brazilian in my class, a very conservative pro-business guy,” Rodman said. “One day this American classmate with similar views began referring to Latin American oil, this resource, as ‘our oil.’” The result was what Rodman called “an educational clash.”

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“There’s an energy and drive among the international students that’s quite inspiring. They ask questions I hadn’t anticipated, and they really dig into the material. They encourage other students to aim higher academically.” Pugh Family Professor of Economics David Findlay In another class, an American feminist raised questions about the prevalence of female genital mutilation in some countries. “She raised the issue, with some passion, as a human rights issue,” Rodman said. “But an African feminist in the class, who shared many similar beliefs, really went after the American student about her ethnocentric cultural assumptions. Those are exactly the kinds of dialogues that are critically important to preparing our students for the world they’re inheriting. You wouldn’t have those exchanges if the international students weren’t here.” American students agree. “Every single international student I’ve met brings a lot to the table,” said Kate Heidemann ’04 of Connecticut. “I was in an anthropology class where we watched a film about civil wars in Africa. The film was full of violent images, and we could all agree that what we were seeing was a tragedy. But sitting next to me was one of my friends from Zimbabwe, and he was crying through the whole thing. This kind of direct contact brings everything alive. You’re never going to get that from a textbook.” The growing population of international students has opened doors to the world. “I grew up in Maine, and I never got farther than Quebec in high school,” said Catherine Fillebrown ’05, an East Asian studies major. “Here are all these students from Africa, India, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. I hadn’t seen the world before coming to college, but in a way Colby brought the whole world to me.” That expanded world is a boost to students and faculty. “There’s an energy and drive among the international students that’s quite inspiring,” said David Findlay, Pugh Family Professor of Economics. “They ask questions I hadn’t anticipated, and they really dig into the material. They encourage other students to aim higher academically.” Assistant Professor of Chemistry Dasan Thamattoor reports that most of the international students he’s taught, even in his most difficult courses, have been stellar. They are unusually “driven and extremely motivated” in ways that inspire their American classmates, he said. Thamattoor cites Rodwell Mabaera ’02, who grew up in Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe, and attended Colby on an Oak Scholarship, a program that brings students to Colby from Zimbabwe and Denmark. Early on Thamattoor noticed that Mabaera, a double major in chemistry and math, continually signed up for “the hardest classes imaginable.” He became “a kind of elder statesman” among classmates of all sorts,

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Thamattoor said. Mabaera ran on the cross-country team, played on an indoor soccer team with American and international students and faculty members and was a COOT leader. In May he graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa after just three years, and in August he enrolled at Dartmouth Medical School. Significant numbers of international students take courses in government and international studies, and their diverse perspectives enrich the content and discussions in those subjects. G. Calvin Mackenzie, Goldfarb Family Distinguished Professor of American Government, worries, though, that future changes in national policy, inspired by security concerns, will make it more difficult for international students to study in America. In the aftermath of last year’s terrorist attacks, Mackenzie notes, there’s been understandable attention paid to the potential risks posed by international study programs. But there has been far less discussion of the other side of the story, Mackenzie argues. “If we make it significantly harder for foreign students to come to study on U.S. campuses, we’ll substantially diminish the educational experience of American students who learn from them,” he said. “We will also destroy the great potential we have, through our colleges and universities, to make just the kinds of positive connections with young people in other countries that we need to make if we’re to raise levels of mutual understanding and combat future terrorism.” Mutual understanding doesn’t come instantly, of course, and even on campus there can be adjustment issues. Last spring more than a dozen Davis-UWC scholars from 13 countries and five continents gathered to talk about the particular challenges of being an international student on an American campus these days. Several admitted that they were mystified by what they considered peculiar behavior by some of their American classmates. Alcohol abuse, especially among first-year students, and casual sexual activity shocked some of the international scholars. Instead of breaking down barriers, initial impressions sometimes reinforced stereotypes. “Some of these kids only care about Abercrombie and Fitch and using daddy’s ATM card,” said a student from India. Another remembered her first view of “this vast conveyor belt of all the food” available in the dining halls and the massive leftovers piled into the trash


PHOTO: FRED FIELD

afterward. “It was a shock,” she said, “to really see for the first time this use-and-throw-away culture.” Some recounted incidents of hostility or ignorance on the part of a few American classmates. The first question a scholar from Ukraine was asked by his roommate was, “Are your parents communists or are they part of the Mafia?” But after a few similar examples, one of the Davis-UWC scholars protested. “I think we’re creating a misleading impression,” said Diego Puig ’04, from Argentina. “This idea that Americans are ignorant—I think that’s complete crap.” He said he’s met plenty of Americans on campus who are smart, engaged and open. And if an American dropped into his own hometown in Argentina, he wouldn’t necessarily be greeted with enthusiasm, Puig says, so why should the international students at Colby expect special treatment? Going abroad for college not only offers an opportunity to understand American politics and culture better but also a chance to reflect on one’s own background and experience. Stanislav Presolski ’05, from Bulgaria, recalls an epiphany during an English composition course taught by Lee Family Professor of English Cedric Gael Bryant. Presolski remembers working on essays for the class on several nights from 8 p.m. until 8 a.m. “I wrote one essay about the gypsies in Bulgaria,” he recalled. “It’s a hidden conflict, almost like racism. Back home, when I was reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin, I would say, ‘Wow, see how Americans are so cruel in their treatment of black people.’ But I had never questioned myself or considered that I had the same kind of bad opinion of the gypsies.” The value of such cross-cultural exchange runs in both directions, of course. Ana Prokic ’04, of Yugoslavia, arrived at Colby in the fall of 2000. Within a few months, U.S.-led NATO troops were bombing Belgrade. “I was watching the live broadcast and they said on television that the military hospital where my mom works had been destroyed,” Prokic said. It took her six hours to get through on the telephone to find out it wasn’t the hospital that had been hit. Several American students whom Prokic didn’t know well at the time were supportive through the difficult weeks that followed, and she says she won’t forget their kindness. Her classmates’ response to her personal crisis in turn informed her own reaction when she returned home for vacation last December, after the September 11 attacks. Prokic said, “People blame the U.S. for the bombing in my country, and so they celebrated the attacks. I said, ‘Can you hear yourself? Listen, it’s not Bill Clinton, it’s not the pilots who bombed our country that died, it’s two or three thousand innocent people.’ Watching the bombing of my country was really, really hard. But I was also here for the September 11 attacks, and when that happened I felt the same exact pain that I’d felt when I saw buildings crash back home.” International students at Colby say they’ve found themselves in a startling position during the past year. Several likened their new challenge to a navigation between the world at home and the world of classmates and professors in the United States.

“I’ve become a kind of interpreter between the American perspective and Polish perspective—an interpreter in both directions,” said Pawel Brodalka ’05 of Poland. Brodalka is on the track team and rooms with an “outspoken conservative” from New Jersey. “He’s an intelligent fellow,” Brodalka said. “He’s got his strong views, but he’s not closeminded, and he’s willing to listen to my views too.” Since the terrorist attacks a year ago, “To my roommate and for the guys on the track team, I found myself to a certain extent able to explain why America is sometimes viewed as isolationist and unilateralist in its actions,” Brodalka said. “And to my friends and family in Poland, I was able to explain just how frightened people are because those planes crashed into the World Trade Center. I told them the [U.S.] is no monolith, and that it’s not as if everybody is against the Muslims now,” he said. “I told them that people are smart, and that they understand that you should not generalize and play into stereotypes.” Brodalka also finds his own attitudes shifting as a result of the frank exchanges in the classroom, during workouts, at meal times and in the dorms. “Most of my life I found myself strongly pro-Palestinian,” he said, offering an example. “Now when I listen to my conservative roommate and other American friends I find my perceptions shaken. I hope they find their perceptions shaken, too, in listening to me.” American students have found that Colby’s 67 Davis-UWC scholars

Charles Data ’04 from Uganda and Sheena Siu ’05 from Hong Kong in an economics class.

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Left, Nina Korolyova ’06 of Bulgaria and UWC graduate Adelajda Zorba ’06 of Albania chat at a recent International Coffee Hour. are not cardboard cutouts, reducible “representatives” of diverse cultures or political views, but are, of course, individuals. The range of their backgrounds, the eclectic nature of their experience, can be dizzying. Nicholas Matatu ’04, from Zimbabwe, attended the UWC in Hong Kong, then came to Colby to study Chinese literature and Japanese politics. Nandini Naik ’05, from India, is majoring in theater and dance and in religious studies and had a role in the campus staging of The Vagina Monologues. Joseph Okeyo ’05, of Kenya, a fine basketball player, arrived on campus with experience in an AIDS hospice in Bangkok and is headed for an M.B.A. and a job in banking. Lubos Hudec ’05, an accordion player from the Czech Republic,

is studying music and physics. Adelin Cai ’05, from Singapore, whose father is a professional magician, taught at a school of hearing-impaired youngsters two summers and is a stalwart of the popular Social Action Theater troupe at Colby. Andriy Avramenko ’04, the son of two engineers from Ukraine, surprised himself by falling in love with classes in art and literature, especially one course on “Asian heroes taught by an Irishman. It had that odd mix, maybe that’s why I liked it,” he said. It’s an eclectic mix of cultures that can be a melding of extremes. Charles Data ’04 wedges his campus job in the post office between classes and a blizzard of academic obligations and volunteer activities. Like many international students, he also works up to 20 hours a week to supplement his scholarship funds. Like some others, he sends almost all of what he makes to his family back home. Data, an economics major and one of 10 Davis-UWC Scholars from Africa at Colby, was born in the Sudan and grew up in Uganda. When he talks about his trajectory from Uganda to two years of academic and social preparation on the United World College campus in Norway to Colby in Maine, he said he’s “as surprised as anyone else to find myself here.” Born into a poor family (his mother works a small agricultural plot, his father lives in a refugee camp), Data was encouraged by his older brother to seek educational opportunities outside of Uganda. He admits that he suffered a walloping dose of culture shock when he first arrived in Waterville. Thrown off at first by American customs, he wasn’t sure what to make of the cheery but seemingly empty greetings that were shouted out at him around the campus. “I didn’t know whether Americans were all fake,” he recalled. “People just seemed to be speaking at high speed—saying, ‘Hi, wuzzut!’—but it becomes very confusing to know whether they were at all interested in an answer to the question they were asking.” The relatively open attitude toward homosexuality on campus also startled him. He’d feared being placed with a gay roommate and took some time warming up to openly gay and lesbian classmates. Attitudes about homosexuality in Uganda are so different, he explains. But Data experienced a dramatic change of heart over the course of his first year. His supervisor at the student post office, a gay man, “treated me respectfully,” Data said. “I really liked him. And that made me wonder why I should have disrespectful thoughts about gay people on the whole. I just began to let my prejudice go.”

“I feel that I’m taking the resources of fifteen people’s education by being here—it’s all being devoted to me. And that raises quite important questions for the rest of my life. I have to think where I’m going to end up. . . .” Charles Data ’04, a UWC graduate from Uganda

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Data hopes to work for the United Nations, helping run resettlement programs. Eventually, he says, he’d like to go into politics in his native Sudan. As he settles into his third year at Colby, Data is keenly aware of his special status—both at Colby and back at home. His unusual opportunity inspires a strong sense of responsibility. “I feel that I’m taking the resources of fifteen people’s education by being here—it’s all being devoted to me,” Data said softly. “And that raises quite important questions for the rest of my life. I have to think where I’m going to end up, and also how am I going to do something to compensate the other fifteen people who were sacrificed so I could be here.”

As he considers all the implications of increasing Colby’s international reach in recruiting students, President William Adams sees multiple benefits. Besides providing opportunities for talented and extremely well-prepared students from all around the world to study here, UWC provides compelling benefits for American students, too. “We believe that a contemporary college education ought to be both cross-cultural and transnational,” Adams said. “International students contribute to the intellectual life of the college in distinctive ways. We need them for the important contributions they make to the educational process itself. We need them, in short, to help educate us.” For information about the United World Colleges visit www.uwc.org

PHOTOS: LEFT, FRED FIELD; RIGHT, JIM EVANS

Shelby Davis Explains Shelby M. C. Davis is founder, went out to visit the UWC campus chief investment officer and chief in New Mexico. I was walking past executive officer of Davis Selected one of the meeting rooms and here Advisers, L.P., a $30-billion mutual were these two students—one Palfund and money management firm. estinian and one Israeli—with their He, his son Andrew ’85 and their arms around each other. That just families have contributed more blew me away . . . I found myself than $50 million to United World thinking, “Hey, this is something I College, a private international can believe in.” college preparatory program with 10 campuses worldwide. The family Is this commitment unlimited? also contributes up to $10 million It is. Anybody who can get admita year to support the Davis-UWC ted to Colby from Bulgaria, I figure Scholarship Program, which they deserve it. Now, when I meet underwrites up to the full educational Bro and he says that professors here and living costs of graduates who win come up to him and say, “Get me Shelby Davis meets with Davis-UWC scholars at Colby in October. admission to Colby, Middlebury, more students like these” because Wellesley, College of the Atlantic or Princeton University. they’re enriching the classroom, they’re fun to teach, they bring different points of view to the discussions, and they’re making a What led to your interest in funding college scholarships for big impact on the American students as well as learning a lot theminternational students? selves—that just confirms the value of it. When I was still in my teens, I took two trips around the world. It was on those trips that I began to understand that only through How did the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., interaction between people can we build bridges of both understand- last fall affect your thinking about the program? ing and knowledge. My whole company could have been wiped out on 9-11. My office is on the 94th floor of Two World Trade, [and] our board meeting These students [are] coming from Bulgaria or Russia or China, was scheduled for that morning at 8:30. By chance, in August the and they’re succeeding in a challenging academic environment in meeting was switched to the O’Hare Hilton in Chicago. My son a second language. They need to succeed . . . but if your father Chris was on the last plane out of Laguardia Airport, and the capearns $30 a month, how is he going to fund $30,000 a year? My tain of the plane said, “There’s something going on at the World goal, frankly, is to have all students that graduate at United World Trade Center.” They looked over and saw the ball of flame as the Colleges to go on to university. second plane crashed. I was so grateful, of course, that we’d been spared. But I also felt How, and why, did you get involved in supporting United World that we had a special responsibility . . . to educate young Americans College students? about global realities while exposing international students to U.S. After meeting Phil Geier [president, UWC of the American West] I college life.

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On Terror’s Trail

A Boston Globe reporter searches for answers in the wake of September 11 By Brian MacQuarrie ’74

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Veteran Boston Globe reporter Brian MacQuarrie ’74 often is dispatched to scenes of tragedy, catastrophe or simple human drama. When Gianni Versace was murdered, it was MacQuarrie who was sent to Miami. When a man went on a shooting rampage in Colebrook, N.H., MacQuarrie was writing from the stunned community within hours. When a Swissair jet crashed in Nova Scotia in 1998, killing 229 people, MacQuarrie flew to Bangor, rented a car and drove the rest of the night to Halifax. He worked all that day, filing stories that night for the Globe. “I think it’s prepared me to go in cold,” MacQuarrie said. “You have only a few facts. You just have to think on your feet and think of the best way to file, who to see, how to arrange your interviews.” And if your assignment is particularly farflung, you hope to hire a good “fixer.” MacQuarrie did just that in Islamabad, Pakistan, where he found himself with the same driver who had ferried Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl through the city in the days before his death. What follows is MacQuarrie’s account of his weeks in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he tried both to report on the day’s news and to divine the motives of friend, foe and those who fell mysteriously in between.

H

alf a world away from New England, at 11 a.m. on March 17, my first working day as The Boston Globe correspondent in Pakistan began with an explosion that catapulted me headlong into the maelstrom that had become the U.S. “war on terror.” A suicide bomber had struck a Protestant church less than two miles from the Islamabad hotel where I was staying. My translator rushed in with the horrific news, abruptly canceled our get-acquainted session and hurried me into a waiting car for a frenzied drive to the scene. There, only a few yards from the U.S. Embassy in the heavily guarded diplomatic quarter, shattered glass and a cordon of Pakistani troops ringed the outside of a small white church. Inside, pools of blood and pieces of flesh, some blasted onto the ceiling 60 feet above the sanctuary, gave sickening testimony of the carnage that ripped apart a quiet Sunday service only a half-hour before. Five dead, including two Americans.

Dozens injured. Welcome to Pakistan. That church bombing provided a nowaiting cultural and professional transition from the streets of Boston to a shifting, covert war zone and the deadly realities

of the aftermath of September 11. In the nine weeks that followed, in cities and villages from the plains of Pakistan to the mountains of Afghanistan, the demands of a reporter’s job also provided me with an

Above, Brian MacQuarrie in Kabul, with Afghan boys newly arrived from refugee camps in Pakistan. They were among thousands of Afghans who returned to their country after the fall of the Taliban. In the background are buses used to transport families from the camps. At right, Afghan fighters scramble as a sniper shoots at them near the front line in Milawa.

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PHOTOS: PREVIOUS PAGE AND ABOVE RIGHT, DOMINIC CHAVEZ/BOSTON GLOBE

eyeball-to-eyeball look at the complicated roots and troubling future of a confrontation that none of the simple, fiery rhetoric from Washington and elsewhere seems able to capture adequately.

I

raised my hand for this assignment, hungry for a chance to balance the three weeks I had spent in New York City after the World Trade Center attack with a stint in the cauldron of Islamic fundamentalism that had nurtured Al Qaeda and spawned the killers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. First stop, Islamabad, the modern, built-from-scratch Pakistani capital, where the Muslim country’s tiny elite governs a nation of 144 million people sprawling from the foothills of the Himalayas to the teeming port of Karachi. My job: to report the news of the day, which after March

17 became a daily update on the hunt for the church bombers, the infiltration of Al Qaeda into Pakistani society and the dayto-day life of a complex, overpopulated and impoverished nation that is little understood by Americans. As a general-assignment reporter for the Globe, my work is concentrated in New England but also has taken me across the country to cover breaking news—often involving the immediate drama of high-profile trials, plane crashes, sensational killings and natural calamities such as wildfires and hurricanes. Nothing, however, had prepared me for the visceral culture shock of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where information was scarce, my Western appearance made me inherently suspect to bureaucrats and ordinary people and each day was an adrenaline-pumping succession of long hours filled with palpable, low-level tension.

Thanks to my translator, a respected Pakistani journalist named Absar Alam, the task of finding and reporting the news became easier in a country where truth is often obscured by official denial and media manipulation. It was Alam who arranged for prompt interviews with top military and government leaders who otherwise might have kept an American newspaper reporter waiting for days or weeks. And it was he who gave me insight into the lives of anonymous Pakistanis, accompanying me on assignments to a leper clinic in Rawalpindi, a sewage ditch called home by dozens of hopeless heroin addicts, a frontier bazaar in Peshawar near the Khyber Pass, the crowded corkscrew alleys of Lahore’s old city and even the hardscrabble cricket fields of Islamabad. Alam, who covers foreign affairs for an English-language daily, not only served as

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translator—parsing my English questions into the Urdu tongue used by most Pakistanis—but also as advisor, guide and boon companion on lengthy trips along dusty, twisting roads into a countryside that sometimes seemed frozen in biblical times. Together, we broke a story about a U.S.-Pakistani raid that uncovered Al Qaeda operatives, reported the arrests of suspect Yemeni students at a flight school near Afghanistan and tracked the painstakingly slow accumulation of leads into the stillunsolved bombing of the Islamabad church. Writing the stories late into the night was a familiar routine I had honed over a 25year career. But outside the western-style room in Islamabad, past the armed guards who kept 24-hour watch at the hotel, on streets crowded with Pakistanis in traditional clothing, past the stares and the outstretched hands, an education into South Asian customs and attitudes was incessant and illuminating. I found a people for whom Islam and family dictate daily life. The Pakistanis’ devotion to their religion touched me deeply, as bureaucrats and beggars alike dutifully pray toward Mecca as many as five times a day—often by the side of the road as the chaotic Pakistani traffic whizzes by, choking the senses with exhaust and noise. Their affection for children was similarly touching, even if hundreds of thousands of these children are malnourished, barefoot and poorly clothed. The women, however, play a shrouded, second-class role. The United States is an enigma to them, a military and material power far beyond their comprehension. To the average Pakistani, the United States is a country of scandalously loose morals, a hypocritical giant that changes allies according to the geopolitical winds and an enemy of Islam. Merely being a Westerner in Pakistan is an invitation for long, sullen looks that convey the deep resentment of the hopelessly disenfranchised. I found the daily task of reporting the news exhausting and exhilarating, and the few hours of down time were enlivened by oases of various foreign social clubs scattered about Islamabad. The United Nations Club, in particular, offered relief from the droning tension that permeated the city for Westerners. In a wooden, English-style pub that served

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PHOTOS: ABOVE, BRIAN MACQUARRIE ’74; RIGHT, DOMINIC CHAVEZ/BOSTON GLOBE

Below, men congregate outside a Muslim shrine in Kabul. The doorway frames the entrance to a cave believed to be a sacred place. At right Afghan soldiers from the eastern province of Shaura hold their position on the front line in Milawa.


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At left, an Afghan trucker recovers from injuries sustained when American troops bombed the truck he was driving. At right, a nomad in the Nahre-Saraj desert, where a drought has added to the hardship of the war. At far right, a street scene in Murree, Pakistan, east of Islamabad. Murree was the scene of a terrorist attack on a western school a few days after this photo was taken.

the forbidden fruit of alcohol in a staunchly Muslim nation, expatriates gathered nightly in a real-life cousin to Rick’s Cafe Americain from Casablanca. Here, German oil executives, British mine-clearing specialists, Irish humanitarian workers and even Saudi diplomats laughed and lingered over a beer or a whisky—and exhaled. Still, there were jitters. One British executive said he planned to send his wife and children home. Another man, a 50-something Northern Irish veteran of the British Army who helped supervise mine-clearing in Afghanistan, shrugged at the danger. “I’m not a saint; it’s just my job,” he said. Outside, private security guards with automatic rifles kept watch over his car.

A

fter five weeks, the decision was made to send me to Kabul, the Afghan capital, because my planned replacement was dispatched to Jerusalem to fill in for a Globe reporter who had been shot and wounded by Israeli troops in the West Bank. The new assignment was exciting, nerve-wracking and even more unpredictable than my stint in Pakistan. Flying into Kabul via a U.N. humanitarian charter gave me a blunt introduction to a country that has been fought over by imperial powers since the time of Alexan-

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der the Great. Below the plane carrying aid workers, bureaucrats and reporters were vast arid tracts of high desert, largely unpopulated except for small clusters of mud-brick homes that cling to the narrow, arable sides of mountain-fed streams. At Kabul Airport, ringed by snow-capped peaks, the ruined carcasses of planes, tanks and artillery lay near the runway that provided the bombed-out capital with its most important lifeline. Unlike Pakistan, the ravages of war were everywhere in Afghanistan. Two decades of unrelenting hostilities against the Russians, then a savage civil war followed by the bloody ouster of the Taliban had left their evidence in every corner of the country’s historic capital and in every village through which I passed. Kabul’s streets were obstacle courses pockmarked by years of shelling; block after block of simple homes had been reduced to clay ruins; 20,000 returning refugees poured into the devastated city every day from crowded camps in Pakistan; and packs of fierce Afghan soldiers, armed with Kalashnikov rifles, patrolled chaotic streets where law and order were concepts in name only. I stayed in a rented home, which the Globe shared with the Financial Times of London, in what had once been the most

fashionable section of Kabul. Behind a 10-foot-high wall and a steel gate topped with metal spikes we typed our stories onto laptop computers that fed the copy to our newspapers via satellite phones. We had a 24-hour Afghan guard who lived in small quarters beside the house, a cook who left after preparing dinner, plus two drivers and translators who arrived early every morning, accompanied us wherever we needed to go and stayed late into the evening until the day’s work was finished. After a 10 p.m. curfew every night, from behind a second-story window that looked across Kabul’s rooftops to the nearby mountains, the news from Afghanistan flowed to the Globe. The silence of the quiet room was broken only by the patter of a keyboard. Although I worked alone, I have rarely felt as fulfilled. Unlike the guerilla war in Pakistan, war news in Afghanistan was achingly visible. The international military coalition held a daily press briefing at 9:30 a.m. That briefing was followed by a U.N. news conference that invariably unveiled new information on the humanitarian disaster that had become Afghanistan: drought, earthquakes, refugees, infant mortality, prisoner abuses, locusts. There were so many stories, so much suffering, so much hope. But only so much time


PHOTOS: LEFT AND ABOVE, DOMINIC CHAVEZ/BOSTON GLOBE; FAR RIGHT, BRIAN MACQUARRIE ’74

to write and report. In nine weeks, I counted only two complete days to myself. My translator in Kabul was Dr. Ebadullah Ebadi, a 30-year-old physician who had taken medical exams in a Kabul bus that moved around the capital to avoid shelling during the civil war. He had dodged bullets in his short life, jumped into ditches to avoid rockets, seen death in the streets where he grew up and had never left Afghanistan. He wore a constant smile. Our most memorable excursion was to Mazar-i-Sharif, a wild city in northern Afghanistan near Uzbekistan and the scene of ferocious fighting during the campaign against the Taliban. The journey to Mazar took an entire day, across the Hindu Kush mountains and through the Russian-built Salang Tunnel, the world’s highest. Along the route, we saw shattered tanks beside the road, warnings for landmines only 10 feet from the highway and some of the most beautiful mountain scenery I have ever seen. Camels trudged slowly across the desert to Mazar in a tableau unchanged for centuries. Locusts, billions of them, fluttered

across the former breadbasket of Afghanistan in a no-quarter feeding frenzy that ravaged what had promised to be a bumper crop. After leaving Mazar, following interviews with warlords from feuding factions of Uzbeks and Tajiks, our entourage of four—myself, driver, translator and photographer—stayed in an unlocked hostel in Taliban-friendly Pul-i-Chumri, only 50 yards from a checkpoint on the country’s major north-south highway. Screams of beaten or tortured men emanated from that checkpoint every hour or two through the night. There was nowhere to go. I resigned myself to the situation and, to my own surprise, managed to sleep during the gaps between the cries. That bizarre and troubling night aside, and despite logistical planning that literally involved questions about the probability of our lives or deaths, I felt more comfortable in Afghanistan than I had in Pakistan. Although scarred by war, the Afghans seemed more open and friendly than their neighbors to the south. Everyone I interviewed in Afghanistan, from tough military

commanders to wounded teenagers with prosthetic legs, expressed what seemed to be a sincere desire for peace. Being a Westerner still attracted enormous amounts of attention, especially in places where foreigners rarely ventured such as the crowded bazaar in Kabul or a village street in the shadow of the Hindu Kush. But rather than resentment, I sensed genuine curiosity among these people. Their faces were open, and surprisingly bright, despite the wrenching poverty that cloaked Afghanistan like a blanket. After I’d worked a month in Afghanistan, the Globe called me home. Walking across the war-scarred tarmac to my plane at Kabul Airport, I looked forward to a rest, but with mixed feelings. Many of the sights I had seen over nine weeks in Asia had been horrific, but the experience had been a profound testament for life itself.

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allbusiness

At the University of Chicago, Ted Snyder adds value to the Graduate School of Business By Grant Pick Jack Welch, the retired chairman of General Electric and author of the best-selling Jack: Straight from the Gut, was scheduled to speak at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business last October. This was well before his wife’s divorce suit cast light on Welch’s extraordinary retirement perquisites, and his reputation was riding high. Dean Edward A. “Ted” Snyder ’75 dispatched an e-mail to his school community touting Welch as “the top CEO in recent memory.” “You didn’t substantiate that,” one faculty member promptly replied. After doing research, a student reported to Snyder that four out of six of the prior GE CEOs had been described with similar accolades. “That’s the kind of place this is,” Snyder said. “People are disciplined in their thought, and they always push.” The lanky, 49-year-old Snyder delights in the environment, one he came to with substantial expectation last year. “He will be a great leader for the school,” said University President Don Michael Randel on Snyder’s appointment. On the job since Sept. 1, 2001, he heads a multi-faceted program that produces some 1,100 M.B.A.’s and executive M.B.A.’s annually. While rooted in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood and at a downtown center, the Chicago GSB also operates branches in Singapore and Barcelona. The school is known for its free-market philosophy and the lack of a core curriculum for full-time students. “The idea is that we trust the students’ judgment,” Snyder said. “If you want to work for Kraft, here you have the flexibility to take marketing research and strategy classes right in your first year so you can get an internship. If you want to work for Goldman Sachs, you can load up on finance.”

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Manning the helm of such an institution requires finesse, says Snyder: “The job is somewhere between being a CEO and being a small-city mayor. Being a CEO in the sense that a business school has to make a lot of strategic decisions and at a fast-moving pace. Being a mayor in that there are a lot of constituencies, and you have to be accessible to a lot of people and must bring the community along.” Snyder faces some more specific challenges. Recently the top-tier Chicago GSB has seen its standing dip in the Business Week and U.S. News &World Report business-school rankings. “The declines are things I care about,” Snyder said in January. “They are part of the competitive landscape—and I’m a very competitive person.” He was heartened to see his school’s M.B.A. program rise to sixth place in the latest U.S. News study, released late this summer. Ground-breaking took place in May for a new GSB building, a limestone-and-glass structure designed by renowned architect


Rafael Viñoly that pays homage to both Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House and the gothic Rockefeller Chapel, its immediate neighbors in Hyde Park. Snyder says he needs to raise $40 million more to complete the $125-million building, along with growing the GSB’s $200-million-plus endowment. He is also committed to increasing the applicant pool and to bringing in more women and minorities. And he finds himself on guard to prevent his faculty (“the best in the world,” he insists) from being raided by other schools. The events of September 11 and the economic downturn have handed Snyder a new and unexpected mission. “We all knew people who were harmed in the attacks,” he said. “Most of us had been in the World Trade Center buildings. This doesn’t just apply to the business school, but this had a vivid quality to us. Also, the economy got tough, and to this particular group of students, it isn’t what they expected. I’ve been spending a lot of time keeping people’s spirits up.” The shoddy and allegedly fraudulent practices involving corporations like Enron and Tyco, Snyder adds, have caused a fresh round of soul searching at the school. The son of a home-improvement contractor and a junior high and high school humanities teacher, Snyder grew up outside Boston. Colby was his only college choice. He set a triplejump record for Colby that still stands. By his junior year mononucleosis and a knee injury brought an end to Snyder’s track career. “That was all good for me in a perverse way, because I got serious about my studies,”

he said. He relished classes with Government Professor Albert Mavrinac and English Professor Charlie Bassett, and his friendship with James Meehan, Herbert E. Wadsworth Professor of Economics, has lasted ever since. “Ted was a first-rate student with a curious mind,” said Meehan, who has collaborated with Snyder on two scholarly papers. Peter Kraft, Snyder’s sophomore roommate, who is now a Portland, Maine, attorney, said that Snyder’s “clear intelligence” was layered “with a sense of what I’d call mirth. He liked Bob Dylan, the Celtics and poker, which we played every night in our room. He tended to speak with reflection rather than to blurt things out.” After Colby Snyder earned a doctorate in economics at the University of Chicago, with a year-and-a-half break as an economist in the antitrust division of the U.S. Justice Department in Washington. His Chicago thesis centered on the effect of hiking criminal penalties for antitrust violators (he later

became a frequent expert witness in antitrust court cases). In 1982 he began a 16-year tour at the University of Michigan Business School, culminating in his appointment as senior associate dean. In 1998 he took the dean’s position at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he distinguished himself by boosting the non-degree executive education program and by securing a $60-million gift for technology and entrepreneurship training from alumnus Frank Batten, founder of The Weather Channel and retired chairman of Landmark Communications, a media conglomerate. Snyder also pioneered the grace note of playing host to small groups of students for Sunday evening suppers at the faculty house he and his family occupied, a graceful home with 14-foot ceilings designed by Thomas Jefferson. “M.B.A. students typically have had work experiences before returning to graduate school, and they are thinking through their life’s work,” Snyder said. “These dinners were an occasion to talk about that.” His wife, Kim, a former hospital clinician, and three children—Alison, 14, Jeff, 11, and Kevin, 8—were also encouraged to join in. Snyder is continuing the tradition at Chicago GSB by gathering students for breakfasts at the faculty Quadrangle Club. More broadly, he said, “I’m taking my job day to day. The real satisfaction will come . . . in knowing that I’ve gotten some new things started and that I’ve added value to this school.”

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A School Across the Bay

By Gerry Boyle ’78

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Kristine Young and Barney Hallowell are moored to their island students

S

chool is in session, and in the middle of Penobscot Bay this is music teacher Kristine Davidson Young’s morning routine: After seeing her three children onto the Vinalhaven school bus, Young ’87 climbs into her yellow Jeep and drives eight miles of winding roads to the northern tip of the island. Young pulls up to a spartan boat ramp on the shore of the Fox Island Thoroughfare, the passage that separates Vinalhaven from the island of North Haven. On the far shore are a cluster of frame houses, a boat shed, lobster boats swinging on moorings. To the west across the bay are the Camden Hills. Young takes out her cell phone and punches in the number, letting the boatyard on North Haven know she’s ready. Leaving the Jeep unlocked, her cell phone on the front seat, Young waits on a small wooden dock, dressed for school in khakis and clogs, book bag in hand. On North Haven, a small aluminum skiff pulls away from a float and heads across the passage. Foy Brown, a North Haven institution, pulls up in the skiff, one hand on the tiller of an outboard. Young steps in and sits, and her “little taxi” pulls away. On the North Haven side, Young steps onto the dock in one effortless movement and makes the bow line fast to a cleat. She then walks to the end of a boat shed and heaves the big wooden door open, exchanging hellos with the workers inside as she moves through the shed. At the far door, she takes a car key off a hook on the wall and heads for a beat-up Oldsmobile named Florence that she keeps for the short drive to North Haven Community School. Before she had the car, Young would hang around the store up the street from the boat shed until someone bound for the school happened by. “Kind of like Colby Corner used to be,” she said. Young grew up on Vinalhaven, 10 miles off of the coast. Her father was a lobsterman, and her parents now own the island store; she studied piano with classical musicians from Boston and Europe who had island ties. At Colby, she majored in music, studied piano with Bill Wallace, then returned to marry Steve Young, another Vinalhaven lobsterman. They have three children—Matthew, 7, and Alex and Libby, 12-year-old twins whose names grace the stern of the Youngs’ new lobster boat—and they have no plans to move to the mainland. Why? “I think it’s what keeps everybody here,” Young said, “and that’s the community. There’s a real strong sense of community. As I get older, I get more passionate about it. I realize how fragile these islands are.” The islands themselves are rugged outcroppings, the islanders rugged, too. But the year-round communities on them face pressures that, if ignored, could threaten their centuries-old existence. Vinalhaven’s year-round population is growing. A new school is nearing completion, with $2 million (including $1.2 million from credit-card giant MBNA) raised for an auditorium. “The

fund raising, it sounds like it’s all about money but it’s not,” Young said. “It’s about preserving what we have.” What could take it away? If the schools are poor, year-rounders will leave. If the yearround community isn’t vital, it will be usurped by the seasonal one. It’s less of an issue on Vinalhaven than on smaller North Haven, where the year-round population holds at 350 and 80 percent of the land is owned by seasonal residents. The little available real estate fetches exhorbitant prices. “There’s a great fear here that there simply aren’t going to be the opportunities for young people to come and live here if they want to,” said Barney Hallowell ’64, principal of the North Haven Community School. Hallowell came to North Haven 30 years ago as an Outward Bound instructor in search of a more permanent mooring for his family. With six children, he has seen his older kids leave North Haven. Hallowell has no plans to leave. “There’s this emotional attachment to North Haven, and Vinalhaven,” he said. “It’s very powerful.” And yet the North Haven Community School strives to prepare students for life beyond the island. During Hallowell’s tenure the school has changed from a tension-fraught place to a thriving community hub. With just 72 students in grades K-12, the school has the New England champion ocean-rowing team and a van-sized entry in a national solar-vehicle contest. With New York director John Wolpe at the helm, the island school supplied the subject and cast of the original musical Islands, which played on Broadway last year. A new $3 million island community center is in the works. “We’re not just an offshore, isolated, little community of no importance,” Hallowell said. Indeed, after some time on North Haven, the island can seem like the center of the world. Hallowell, whose school aims to prepare students for life off the island, is acutely aware of the island’s pull. “This community is not like many that people find themselves in these days,” he said. “Everybody knows everybody here. Even with friction and strife, everyone watches out for everyone else.” But that isn’t North Haven’s only distinguishing characteristic. This is a community at sea, where days are regulated by the tides and the ferry schedule. It’s a place where Young teaches Debussy and Grieg to first graders but knows when to draw on their own body of knowledge. One day last spring, during a lesson that included a song about cowboys, she tried to explain branding cows to her young charges. “How do people keep track of their [lobster] traps,” Young said. “Buoys,” the class responded in unison. “What is the difference in the buoys? Is everybody’s blue?” “No,” the children of lobstermen said, chiming in with their father’s identifying buoy colors. White with a blue stripe. Black stripe, white stripe, black stripe. White with green. “What’s your dad’s, Leita?” Young said. “It’s pink,” a small blond girl said. “It’s pink with a yellow star.”

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From the Hill on campus

A Children’s

Crusade

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alfway across the world and a cultural universe away, Kuj Akon tirelessly searches for his missing daughter. He doesn’t know what she would look like today and describes her as she was 10 years ago, when she was abducted by slave raiders. This is the image that Ushari Mahmud remembers at Colby when he reflects on his work improving human rights in Sudan and helping the Sudanese children who have been

Ushari Mahmud, the 2002 Oak Human Rights Fellow, works for victims of slavery, incarceration and child soldiering

DAVID LEAMING

Toddlers are stolen from their families and sold into slavery. Thirteen-year-olds are handed weapons and ordered to kill and mutilate their enemy. Slaves are often beaten. Moreover, these practices are used as war strategies by both sides; slavery is tolerated by the northern Khartoum government and child soldiering is adopted by the southern rebels. Met with admiration by some and searing hostility by others, Mahmud has put his personal safety on the line to expose these ugly practices. His work documenting and revealing the reality of slavery in Sudan, now a controversial issue in the media, landed him in prison for two years. Mahmud has found a safe haven at Colby this semester—a respite intended to give him a chance to relax and reflect. “I don’t have time to relax, but I will do a lot of reflection,” he said. As well as helping to organize the Oak Human Rights Lecture Series, he Oak Human Rights Fellow Ushari Mahmud teaches in Miller Library. is teaching a course the victims of slavery, incarceration or child called Human Rights in a Global Perspective, soldiering. “He makes a trip from south to north giving presentations at high schools and writing Sudan every year hoping to find his daughter,” manuscripts on issues such as child protection, Mahmud said. “He never gives up.” human rights and language rights. Mahmud is the 2002 Oak Human Rights He said he is delighted by the atmosphere Fellow at Colby for the fall semester. For the at Colby and especially by the receptivity of past 15 years he has been protesting the effects his students to his work. Mahmud found many of armed conflict on the Sudanese people, students already involved in human rights particularly children caught up in a bloody work in the United States. “It’s encouraging civil war that pits the Muslim north against to know that,” he said. the Christian south. Mahmud developed his interest in human

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rights while studying sociolinguistics at Georgetown University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1979. He taught at Khartoum University for 10 years and has worked for the past six years with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Kenya and Burundi to protect children in Sudan. It’s a painstaking process, despite the broad ideals UNICEF upholds. Mahmud educates rebels and government officials alike, emphasizing that slavery and child soldiering are considered violations of international law and human rights offenses. Through data gathering, documentation and persuasion, he seeks government approval to release incarcerated children and to help displaced populations. “The main challenge has been knowing how to deal with sensitive issues and handling exposure to danger by those who perpetrate the crimes I’m fighting against,” Mahmud said. Perhaps the most fulfilling achievement in his career was demobilizing 10,000 child soldiers in south Sudan in 2001, “a one-year project in which I was able to save one of the largest amounts of children I ever have,” he said. Once demobilized, the children are reunited with their families, if possible. Mahmud’s group also attempts to get children involved in a program designed to reintegrate them into society. Counseling and other services are offered to those children traumatized by their duties as soldiers, and Mahmud tries to get them to go to school. After he leaves Colby, Mahmud will return to Burundi, where he has been accepted as the chief of the Child Protection division of UNICEF. He will continue to advocate for human rights and to help reunite families that have been torn apart because of the war. And all the while he will remember Kuj Akon and his stolen daughter. “I met him years ago, and I’ve never forgotten about him,” Mahmud said. —Yvonne Siu ’03


Daniel Pearl Receives Posthumous Lovejoy Award Some meetings of Colby’s Lovejoy Award Selection Committee feature spirited deliberations comparing the merits of various nominees. This was not one of those years. A couple of the nationally prominent editors on the committee independently suggested that the 2002 award should go to the late Daniel Pearl of The Wall Street Journal, and there was immediate and unanimous agreement. So on November 13, 200 years since Elijah Parish Lovejoy was born and 50 years since Colby began presenting an annual journalism award to an American journalist for displaying courage in pursuit of the truth, Pearl will be remembered and honored with a posthumous Lovejoy Award. Lovejoy, who graduated from Colby in 1826, was killed defending his presses against a proslavery mob in Alton, Ill., in 1837, and he is Daniel Pearl remembered as an important abolitionist and as America’s first martyr to freedom of the press. Pearl was abducted on his way to interview a Muslim fundamentalist leader in Pakistan and was killed by his captors early this year. The selection committee recognized that both men were committed to the pursuit of justice and understanding through a free exchange of ideas in the press and found it absolutely fitting that Pearl receive the 50th Lovejoy Award. Since there can be no traditional Lovejoy address with a posthumous award, a program of distinguished journalists will instead present a panel discussion titled “The Perils of Reporting in Wartime, Abroad and at Home.” Syndicated columnist and 1990 Lovejoy winner David Broder H’90 will moderate the forum and participate in the discussion. Other panelists include Ann Cooper, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists; Noreen Ahmed-Ullah, a Muslim

who has covered the war in Afghanistan for the Chicago Tribune; and 1983 Lovejoy recipient Anthony Lewis H’83, who recently retired from The New York Times. The topic was selected to encompass both the physical perils faced by war correspondents and the dangers and difficulties experienced by reporters doing truthful, accurate reporting at home in a climate of tightly controlled information, military secrecy and national security concerns. The Lovejoy Award was established in 1952. Only one of 50 previous awards was a posthumous honor, in 1977 to Arizona Republic reporter Donald Bolles, who was killed as he investigated criminal activity. The decision to present this year’s award to Pearl was made by a selection committee that includes Matthew Storin, retired editor of the Boston Globe, now associate vice president of the University of Notre Dame; Ann Marie Lipinski, editor of the Chicago Tribune; William Hilliard, retired executive editor of The Oregonian; Rena Pederson, editorial page editor of the Dallas Morning News; and Rebecca Littleton Corbett ’74, assistant managing editor of the Baltimore Sun. Storin, who chairs the committee, said, “Daniel Pearl’s commitment to his profession, the drive and determination that were hallmarks of his work, and his unquestionable courage are inspirational to any journalist. His life stands as eloquent testimony to the ideals embodied in the Elijah Lovejoy Award. We could not have a more appropriate or deserving award winner. I only wish he were here to receive the honor.” More information about the Lovejoy Award is online at www.colby.edu/lovejoy. —Stephen Collins ’74

Governor Recognizes Colby’s Environmental Effort Colby’s Environmental Advisory Group (EAG) is barely a year old, but its commitment to integrating environmental sustainability into academics, campus maintenance and administration is a long-time institutional ethos. Maine Gov. Angus King recognized that, and in September the College received a 2002 Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence. Colby was the first institution of higher learning to earn one of the awards, first presented in 1995. The award is an incentive for people at the College to continue their efforts—from composting yard and food wastes and lowering steam plant emissions to promoting a pedestrian-friendly campus. It also raises awareness of Colby’s environmental priorities, says Patricia Murphy, director of the Physical Plant Department. The Governor’s Award recognized Colby’s curriculum, which includes

environmental studies majors in policy or science as well as environmental options in biology, chemistry and geology. Recycling unwanted student belongings, reducing paper consumption and food waste in dining halls, using environmentally friendly cleaning solutions, making use of excess steam to generate electricity and favoring native species in landscaping also earned praise. What’s on the agenda for the future? “Looking at green building standards, alternative vehicles and waiting to see what the student body brings us,” said Bruce McDougal, environmental compliance and safety coordinator. That doesn’t mean simply listening to and responding to complaints. “You have to make critics part of the solution and get them involved,” said Murphy. “I hope this makes people realize how much is going on.”

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wit & wisdom “‘Aesthetics.’ It seemed like such a good idea at the time.” Mike Daisey ’96, who performed his off-Broadway hit 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com at Strider Theater in September, talking in the show about the independent major he designed and completed at Colby. “I like it a lot. It’s a big deal. I wish we had one.” Robert Storr, senior curator of painting and sculpture at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), quoted in the Waterville Sentinel reacting to the new Sol LeWitt sculpture Seven Walls at the dedication ceremony July 17.

Rosenfeld Hopes to Collect New Audience for Museum of Art Before Daniel Rosenfeld was named director of the Colby College Museum of Art, he made a clandestine tour of the galleries in Waterville and came to two conclusions: that the museum’s collection is extraordinary and that the Colby museum is “a little less known than it should be.” Rosenfeld plans to do something about the latter. The first new director of the Museum of Art in nearly 40 years, Rosenfeld follows Hugh

Daniel Rosenfeld

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Gourley, who saw the museum grow prodigiously in both size and stature during his tenure. Calling Gourley “exceptional,” Rosenfeld said he sees the museum as a resource of great potential for both the College and the community. He also noted the commitment of the museum’s Board of Governors. “What I find at Colby I found at RISD [Rhode Island School of Design],” Rosenfeld said. “The sub board was composed of people who are very knowledgeable and very serious about collecting.” He served as curator of painting and sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design from 1984 to 1995 after stints as research associate and acting curator at Yale University Art Gallery. A native of Philadelphia, Rosenfeld earned his undergraduate degree at The Johns Hopkins University and his M.A. and Ph.D. at Stanford University. He held faculty and visiting faculty appointments at Boston University, Wellesley College, Brown University and the University of Chicago before turning to museum administration at Yale in 1981. After Yale and RISD, he was director of the museum of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1996-2000), the oldest arts institution and museum in the nation. Rosenfeld also is the author of European Painting and Sculpture, ca. 17701937, as well as numerous essays in exhibition catalogues and scholarly journals on topics including the sculpture of Auguste Rodin, 19th-century

French and American painting and modern and contemporary American art. “His dedication to art and to higher education makes this appointment a perfect fit for Colby,” said President William D. Adams. And the museum is a perfect fit for Colby, too, Rosenfeld says. He referred to its “layers of audience,” including the College and its students and faculty, the trustees and the national art world, and the outlying community, beginning in central Maine and widening to New England. “Each of these constituencies requires different kinds of attention,” Rosenfeld said. He said his goals include making the museum “a very important player” nationally, but also include expanding its use as an educational resource for faculty and students. “It’s very important to make the museum a vital resource that contributes aggressively to the educational mission of the College,” he said. Rosenfeld said he can envision the Museum of Art as not only a place to display art but as a stage where art can be produced. He noted the evolution of art forms that is ongoing, pointing to the Whitney Museum biennial exhibition in which only three of 60 artists were painters. Other forms included computer-generated work, installations and video. “You can dislike the stuff at your pleasure, but it’s where the culture’s at,” he said. —Gerry Boyle ’78


Colby Scientists Plumb the Depths and Chemistry of Belgrade Lakes of Geology Robert Gastaldo, Assistant Pro­fessor Jennifer Shosa (geology) and Senior Te a c h i n g A s s o c i a t e Bruce Rueger (geology) melding their expertise. Last summer, Colby student researchers were joined by Nathan Boland ’01, a science teacher in Baton Rouge, La., and high school student interns he brought to Maine through a National Science Foundation grant. The research platform Colby Compass puts out onto the waters of With Colby student Great Pond. A Colby research team is studying the Belgrade Lakes. research assistants doing much of the work, the team studied chemical decades—and even centuries—may have composition of lake water at various depths and changed what sinks into the mud. times of day and season. A highly accurate map The project, funded through grants from of the lake basin was produced, and test wells the NSF and Colby, comes at a time when were drilled in wetland and uplands around the lakes are prone to algae blooms and other lakes to monitor the direction and variation water-quality problems. Experts variously in the flow of ground water into the Belgrade blame development, fluctuating water levels, chain. Another phase of the study involved agriculture and other factors, but the definitive study of core samples from the bottom of the causes and solutions remain elusive. “The lakes to consider changes in the composition whole point of this,” said Shosa, “is to get away of sediments and how land-use trends over from that speculation.” —Gerry Boyle ’78 GERRY BOYLE ’78

It’s 4 a.m., the dawn sky a deep blue over Great Pond in Belgrade. In the center of the lake a boat makes a slow traverse as it has all night long, lights showing, like a fishing boat on the ocean. This boat is trolling, but not for fish. The vessel—actually a 24-foot pontoon boat custom built as a Colby research platform—is trolling for information. Water temperature. Chemical content. Readings taken at precisely recorded times, depths and locations with an underwater electronic-sensor equipped “fish”. Water samples pumped into sophisticated analytical equipment on the boat itself. Information fed into an onboard computer for analysis that student and faculty researchers hope will provide an unprecedented picture of how this lake works. The ongoing Colby project could make the Belgrade Lakes chain one of the most scientifically scrutinized water bodies. in Maine and serve as a model for scientists studying the effects of development on lakewater quality. “What we’re trying to do is understand the dynamics of the lake over time,” said Whitney King, Miselis Professor of Chemistry. It’s a team effort, involving both the Chemistry and Geology departments with King, Whipple-Coddington Professor

Grave Matters For most Americans, massacres and mass graves are horrors from a world away. But forensic scientist William Haglund deals with them daily in an effort to provide their victims a voice. In August, Haglund was on campus to share his experiences working in human rights and mass fatality identification with the 100 medical examiners and coroners attending the New England Seminar in Forensic Sciences, held each summer at Colby. Since 1998 Haglund has been director of the International Forensic Program for Physicians for Human Rights, working extensively on international forensic missions from Cyprus to Honduras. In 1996 he spent eight straight months working in graves as the senior forensic advisor for the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Haglund exhumed and examined hundreds of bodies of genocide victims, advised the tribunals on forensic policy, analyzed results and testified on behalf of the tribunal. In 2001 he investigated the 1941 massacre of 1,600 Jews burned alive in a barn by their own neighbors in Jedwabne, Poland. This year Haglund’s fieldwork included missions to Massar-e-Sheriff, Afghanistan, and to the Jenine refugee camp in Israel. “The face of war has changed,” Haglund told the seminar participants. Worldwide, diverse conflicts include terrorism and internal and small-scale

clashes. “Now we deal with ragtag warlords with fourteen-year-old soldiers, versus armies with codes of honor,” said Haglund. Though no forensic evidence was used at the 1945 Nuremberg trials, now it is relied upon to prosecute individuals for war crimes and crimes against humanity. But acquiring that evidence has its own obstacles. These range from lack of safety (in some countries Haglund has to remain under military guard) to the logistics of flying a planeload of equipment to another continent. Once there, if you don’t have a darkroom for x-rays you tear apart a toilet to use instead, as Haglund did in Rwanda. Haglund advises international forensic teams to show locals what they are doing and explain the process rather than being seen as “just another official.” Scientists must also be willing to accommodate religious and political concerns. That may mean allowing Nigerians to sacrifice a chicken before exhumations or letting Indonesian religious leaders say a prayer. Ultimately “you can’t create false expectations,” said Haglund. In mass fatalities, not all bodies will be recovered and, even with DNA evidence, not all those recovered will be identified. Since 1996, 1,895 bodies and thousands of partial remains have been recovered in Bosnia. Of those, only 81 bodies have been identified. —Alicia Nemiccolo MacLeay ’97

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A Civil Community Orientation for the Class of 2006, Colby’s 185th entering class, included an address by President William D. Adams to the entire class, assembled in Lorimer Chapel. As Adams noted, this is one of only two occasions when the president has the opportunity to address a Colby class in its entirety. For the Class of ’06, the next opportunity will come in four years, at baccalaureate. The following is an excerpt from Adams’s speech, which explored the notion of civility. Go online (www.colby.edu/ president/articles/firstyr02.html) for the full address.

The civility I have in mind is really a public and political virtue and capacity, not a private one. It happens in public places and in public exchanges like this community. It’s about our individual actions but only in a public place like Colby, in this community. Its key elements seem to me to be this. First of all, to be really civil we have to have a commitment to affection for the community of which we are a part. Otherwise it doesn’t make any sense. We have to have, secondly, a respect and tolerance for individuals not simply in the way in which they are like us but most especially in the ways they are not like us. And third, I think, elemental to civility is the notion that it is basically about communication. That is to say, it happens only in communication, and its effects and nature are demonstrated in the communications we have with others. And finally I think, I hope in a way that will become clear, civility has to do with something like self-control. But what does it look like in action? What do these elements look like when you put them together? I think it involves listening and openness. Listening especially to things that are hard to hear, that we don’t like to hear, that challenge us, that make us uncomfortable and nervous and anxious. [And] a kind of openness to that experience which is very hard—an invitation to others who make us uncomfortable in their differences to keep on talking to us about things they’re thinking and caring about. . . .

There’s a New Mule in Town

Faculty Research Reaps Rewards Faculty in a variety of departments have won grants from foundations to expand their research. Since last spring the following professors have received grants for these projects: LYNN HANNUM (biology), $50,000 from The National Science

Foundation for her project on enhancing opportunities for undergraduate learning in immunology (September). DUNCAN TATE (physics), $200,261 from The National Science

Foundation to support a project titled “Many-body Effects in a Frozen Rydberg Gas” (September). BOB GASTALDO (geology), $74,812 from The National Science

Foundation for his work on tropical vegetation during the early part of an ice age (August). STEVE DUNHAM and DAS THAMATTOOR (chemistry) and PAUL GREENWOOD (biology), $117,220 from The National Science

Foundation for a project called “Acquisition of Isothermal Titration and Differential Scanning MicroCalorimeters for Chemistry and Biology Research” (August). BEN FALLAW (history), $60,000 from the American Council of

Learned Societies for a project called “Uncivil Society: How the Church, Business, and Press Helped Forge an Illiberal Mexico, 1924-1940” (July). SANDY MAISEL (government), $580,000 from The Pew

Charitable Trusts for a project titled “Multi-grant Evaluation for Grants in the Area of Candidate and Consultant Conduct Improving Elections Program” (July). JULIE MILLARD (chemistry), $33,516 from the Research

Corporation for her work on “in vivo Mapping of Diepoxybutane Damage Using a Ligation-mediated Polymerase Chain Reaction” (May). SUELLEN DIACONOFF (French), $28,800 from the U.S.

Department of Education’s Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Program for a sabbatical project titled “The New Scheherazades: Women, Writing, and Politics in Morocco” (April).

© Colby College 2002

Take a good look at this mule. You’ll be seeing a lot of it if you follow Colby athletics. This is the official Colby white mule. It recently replaced several earlier portrayals of the Colby mascot, some of which bore closer resemblance to other equine species, from asses to zebras. The new mule, drawn by Designer/Illustrator Leo Pando and designed by Design Director Brian Speer, is as faithful to the species as possible and reflects the competitive spirit of Colby athletes. The change was implemented as the College established a formal graphic identity, which gave Colby recognizable and consistent logos for use on everything from letterhead to coffee mugs. In addition to the new logo and seal introduced in the summer magazine, a new mule gallops forward into Colby’s future.

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WHITNEY KING (chemistry), $19,969 from The National Science

Foundation for an exploratory geochemistry field program for minority students (March). HERB WILSON (biology) and WHITNEY KING (chemistry),

$60,000 from the Merck Charitables Foundation, a three-year grant for the Merck/AAAS Undergraduate Science Research Program (March). A current list of faculty and institutional grants received is available online (www.colby.edu/cfr/current.html).


From the Hill sports

All the

Marbles

Ski coach Tracey Cote excels in the rarified world of extreme sports

T

racey Cote is going downhill fast—on the end of a bungee cord, towed by her white Siberian husky, Lena, of sled dog lineage. Even though Cote is Colby’s nordic ski coach, it’s not the white stuff she’s dreaming of right here. She puffs along behind her pooch readying herself for races in the Hi-Tec Adventure Racing Series—“extreme races” in which three-member teams pitch into kayaking, trail running and mountain biking, the three teammates all the while keeping within 100 feet of each other. That’s the rule. Hi-Tec adventure racing is serious stuff—even when it isn’t. On the one hand, at the fourth annual Hi-Tec adventure race in Texas on July 12, Cote’s coed elite team, Team Guinness, won all the marbles in a field of 197 teams with a time of 2:08:28. On the other hand, some couch potatoes might think that Cote and her male teammates lost their marbles: through the one and three-quartermile kayak course, the six-mile run and the 12-mile mountain-bike race the threesome hung together—sometimes hooked by that bungee cord. Besides paddling, padding and pedaling, they crawled through a hay maze, shot paint guns, crossed from one swing to another without hitting the ground and scaled a 15-foot wall. These people are taking it, as the expression goes, to a new level. “They throw in special tests, crazy things, like cutting a hole in a piece of paper big enough to get your partners through without tearing it. It’s proof of teamwork,” Cote said. “It’s trying to teach you thinking and creativity to get through something as a team. It’s making you work together.” Learning to “control hurting” is challenging, too, but Cote maintains that training for a race is fun. It’s fun, running downhills with her dog. “It helped me increase speed. It’s an art,” she said. On Team Guinness, “If it’s a cord now, it’s me towing them.” About 300 three-person teams took up

Tracey Cote, center, scales an obstacle while tethered to her teammates with a bungee cord during an Adventure Series race  last summer.

the Hi-Tec challenge in this year’s eight-race series. It’s great sport, Cote says. She meets people with diverse backgrounds, from former world-class athletes—some teams include retired bikers or runners or kayakers who have gone in for adventure racing—to a 65-year-old competing along with his kids. “It’s a great group of people. Everyone’s just looking for a little challenge,” she said. Team Guinness looked for “a little challenge” in the coed elite category in six of the eight races this year. To be “elite,” a team has to place in the top five in the regular division or apply with résumés. “What it means is, you’re able to win money,” Cote said. “I’m approaching two thousand dollars, total.” Cote competed on an elite team last year, too, until its sponsor went belly up and the team broke up. One night in January, she got a call from two fellows in Arizona, and in the summer she flew out to train with them. The brewing company agreed to bankroll Team Guinness. “Guinness is a great sponsor,” Cote said. “They paid for all of our travel. But most races are in state parks where you can’t have beer. I

drank more Guinness before I started than I do now.” The Hi-Tec Adventure Series races, which usually last two and a half to three and a half hours, are considered sprints. This summer Cote also competed in three races in the Balance Bar series, 12- to 24-hour orienteering competitions in which athletes find their way by compass and trail map, sometimes rappeling down cliffs and crossing gorges in climbing harnesses. Biking and running are part of it, as they are in the Hi-Tec races, but the Balance Bar races, she says, are “just a lot longer.” Cote came to adventure racing from nordic skiing and cross-country running at Division I Northern Michigan University, where offseason conditioning meant miles of running and mountain biking. Even that doesn’t seem enough preparation for the event she calls her pinnacle, the Appalachian Extreme in Maine. “Extremes? They’re crazy,” she said of the 72-hour event she completed on an hour and a half of sleep, “but it’s amazing how popular they’re becoming. It’s a whole new challenge.” —Robert Gillespie COLBY

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From the Hill students

Cancer Clues

Traci Speed ’03 looks to unravel chemical puzzles that may defeat the disease

L

aboratory research aimed at discovering a cancer therapy or cure carries with it a certain amount of scientific glamour. But as Traci J. Speed ’03 knows, that noble pursuit requires innumerable, silent hours of repetitive, exacting and seemingly mundane tasks. While working on a cancer research project under the direction of her Colby advisor, Assistant Professor of Chemistry Dasan M. Thamattoor, Speed put in nearly 500 painstaking hours in a cramped organic chemistry lab located on the second floor of the Keyes Science Building. Surrounded by computers, piles of notebooks and brown jars filled with chemicals, she spent much of her lab time stooped over a piece of equipment called “the hood,” an overhead air-filtration and suction device that draws out noxious fumes of chemicals on a bench below. “It’s just like cooking and adding different sauces,” she said, demonstrating how she might tinker with chemical reactions using a roundbottom glass flask clamped over a hot plate. “My main purpose was to synthesize natural compounds isolated from coral compounds known to attack human tumor cells. I lucked out. In the long run, this [synthesis] could be used to develop a new kind of chemotherapy.” Speed actually synthesized two very similar compounds that occur naturally in the coral. Further testing by cancer research labs has yet

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Traci Speed ’03 in the chemistry lab in the Keyes Science Building.

to be done to demonstrate how effective the synthetic compounds will be against human cancer cells, she said. So far her successful syntheses have elicited interest from the department of zoology at Tel Aviv University. “He [Thamattoor] knew I was interested in doing cancer research and gave me this to work on,” she said. “It has all the potential associated with any other natural product that has activity against cancer cells,” Thamattoor said of the synthesized compound. “Whether the potential will be fully realized, only time will tell.” It was a tough project for an undergraduate, he said.

“Traci seems to have hands of gold. She is just an absolutely phenomenal worker in the lab. She is so conscientious. It takes a skillful student to make it work.” Speed began her research by analyzing the specific chemical structure of a stony coral called montipora, found off the coast of Korea. She did not work directly with the physical coral or its natural cytotoxins but from the molecular structure identified in a research paper published in The Journal of Natural Products in 1999. A cytotoxin is a poisonous substance secreted by certain organisms. In the journal


The Book on the Class of ’06 HOW MANY GOT IN 471 students from a pool more than eight times that size. HOW MANY WERE ADMITTED EARLY DECISION 42 percent. WHERE THEY’RE FROM 30 countries and every region of the U.S. WHAT THEY SPEAK 34 languages, but not in the same classroom. THINGS THEY’VE DONE ALREADY Won state essay contests, received book awards, researched cures, worked in the U.S. Congress, lived with Buddhist monks in Tibet, performed in Carnegie Hall. WHEN THEY WEREN’T DOING THAT They were all-star athletes, including a four-time cross-country champ from Ontario, the top in-line skater in Norway, a Junior Olympic skier and a nationally ranked race walker.

PHOTO: JIM EVANS/MORNING SENTINEL, ILLUSTRATION: LEO PANDO

AND DON’T FORGET Over half were involved in community service during high school. Members of the class have worked with the Roosevelt Island Youth Center, Bombay Street Kids, Big Brothers/Big Sisters and Habitat for Humanity.

paper, researchers reported that lab tests showed that organic compounds in the coral produced varying kinds of activities against a number of different human cancer cells, such as lung, ovarian, skin, central nervous system and colon cancers. Speed labored to break down the coral’s organic compound into segments, using a research method called retrosynthesis. “It’s like thinking backwards,” she said. “You want to break it down into a chemical that you can easily obtain from a chemical company.” Compounds are synthesized in this way because it would take tons of coral to extract a small amount of isolated compound. “One of the things Traci has done is to make available several hundred milligrams of this stuff, so researchers can use it for further testing,” Thamattoor said. The results of the Colby research were pub-

lished in January 2002 in Tetrahedron Letters, a prestigious, international journal for reporting preliminary communications in organic chemistry. For her academic achievements and research experience, Speed was awarded a two-year grant for $1,500 per year from the American Association of Cancer Research, based in Philadelphia. The grants are available to third-year undergraduates involved in cancer research, she said. The AACR only gives this award to 10 students nationwide, Thamattoor said. Part of the grant allowed Speed to attend the AACR’s national meeting in San Francisco in April. “It was a great opportunity to meet mentors in the cancer field and other cancer researchers,” she said. Speed grew up in Rocky Hill, Conn., south of Hartford. At Colby, she is majoring in chemistry with a concentration in cellular

and molecular biology/biochemistry. She became involved with organic chemistry in her sophomore year. Since then she has been involved in another ongoing cancer research project in collaboration with Thamattoor and biochemist Julie Millard, associate professor of chemistry. That project involves work with a compound extracted from a mushroom that grows in Japan called Hydnum repandum, which also has shown activity against cancer cells. “I’m taking the structure, based on literature and trying to synthesize it in the lab,” Speed said, with the modesty that comes from knowing the scope of cancer research. “We’ve had some success.” —Lynn Ascrizzi

A version of this story appeared in the Waterville Morning Sentinel and Kennebec Journal.

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From the Hill media

A Path

Less Traveled

First-year reading reveals how diverse backgrounds color college

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othing you can’t do if you set your mind to it,” Barbara Jennings mer program for minorities before his senior year. But he can’t relate advises her son, Cedric, in A Hope in the Unseen. And Cedric Jen- to the self-assured, middle- and upper-middle class black and Hispanic nings puts his trust in that American ideal—work hard, keep your kids around him. He learns “to be reserved, for fear of slipping into faith, and you’ll attain your goals. He refuses to swallow his pride a mispronunciation or some embarrassing parochialism,” and despite or succumb to the hopelessness prevalent in his inner-city neighbor- continuous studying he struggles to keep pace academically. hood. He dreams of finally getting somewhere he belongs, even if it’s “It just seems like there’s no way to give kids like that credit for the someplace he’s never seen. distance they’ve already traveled,” the program’s director says. “This Through Jennings’s eyes, Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind Cedric had to run three more laps than the other kids, but he’ll still examines race, class, education and achievement in America. This fall be two laps behind, so he loses.” A Hope in the Unseen was the first-year book selection for the Class of Despite raising his grades through sheer determination, Jennings is 2006. Dean of Faculty Ed Yeterian, who oversees the program, said told he’s not MIT material. “The thing is, I can work harder than other he was drawn to A Hope in the Unseen “because it dealt with general people,” appeals Jennings. “When I really set my mind to something, issues of personal identity and the transition to college as well as more anything, I can get there. It’s about wanting it more in your heart.” specific issues of race and class.” After reading the book over the sum“That perspective, that belief, Cedric, is admirable, but it also can mer, first-year students took part in residence hall discussions led by set you up for disappointment,” says the professor. “And, at the present faculty members during orientation. time, it just doesn’t seem to be enough.” The book was enlightening on the different ways diversity is Even at MIT there are dreambusters. perceived, said Jessica Varnum ’06 of Presque Isle, Maine: “Every But Jennings proves this one wrong, too, by getting accepted at individual in a community brings with him or her a set of predefined Brown. He must now learn to decipher unfamiliar intellectual and ideas concerning identity and diversity.” cultural codes in the dorm (what is his roommate talking about when For Jennings, identity is based on character, not something that he refers to “birding?”) and in the classroom (who are Churchill and simply sets you apart, like race. Freud?). Jennings wants to be just Suskind’s nonfiction narrative folanother guy, but feels alienated by class, lows Jennings from his junior year at race and his spiritual faith. impoverished, crime-ridden Ballou The self-imposed system of strict Senior High School in Washington, boundaries and isolation that got Jennings D.C., to the bewildering—and in some to Brown no longer works. To survive ways more threatening—landscape of here he must learn to negotiate a truce Brown University. between fitting in and being himself. On the surface Jennings might seem A Hope in the Unseen provides an an urban statistic. He’s the child of an inspiring lesson about sacrifice, perseverunwed single mother and an uninvolved, ance and dreams while admonishing an incarcerated drug dealer. He knows to unfair education system. Suskind’s work fill up on lunch at school the week the is as much about how so many American rent money is due and to avoid the bus children are set up to fail before the race stops frequented by gangs. But instead even starts as it is about the success of of accepting this life as his lot, Jennings one extraordinary individual. fights off the “dreambusters” around him. For first-year students, the book (“Their favorite lines are ‘you cannot’ or provided insights into the different ‘you will not,’” he says.) With grit, vision ways their classmates will perceive and his mother’s faith in him and in Jesus, Colby’s academic and residential Jennings succeeds in a school where being environment and the ways in which an academic standout is not only socially their diverse backgrounds will color A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey unacceptable but dangerous. their experiences on Mayflower Hill. from the Inner City to the Ivy League Jennings’s first glimpse of life outside —Alicia Nemiccolo MacLeay ’97 By Ron Suskind his community comes at an MIT sumRandom House/Broadway Books 1998

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Greenlaw Chronicles Life, Not Lobsters Catchiness aside, The Lobster Chronicles is a bit of a misnomer for Linda Greenlaw’s second book. Its subtitle, Life on a Very Small Island, hits the nail more squarely. In these essays, grouped temporally around one lobster-fishing season, Greenlaw ’83 explores the challenge of living in a tiny and dwindling colony seven miles off the Maine shore. Greenlaw was made famous by Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm, which called her the best swordboat captain on the Grand Banks. She went on to write her own memoir of life among swordfish, The Hungry Ocean, and several years ago decided to return to her ancestral home, Isle au Haut. Single and childless—and hoping to change her status on both counts—she moved in with her parents and joined an island community of fewer than 50 souls. She bought a lobster boat, hired her father, James Greenlaw ’57, as her sternman and began to fish. Once a thriving community with four school districts, a population that supported several stores and a lobster-canning factory, Isle au Haut now almost literally lives and dies by lobstering, a legendarily taxing and difficult line of work. Greenlaw notes that the place does have its share of people who turn their faces to the salt spray, put their backs into hauling traps and otherwise live up to the myth of the Maine lobsterman. But the world she describes also is rife with gossip and feuds, pettiness, moral weakness, despair, anger and hopelessness. In short, Greenlaw chronicles a small community like many in Maine—proud of its past, contentious in its present, worried about its future. Greenlaw uses her own situation as a metaphor for the island’s unknowable future. Isle au Haut’s survival depends, she says, on being able to hold on to year-’rounders like her—they must make their lives there, have children, protect the rich fishing grounds from encroachment by off-islanders. And yet, at 40, with no eligible men in reach, Greenlaw is thinking about leaving the island again, going back “offshore” to fish. She is building a house—the island will be home—but her dream of saving Isle au Haut probably won’t come true. She seems defiant—in a whistling-around-the-graveyard way—when telling the story of Nicholas Barter, a descendant of the island’s first settler. Nicholas started lobstering when he was 6 and, for a time, he could barely be persuaded to leave the water’s edge. Now 9, Nicholas hasn’t pulled a trap in a year, and he enjoys Harry Potter books, his chemistry set and the Internet. But, Greenlaw says, Nicholas “has no intention” of forsaking his heritage, and he is “the hope for the community’s future.” That’s a lot of hope for one small boy, or for one grown woman. —Sally Baker

The Lobster Chronicles: Life on a Very Small Island Linda Greenlaw ’83 Hyperion Books (2002)

recent releases Maine Lakes Photography by Chris Barnes Text by Sarah Stiles Bright ’80 Maine Lakes Conservancy Institute and Tilbury House Publishers (2002) More than 100 pages of full-color photographs by Barnes capture the detail of Maine lakes in all seasons. Bright’s thoughtful essays and closing poem reflect her own affinity and affection for the water. (“This is not my home, but it is, I realize, my place.”) She also describes the need to understand, sustain and protect Maine lakes and their communities that led her and her husband to found the Maine Lakes Conservancy Institute in 1999. 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com Mike Daisey ’96 Simon & Schuster/The Free Press (2002) When a fledgling Amazon.com recruited temp workers in 1998, it gave a simple directive—send us your freaks. Daisey arrived and ascended from lowly temp to customer service rep to business development hustler. Based on his popular off-Broadway show, 21 Dog Years chronicles Daisey’s adventures at the world’s largest bookstore—where he says he learned to “slavishly love idealistic mouth breathers, 60-hour weeks and the cult of personality that is Jeff Bezos.” American Colonies Alan Taylor ’77 Viking (2001) American Colonies is the first volume in the Penguin History of the United States series (edited by Eric Foner, son of the late Colby professor Jack Foner). The book begins 15,000 years ago, with Native American settlement, and proceeds to 1820, through thousands of years of conquest and reconquest of lands and civilizations. Pulitzer Prize-winner Taylor demonstrates the ways in which the clash and meshing of cultures—Native, African and European—molded the modern United States.

Staged Narrative: Poetics and the Messenger in Greek Tragedy James Barrett (classics) University of California Press (2002) While the messenger is a familiar inhabitant of Greek tragedy, one of the most studied forms of ancient literature, the role has received little critical attention. With the works of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus as illustration, Barrett explains that the messenger speaks with a unique voice on the tragic stage—a voice whose truth and authority is finally being questioned and examined by one critic.

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From the Hill faculty

Gift

His Was Language A century ago John Hedman brought romance to languages at Colby

H

e was five feet, eight inches in height, 140 pounds, a Baptist, a Republican; his countenance was “cunning” and his character “foxy,” says the ’95 Oracle. His favorite employment was “exercise on the plains”—he was a baseball star—and he was “fit for leg pulling.” In response to the question “Relation to the opposite sex,” he reported, “Got a girl.” His hijinks with classmates as well as his athletic triumphs were reported in the Echo. His name also appears in programs for musical and oratory events, and he helped his debate team win competitions. Grade books reveal his excellence in course work. Evidently John Hedman, Class of 1895, caught the attention of Colby’s faculty. Upon graduation he was offered a post as assistant instructor in modern languages and he began teaching French classes that September. Seven years later President Charles White reported to the trustees that Hedman was “doing the entire work of the French Department in a most satisfactory manner,” adding that Hedman was “qualified to introduce courses in Spanish, Italian, Swedish and Old Norse” (and presumably to offer courses in Greek, since he also was listed in the course catalogue as instructor of Greek in 1896-1899). That same spring of 1902 Hedman taught an elective Spanish grammar course for juniors and seniors—the first Spanish class at Colby. On its 100th anniversary this year, Hedman’s basic Spanish course had evolved into a curriculum of more than 20 courses in Spanish language, literature and culture as well as a program of study abroad. As predicted by the Echo 100 years ago, Spanish became increasingly popular, and the thriving Spanish Department today is a lasting tribute to Colby’s first professor of Spanish, whose multilingual abilities would galvanize the teaching of modern languages at the College. Hedman was an immigrant. Born in Undersaker, Sweden, on October 15, 1868, he came to Maine in 1871 with his parents and older brother, part of the third wave of settlers enticed by the state to populate Aroostook County. The family eventually owned a farm in the land grant settlement of New Sweden.

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John Hedman

Swedish was spoken at home and in the community. John and his younger brother attended high school in nearby Caribou, where they learned English and perhaps were introduced to French. Hedman entered Colby in September 1891, just shy of age 23. From his first days, he distinguished himself in his classes, in the Delta


New to the Hill Four new faculty members who greeted

Hatch, a graduate of Macalester College,

Internal Migration, and Occupational Mobility

students returning to classes this fall were

went on to earn an M.A. in international stud-

in Victorian Britain” and “Estimating Labour

hired on continuing (tenure-track) contracts.

ies from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in politi-

Market Matching Functions.” Long has three

Carleen Mandolfo (religious studies) is

cal economy from the University of Seattle. He

works in progress on labor mobility in the U.K.

a specialist in the Hebrew Bible. Mandolfo

has taught at the University of Washington and

and U.S.

earned her B.A. from California State Univer-

in Japan and is the author of Asia in Japan’s

Laura Chakravarty Box (theater and dance)

sity and an M.A. from Jesuit School of Theology

Embrace: Building a Regional Production Alli-

was a visiting guest artist at Colby last spring.

at Berkeley. Her Ph.D. is from Emory University,

ance. He has contributed to books on Asian

She earned an A.A. in theater from Los Angeles

where her dissertation was titled “The Dia-

technology and Vietnam’s place in Japan’s

City College, a B.A. in linguistics from Califor-

logue Between Faith and Experience: Voicing

Regional Production Alliance.

nia State University, an M.A. in drama from San

in Psalms of Lament.”

He reads and speaks Japanese fluently.

Diego State University and a Ph.D. in theater from the University of Hawaii.

Mandolfo brings seven years of teaching

Jason Long (economics) earned his B.A. in

experience to Colby. She is fluent in Hebrew,

economics from Wheaton College and his M.S.

Box taught at San Diego State and the Uni-

Aramaic, Akkadian, Ugaritic, Greek, German and

and Ph.D. in economics from Northwestern

versity of Hawaii and was a post-doctoral fellow

French. She has three books in progress.

University. Long’s specialties include eco-

at Deep Springs College. She has published

Walter Hatch (government) is a former jour-

nomic history, labor economics and applied

four books on North African women’s theater,

nalist whose experience includes stints with

econometrics. He taught for three years at

directed seven plays and has extensive stage

CBS News and The Seattle Times, where he

Northwestern before coming to Colby.

experience in about 20 plays. She is fluent in

was a business and political reporter.

His published papers include “Urbanization,

Kappa Epsilon fraternity and on the “base-ball” squad. As a young man, Hedman played on his town’s team against neighboring communities in Sunday afternoon games that sometimes involved a round-trip walk of 15 to 20 miles. He often traveled back to New Sweden, where he became known as “Professor John.” The 1890s were critical in Colby’s move from the “classical course”— which emphasized Greek and Latin—to a curriculum involving modern languages. Throughout the 19th century, many educational institutions in the United States debated the continued relevance of Greek and Latin to modern life. Colleges and universities worried about appearing archaic to parents of potential students. Nineteenth-century French authors and the 1889 Exposition in Paris stimulated interest in French culture and the French language. Knowledge of German became critical in scientific research, and new immigration patterns and the 1898 Spanish-American War drew attention to the Spanish language. All of these factors led both small and large institutions to incorporate modern languages—French, German and then Spanish—into the curriculum and eventually to move some Greek and Latin courses to elective status. The Colby catalogue shows an increase in French and German offerings through the 1890s. The term “romance languages” first appeared in the 1901-1902 course catalogue. In 1899 Colby trustees granted Hedman a year’s leave, allowing him to attend the University of Paris for professional development. In his first university class, which had nine other students, he strove to attain “Parisian fluency” and was selected to be toastmaster at the semester-end banquet because of his excellence in French. He also

French and familiar with Arabic and Japanese.

began studies of Spanish and Italian; his final achievement was winning the prestigious competitive Sorbonne prize in 1900. Hedman had the opportunity to remain in Paris for a doctoral degree but elected to return to Colby for the 1900-1901 school year to teach French. His $900 salary as associate professor of modern languages was raised the next year. His genuine interest in students was noted, and he was, as President Lincoln White said, “a Colby alumnus . . . and peculiarly in touch with the spirit and temper of the institution.” In June 1902, when he was doing “the entire work of the French Department” and already had taught the first Spanish course, Hedman was promoted to professor of romance languages at a salary of $1,500. Hedman’s first wife, Alice Mabel Bray ’95, the “girl” referred to in the Oracle—died at 28 in October 1897, less than three months after they were married. Hedman’s marriage to Delia (Delice) Jane Hiscock ’01 of Damariscotta on July 22, 1902, followed his return from Paris and promotion to Colby professorship. She would survive her husband by only five years. John Hedman died suddenly in 1914 of typhoid pneumonia at the age of 46. When construction of a new dormitory began in 1915 on Colby’s campus in downtown Waterville, trustees readily agreed on a name for the new building: Hedman Hall. The building no longer stands. Its sole surviving artifact, a plaque in the Pugh Center on Mayflower Hill, remembers the man whose extraordinary talents sparked Colby’s embrace of modern languages at the end of the 19th century. —Pat Burdick, special collections librarian, and Luis Millones, assistant professor of Spanish

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Q&A

Terry Arendell on gender, family and “men who hang in” Professor of Sociology Terry Arendell has taught sociology at Colby, focusing on gender and family issues, since 1994. She spoke to Colby about her work, her students and our changing culture. What is the interest that students have in these gender and family issues, when they aren’t that far from being boys or girls themselves?

Both the young women and young men students are still reflecting on their own experiences and still trying to sort their way through into adulthood, so they’re really caught, I think, in terms of gender identity and understanding, really on a cusp. Generally my experience has been that the women are actually more thoughtful at this point and more open, boundaries are more permeable. College-age men are much more locked into conventions of masculinity. There is a difference?

Gender class mostly attracts women. What I always find interesting is that women are especially interested in trying to understand men. And I’m talking about straight women here. We have an increasingly visible population of lesbian women, too. Often their interests are different in terms of gender issues. But all my friends who teach gender, we often find that one of the motivating reasons for coming into the class for women is to try to understand men, especially men’s sexual lives. That’s very generational, I think, very much age related. Do they find the other gender perplexing?

Yeah. And alluring and all of those things. And especially the women, because of the culture at the moment, coming in and hoping to find a way to have it all. They want the perfect career, the perfect house, the perfect children, the perfect spouse. And of course, you look at American society—you can’t have all that at once, generally. The work world is still set up for non-parents, basically. The students realize that before they get there?

I don’t think they realize it before, but they begin to realize it as they read more and more. Of course a few students will have families where it seems to be handled very smoothly and easily. But that’s less and less common, too. Many students come from single-parent families where the struggles were obvious, one parent having to do it all. Other students will come from families with two parents, both working long hours. So they had some personal experience. So what is the traditional family? Or is that a misnomer?

It is a misnomer. You still use it in the culture, and even sociology shares the basic definition that it’s the father/husband who is the full-time provider, mother/wife is homemaker and mother full time, and then their offspring or adopted children. I think that data show now that it’s less than one in six that fits that model. In fact, I expect that one in six is even high, that if you catch families at any particular point in time, you’d see even fewer families. 36  |

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Do you find your teaching evolving as the culture evolves?

I hope. Otherwise I’m an anachronism, right? I was thinking about this this morning. I’ve taught gender for years now and I’ve always included some on sexuality and sexual variations but only in the last couple of years has that become a key component. In fact, now I offer a course in sexuality. That’s very much reflective, I think, of where the discipline is headed but also the culture. We’re talking much more explicitly about sexuality. Do you think that’s true at Colby right now with the recent activism and call for “queer studies” offerings?

Yeah, I actually think we’re behind. Queer politics has been going on for a decade at major institutions. We’re somewhat behind, but we’re probably on par with other small liberal arts colleges. It would be interesting to know that. In the gender course, what do students want to know?

A couple of things, and I actually broaden it for them. Not biological but socio-cultural constructs. So I think that’s the fundamental question. How is it we raise boys and girls in this culture to become who they are? Or is it inevitable that they become who they are? . . . They’re very interested in interpersonal dynamics, the pop culture thing, “Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.” Our students have seen a lot of pop TV. So they’ve seen a lot of things that are of interest to the general population. Is that a change?

That’s changed some. I think because there are more talk shows available, high schoolers are watching more TV than they were even six, eight years ago. And prime-time TV deals with some of these issues in a way it didn’t in the past. So they have some exposure?

Yeah, the women are interested in issues about employment and the wage gap. Many come believing that most of that is corrected and resolved, although they have some awareness that the gender difference is still institutionalized and embedded in our structures. But I think they’re surprised and sobered by the material we cover to see how extensive it still is, particularly in the workplace. Yes, there have been gains, but some estimates say it will be three hundred to five hundred years before women have parity with men in the workplace, the gains have been so slow. What’s the reaction of men in the class?

It’s a struggle. With the gender class, one of the challenges is that we not make the men defensive, that they don’t become the token representatives of manhood in the culture, that they’re also entering the structures, they haven’t determined them. But actually oftentimes the men who come into the classes are somewhat progressive in attitudes and approaches. One of the things I’d really like to see is the classes become more equitable in terms of representation of men and women so that family, sexuality, gender, all these courses become a little more balanced. So I admire the men who hang in.


From the Hill alumni

Passing the

Screen Test

Waterville festival’s reputation grows as luminaries come calling

I

JIM EVANS/WATERVILLE MORNING SENTINEL

t’s day six of the fifth annual Maine out and just experience—so therefore International Film Festival, and festhey’re seeing great films. And that’s tival programmer and Railroad Square fantastic. That’s all you could ever ask Cinema partner Ken Eisen ’73 leads a for as a film programmer.” caravan of cars out of the dusty theater Or as the founder—with Gail Chase parking lot to a dinner party at his home ’74 and Leah Girardin (formerly an in Fairfield. Eisen occasionally turns to audiovisual specialist at Colby) and chat with his passenger and dinner guest, others—of a cinema that was built in an who is in town to receive the Mid-Life unused warehouse, burned flat once and Achievement Award later that night at rebuilt thanks to an outpouring of supthe Waterville Opera House. port from the community. The guest: Oscar Award-winning That support continues to grow director, producer and screenwriter as an ever-widening circle of friends Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs, endorses the cinema and the summer Philadelphia, Something Wild, Stop Makfilm festival associated with it—run by ing Sense). Unlikely company in central the nonprofit Friends of Art and Film in Maine? Perhaps, but in Waterville, where Central Maine. The festival delivers “the Demme chatted at length with filmgoers sustenance of art,” which “keeps us in after the U.S. premiere of his new docuany way sane and growing and human,” mentary, The Agronomist, nobody acted Eisen said. And that means more than star struck. In fact, in the four years since just a summer blockbuster movie. Colby last checked in on the festival, the Last summer it meant packed houses presence of filmmakers of Demme’s statfor the festival, highlighted by Demme’s Jonathan Demme with his Mid-Life Achievement Award at ure has become de rigueur. appearance. The night Eisen took Director Terrence Malick (The Thin the 2002 Maine International Film Festival in Waterville. Demme home for dinner in Fairfield, Radio Haiti Inter. The May 2000 assassination Red Line) and actress Sissie Spacek (In the guests included the Haitian novelist Bedroom) are among those who have come to of Dominique remains unsolved. Edwidge Danticat, author of Krik! Krak! This year’s program included unusual and Breath, Eyes, Memory, and the late DomWaterville to accept Mid-Life Achievement Awards in previous years. This has helped films from Iceland, Japan, Hungary, India, inique’s surviving daughter, Natalie, visiting build the Maine festival’s reputation in the Denmark and France. Audience members from Haiti. Also in the group was Francois film world. “Jonathan Demme was very famil- voted the Tunisian film Satin Rouge as best Bugingo, a journalist with Reporters Without iar with us and honored to get the Mid-Life film of the festival. Also featured were nine Borders, an organization participating in the Achievement Award,” Eisen said. “That sort Vietnam-related films and a concert perfor- search to uncover the parties responsible for mance by the Billy Bang Sextet, a jazz band Dominique’s death. of lets you know you’re somewhere.” And where are they? Central Maine, of partially composed of vets, and a Vietnam War The guests are artists and passionate profescourse, but also at the hub of what is increas- symposium that opened up a lively political sionals, not celebrities—a distinction Eisen, ingly a favored stop for movie buffs. This year discussion. who teaches film during Jan Plan at Colby, Audiences opened themselves up as well. is well aware of. “We don’t ever want to be a filmgoers from 26 states and 11 countries converged on Waterville to take in the offerings “Movie audiences are far more conservative Sundance,” he said. “That’s definitely not a and cautious in what they go to see [during the goal. We have no desire to have lots of glitzy of a festival that is truly international. Demme’s The Agronomist, a work in prog- year],” Eisen said. “Film festivals, conversely, stars and the starlets in bikinis on the beach— ress, follows the life of Jean Leopold Domi- have been a way in which people are willing that isn’t here, that isn’t going to happen.” nique, the Haitian journalist and founder of to throw caution to the wind—try things —Colleen Creeden ’02

COLBY

FALL  2002

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Another Record Year for Alumni Contributions Despite nationwide concerns about philanthropic support for colleges and universities as the economic downturn slogged into its second year, contributions to Colby’s Alumni Fund continued strong in 2001-02. Alumni set a record for cash contributed and extended to four years their streak of at least 50 percent participation. Alumni contributed $3,318,160 to the fund last year, a 7.5 percent increase from 2000-01. With a 51 percent participation rate,

Colby remains in a select group of institutions that receive support from more than half of their alumni. Contributions to the Alumni Fund go directly to the College’s operating budget. With an endowment that ranks in the lower third among the NESCAC colleges, and with a conservative approach to spending endowment income, “the annual fund is very important to the funding of the education we’re providing here,” said David Beers ’85, director of annual giving.

Future Takes Shape with Plans for Alumni Center Four new buildings are envisioned on

offices of the College Relations Division—alumni

Mayflower Hill in the 10 to 15 years covered by

relations, development and communications.

in administrative and academic departments. The other three building projects proposed in

The Plan for Colby, and the first—a new alumni

Moving those administrators out of quarters in

The Plan for Colby include a science building, a

and development center—is already on the

Eustis and Millett will free up space for other

music instruction and performance space and a

drawing board.

administrative offices now housed in Lovejoy.

social sciences and interdisciplinary studies center.

The strategic planning initiative that provided

Other shifts will create a domino effect that

Next up on that list is likely to be the social sci-

a framework for the College’s foreseeable growth

will open up much-needed space for additional

ences building, referred to in The Plan for Colby

recognized needs for three new academic build-

faculty offices as well, alleviating overcrowding

as a center for public and international affairs.

ings and the alumni center. The latter will give alumni a more central presence on campus in a facility designed to accommodate alumni functions as well as certain other events that don’t easily fit into existing venues on campus. The center will be located across Mayflower Hill Drive from the F.W. Olin Science Center, roughly between Lunder House (admissions) and the Hill House (the guest house behind the tennis courts). Ann Beha Architects, a firm from Boston, was selected in the spring to design the facility, and early schematic designs show a building of about 26,500 square feet located away from the road, near the tree line. Refinements of the design were being hammered out this fall by the architects working with a building committee, and the trustees were expected to review placement of buildings at their October meeting. In addition to providing function space, the alumni and development center will house

38  |

COLBY

FALL  2002

Landscape Architects Visualize “The Colby Green” Architects involved in the campus master plan project (Shepley Bulfinch) and the first new building, the alumni center (Ann Beha Architects), got together with a team from Reed-Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture in September, and possible shapes of the 21st-century Colby campus began to come into better focus. First and foremost among landscaping design challenges is how to maintain harmony with the rather formal design of the existing campus as new buildings are sited east of Mayflower Hill Drive. Part of the solution is a concept called “The Colby Green,” modeled on a town common and likely to feature an elliptical lawn across the road from the Miller Library terraces. That shape, and trees and plantings around it, would knit together the existing Lunder admissions building, the proposed alumni and development building and two of the academic buildings envisioned in The Plan for Colby—an interdisciplinary social sciences center and a psychology/math/ computer science building. Putting academic buildings across Mayflower Hill Drive “changes the picture, maybe even changes the center of gravity of the campus,” said landscape architect Gary Hilderbrand at a campus forum in October. Reed-Hilderbrand proposed a series of zones of different character including the formal, beaux arts precinct of the existing quadrangles; a greensward of rougher lawn and trees; managed woodlands; open meadows and fields; and more diverse woodlands including the arboretum. Reed-Hilderbrand showed aerial photos of the campus taken in the early 1960s that showed little tree cover in the developed part of campus and pasture from the Miller Library lawn to Messalonskee Stream. “Nothing is static in a landscape,” Hilderbrand said.


’20s/’30s-1940s Alumni at Large

Alumni Association Awards Hope Palmer Bramhall ’56, Alumni Council Awards Committee chair, reminds Colby readers that the committee meets three times a year to select deserving alumni and friends of the College to receive Alumni Association awards. Any alumni can submit nominations for the following: Outstanding Educator Award: Given to an alumnus/alumna for exceptional distinction in the classroom (2002 recipient: Diane Scrafton Cohen Ferriera ’61). Ernest C. Marriner Distinguished Service Award: Given periodically to a member of the Colby family for exceptional dedication to the College (2002 recipient: Earl Smith). Colby Brick Award: awarded annually to three to five members of the Colby family who have demonstrated outstanding loyalty to the College through consistent and dedicated service (2002 recipients: William Alfond ’72; Stephen Roy ’77 and Valerie Jones Roy ’76; Leland Potter ’67 and Linda Mitchell Potter ’66; Douglas Shair ’76; James E. Fell ’32). Distinguished Alumnus/Alumna Award: awarded periodically at Alumni Reunion Weekend to an alumnus/alumna who has achieved unusual distinction in his or her profession or avocation (2002 recipient Allan van Gestel ’57). Edson V. Mitchell Distinguished Service Award: awarded periodically to an alumnus/alumna, within 25 years of graduation, who has demonstrated sustained dedication and leadership in support of the College (2002 recipient: John B. Devine Jr. ’78). Special consideration is given to candidates in their reunion years, Bramhall said. She noted that nominations can be made on the Colby Web site, with the form in Colby magazine, and directly to Alumni Relations staff.

40  Our regulars were present for

reunion again this year: Doris Rose Hopengarten, Ernie Marriner, Alleen Thompson and Lin Work­ man. We marched proudly (and last) in the Parade of Classes, pushing the lone marcher from 1941, John Hawes, who was in front of us. . . . A thoughtful note from Trophy Frederick transmitted Halsey’s obituary, which was a tribute to his avocation of breeding and training dogs for the National Field Trials. . . . No letters, no e-mails and, therefore, no news from the rest of you. We can’t share what we don’t know. —Ernest C. Marriner Jr.

45  Fascinating stuff in a recent

article in The Log-Year 2002 by Bill Whittemore, who’s a nuclear physicist: “I have had opportunities to meet with interesting individuals and discuss with them scientific problems. In addition to my work with Edward Teller and Freeman Dyson . . . I have had the pleasure to sit with and discuss interesting topics with the Nobelists, Niels Bohr and Enrico Fermi. . . . My meeting with Prof. Bohr took place in June 1959 during the festivities associated with the dedication

ceremonies for the General Atomic Facility. The reader may make the connection between Prof. Bohr and the fascinating play, Copenhagen, on Broadway. [An intriguing play indeed, even if you never had a single thing to do with physics—NCP.] It centers on a visit during WWII by Werner Heisenberg, a leading German nuclear physicist, to his former professor in Denmark, Niels Bohr. What exactly transpired between the two of them remains unknown. Did Germany fail to build the bomb before the end of the war out of lack of understanding or for other reasons? What is suggested is that Heisenberg returned to Germany and possibly worked to hinder the effort to build the bomb by overstating the difficulties around making it. It may also be interesting to learn that the sale of each bottle or can of Carlsberg beer results in funds contributed each year to the Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. . . . Enrico Fermi in the field of nuclear science was a modern day scientific adventurer. Ferdinand Magellan charted the path previously unknown to circumnavigate the globe. Fermi in his world accomplished something not unsimilar. He was the prime scientific guide for the

The Club Circuit For a list of club events go to www.colby.edu/alumni/regionalclubs Arizona, Cindy Castro Minnehan ’86. Atlanta, Chris Tierney ’89. Austin, Texas, Lambie Bickford ’01. Boston, Christopher Sullivan ’97. Charlotte, N.C., Farrell Burns ’98. Chicago, Mike Cuzzi ’98, Sarah Ummell ’97. Colbiana (Mass.), Elizabeth Wade Drum ’47. Colby North by Northwest (Boston’s North Shore to Southern New Hampshire), Cherrie Dubois ’69. Colorado, Katherine Walker ’88, Peter Weinberg ’91. Down East, Andrea Krasker Gavin ’93 and Chip Gavin ’90. Fairfield County, Conn., Janet Breslin Gilmartin ’76. Hartford, Franc-Eric Wiedmer ’90. London, Stephen Reed ’85. Los Angeles, Rabbi Zachary Shapiro ’92. Minnesota, Kendra K. Shank ’02. New Hampshire, Tony Baldasaro ’94. New York City, Diana Herrmann ’80. Philadelphia, Kirk Paul ’79. Providence, Sarah Dressler ’02. San Francisco, Ruth Bender ’89, Elizabeth Baker ’97. Sarasota, Fla., Ernie Fortin ’51. Seattle, Sarah English ’95, Corley Hughes ’98. Shanghai, Susanna Schneider ’82. Southern Maine, Demetra Giatas ’88, Rebecca Birrell ’92. Tokyo, Ari Druker ’93. Washington, D.C., Kevin Fahey ’80. Waterville, Jon Eustis ’69.

20s/30s Merrill S.F. Greene ’20 was recognized by the Maine Legislature with a proclamation honoring the 102-year-old World War I veteran, one of two in Maine. In World War II he went into uniform again as a U.S. Army doctor. “Wherever the troops were, I tried to be there,” Dr. Greene told the Lewiston Sun    At the 16th annual Alfond Youth Center Awards Dinner in May, retired Waterville, Maine, lawyer Lester T. Jolovitz ’39, a board member for many years of both the Waterville Boys & Girls Club and the YMCA, Merrill S.F. Greene ’20 received a special service award recognizing his gifts of time, talent and treasure to Waterville youngsters. Deaths: Marion Merriam Hooper ’25, June 19, 2002, in Waterville, Maine, at 99     Dorothy Farnum Scott ’26, July 21, 2002, in Annapolis, Md., at 97    Seneca B. Anderson ’30, June 21, 2002, in West Falmouth, Mass., at 90    Wendell A. Tufts ’30, February 8, 2002, in New Hampshire, at 94    Mary Louise Kelly ’32, June 2, 2002, in Middlebury, Vt., at 93    Josephine Porter Cunningham ’34, July 24, 2002, in Freeport, Maine, at 90    John J. Leno ’34, April 30, 2002, in San Diego, Calif., at 94    Wilma Stanley Hill ’35, August 5, 2002, in Hamilton, Mass., at 88    Florence Cayer ’37, July 17, 2000, in Glendale, Calif., at 85    Arnold A. Green ’37, March 29, 2001, in Trinidad, Texas, at 86    Joyce Porter Fox ’38, June 6, 2002, in Caribou, Maine, at 84    Willetta Herrick Hall ’38, May 18, 2002, in Bar Harbor, Maine, at 84    Lucile E. McClintock ’38, May 22, 2002, in Fairfield, Maine, at 86.

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Alumni at Large

1940s-1950s

1940s Correspondents 1940

Ernest C. Marriner Jr. 10 Walnut Drive Augusta, ME 04330-6032 207-623-0543 classnews1940@alum.colby.edu

1941

Bonnie Roberts Hathaway 400 Atlantic Avenue #34C Leominster, MA 01453 978-343-4259 classnews1941@alum.colby.edu

1942 1943 1944

c/o Meg Bernier Colby College Office of Alumni Relations Waterville, ME 04901 207-872-3185 classnews1942@alum.colby.edu classnews1943@alum.colby.edu classnews1944@alum.colby.edu

1945

Naomi Collett Paganelli 2 Horatio Street #5J New York, NY 10014-1608 212-929-5277 classnews1945@alum.colby.edu

1946

Anne Lawrence Bondy 771 Soundview Drive Mamaroneck, NY 10543 914-698-1238 classnews1946@alum.colby.edu

1947

Mary “Liz” Hall Fitch 4 Canal Park #712 Cambridge, MA 02141 617-494-4882 fax: 617-494-4882 classnews1947@alum.colby.edu

1948

David and Dorothy Marson 41 Woods End Road Dedham, MA 02026 781-329-3970 fax: 617-329-6518 classnews1948@alum.colby.edu

1949

Anne Hagar Eustis 24 Sewall Lane Topsham, ME 04086 207-729-0395 fax: 978-464-2038 classnews1949@alum.colby.edu construction of the world’s first nuclear reactor. . . . My wife and I have been given the opportunity to interact on a deeply personal basis with people from 40  |

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as many as 24 countries that has led to lasting friendships. We have been brought into everyday contact with vastly different kinds of food, cultures, educational systems, homes and living conditions. In 1958, one of 12 Korean trainees in La Jolla did not have money enough for room rent and food. He lived in our house and shared our food for about six weeks before returning to Korea. . . . He moved up through the Korean hierarchy to become an important member of the Korean Atomic Energy Commission.” Bill goes on to tell even more. . . . In April, Muriel Marker Gould, Helen Strauss and I had another opportunity to hear a piece composed by Hugh Aitken, Laura Tapia Aitken’s husband. A fine composition titled “Duo,” it was performed beautifully by a cellist and a pianist at Hunter College. . . . Also in April, Laura and Muriel were the ’45ers who along with 12 other Colbyites attended a tour of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House. Helen organized the tour, which I am sure was very interesting. I missed it because I was away visiting friends in Tennessee. . . . I had a nice little talk recently with Leonard Caust ’43. He and Ruth live in Goldens Bridge, N.Y. Len, retired from Lever Brothers Company, has three daughters, two stepdaughters and three grandchildren. Chess seems to be high on Len’s list of many interests. —Naomi Collett Paganelli

46

Gene and I had a too-short visit in May with Colby friends during a fascinating tour backstage at the Metropolitan Opera, arranged by Helen Strauss ’45. The group included Larry and Marie Kraeler Lowenstein, Hugh and Laura Tapia Aitken ’45 and Muriel Marker Gould ’45. It was also nice to see Sue Cook ’75 from the College. Lots of rain, though much needed, put a damper on an after-tour gathering. For several years Helen and, often, Naomi Collett Paganelli ’45 have arranged tours of interesting places around Manhattan, especially for members of classes up to ’55. Great idea! . . . Dr. Philip Boyne recently completed his two-year tenure as president of the American College of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons at its annual meeting in Las Vegas. Phil also received the Honor Award for 2001 from the Pierre Fauchard Academy. He continues to practice as a professor emeritus at the Loma Linda University Medical Center in California. Phil has been

MILESTONES How about a concert at Carnegie Hall in honor of your birthday? Last May the New York Choral Society celebrated the life and music of Robert R. DeCormier ’43, music director of the society for 17 years, on the occasion of his 80th. DeCormier has written works ranging from choral to ballet to Broadway scores and conducted the Robert DeCormier Singers on tours throughout the United States and Canada. For many years he was conductor and arranger for Harry Belafonte and has been music director for Peter, Paul & Mary Robert R. DeCormier ’43 for the past 20 years    The late Dominic M. Puiia ’48 was inducted into the Maine Sports Hall of Fame in June. He was a member of the basketball, football and baseball teams at Colby and played on the East-West College All-Star team in 1946    Dexter, Maine, native Horace P. Landry ’49 published his second suspense novel in June. Death on the Rocks takes place in Ellsworth, Winter Harbor, Augusta and Bangor and begins in 1947 in a college town on the Kennebec River. “I changed Colby College to Chamberlain College, for the Civil War hero [Joshua Chamberlain],” Landry told the Waterville Morning Sentinel. Deaths: Ruth Lewis Nowlan ’41, June 14, 2002, in Foxboro, Mass., at 83    Gerald D. Robson II, July 5, 1999, in Pleasanton, Calif., at 82    Saul Millstein ’42, May 28, 2001, in Roseburg, Ore., at 81    Harold L. Rhoden­ izer ’42, April 24, 2002, in Bethlehem, Conn., at 81    Olivia Elam Davis ’43, December 23, 2000, in Dublin, Ohio, at 80    Justin O. Johnson Jr. ’43, November 15, 1999, in Hancock, Maine, at 79    Chester W. Arthur ’44, January 22, 2002, in Keeseville, N.Y., at 80    Kenneth J. Dolan ’45, May 15, 2000, in Bangkok, Thailand, at 75    George H. Lewald ’45, May 18, 2002, in Weymouth, Mass., at 78    Ardis Wilkins Holt ’46, July 8, 2002, in Presque Isle, Maine, at 79    Jeanne Snowe Ainsworth ’47, May 12, 2002, in California, at 76    Joyce E. Curtis ’47, June 29, 1999, in Maine, at 72    Donald C. McCoy ’47, February 14, 2002, in California, at 76    Norman G. Epstein ’48, August 12, 2002, in Swampscott, Mass., at 78    Alice Covell Bender ’49, June 24, 2002, in Honolulu, Hawaii, at 74. extraordinarily generous to Colby, for which we are all grateful. . . . Have you all noticed the ever-increasing quality of Colby magazine? Too bad there’s such a long lag between class notes deadlines and publication. But don’t let that stop you—let’s hear from more of you. I can’t write news unless I hear news! —Anne Lawrence Bondy

47  Chuck Dudley writes that in

the last years, he and Shirley (Martin ’46) have traveled extensively through the Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand. They visit their five children in Florida, California, Indiana, Connecticut and Minnesota at least twice a year (that in itself seems like extensive traveling to me!) and all get together, including the seven grandchildren, at a Connecticut beach in July. He says all are well, happy and a wonderful joy to them. The Dudleys winter in

Safety Harbor, Fla., and spend summers in Windsor, Conn. . . . The “Best of Times” is the way Dorothy Briggs Aronson described our recent 55th reunion. “There were 40 of us from our class—and we all sang the old favorites of the Blue Beetle days. We told old stories and laughed and sighed nostalgically—and realized how lucky we were to have known Dean Runnals, President Bixler, professors Wilkinson, Galbraith, Marshall, Comparetti and all the others and each other! If you haven’t tried one, come next time. It’s great!” I drove up with Louise Kelley Rochester and Briggsey and roomed with Jane Rollins, who was on campus for the first time since our graduation. I think everyone enjoyed the kick-off cocktail party at Ray and Tossie Campbell Kozen’s house, the usual lobster-clam bake, the many choices of interesting lectures and the chance to meet President Adams. Again, Tom Burke did a wonderful


job as class agent and made us collectively proud of our class contribution to the Alumni Fund, and both Tossie and Dorie Meyer Hawkes should be thanked for all the planning that they did. . . . On a sad note, I have to report the death of one of my former roommates, Jeanne Snowe Ainsworth, on May 12 in California. —Mary “Liz” Hall Fitch

48  Helen Knox Elliott and her

husband, Charles, were pleased to have Marguerite Baker Stackpole ’49 and her husband, Howard, visit with them in Burlington, N.C., for a couple of days on their way to Florida. They were going to meet their new grandson, recently born in Germany, for the first time. Marguerite and Helen were Colby roommates from 1945 to 1947 and were each other’s wedding honor attendants. Helen and Charles also were recently privileged to attend a banquet in Charlotte, N.C., where the Honorable John Ashcroft, United States attorney general, was the guest speaker. . . . Marvin Joslow wrote to us on May 18, 2002, from Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard. On that day in May, he stated that the temperature was in the mid-30s and they were being flooded with a non-stop deluge. The wind was blowing more than 25 miles per hour—so typical for spring in New England. Marvin proudly proclaimed that his letter was being written on their new, and first, computer. He is getting “the hang” of some of the functions and finds word processing and e-mail especially useful. (We will plan our annual dinner/reunion this summer using the modern medium of e-mail.) In response to David’s birthday greeting, Marvin advised that David is six months older and that

Marvin’s birthday is April 14, a date that coincides with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the sinking of the Titanic. We have not verified the validity of such facts and rely strictly on Marvin’s academic prowess to provide documentation if needed. Not long ago Marvin received a note from Millie Schnebbe Riordan. He also wrote that he expected a visit from Bill Maurice and his wife, Gerrie, in late May, so we advanced our tentative schedule and on June 1 sailed to Martha’s Vineyard. While underway we called Marvin on the cell phone and arranged for him to pick us up in his car in Vineyard Haven Harbor. We went to a flea market and there we caught up with Betty Joslow and Gerrie and Bill Maurice. The six of us spent the day together. We visited an art gallery, and then with six of us squeezed into Marvin’s car we drove to Menemsha for lunch and a walking tour of the tiny harbor. We then went to Marvin’s house and from his deck enjoyed the breathtaking views of Vineyard Sound and the Elizabeth Islands. . . . You have all read our lament in the past about lack of news for this column, hence the “boat” news. We are sparing you the details of our golf game. (We focus on that in the winter.) Send us news and you can be certain that it will be printed. Try not to leave the class with a quarterly Marson soliloquy. —David and Dorothy Marson

49  This year I made the “trek” to

Waterville for Colby Reunion Weekend 2002. A small contingent of ’49ers was present: Kay and Walter Borucki, Carol Carpenter Bisbee, Oz and Ginny Young Ellis, Miles and Ruth Endicott Freeman, Don and Hilda Farnum Nicoll and Muriel and Bob

DOROTHY CLEAVER ’48 What she’s been doing Reading to pre-schoolers in Skowhegan and Athens, Maine. Under the auspices of what? As a Born to Read volunteer, through a program created by the Maine Humanities Council. What she told the Waterville Morning Sentinel “It’s a new thing for [children] to have a grandmother or grandfather type show up regularly every week.” One of Cleaver’s greatest hits Franklin in the Dark by Paulette Bourgeois, a book about a turtle that is afraid of the dark and won’t go in his shell. The turtle’s solution A night light. One of the unexpected benefits Children recognize Cleaver in her travels around town. What do they do when they recognize her? Give her a hug and call her “Dottie.”

Tonge. Those of the class who chose to stay on campus were housed and fed as usual in Dana Hall. Our 50-Plus Club reunion dinner was there also. Our dinner table was made up of five members of the Class of ’49 joined by five members of the Class of ’48! Another small class contingent! President William “Bro” Adams made a brief appearance during our dinner and welcomed us back to Colby. Although I was only there for the day, I took advantage of one of the varied afternoon presentations, “Forensic Toxicology: A Rhode Island Perspective,” which I found most interesting since I enjoy murder mysteries and, in particular, Patricia Cornwell’s. . . . If you can believe it, Don Nicoll’s and Bob Tonge’s three-year terms representing us on the Alumni Council were completed as of this Reunion Weekend. One bonus of the 50-Plus Club that I noticed is that you have ample opportunity to catch up with friends in the classes before and after you, an advantage you seldom had when our reunions were every five years. By far the greatest class participation in the 50-Plus Club was the Class of ’47, which was celebrating their 55th reunion. Our 55th reunion will be upon us before we know it in 2004! Mark your calendars now and plan to return for another weekend of reminiscences and renewing of friendships. . . . My daughter, Elisabeth Eustis Paine ’81, told me that Shirley Kydd Bastien was going to celebrate her 75th birthday with a big party. Shirley didn’t want any presents, but she suggested that everyone buy themselves a present, which in some fashion represented their friendship with Shirley, and bring it wrapped to the party. A neat idea, Shirley! . . . As you can see, I haven’t heard from many of you, but I hope I do before my next deadline. —Anne Hagar Eustis

50

I got a great letter from Ray Brackett encouraging me to pursue a career in creative writing. It seems my fictional account of Dick and Connie Leonard Hayes’s hang gliding adventures had the desired effect. Real news! Ray got together with Phil Shearman for dinner in Gorham, Maine, recently and had a great time recalling bygone days. (Did you really just return from a motorcycle weekend, Ray?) He and his wife, Ivory, are moving to Londonderry, N.H., just down the street from their youngest daughter and two grandchildren. Isn’t it great to be near family! It seems his daughter

1950s Correspondents 1950

Alice Jennings Castelli 6 Salem Road Madison, CT 06443 203-245-7725 classnews1950@alum.colby.edu

1951

Nancy Nilson Archibald 15 Linden Avenue Scituate, MA 02066 781-545-4987 classnews1951@alum.colby.edu

1952

Janice Pearson Anderson 23 Fernwood Circle Harwich, MA 02645-2819 508-432-4049 classnews1952@alum.colby.edu

1953

Barbara Easterbrooks Mailey 80 Lincoln Avenue South Hamilton, MA 01982 978-468-5110 978-777-5630 ext. 3310 classnews1953@alum.colby.edu

1954

Helen Cross Stabler 5387 Anvil Drive Camillus, NY 13031 315-672-8430 classnews1954@alum.colby.edu

1955

Ken Van Pragg P.O. Box 87 (May–early Nov) Grafton, NY 12982 518-279-1696 22 Golf Drive (Early Nov–May 6) Pt. St. Lucie, FL 34952 561-344-5961 classnews1955@alum.colby.edu

1956

Kathleen McConaughy Zambello 135 Iduna Lane Amherst, MA 01002 classnews1956@alum.colby.edu

1957

Guy and Eleanor Ewing Vigue 238 Sea Meadow Lane Yarmouth, ME 04096 207-846-4941 classnews1957@alum.colby.edu

1958

Margaret Smith Henry 1304 Lake Shore Drive Massapequa Park, NY 11762 516-541-0790 classnews1958@alum.colby.edu

1959

Ann Segrave Lieber 7 Kingsland Court South Orange, NJ 07079 973-763-6717 classnews1959@alum.colby.edu

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Alumni at Large 1950s-1960s NEWSMAKERS Robert S. Lee ’51 was honored with the Distinguished Citizen Award by the Yankee Clipper Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Best known for his commitment to the Danvers, Mass., YMCA, Lee was recognized for exemplifying the ideals of the Scouts in both his professional and personal life and for unselfish service to his community    Mediaweek conferred its President’s Award on Robert A. Frank ’54 for his career in pioneering the full-service media independent SFM Media. With Stanley Moger ’58 and a third partner, Frank started the company in 1969 and over the years landed blue-chip clients such as Avis, Max Factor, Canada Dry, Pfizer and Smith Kline    A Lawrence, Mass., Sunday Eagle-Tribune story about the Weitzman family shoe business highlighted the role of Warren M. Weitzman ’58 in the Haverhill company’s success. While his younger brother, Stuart, became one of the world’s most famous footwear designers, Warren Weitzman ran the business side of the factory until the company moved to Spain in 1972. He has continued to work for the past 25 years as an international consultant to the shoe industry.

MILESTONES Deaths: Charlotte Pettee Johnson ’51, June 10, 2002, in Waterville, Maine, at 72    Mary Lo White Shahawy ’51, July 22, 2002, in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, at 72    Anthony M. “Jerry” D’Amico ’57, August 26, 2002, in Bangor, Maine, at 68    Gail Gaynor Kirkbride ’57, June 13, 2002, in Cape Cod, Mass., at 66    Charles R. Gorham ’58, May 11, 2002, in Cheshire, Conn., at 71. Andrea has a workshop in her basement that beckons. Ray may just get back to his woodcarving. . . . Sybil Green Reichek writes that she and her husband, Mort, are dividing their time between New Jersey and Florida. Sybil is giving classes on film appreciation and contemporary fiction in adult education classes in both states. . . . Gerry Baker is among the many world travelers in our class. He and his wife took a wonderful trip recently to southern Italy as well as to Paris and the Riviera. In addition, Gerry puts in a 50-hour week (!) as president of Mark of Fitness. That works. . . . So, how about you? Are you fulfilling any of your dreams? Have you taken up the piano or scuba diving? Are you thinking of buying a camper and touring our beautiful country? Are you actually getting together with old friends you’ve been meaning to see over the years, as did Ray Brackett? Let’s hear about it. —Alice Jennings Castelli

51  Harland Eastman writes that

he is the proud grandfather of Jake Eastman, son of Sally (White) ’91 and Said El Quahabi Eastman ’90. His daughter, Eliza (University of Wisconsin), will be living with him while working towards her master’s degree at the University of Southern Maine. His son Stephen (Stanford) is VP at Wellington Management in Boston. 42  |

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Harland is interested in the antiquarian book business, and he travels extensively. . . . Bump Bean’s family had a great vacation trip to Bermuda. . . . I hope to receive news from you all so that I will have some material to put in our next class column. I am having knee replacement surgery and will be back in action after two months or so. Let me hear your latest news! —Nancy Nilson Archibald

52  May I begin by saying “thank

you” to Paul Aldrich, who has done such a great job as our class correspondent. I’ll try to do my best to take up the pen (or the computer keyboard) where he left off. This is just a greeting note to you all to tell you a bit about our 50th reunion in June. For those of you who were not able to make the 50th, we really missed you. It was a great time, and Colby went out of its way to highlight the Class of ’52. Those of us who could, attended the pre-reunion in Boothbay Harbor at the charming Spruce Point Inn. We enjoyed a great welcoming party and dinner and the next day had nature walks and a cruise around Boothbay Harbor. The high point was a wonderful cocktail party given by Joan and Dave Morse at their beautiful home overlooking the water. On to Colby the next day, and the official reunion activities began. In all the times I have returned to Colby, I have never seen it look so beautiful.

The grounds crew must have really worked hard, and the results showed! Two of the dorms, Mary Low and one up next to the library, were being gutted and renovated, but progress was so good on Mary Low that they hoped to have it back in service this fall. Our class was headquartered in Foss and Woodman halls (you remember—the “new” women’s dorms back in our days at Colby). The Foss dining room is beautiful and the food plentiful and delicious. We went on to enjoy all the usual reunion festivities: from campus tours to the Parade of Classes (in which ’52 was the honored group), the lobster bake, seminars of all kinds and, of course, the Class of ’52 parties and reunion dinner on Saturday night. It was wonderful to see old friends, some of whom joined us for the first time in 50 years. . . . This column would not be complete without thanking our outgoing officers, Norma Bergquist Garnett, Paul Aldrich and Barbara Bone Leavitt. They put in an amazing amount of time and effort in planning and arranging, along with the Alumni Office, for our good time. Now we’ll have to look forward to next time. In the meantime, stay well and enjoy life! —Janice “Sandy” Pearson Anderson

53  Nelson Beveridge sent me

some news he had collected while phoning for Colby a while ago. Paul Joseph retired in 1993; he worked for the government in the Office of Personnel Management, handling security investigation, staffing of specialists and veteran’s affairs. He also provided grants 50/50 with the states to those who demonstrated personnel productivity and monitored state Civil Service functions to judge qualified individuals. Paul is now assisting at auctions at the GM plant in Framingham, Mass. He plans to see us at reunion. . . . Marcia Curtis has retired from a career in medicine. She cruised the Caribbean in February and planned to spend her summer at Waterville Valley, N.H. . . . Joe Bryant, who spent the winter in Myrtle Beach, still plays golf there and at the Brunswick Country Club in Maine. He has fully retired from teaching. . . . Peter Salmon lives in Watertown, N.Y., but spends his winters in Sun City Center in Florida. Pete’s children recently surprised him on his 70th. He also attended the graduation of his cousin, Wynter Stinchfield ’01. He says he will be with us for reunion. . . . Ray Ducharme’s daughter Devon is a member of Colby’s Class of ’06.

. . . Norman Hodgkins retired from his post as a government meteorologist at Logan International Airport. He now lives in Lovell, Maine, where Herb Adams ’54 is his neighbor. . . . I will close with a real “fish story.” Ted Lallier has wanted to fish the Mirimachi River in New Brunswick for many years, and he finally got his chance in May. He and his wife’s cousin, Fred, stayed at Pete Perry’s lodge for five days. He says they had three full days of fishing. I quote: “It rained, had hail, it blew and blew, it got hot, clouded over, and then the fish didn’t want to bite for a while. The temperature was 27 to 30 degrees in the a.m., then roughly in the upper 40s during the day. But in those three days Fred and I pulled into the boat about 12 fish. The smallest fish I took was a 12-inch brook trout. Then the salmon we fished for were anywhere from 24 to 42 inches long and weighing at least 16 to 27 lbs. One brook trout, weighing about 7 lbs. and about 15 inches in length, looked like a ceramic piece of art. Just to let you know this is not an ordinary fish story, we had pictures taken of each fish caught for all you non-believers. It was a great trip. Pete and I look forward to seeing everyone at the 50th reunion.” Ted would like us to call him (at 978-388-9500) to help with reunion and suggest some ideas to pass on to the administration. To update Ted’s family news, he says that his oldest son, Ed, is working for the Bloomberg Co. (of Michael Bloomberg fame) and is living in San Francisco. His youngest son, Matt, is a junior at Union College and will be going to law school and then will join Ted’s law office, where his wife, Erna, is his paralegal and only office help now. The new addition to his family is a golden retriever puppy, Wally. Ted says, “See you in June 2003.” —Barbara Easterbrooks Mailey

54  Georgia “Gig” Roy Eustis

writes that she is a R.E.L.I.E.F./ Hospice nurse, now living in Sunrise, Fla. She says that her constant companion for 16 years has been a sleek black cat named Fiona MacLaren, after the heroine of “Brigadoon.” Gig has had two new lens implants and two total hip replacements, so she regards herself as a Bionic Woman. She feels so good now that she tells us to keep our eyes peeled for this Silver Flash at the Winter Olympics in 2006. She has attended most all of the class reunions, where she finds it wonderful to see former classmates, catch up


on their news and remember Colby days together. . . . Ed and I moved in March. My new address appears in the list of correspondents near this column. We now live next door to one daughter and a mile from two others. Unfortunately, our son doesn’t seem inclined to move from Los Angeles. The move, after 43 years in the same house, was a nightmare, and the whereabouts of some essential items remains a mystery. Otherwise, we love the new house and the location. —Helen Cross Stabler

56  What a wonderful 11-day trip

to Italy with the Alumni College in Tuscany. We were a group of 46 from Colby, Bates and Bowdoin. This trip was so popular with Colby alums and friends (24 of us) that a second group of 18 arrived on the day we left. Colby’s Associate Professor of History Larissa Taylor accompanied us as did Professor Rebecca Corrie from Bates. We had their expertise on Renaissance history and art at our disposal. This large group of diverse ages and addresses, with its small-college Maine experience, had an instant rapport. We spent seven nights at a small hotel in the hill town of Pienza and had several informal lectures, daily tour guides and trips to surrounding hill towns and a continuing abundance of wonderful Tuscan food. We all received “graduation” diplomas before heading back to Rome. Some of us stayed on for three more days, sampling the wonderful noise, confusion and magnificence of the city. The nerve-shattering rides in a Rome taxi and walking the streets during World Cup soccer were unforgettable. Every store had a TV going and people shouting and cheering. We are now addicted to watching the soccer outcome. With us were Jan Nordgren Meryweather, Mary Ann Papalia Laccabue and her husband, Ron, and John ’55 and Jane Daib Reisman ’58. . . . I have heard from no classmates recently. But I did get a very old and yellowed post card from a cousin in Florida, who found it in her hospital thrift shop. It showed Johnson Pond with very young willow trees, probably just around the time we all disembarked at Colby. Send news. —Kathy McConaughy Zambello

58 I waited as long as I could for input from the class, but only one class member sent me news—a very pleasant note from John Baxter along with a nicely completed questionnaire. John said he hoped his news would make the

“slim pickins” a little fatter. Thank you, John, for your contribution; it’s very much appreciated. Although John is retired from teaching, his wife, Diane, is still at work as a reading teacher in the East Providence schools. John and Diane live in Rumford, R.I. They became grandparents for the first time on March 11, 2001, so little John Cameron Baxter is now over a year old. For the past three years or so, John has been serving as a commissioner of the East Providence Housing Authority. This position has enabled him to travel to various parts of the country to study and observe how other urban and suburban housing authorities function. Currently John is working on the political campaign of one of his former students who is running for congressman in Rhode Island’s First Congressional District. This involves attending meetings and fund raisers and doing all that he can to get his candidate in front of the voters. . . . Next year is our 45th reunion, and my term will be up. At that point I will have been doing this column for 10 years. I am asking you to think about volunteering to take over the job. Perhaps in the coming year someone will decide to take me up on my offer. Please think about it. —Margaret Smith Henry

59 With children in Philadelphia,

Atlanta, Cleveland, etc., Phil “Doc” Suchecki and his wife do lots of traveling to visit their 10 grandchildren. A recent vacation trip took them to Panama, where they found the canal most impressive. In winter, Phil wonders why he chose to retire in Michigan! . . . Retired after 40 years of public school teaching, Lee Oberpar­ leiter is—you guessed it—teaching. This time it’s a graduate course, The Brain and Learning. Lee has written and published five books on the brain and teaches in a program called “The Brain and Learning Series.” He visits Maine with his daughter every year, loves movies and still has season tickets to the Phillies with his dad. . . . Edo Foresman Donaldson and her husband are still enjoying life on the road after two years. They’ve camped in 37 states and have crossed the country twice. Edo would love to meet up with any other class members who are out on the road. How about it? Anyone else fancy-free and ready to roll? . . . John Brooks volunteers full time at a food pantry and is in his 29th year as a volunteer fireman. He is also a runner’s guide for disabled athletes who run

marathons. He must be very fit to keep up that level of activity. Thanks for all you do, John! . . . Sheila and Lloyd Cohen have taken some marvelous cruises, both with and without grandchildren: Mexican Riviera, Fort Lauderdale-Panama Canal-Louisiana, Alaska, etc. Deep-sea fishing in the presence of whales, Lloyd says, was an otherworldly experience. In between cruises he still finds time for high school softball umpiring. . . . Eileen and Al Wilbur plan to retire (kinda) in Palm Springs, Calif., in 2003. . . . Sadly, I must inform you of the death of our friend and classmate Mike Riordan. Mike succumbed to cancer in the spring. He had hoped for a final trip to St. Maartens and, with good humor, acknowledged using frequent flier miles to upgrade to first class. He never made the trip. Many thanks to Bob Keltie for regularly keeping me informed on Mike’s condition. . . . Stay in touch, folks; life is unpredictable. Regards to you all. —Ann Segrave Lieber

60  All the news I had wouldn’t fit

in the last issue, so even though it’s a while back . . . did you all see Debbie Wilson Albee in the March 3 Parade Magazine, right next to the CEO of Nike? She is still working all too hard at innkeeping at her Goddard Mansion and hosts the regular reunions of Wendy McWilliam Denneen, Liz Boccasile Mavis, Charlotte Wood MacPhetres and Judy Ingram Hat­ field. . . . Dottie Baldridge Dzenis retired on September 7, 2001, and was jubilant for the weekend and one day, but, as she mentions, everything took on quite a different perspective from then on. She and Tal live in Bradford, Vt., and often see her Colby roommate Julie Klafstad Runnells and her husband, who live in Concord, N.H. Last year Julie and Dottie met at Sunapee a lot to ski together. The four of them do get together many times during the year for dinner, or the Maine beaches, or any other excuse they can manage. . . . Cynthia and Jerry Guiles live in the Sarasota area of Florida, where his trademark is “Maker of Fine Sawdust!” Jerry and his handiwork have been featured in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune and The Boston Globe. He has been instrumental in working with the developers of their future retirement home in designing a workshop that will be part of the main activity center. Cynthia and Jerry have three children and nine grandchildren. . . . I retired from IBM at the end of

1960s Correspondents 1960 Jane Holden Huerta 2955 Whitehead Street Miami, FL 33133 305-446-5082 classnews1960@alum.colby.edu 1961 Diane Scrafton Ferreira Pihanakalani Ranch P.O. Box 249 Pa’Auilo, HI 96776 classnews1961@alum.colby.edu 1962 Patricia Farnham Russell 16 Sunset Avenue Hampden, ME 04444 207-942-6953 classnews1962@alum.colby.edu

Nancy MacKenzie Keating 49 Sycamore Station Decatur, Georgia 30030-2757 404-370-0422 1963 Karen Forslund Falb 245 Brattle Street Cambridge, MA 02138 617-864-4291 classnews1963@alum.colby.edu 1964 Sara Shaw Rhoades 76 Norton Road Kittery, ME 03904-5413 207-439-2620 classnews1964@alum.colby.edu 1965 Richard W. Bankart 20 Valley Avenue Apt. D2 Westwood, NJ 07675-3607 201-664-7672 classnews1965@alum.colby.edu 1966 Meg Fallon Wheeler 19 Rice Road P.O. Box 102 Waterford, ME 04088 207-583-2509 classnews1966@alum.colby.edu 1967 Robert Gracia 295 Burgess Avenue Westwood, MA 02090 781-329-2101 classnews1967@alum.colby.edu Judy Gerrie Heine 21 Hillcrest Road Medfield, MA 02052 508-359-2886 classnews1967@alum.colby.edu 1968 Nancy Dodge Bryan 7 Weir Street Extension Hingham, MA 02043 781-740-4530 classnews1968@alum.colby.edu 1969 Sari Abul-Jubein 257 Lake View Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 617-868-8271 classnews1969@alum.colby.edu

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Alumni at Large 1960s February and hope to have started my next career (unknown as of June) by the time you read this. —Jane Holden Huerta

61  Aloha from the Big Island of

Hawaii, Land of Fire and Ice! By the time you read this column, Bob Burke will have spent four days at Pihanakalani Ranch—he was the winner of this auction item at our 40th! He bid on a total Hawaiian cultural experience, to be enjoyed along with his wife, Donna, and son, Mike. Stay tuned for a fuller report in the next newsletter. . . . Ted Lockhart e-mailed that he works for Anteon Corporation in Newport, R.I., as a defense analyst. Although he commutes home to New London, N.H., on weekends, sometimes his wife, Carolyn (Webster ’60), or his daughter, Anne, spend the week with him in Newport. He reports that his

son, Jeff, and two grandsons live in San Carlos, Calif., and he manages to go out at least once a year. He added that his Maine connection’s been greatly strengthened with the acquisition of a York, Maine, home built by Carolyn’s grandfather in 1920. Ted visited Penny Dietz Sullivan and Paul at their home in Reston, Va., recently. Ted’s news was our only news. Thank you, Ted! . . . Forget e-mailing me, as the computer gods cannot imagine a way to wire my side of Mauna Kea. I live in complete isolation! I do have a totally reliable fax (808-776-1479), and there’s always snail mail. Hoping to hear that ’61 is “Still Kicking.” —Diane Scrafton Ferreira

62  Greetings, Class of ’62! Pat Farnham Russell has agreed to welcome me as co-correspondent, and we’ll be sharing the duties related to

writing this column. Our hope is that we’ll widen the circle of those of you who actually want your classmates to know what you’re up to—so please consider using the form that appears in this issue and let us hear from you! . . . Setting aside vanity, disbelief and the paralyzing fear that we’d look older than everyone else, 57 of us, plus spouses, friends and family, traveled from long and short distances to attend our 40th class reunion the weekend of June 6 through 9. I think the prize for travel perseverance goes to Muff Symonds Leavitt and her husband, Boyd, who actually drove from their home in California! Boyd says he “likes to drive.” A bit of an understatement perhaps? Our weekend actually began on Thursday, the 6th, at the beautiful home and gardens of Pat and Rich Simkins in Byfield, Mass. Rich has literally created his gardens with his own

hands and heart, and he offers them as a gift to his community. Lovely and gracious Pat modestly says she does the “weeding.” Persistent, unrelenting, cold (for a Southerner like me) rain fell throughout the afternoon and evening, but guided tours under umbrellas went out anyway to enjoy the great beauty and creativity of the gardens. Many thanks to Rich and Pat for their extraordinary hospitality! In attendance were Harry and Judy Hoagland Bristol, Bill and Jane Germer Krebs, Patch Jack Mosher, Olive Pingree Ingraham, Cal Pingree, Sylvie and Al Neigher, John and Alice Webb Webb, Vera and Sam Mc Cleery, Judy and Chris Wood, Mike McCabe, Malcolm MacLean, Barb (Haines ’63) and Bill Chase, Paul ’59 and Elaine Healey Reichert, Patty Downs Berger, Ellie Tomlinson, Dick and

janet grout williams ’60 Flight School

Janet Grout Williams ’60 may find it difficult to avoid the subject of the career from which she recently retired, particularly while hiking through the White Mountains of New Hampshire. She left her position as a professor of field research biology at Swarthmore College in June and migrated north, marking the end of her noted career as an ornithologist. Williams’s research in animal behavior began when she worked with the world-famous zoologist Dr. Donald Griffin, who coined the term “echolocation” to describe his discovery in the 1940s of ultrasonic navigation among bats. Williams’s husband, Timothy, was studying under Griffin for his Ph.D. when Griffin offered her a position as a research assistant. The Williamses traveled frequently, including a stay in Trinidad to carry out a detailed study of bat behavior. It was there that the Williamses discovered that sight had a greater role in navigation than many biologists realized. Bats, they found, rely on visual landmarks in addition to echolocation with reflected sound waves. After their research on bats, Janet and her husband maintained a laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., and became interested in studying mass oceanic bird migrations. They had watched 12 million birds bound for the Southeast leave Cape Cod in a single night. The Williamses wondered where the huge flocks were going and how they got there. In 1969 the pair began what would result in a 30-year study of mass migrations. They found that while some birds fly over land, others, such as certain species of warblers and sandpipers, traverse a 2,000mile stretch of the Atlantic Ocean to reach their destinations in South America and the Caribbean. The Williamses examined data from ship and coastal radar systems to learn the speed of the birds, how high they fly, which routes are taken and which birds are most successful at completing the lengthy flights. Results from the ongoing study were first published in the October 1978 issue of Scientific American. The article shared some of their interesting findings on how birds make the difficult journey. “The trip . . . require[s]

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a degree of exertion that is not matched by any other vertebrate,” the article stated. “For a man the metabolic equivalent would be to run fourminute miles for 80 hours.” Williams’s interest in biology began at an early age, though she was not always certain of the direction she wished to take. “I’ve always been interested in nature since I was a little girl,” she said. “I was an outdoors person, and that was part of why I chose Colby.” Enjoying her membership in the Outing Club and Colby’s location in central Maine, Williams was also thankful for the support and personal interest shown by the Colby community in what began as a difficult first year of college. Her mother had died just weeks before she left home for Mayflower Hill. These tragic circumstances “forced me to be independent and self-assured,” she says. With the help of the supportive environment at Colby, Williams said, “I was able to become a mature, independent person with a liberal arts background. I could strike out on any path.” She chose ornithology, and although Williams has retired from academia it will not mean the end of her passion for nature and travel. “I will continue to be a naturalist,” she said, and she plans to become actively involved in the Appalachian Mountain Club after taking up residence in the New Hampshire mountains. Williams also will be occupied with finishing a book about herself and her husband—a reflection on the careers of two field ornithologists. —Gavin O’Brien ’04


Jeannie Banks Vacco. (I’m going to ask you in advance for forgiveness if I leave you out of a list . . . after all, I’m new at this.) Friday was as beautiful in Waterville as only a June day in central Maine can be. You remember! Several stalwarts arrived early to participate in the golf tournament. Others drifted northward to arrive, register and join the party in the dorm that evening. Over the course of the weekend, we saw Roey Carbino, Penny and Ed Kyle, Linn Spencer Hayes, Liz Conley Clagett, Debby Price, Dick Schmaltz, Elmer and Linda Laughlin Seeley, Pam Taylor, Toni and Allie Weller, Nancy and Whit Coombs, Nancy Rowe Adams, Dave Berman, John Chapman, Brenda Wrobleski Elwell, Ellie and Bruce Ferguson, Donna and Phil Gregorio, Jan Griffith and Dick Perles, Kathy Hertzberg, Jimmy Johnson, who continues to be our head cheerleader, Rollie and Pat Farnham Russell, newlyweds Shirley and Peter Jaffe, Lynn Kimball, Peter Leofanti, Craig Malsch, Ben Blaney, Lael Swinney Stegall, Nancy and Gerry Tays, Jay Webster, Marlyn Crittendon Coffey and Henry Wingate ’61, and Ginny (Murphy ’61) and Ed Cragin. Saturday brought the Parade of Classes and presentation of our class gift to the Alumni Fund. Under the capable leadership of Mike McCabe, reunion gift chair, and thanks to you we exceeded our goal of $62,000 for ’62. Outgoing class president Rich Simkins and Mike represented us on the dais. Then it was lobster and all the trimmings in the field house, and on to hear Jeannie Banks Vacco share her experiences of living and teaching in Kazakhstan as a Fulbright Scholar. The room was packed, and Jeannie made us proud! Millett Alumni House was the site of Saturday night’s class cocktail party and dinner and brought the news that Ellie Tomlinson will become our class president for the next five years. We missed Mary Ballantyne Gentle and Peter Duggan, both of whom had to cancel because of illness in their families. And we missed you! It was a great time for renewing friendships and making new ones. Plan on June 2007 and the 45th! —Nancy MacKenzie Keating

63  Booty (Ann) Bruno Hocking

reminds us all to save June 6-8, 2003, for our 40th reunion! If you have ideas for the reunion and also want to volunteer to encourage friends to attend (the bigger the reunion the better!) please

NEWSMAKERS The Washington state Parks and Recreation Commission awarded park planner Gerald W. Tays ’62 the 2002 State Historic Preservation Officer’s Award for outstanding achievement in education. The honor, presented by the Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, recognizes accomplishments in the identification, evaluation and protection of Washington’s cultural resources    Imagine your earthly possessions featured in Victoria Magazine and Country Living! Actually that’s Earthly Possessions, freelance designer Sandy Sandy Miller Keohane ’67 Miller Keohane ’67’s 13-year-old eclectic home furnishings store in Milton, Mass., where wares range from her handmade “shard tables” to vintage button bracelets to a variety of fine English china    Development “doesn’t have to be only business development or real estate development”: include housing, community and neighborhood development, Lee D. Urban ’68 told Portland, Maine’s Mainebiz. The director of Portland’s new department of planning and development now oversees the formerly separate departments of planning, economic development, and housing and neighborhood services.

MILESTONES Deaths: Leon R. Holmes ’60, May 5, 2002, in New York, N.Y., at 63    Wil­ liam B. Law ’63, March 28, 2001, in Connecticut, at 59    Edward D. Winkler ’63, June 24, 2002, in Lebanon, N.H., at 60    Jacqueline Roe Lloyd ’64, August 26, 2002, in Farmington, Conn., at 60    Joyce MacDonald Reed ’64, May 9, 2002, in Boston, Mass., at 61    Tom Korst ’65, June 14, 2002, in Hillerød, Denmark, at 59    Robert E. Comstock Jr. ’67, March 25, 2002, in Westfield, N.J., at 57    Diana Walsh Lockwood ’67, January 13, 2002, in Honolulu, Hawaii, at 57. e-mail her at hockan@aol.com. This summer the class will be receiving a letter from the committee giving more details. . . . If you thought “déjà vu” upon reading the class column in the spring 2002 issue, you were right, and your memory is still intact and working well. The column of summer 2001 mysteriously reappeared! The editor, pleading that his memory wasn’t intact and working well, apologizes. (The summer 2001 column was used as a template for the spring 2002 issue, and he didn’t remember the old column that inadvertently remained in place.) . . . As for a recent update on Forslund Falb news, we have headed to Martha’s Vineyard for a refuge instead of Cumberland, Maine. Older daughter Hilary is a sophomore at Brown this fall; younger daughter Alison, now a senior at Northfield Mount Hermon, had a tour and interview at Colby in June. As for myself, I’m headed for a busy year finishing my certificate in landscape design history at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University (formerly known as Radcliffe Seminars). . . . On a very sad note, Ed Winkler passed away on June 24 after a long

battle with colon cancer. Cindy Rich­ mond Hopper sent me this news after having tried to contact him about a possible visit to see him and his sculpture. Cindy and Monte keep very busy and are the proud grandparents of Alexandra Rose, born in April. . . . Ruth Pratley Madell continues working for the Kansas Humanities Council as its budget director and grants manager. She really enjoys her job as well as her volunteering at the Performing Arts Center and seeing many concerts and shows. She says, “this year has been kind of crazy.” Her daughter was married in San Francisco last September 21 when traveling by air was difficult, but the wedding was a fun time—it took place in Golden Gate Park, with the reception on the Balclutha, a tall ship moored at the maritime museum. In January she learned that all of the walking she had done for her health necessitated a hip replacement in April. Thanks to a laptop and e-mail, she has been able to keep up with work, and the rehab has gone amazingly well, enabling her already to be back almost to normal. . . . Having retired from the classroom several years ago,

Bunny Read McEldowney is now an education consultant in Colorado’s Jefferson County schools for gifted and talented students. She and her husband, Ron, enjoy traveling and were looking forward this summer to their first cruise, a trip to Alaska. A gathering of the family at Christmas on the tip of the Baja Peninsula included their three children and three “wonderful” grandchildren. Of interest is that one of their sons was a coordinator working on the Hayman fire outside of Denver in June. . . . In March, skiing at Mad River, Jane Melanson Dahmen fractured her left shoulder, which, she said, “put a crimp in my style.” She and I met for lunch in April at which time she was well practiced at driving with just one arm and was looking forward to painting again. We had more fun reminiscing about freshman year and being on the basement floor of Woodman Hall. . . . Finally, our busy Barb Haines Chase and Bill ’62 went to Haiti in February for the second time on a medical mission and had an amazing experience, finding the people warm, welcoming and in great need. —Karen Forslund Falb

64  I asked the class by e-mail,

“What do you remember about Gordon Linen?” and got a collection of memories: Who’s he? Stripping the beds and trooping down to wherever to pick up a new set. Didn’t we occasionally use the sheets for unorthodox uses? I vaguely remember people putting Gordon Linen products to a variety of uses for which they were never intended—shoe polishing, among the more mentionable abuses. Can you believe we changed our beds once a week? Does anyone still do that? That nice neat package wrapped in brown paper. Stiff scratchy sheets, but better than dirty ones; blue striped towels and the funny, sterilized sort of smell on the clean ones. They were pretty thin too. But hey, I wasn’t washing or folding, so I couldn’t complain. When we made banners for something or other and then were faced with how to turn in the evidence. Did we surreptitiously exchange the markered sheet for one of a classmate, or did we attempt to wash the paint out first, or did we just not turn it in and face the monetary penalty? This was probably one of the more serious moral dilemmas in our shallow youth. Believe it or not, I did not use Gordon Linen. Instead, my mother insisted I take bedding from home. I learned very quickly how to use C O L B Y   •  F A L L  2 0 0 2

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Alumni at Large 1960s the pay washing machines downtown. Many a Sunday I spent in front of spinning clothes and sheets while doing homework (ugh). I have to admit I have no recollection of Gordon Linen—ask me about Super Shirt instead, as I was the Super Shirt “girl” for two years. I only did the girls’ dorms—guess the girls were natty then, as a lot of them sent their button-down shirts out. I don’t know how we did it but there must have been dozens of sheets converted to banners each year, for such things as Homecoming, general insults, etc. My personal favorite was “George will oversleep comps.” And many of us got through graduate school using GL towels. (After that, the Army towels seemed quite gentle on the complexion.) I suspect that GL knew there’d be some “shrinkage” and folded that into the price. All in all, it beat doing our own laundry. Occasionally getting all ready in the morning, and finding out that it wasn’t Gordon Linen day after all! What a bummer to put it all back together again for one more night; or not—no problem sleeping without the sheets actually on the bed in the proper fashion. They were delivered to the door in men’s dorms if you remembered to leave the used linens stuffed into the pillowcase. B.J.’s suggestion of unorthodox uses recalls the freshman amusement of soaking a towel in water and hanging it out a window overnight in below-freezing weather. What was done with the resulting “board” I don’t remember. I had a roommate who occasionally used the towels for cleanups after art projects. The irate serviceman would fling them back into our room and finally refused to accept them. At a graduate school party sometime in the late ’60s, I was talking with a Harvard grad from Maine who said that he had spent a year and a half after his graduation working for Gordon Linen and did remember occasionally throwing paint- and ink-stained towels back into a room at Colby. . . . In real news, Martha Hincks Kel­ logg writes, “I retired from being a university librarian at the beginning of 2000 after 20 years at the University of Rhode Island library. I got my M.L.S. (library science) degree at Florida State University in 1965. I’m now living with my husband, Ted Kellogg ’63, in Englewood, Fla., in Sarasota County, enjoying the climate and time to read, golf, swim, lurk on computer lists, etc., but missing my R.I. friends and colleagues.” . . . Bob Gelbard received an honorary 46  |

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doctor of laws from Colby in May (see www.colby.edu/commencement). . . . Dick Larschan said, “I’m off to Dublin for a month at the Keough Institute, immersing myself in Irish poetry in the company of Seamus Heaney and Seamus Deane—okay, and maybe (just maybe) also getting reacquainted with a jar or two of Harp 33 years after my doctoral dissertation year in Ireland.” . . . Martha Farrington Mayo is working on deed research now for a potential nomination of a district for the National Register of Historic Places, and she is looking forward to time to do some genealogy. “Even though I am a webmaster for my job, I have not made much use of the Internet yet, but someday I will explore some topics there,” she said. . . . From Barbara Carr Howson: “Just finished my first year of grad school. Summer courses plus next year to go. There will be three graduations in the same weekend next May in our family. The logistics this will involve! Me, on Saturday from grad school in Richmond, son Michael from Georgetown Law and daughter Susan from Bryn Mawr (Pa.) on Sunday. Oh boy.” . . . John Oaks: “At this moment (that is, age 60), I cannot envision myself doing anything else full time. Although ‘age is a high price to pay for maturity’ (George Carlin), a career in academic research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has no age limits. (There are a few caveats: the nervous system above the neck must still function properly, and the grants must keep coming.) Longevity in research appears to stretch many years ahead, since my collaborator and good friend, Paul Bass, is 74, retired and still working with me about 70 percent of his time. He says it’s because our research is still exciting and fun. I can see that happening to me. But then again, there is my avocation. Some day, I will need more time for ‘the studio’ and my grandchild.” . . . Anyone out there who could send me news via snail mail? I can’t remember the last time one of you licked a stamp in my honor. —Sara Shaw Rhoades

65  Vol. 90, number 4 (fall ’01) was

the first issue I missed since becoming class correspondent in 1990. Except that I did not miss. The omission was due to a Colby error and not a lazy correspondent. No news may be good news, but Colby believes that some news is best and that late is better than never—so here is the column,

Bonds being called early?

Consider a charitable gift annuity. Take advantage of excellent gift annuity rates available now! Sample Rates (singles life) Age 60 65 70 75 80 85

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Contact Steve Greaves or Sue Cook at 207-872-3210 or plangift@colby.edu


only a year old. Charlie ’63 and Pam Plumb Carey’s son Todd was married Oct. 14, 2000, in Philadelphia. Spotted in the happy crowd were Marcia Anderson Harding, Ginger Barnes Goddard and Jay Gronlund. . . . Rick Davis’s son, Steve ’95, married Lauren O’Toole ’95 on Oct. 8, 2000, in Wellesley, Mass. Seen at the munchies were Bill Snow ’66, Karen Knudson ’64 and Jay Gronlund. I spoke with Jay and learned that he is teaching a course in brand positioning and development at NYU in N.Y.C. When not at the NYU spa, he does marketing workshops in Europe, Beijing and Bali—tough duty, but someone has to do it. Jay’s daughter, Melisa, graduated from Princeton in 2000. . . . Elfie Hinterkopf Biles had her book Integrating Spirituality in Counseling published in Japanese. She and her new husband, Stephen, spent their honeymoon in the Japanese Alps in the fall of ’99. . . . Whit Robbins reports from Delaware, Ohio, that he is still with the confectionery division of Nestle, working on international projects. He reported that “international travel gets pretty frustrating with all the delays these days.” He and his wife, Pat, are active in their church and keeping up with six grandchildren. . . . Jerri Hamilton Bost realized a long-term goal of walking across the Golden Gate Bridge in July 2000. This was discussed with Colby friends in 1997, and then Jerri was diagnosed with bone cancer. . . . Susie Walker Ostrem reports the sad news of her husband’s death in May 2000. She has now moved to Bigfork, Mont. . . . Stu Rakoff (rakoff@erols.com) is a selfemployed consultant living in Reston, Va., with Roz, his bride of 35 years. “I try hard to keep work in balance by taking Grampa breaks and staying involved in the community,” he said. Stu was appointed to the board of trustees of the Fairfax County Police Retirement System and is past president of the D.C. Colby alumni club. “In the past few years,” he added, “we have spent time in Tuscany, London, Paris, Costa Rica and the U.S. Southwest. We have started spending some time on Cape Cod in the summer. On the Cape last year I read the new translation of Beowulf, bringing back strong and pleasant memories of Prof. Colin MacKay describing Beowulf as the Scandinavian Hopalong Cassidy in freshman comp.” . . . Dave Fearon, fearon@mail.ccsu.edu, has embarked on an intellectual quest of monumental proportions. “I am starting a sabbatical from my professorship at Central

Connecticut State University to study myself! Before people start hauling out the Golden Fleece Awards, my study is of how I learn ‘knowledge management’—the green edge of my field of managerial and organizational behavior. With the help of my son, Dave ’89, I am forming a database to track ‘what David knows and how he got to know it,” . . . Dave Hatch, davidhatch@hotmail.com, has one more year at Burlington (Massachusetts) High School to get his pupils up to speed in Spanish before he retires to Florida. “Am looking forward to doing something outside and dealing with adults,” he wrote. Dave ushers at the International Tennis Hall of Fame tournament each July and every winter collects money for Cystic Fibrosis by selling raffle tickets at Attitash Mountain in Bartlett, N.H. . . . John Tewhey was profiled in a Falmouth (Maine) Forcaster article about members of the Board of Environmental Protection. John is the current BEP chair and owns Tewhey Associates, an environmental and technical consulting firm. He has been on the faculty of the University of Southern Maine. . . . A press release from the University of Chicago Press announced Barbara Howard Traister’s new book. She is a professor of English at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. After Colby, she earned a master’s in philosophy from Yale and a Ph.D. from Yale in ’73. She previously taught at Medical College of Pennsylvania and Kalamazoo College. Her new book, The Notorious Astrological Physician of London, is a treatise on the works and days of Simon Forman. Her earlier work, Heavenly Necromancers: The Magician in Early Renaissance Drama, is also available. . . . Hail, Colby, Hail! —Richard W. Bankart

66  The last two issues of Colby

attributed the ’66 column to Natalie Bowerman Zaremba, our previous correspondent, but Meg Fallon Wheeler has been writing them. The editor has explained most apologetically that Colby is laid out using a previous issue as a template, and both times Natalie’s name was inadvertently left in place of Meg’s. Not to confuse you further, but it’s Linda Bucheim Wagner who is handling the writing duties this time. . . . Colby kudos to Russ Monbleau, who was chosen as the recipient of the 2001 Babe Ruth Softball Volunteer of the Year Award. Russ was selected from over one million volunteers throughout the U.S.

and Canada for this highest honor bestowed in Babe Ruth. Now New Hampshire State Commissioner, Russ has been active in Babe Ruth since 1982 and has led N.H. to become one of the most successful states in the league. Russ’s wife, Joyce, his sons, Ron, Greg and Rusty, and his five grandsons certainly must be proud of this man who stepped up to the plate when leadership was so necessary. . . . While we’re on the subject of apologies, Colby class correspondent apologies to Mary Sue Hilton Weeks for leaving her off the list of reunion 2001 attendees. Not only was she there, she was on the reunion committee, and she led an expedition out to Hurricane Island for some adventuresome classmates! Check out Faux Finisher Magazine, the winter 2001 issue. Mary Sue is featured on the cover and in a two-page spread. After 30-plus years she has returned to her first love (and major at Colby)— art—and has started a business doing custom decorative finishing. Her Web site is www.decorativeillustions.com. . . . Bill Donahue was inspired to write commending Meg Fallon Wheeler on the terrific job she has been doing with getting out the Class of 1966 newsletter and the quarterly class columns. Bill, an attorney in White River Junction, Vt., and married for 33 years to Katherine Curtis, lives in Windsor, Vt., with Katherine and three sons, James, Sam and Tom ’00. Dave Cutler ’65 and Bill met recently for a weekend with their sons in New York City, and Tom Cox joined Bill for some bird hunting in northern Vermont last October. When not working, Bill plays the fiddle, reads avidly, plays golf and is attempting to teach himself to speak French to redeem a pledge he made to himself after flunking French at Colby! . . . Early retirement is on Debbie Anglim Higgins’s mind. She is considering using her long experience teaching high school French (Bill, you could ask Debbie to help you with your French lessons!) to take a position in the Department of Defense overseas school program. This summer Debbie was to travel in Italy for three weeks and meet with people involved in that program. She has just bought a twofamily home overlooking Quincy Bay, Mass., so Debbie is a new landowner and a first-time landlord. She says she feels like a 22-year-old again what with all her new adventures. . . . Jeff Wright, his wife, Karen, and daughter, Julie, a junior at Furman University, live in Marietta, Ga., where Jeff is a human resources director for Kimberly-Clark.

He has been with the company since 1969 and has moved across the country and back with the job. A member of the Colby Eight, Jeff has kept music in his life—he played drums for a number of years in a rock ’n’ roll band while Karen sang and played percussion with the group. They are now a bit more subdued and sing in the church choir. Dave Wooley and Peter Winstanley are in touch with the Wrights. . . . Peter and Ellie Eichmann Densen are still ardent joggers, and Peter continues his Saturday morning basketball games without fail. Finding time for exercise is tough, given that Peter is head of internal medicine at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City. He has 500 faculty and staff to oversee—and he still continues to do patient care. Dr. Densen, we salute you! Ellie volunteers at their local library and also works for National Public Radio reading for sight-impaired people. Their sons, Greg and Brad, live in Denver. . . . Meg Fallon Wheeler, Beth Peo Armstrong, Diane Leach Wilbur and I all met in Portland, Maine, for a three-hour gossip and power lunch on a beautiful day in May. The gathering left us all feeling the security and warmth of old friendships. —Linda Bucheim Wagner

67  Our sincerest sympathies to

Fran Richter Comstock, as Bob Comstock succumbed to cancer after a long and difficult fight. The funeral celebrated Bob’s life beautifully. Colby ’67 was represented by Ross Kolhonen, the first to give a eulogy, as well as Paul Cronin, Joe Connolly, Terry Straton and Mike Picher. There were also a number of younger Colby grads of the generation of their daughters, Jennifer ’93 and Ginger ’96. . . . Reunion Weekend weather was beautiful, and ’67 had a good turnout for the 35th. At Friday night’s banquet, Alumni Council president Lou McGinity Richardson presented Colby Bricks to two members of our class who have made generous contributions to the College of both time and money: Lee Potter and his wife, Linda (Mitchell ’66), and Doug Schair. Back at the dorm, the video done by Bob Field for the 30th reunion was a huge hit, bringing back memories of our four years on campus. We marched, a little farther back, in the Parade of Classes wearing our 35th reunion denim baseball caps. The class gave generously to the Campaign for Colby and C O L B Y   •  F A L L  2 0 0 2

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Alumni at Large 1960s-1970s set a new record for a reunion class. Irv Faunce hosted Saturday night’s dinner at the Museum of Art and continued the tradition of presenting “Colby Rocks” to class members who attended the weekend. Mike and Pam Cooper Picher distributed CDs of “Bob’s Music,” favorite songs of Bob Comstock, which will help all of us remember him. Some classmates have never missed a reunion yet. For many, this was their very first Colby reunion, but they agreed that they’d be back for the 40th in 2007. . . . Laila (Walji) Alidina is an allergist specializing in asthma in Orlando, Fla. She has been in practice for 19 years and is board certified in allergy and clinical immunology and in pediatrics. After Colby, Laila earned her medical degree and doctorate in anatomy at the Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She completed her allergy, asthma and clinical immunology fellowship at Jefferson Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. . . . Phil Kay is a consultant who provides sales training for the telecommunications industry. He has written “Compete and Win in Telecom Sales,” which draws upon his experience as a U.S. Navy lieutenant on the U.S.S. Preston Destroyer (DD795) in Vietnam. . . . Kurt Swenson is chairman, president and chief executive officer of Rock of Ages Corp. as well as VP of Swenson Granite. Kurt has seen the firm through hard times and created brand recognition for the maker of granite products as well as a nationwide chain of retail outlets for quarried building materials. He often incorporates “philosophical musings” in his annual report, and this year used Tibetan and Chinese folk stories to illustrate his thoughts about recent company changes. Kurt runs the family companies from offices in Concord, N.H., where he lives with his wife, Elaine. He also has two grown sons, Todd and Jake. . . . At the reunion, we collected e-mail addresses of classmates who wanted to be kept posted of news more frequently than we do in quarterly Colby magazines. If you’d like to join, just contact us by e-mail and we’ll add you to the list. We look forward to hearing from you and getting news for the next column. —Robert Gracia and Judy Gerrie Heine

68  Heard from Jane Bubar Mor­

rison, who lives in Dixfield, Maine, and is director of community relations development at Rumford Hospital. Her son Seth graduated from South48  |

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ern Vermont College in 2001. Her son Joshua ’93 and daughter-in-law Beth Cronin ’93 graduated from Colby and presented her with a grandchild, Duncan Cronin Bubar. She says she wasn’t at all excited about being a “nana” until he actually arrived, and now she’s a photo-showing addict. She adds, “When I lived in Waterville from 1983 to 1991, I doted on the Portland String Quartet concerts at Lorimer. What a gift to the community!” She says her Colby friends are still her best—Jann, Otts, Lystra and Brenda. . . . Gleaned from a newspaper clipping: Jolan Force Ippolito is the new chair of Rumford Hospital after having served on the board for four years. Vice president of risk management at the American Skiing Company, she also serves on the board of the Western Mountains Alliance, as chair of both the Maine Employers Mutual Insurance Company board and the finance committee of the Town of Rumford, and on the Oxford County advisory board of the Maine Community Foundation. Jolan and her husband, Jim, have been residents of Rumford for 30 years and have three grown children. . . . From a press release: David and Susan Davidson Lombard received honorary degrees at Nichols College in Dudley, Mass. David, who is chair of the college’s Comprehensive Campaign, graduated from Nichols and was the recipient of the honorary doctor of science in business administration. Susan received an honorary doctor of humane letters. According to the press release, “She is deeply committed to the community, as she is the vice chair of the board of trustees for Berkshire Community College and a member of the board of the Berkshire United Way. As a former teacher, she impacted the lives of young students throughout Central Berkshire as a member of the school committee, which she chaired for many years. She also serves on the boards of Berkshire Health Systems, the Berkshire Medical Center, the Berkshire Art Association and the Berkshire Center for Families and Children.” —Nancy Dodge Bryan

71 University of Southern Maine

Professor of Public Policy Charles Colgan, a.k.a. Maine’s “top economist,” predicted Maine businesses would cut about 9,000 jobs before an economic rebound occurred in the summer of 2002. He noted that 9,000 is less than a third of the 30,000 jobs Maine lost in the deep recession of the early 1990s. He felt the deepest

point of the recession probably had passed already but that projections of a rebound could be “out-the-window” if another “major terrorist attack” were to occur in the United States. He recently noted that the state economic forecasting panel that he heads had to throw out its outlook from last year following the 9/11 attacks. He noted that this is the first time since the Great Depression of the 1930s that all of the world’s major industrial countries have been in a recession at the same time. “That means it will probably be up to the United States to pull the world out of the slump,” he said. . . . On a lighter note, and low on material for this column, I will report that my husband, Bruce ’72, our son, Clark, 10, and I anticipated a trip in the summer to the Grand Canyon and some of the national parks in the Arizona-Utah area. . . . Please send your class correspondent some news for the next edition of the ’71 class column! —Nancy Neckes Dumart

72  Kathy O’Dell moved into

higher education administration last year as associate dean of arts and sciences at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), where she is also associate professor of art history and theory. She continues to bask in middle-aged parenthood as mom of Lucy O’Dell Mernit, 5, who changed Kathy and husband John’s lives in myriad ways, including what Kathy calls a once-and-for-all move from apartment life in New York City to an actual house in Catonsville, Md. Kathy stays in touch with Alice Osmer Olson and Aja Razumny (formerly Julie Pfrangle), who visits periodically from Juneau, Alaska, and reminisces about Colby with UMBC colleague Roy T. Meyers ’76, associate professor of political science and director of the public affairs scholars program. Kathy continues to be grateful for the mentoring of the late James Carpenter, professor of art history at Colby, whom she credits for influencing her to pursue a Ph.D. in the field. . . . Don Snyder has published his sixth and seventh books in the past year, both novels, Night Crossing (Alfred A. Knopf) and Fallen Angel (Simon & Schuster-Pocket Books). He wrote a screenplay of Fallen Angel for Hallmark, which will be filmed this autumn for the 2003 Hallmark Hall of Fame Christmas movie. This summer he planned to head to St. Andrews, Scotland, the setting for his eighth

book, a novel that will be published by Doubleday in 2003. —Janet Holm Gerber

73 Seth Dunn writes that he has

succeeded in delaying the inevitable mid-life crisis by becoming a parent! Father to Abigail, 4, and Benson, a son born last January, Seth lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Jennifer, an educational researcher. Seth has been a social worker for 25 years and finds great satisfaction in the personal rewards of his chosen profession, though finds the financial rewards lacking. He would love to hear from Colby friends. . . . Eric Rolfson was recently appointed vice president for institutional advancement at Thomas College in Waterville, Maine. After receiving a master of arts from the Goddard Graduate Program in Europe, Eric worked as a secondary school teacher in Waterville and in Paris, France. He also served for 13 years as Colby’s director of development, helping to plan and implement successful $35-million and $150million capital fund-raising campaigns. He then co-founded Toast Technologies Inc., a Boston-based information technology consulting firm that was twice rated in the Boston Business Journal’s top 25 list of “Area’s Largest Computer Networking Companies.” Eric has maintained his interest in music and was to travel to Poland with the Old Grey Goose band of central Maine to perform traditional music of the Northeast. He is also master of ceremonies for the annual East Benton Fiddler’s Convention, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in July. Congratulations to both Seth and Eric. —Jackie Nienaber Appeldorn

74  I received a number of e-mails

this month! Don Richardson writes that he and his wife, Janet, celebrated their 20th anniversary. After their son, Matt, graduates from high school he will attend Rensselaer. Don recently completed 25 years of service at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he is a systems librarian. He sometimes bumps into Debbie Smith Selkow, whose husband is a professor at WPI. Don says he enjoys reading Brian MacQuarrie’s articles in The Boston Globe. . . . Gay Peterson emailed that she is still living in North Yarmouth, Maine, in the house she and her husband, Rob Wood, built in 1979. Their two children, a junior and senior in high school, are making


NEWSMAKERS The Department of State recently announced the selection of Patrick D. Duddy ’72 as the U.S. consul general in São Paulo, Brazil, the world’s thirdlargest city. A career member of the Foreign Service, Duddy will be the senior U.S. government official at the largest consulate in South America, one of the largest in the world    “A new leader emerges,” declared the Norfolk, Va. Virginian-Pilot headline. Even though Kenneth R. Melvin ’74, now in his 17th year as a delegate to the Virginia General Assembly, is pleased with laws he’s helped enact, he said he also serves “to make certain that bad bills do not become legislation. In a session with over 2,500 bills, there are a lot of them”    Composer Arthur C. Levering II ’75 recently was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. Levering was one of 184 people selected from among more than 2,800 applicants on the basis of unusually impressive achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment    For weeks their story was front page in major newspapers as Wachovia Corp. and First Union Corp. closed in on a merger, making the Charlotte, Va.-based company the fourth-largest banking institution in the U.S. “We think we have very effectively blended the two teams and cultures,” Stephen E. Cummings ’77, co-head of the new corporate and investment banking unit, told the Charlotte Observer.

MILESTONES Deaths: Amelia Rosenfeld ’71, July 17, 1999, in Chapel Hill, N.C., at 49    Ellen Muzzy Farnham ’72, June 14, 2002, in Brunswick, Maine, at 51    Paul Allerton ’77, June 6, 2001, in New York, N.Y., at 47. Gay think that changing two sets of diapers at a time was nothing compared to finding colleges together! Gay is an R.N. at L.L. Bean. . . . Our former class correspondent, Shelley Bieringer Rau, sent word that after 14 1/2 years she left the busy orthopaedic surgeon group to start an occupational and hand therapy rehab program at a private physical therapy practice in Auburn, Maine. The smaller office is a real change of pace, but for the better. She and husband Rick are still very involved in their choral activities and are joined by both kids. The whole family planned to vacation at the Berkshire Choral Festival this summer. . . . Amy Caponetto Galloway returned to school for a master’s in education at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. In exchange for tuition, Amy worked as an elementary school substitute teacher. Last fall she student-taught six weeks each in second and fourth grade and then took over a fifth grade class to finish the year. “Tiring but rewarding” is the report! . . . From Down Under comes news from Robin Mycock that he survived the big 5-0 with a climb to the top of Sydney Harbor Bridge with his wife and kids followed by a surprise party with family and friends. Both his daughter and son have begun university in Sydney. Robin changed careers about five years ago when he bought an import/wholesale

business sourcing decorative lighting and accessories out of Asia. His travel is now mostly to Europe and Asia and very little in North America. He is in communication with Phil Deford, who lives with his family in Singapore. . . . I received a newspaper article reporting that Diana Krauss, a teacher at Mt. Ararat High School in Topsham, Maine, recently achieved National Board certification—a yearlong process. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards aims to establish rigorous standards for what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do. . . . Keep the mail coming! —Robin Sweeney Peabody

76  Ann Dunlap LeBourdais and I

have a little news to share; we’d love to have more. I am happy to tell you that I am recovered from my accident. (I completely tore the hamstring muscle from its upper attachment point. I was totally unable to use the leg, and it severely limited my activities.) Thanks to a wonderful surgeon and to unbelievable assistance from our church and community, my leg is as functional as before this untoward event. . . . Paul Kueffner said he was teaching French to fifth graders but expected to include fourth graders this fall. He speaks only French when “on the job,” and says, “It is amazing how many teachers, staff, parents and students who all ‘know

nothing but English’ can understand persistent French.” . . . Henry T. Osborn is in Florida, where he is communications director at Sabine, Inc. He planned to come north to celebrate his dad’s 80th birthday. He finds life busy with his job and family. He still enjoys music and will make or has already made a limited-edition CD. . . . Kate Cone knows about being busy. She has a soccer-playing son and two active daughters, and she’s working on a master’s degree herself. . . . Sim (Chan ’75) and Robert Gregory sent a brief note saying that their four children are doing well and the parents are adapting to a semi-empty nest. . . . Carl Witthoft sent a brief note to say that he considers himself a ’76er, although he finished with ’77. He says he enjoyed the 25th-reunion yearbook and will “definitely plan to show up for the 50th . . . heh.” My husband enjoyed his Web page immensely. Have a look. . . . Richard Clark beats my 11 years as a vegetarian by seven years. Richard has been studying the Beat Generation authors. . . . Rebecca Hushing McCole shared news of her activities. She has traveled to several U.S. destinations recently, teaches aquacise, is a school volunteer and runs an advertising business. She has put music on hold to avoid overextending herself but says she has a newly adopted cat that plays guitar! Becca has heard from John Mulcahey, who is a musician in New York City and was (still is?) music director for Annie, Get Your Gun. She also had word from Phil Freund, who has a family and a software company to keep him busy. Becca’s family had a visit from Peter Labombarde and family. The Labombardes and the McColes have age-mate daughters, so it was an outing enjoyed by all. . . . Our class newsmakers include Maureen Kelliher, who is now senior vice president and manager of Citizens investment services at Citizens Bank in New Hampshire, well-known musician and folklorist Jeffrey M. McKeen and Wendy Swallow, Ph.D., who has published a book about divorce and life after one. . . . Please send more news to classnews1976@alum.colby.edu. —Jane Souza Dingman

78  Hi everybody! Great quality but

weak quantity on the news front so it’s time to get out those laptops and pens. Let’s gear up the information flow in anticipation of our 25th reunion in June 2003! Speaking of our reunion, I had breakfast with Sandy Buck a

1970s Correspondents 1970 Brenda Hess Jordan 141 Tanglewood Drive Glen Ellyn, IL 60137 630-858-1514 classnews1970@alum.colby.edu 1971 Nancy Neckes Dumart 19 Deergrass Road Shrewsbury, MA 01545 207-524-5701 classnews1971@alum.colby.edu 1972 Janet Holm Gerber 409 Reading Avenue Rockville, MD 20850 301-424-9160 classnews1972@alum.colby.edu 1973 Jackie Nienaber Appeldorn Mohonk Mountain House New Paltz, NY 12561 845-255-4875 classnews1973@alum.colby.edu

1974

Robin Sweeney Peabody 46 Elk Lane Littleton, CO 80127 303-978-1129 fax: 303-904-0941 classnews1974@alum.colby.edu

1975

Bruce Young 20 Applewood Avenue Billerica, MA 01821 978-443-6417 classnews1975@alum.colby.edu

1976

Ann Dunlap LeBourdais 183 High Head Road Harpswell, ME 04079 207-725-6883 classnews1976@alum.colby.edu

1977

Mark Lyons 66 Edgewood Drive Hampton, NH 03842-3923 603-929-7378 classnews1977@alum.colby.edu

1978

Robert S. Woodbury 484 Bridge Street Hamilton, MA 01982 978-468-3805 fax: 617-951-9919 classnews1978@alum.colby.edu

1979

Cheri Bailey Powers 6027 Scout Drive Colorado Springs, CO 80918 719-532-9285 classnews1979@alum.colby.edu

couple of months ago. I won’t spoil any of the surprises, but he has some terrific ideas. Sandy has already started the planning process with a core of classC O L B Y   •  F A L L  2 0 0 2

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Alumni at Large 1970s-1980s mates, but I’m sure he could use some more help, so give him a call if you’re so inclined . . . or even if you’re not. . . . John and Pam Cleaves Devine write that their daughter Kimberly Cleaves Devine was accepted early decision by Colby and is a member of the Class of 2006. And in June 2002 during Reunion Weekend, John was the first recipient of the Edson Mitchell Award for distinguished service to the College. The award is presented to alumni who have been out of college less than 25 years. Congratulations

on both counts to John and Pam! By the way, John also participated in the reunion planning on a conference call with Roebuck and Jeff Wheeler. . . . Nick Levintow sent a fascinating email announcing that the Levintows are back, in one piece, from Nigeria. Their travels included trips to Benin, Togo and Ghana (floating villages, slave forests, old Portuguese castles from the 16th century and aerial walks through the rain forest on suspended “bridges”). He says the Kodak moment was when the family helped a small

village in Ghana’s Cape Coast pull in their fishing nets. The Levintows also realized a childhood dream of Nick’s by going on safari in South Africa. The Nigeria tour highlights? Getting attacked by goons armed with hyenas and baboons in Abuja as Nick was departing a political rally turned riot. An aerial tour of the oil-rich Niger Delta by floatplane and finding someone selling Osama bin Laden posters deep in the ancient bazaar of Kano. Handling Madeleine Albright’s visit to the palace of the emir of Kano

and getting a grip-and-grin during a visit by Bill Clinton. Reminding his youngest son at the airport as they were preparing to return to the U.S. to remove his bulletproof vest and leave it in the bulletproof embassy car. Nick called the experience “the most rewarding and challenging job” he’s ever had. He’s now back living in suburban Washington and, at the Labor Department, trying to get out of the legal biz. He hopes to get picked up by the State Department in either the international labor field or

kathy perkins mckechnie ’79 Agent of Change

It wasn’t until two years ago that Kathy Perkins McKechnie ’79 found her ideal job—and she’s been working in the same office since she graduated from law school in 1986. McKechnie is an assistant district attorney in York County, Maine—a fast-growing county in a slow-growing state, and one that has made headlines for its overcrowded jail. The DA’s office, however, has grown more gracefully, from six to a dozen attorneys during her 16 years there. She began prosecuting in District Court, handling traffic cases and assaults, then moved to Superior Court, taking on more violent felonies. When the office was reorganizing two years ago, she was offered the chance to concentrate on juvenile cases and has found her niche. Her own children, now ages 9 and 5, help provide perspective on her new job. “You come into contact with kids before they’ve been shaped by the system,” she said. “You can do more to fix the problem. By the time you’re dealing with adults, most of the time, it’s too late.” Maine has more resources to deal with youthful offenders than it did 15 years ago, when the state offered minimally supervised probation— the proverbial slap on the wrist—or confinement in the Maine Youth Center, a chronically understaffed institution (it has since closed). McKechnie says she’s able to work with defense attorneys and the offender’s family to come up with a plan that often can break the developing pattern of criminal behavior. “It’s much less adversarial than you’d expect,” she said. “Everyone has an interest in helping the kids involved.” The state, she said, “has really put the emphasis on rehabilitation. Of course, there’s the risk that some of them can’t be rehabilitated. I’m not sure they have an answer for that.” Her work has benefited from a new emphasis on timely processing of juvenile cases. “It used to be that the cases were grouped in the afternoon, after the adult cases were heard,” she said. Often, there wasn’t enough time, and police officers and DA’s hadn’t even gone over testimony in advance. Now, juvenile cases are

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heard on a separate day, cases are screened faster and the young people involved “are shown how we intend to prevent this behavior” in the future. When deciding how to handle a case, she considers whether the behavior “is an aberration, where the kid hits his mother and she calls the police.” At the other end, she sees older juveniles “where the system has nothing more to give them.” What works for kids in trouble? “Counseling can be tremendously helpful,” she said, “if they’re willing to do the work.” One tough part of the job, she said, is dealing with victims. “People are so angry that they simply want to vent at the defendant. You can’t really do what they want, but you can offer answers they can live with.” Though her father, Stephen Perkins, was a Maine Superior Court judge, “he was amazed” when his daughter decided to go to law school, McKechnie said. And indeed, her first choice of career was much different. After graduating from Colby as a history major, she decided to try hotel management and after working in a variety of positions found herself in middle management. It was an uncomfortable fit. “The way you succeed in the hospitality business is to figure out how to cut costs by using fewer people in the service positions,” she said. “But my sympathies were with the people who do the work.” Deciding to switch career tracks, McKechnie took a paralegal course, had a good experience interning in her native Maine and applied to law school, attending Franklin Pierce in New Hampshire. When she graduated—and passed the bar exam on her first try—she decided against private practice, figuring that a prosecutor’s office would provide more structure and definition. She credits Colby with preparing her to study law. When she arrived on campus, “they were telling us to focus on graduate school. I wanted to be able to go out and get a job. But then, five years later, there I was, enrolling in law school. In my case, they were right.” —Douglas Rooks ’76


in a multi-functional job in the Africa bureau. It turns out that the former boss of Liz Dugan is heading up one of the bureaus with which he is seeking employment. Nick would love to be in touch with you, Liz, so he can “grovel appropriately.” . . . I received a news clipping from the Manchester, N.H. Union Leader with more details on Ellen Geaney Scarponi’s new job. She joined Eastlantic Advertising as director of strategic business development. She will partner with businesses throughout the region to develop marketing, advertising and public relations solutions for their business needs. Prior to Eastlantic, Ellen was with AT&T for 15 years. She’s very active in her community (president of the Manchester Boys & Girls Club) and lives with her husband in Canterbury, N.H. . . . On the topic of new jobs, I recently joined Boston Private Bank on their investment management and trust team working for Jay Henderson ’64. Boston Private provides many financial services for individuals and their companies, including investment management, commercial lending, mortgage lending and deposit services. If any of you (especially Chris Pesek, wife of co-worker David Glen) have any such needs, please call me first. . . . That’s it for now. Please keep those letters and e-mails coming. —Robert S. Woodbury

79  Hello from dry, fire-ravaged

Colorado Springs, Colo. As I look out my office window, I see the smoke coming from the Hayman fire just 2025 miles away. It is a pretty scary time here, what with all of the evacuations occurring so close to home. We could use some of the rain pounding other parts of the country. . . . On February 2, 2002, the ordination ceremony of bishop-elect Savas Zembillas was held at the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in New York City. All of Sav’s family was in attendance for the occasion. Sav was the first Greek Orthodox bishop ordained in America since 1999. He will serve as an auxiliary bishop to Archbishop Demetrios and continue as chancellor of the archdiocese. He will also help place priests and assist with the transfer of priests. To get to this point in his life, Sav spent time after Colby among various monastic communities in Greece and England and furthered his education by pursuing a master’s of divinity at Holy Cross School of Theology in Brookline, Mass., graduating

with highest honors in May 1985. After serving as pastoral assistant in Cincinnati, Ohio, Sav began a program of doctoral studies at Pembroke College at Oxford University in England. In 1992 Sav returned briefly to his home parish of Sts. Constantine and Helen Cathedral in Merrillville, Ind., where he was ordained to the holy diaconate. He returned to England to serve as deacon until his return to the States at the end of 1996. Father Savas was elevated to the rank of archimandrite of the monastery of St. Gregory Palamas in Hayesville, Ohio. In 1997 he was assigned to St. Demetrios Church in Merrick, Long Island. In December 1999 Archimandrite Savas was appointed chancellor of the archdiocese. . . . Diane Palombo can now be found providing expressive therapy at the Tabernacle of Hope in Country Junction Plaza on South Main Street in Carver, Mass. Diane is a certified expressive therapist with a bachelor’s from Colby and a master’s degree in expressive therapy from Lesley College. She worked in hospitals and outpatient programs as a physical therapist for years and in schools as a teacher, therapist and counselor for 20 years in the Boston and Bridgewater school systems. HMO managed care forced Diane to redirect, and she returned to teaching language at Bridgewater/Raynham and moved to Carver. Diane felt that she could offer people more as a therapist and teacher. Her sessions at the tabernacle involve art, motion, music and acting to create a new vehicle of expression and to help ease patients into new understandings and even epiphanies about themselves and others. . . . Once again, this is a short column. I just haven’t been hearing from you all. Guess we are all just too busy with our schedules. I am going to try something different to get some news from you, so if you receive an e-mail or letter from me, please respond. Reunion is in two years and the time between now and then will fly by quickly. Please take a few minutes to e-mail me at classnews1979@alum.colby.edu to let me know what is new in your life and also to update your information with Colby so that we can see you at the 25th. Or use the traditional mail (6027 Scout Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80918). Heck, drop on in the next time you are in Colorado! —Cheri Bailey Powers

80  Bill Beck lives in Chappaqua, N.Y., with his wife, Jody (a Middlebury

grad), twin daughters and a son. Bill is a retired banker and future schoolteacher currently at home “breaking up screeching matches or pushing semi-edible food at the children.” He volunteers at schools and church, and the kids keep him busy with their activities and homework. They spend a month each summer on the coast of Maine near Bowdoin. . . . Diana Parsons Herrmann’s thirst continues for extraordinary adventure and challenge. As a diversion from her daily challenges as president of a $3.4-billion mutual fund company in New York City, Diana has traveled to Patagonia, Chile, and rafted the rapids of Rio Futaleufu, known as “the Fu” by international white-water aficionados. She traveled to China/Tibet in July ’01 to raft along the upper Yangtze River, visiting remote Tibetan villages and monasteries. In May ’02 Diana completed her first marathon, the Vermont City Marathon, in Burlington, Vt. While raising more than $5,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, she faced the challenge of training for a marathon after not running for more than a decade! . . . Dan Berger, president and CEO of Salesdriver.com in Maynard, Mass., sold his company and returned to California in December ’01. Before he left, he got together with Mike Costello and Ron Davids ’78 for dinner. Dan and Mike were elementary school buddies in Acton, Mass., as well as classmates at Colby. . . . After Lori Batcheller’s fantastic experience as a freelance journalist at the Paralympic Games in Salt Lake City in March, she moved from western Massachusetts to Boulder, Colo. She recently had a speaking engagement on disabled skiing at a rehabilitation center in western Mass. Her book, Alpine Achievement, was mentioned in our last column. . . . Tina Chen Starke is taking a break after working for 12 years in environmental consulting. She does not miss worrying about budgets, deadlines and 8 a.m. meetings. Tina and Larry ’81’s son, Ben, a third grader, is benefiting from having someone who is not exhausted at 5 p.m. to guide him through his homework. The Starkes visited with Don and Dawna Eastman-Gallo ’83 in Princeton last January. . . . Bo Preston’s daughter, Lanie, recently graduated from preschool. Bo lives in Hamilton, Mass., in a beautifully restored 1840 Greek Revival farmhouse next to conservation land. He takes brisk walks around his neighborhood while dreaming of “going to Nepal and hiking Mt.

1980s Correspondents 1980

Lynn Collins Francis 16 Oakridge Road Sudbury, MA 01776 classnews1980@alum.colby.edu

1981

Elizabeth Stiller Fahey 4740 Connecticut Avenue, NW #610 Washington, DC 20008 202-363-8535 classnews1981@alum.colby.edu

1982

Janice McKeown 73 Elm Road #8 Newtonville, MA 02460 617-244-7013 janicem@clarksna.com classnews1982@alum.colby.edu

1983

Sally Lovegren Merchant 24 Easy Street Mt. Desert, ME 04660 207-244-0441 fax: 207-244-9445 classnews1983@alum.colby.edu

1984

Cynthia M. Mulliken-Lazzara 107 Diablo Drive Kentfield, CA 94904-2605 classnews1984@alum.colby.edu

1985

Sue James Geremia 87 Centre Street Dover, MA 02030 508-785-8366 classnews1985@alum.colby.edu

1986

Andrea V. Sarris 499 Cutts Avenue #2 Portsmouth, NH 03801 603-433-4439 (h) 603-868-4490 (w) classnews1986@alum.colby.edu

1987

Kathleen Harnett Linger 1415 Catamount Road Fairfield, CT 06430-1607 203-319-0861 lingerkath@aol.com classnews1987@alum.colby.edu

1988

Dean A. Schwartz 94 Upland Road Concord, MA 01742 classnews1988@alum.colby.edu

1989

Anita L. Terry 501 Warwick Street St. Paul, MN 55116 651-698-9382 fax: 651-848-1182 classnews1989@alum.colby.edu

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Alumni at Large 1980s Everest.” . . . Darcy MacKinnon Sledge writes from Connecticut that since leaving Credit Suisse First Boston she has joined committees at her church, teaches Sunday school, volunteers at her children’s schools, does Junior League, is a spectator at her sons’ baseball games and adopted a beagle named Nimbus. She also has a new career as a realtor with Prudential Connecticut Realty. Call her if you are planning to buy or sell in the Fairfield, Conn., area. . . . In August Barry ’81 and Johanna Rich Tesman and their children began a year’s assignment in Norwich, England. Barry, an associate professor of mathematics at Dickinson College, will be an advisor for Dickinson science majors while they attend the University of East Anglia. Johanna is on leave from her psychologist position in the department of education. Their daughters, Emma and Lucy Rose, ages 12 and 3, will attend English schools. The Tesmans would love to have company come to visit! . . . Tom Marlitt stayed with Mark Garvin and family in Andover, Mass., last April when Tom was on his annual East Coast prep school recruiting swing for Reed College in Oregon. Mark reports that they had a full recycling bin of empty bottles by the time Tom left. . . . Deb Nelson and Leslie Mitchell enjoyed getting caught up with each other in April while their dogs had a “playdate.” Deb reports that Andy Huber ’79 ran a very successful mites hockey league this year in Darien, Conn. She said we should ask him about his unique playoff method. . . . Peter Golden continues his success in television as senior vice president for talent and casting at CBS in Los Angeles, Calif. . . . Jim D’Isidoro and his wife, Carolyn, recently moved to Sudbury, Mass., with their two sons. They report staying in touch with Vanessa (Norton ’81) and Artie Sullivan and family, who are living in Woodstock, Conn., with David Mordecai in Weston, Mass., and with Glenn Rieger, Scott But­ terfield and Paul Faulkner. . . . In June Dr. Alice Domar joined the staff at Boston IVF, one of America’s leading fertility providers. She will conduct a variety of programs at Boston IVF under the auspices of the Mind/Body Center for Women’s Health. . . . Have you ever had the experience of running into Colby classmates after more than 20 years have gone by? During a March trip to Florida, I saw Jeff Protentis ’81 at Logan Airport in Boston. He is vice president of North 52  |

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NEWSMAKERS Gary H. Ruping ’85, owner and operator of Ruping Builders, Inc., in Billerica, Mass., was awarded the Donald Van Greenby Builder of the Year Award. Given by the Home Builders Association of Massachusetts, a division of the National Association of Home Builders, the award goes to the builder who exemplifies both state and local leadership in the industry. Ruping has completed 260 homes since 1986.

MILESTONES Marriages: Elias J. Newfel ’84 to Eleni Lampros in Lynn, Mass.    Carol A. Kenerson ’87 to James D. Wilson in Hull, Mass.    Emily J. Isaacs ’88 to Paul E. Modiano in Jaffrey, N.H.    John T. Reynolds ’89 to Michelle J. Galanter in New York City, N.Y. Deaths: Thomas Lincoln Downey ’85, June 7, 2002, in Connecticut, at 39. American sales, support and marketing for Pyrosequencing, Inc., in Westborough, Mass., and is looking happy and successful. Since we were both biology majors at Colby, he was eager to share information with me on his company’s product(s). Unfortunately, we had planes to catch! He lives in Acton, Mass., with wife and family. On the same trip I ran into Steve Trimble ’82 and his wife and family at Disney World—two days in a row! Other Colbyites seen include Marj Gonzalez Blackwell ’78 in Sudbury. She reports that one daughter is attending college this fall while her other daughter is at prep school. Her husband, Doug ’78, recently started working in Connecticut while Marj holds it all together at home. I often see Bill Moorman ’82 at Nixon elementary school in Sudbury, where my son, John, is a fifth grader with Bill’s daughter, Brit. During the spring Little League baseball season, I saw Doug and Kim Smith McCartney ’82 several times at games where our fifth graders were playing. . . . Do you have Colby sightings to tell me about? I am waiting to hear from you! —Lynn Collins Francis

82   Hello, Class of ’82. I am honored to take on the role of class correspondent for the next five years. I know you will all join me in thanking Mimi Rasmussen for the effort she put into this job for the last 10 years. Mimi and I drove up together from Boston to our 20th reunion and had a lot of laughs comparing stories from our four years as students. Thank you, Mimi! . . . What a thrill it was to be back on campus. I immediately felt 20 years younger . . . until I saw the new and recently renovated dorms (i.e., Dana) and the senior apartments. Then I felt old as I thought, “These kids are spoiled!” The campus looked

absolutely beautiful (perfect weather was a bonus). We had a strong turnout from our class—more than 70 people—but I can’t help thinking of all the people that I didn’t see. You know who you are! If you couldn’t make it this time, please block out early June of 2007 now. We want to see an even bigger turnout in five years! . . . Many thanks to Ellen Huebsch Anderson and Claire Brovender Liliedahl for their hard work as co-presidents to make this weekend a reality for our class. And congratulations to Seth Medalie, our head class agent, and his team for leading our class to set a new 20th-reunion record for class participation in the Alumni Fund: 54 percent. Ellen, Claire and Seth all made it a family weekend, with spouses and at least one child alongside! (I can tell right now that I don’t have enough room to cover all of the stories I have from the weekend, so I will split the reunion recap up between this issue and the next.) The weekend started off on Friday night with a lively welcome reception in Treworgy (the dorm formerly known as Lambda Chi). This was our “home base.” I didn’t arrive until 11 p.m. and the place was jumping. . . . Bob Benjamin rode his motorcycle up from Connecticut and let his wife drive in the van with the kids! I had fun catching up with Ross Brennan, who traveled from D.C. with Scott Sophos. Ross works for the EPA and lives in “the district” with his wife and two children. Scott is pursuing an acting career (send me more details, Scott). . . . Gary Wes­ terman looked great, as did his wife, Anne (Edwards ’83). He was happily reunited with his buddies Bob Hoff­ man (all the way from California with his wife) and Glenn McGrath and his wife. Some of the other smiling faces were Bill Moorman, John Najarian,

Tony Perkins, Richard Robinson, Ron Agnes, Scott Many, Bruce Anderson, Rebecca Badger Fisher, James and Elaine Johnson Peterson, Roger Valliere, Patty O’Loughlin, Andrea Brantner and Ann Renner Stillwater. . . . Saturday gave us many options . . . listening to Colby’s “new” president, Bro Adams, define his vision of where Colby is going (it’s good news!), touring the campus, visiting the award-winning Colby Museum of Art. Of course the lobster lunch/feast was a big hit, and what would a visit to Colby be without shopping in the Colby bookstore? Many people were spotted chatting there. Our reception and dinner were held in Roberts and included a fun serenade by After Eight, the quite talented alum version of the Colby Eight. Retired professor Charlie Bassett dined with us and shared stories of his pre-Maine life in South Dakota. . . . Many more classmates arrived on Saturday, including Sarah Fox Whalen, Cathy Smith Badming­ ton and Julanne Cully Wright, all with families in tow! Sue Meehan, Alice Kirkpatrick, Donna Fabiani, Ron Miolla, Steve Trimble, Warren Krueger and Marty Eisenberg also joined us. Matt Donahue made his first trip to Colby in 20 years. Seemed like he was having fun even though he signed up late and had to sleep in the “overflow” section (a.k.a. The New Dorms). Next time he will sign up early and bring his wife and four (?) sons! . . . Most of you probably know by now that David Strage lost his battle with cancer this past winter. He had already made the plans for his whole family—his wife, Laura Agostini, and three daughters—to make the trip with him from England to this reunion. Many of us had the pleasure of meeting Dave’s family at the 15th reunion. Sadly, he didn’t make it this time, but the rest of his family did, including his parents and in-laws. On Sunday morning, his close friends and family put together a touching tribute. Helen Dooley Jursek, Matt Figel and Jeff Brown each took a turn recalling their friendship with Dave. Then Dave and Laura’s 8-year-old daughter read a poem for her dad with great confidence and poise. . . . The baton has been passed for the next five years to Carolyn Berry Copp and Carol Birch, co-presidents, and to Mary Beth Whitaker McIntyre, VP/Alumni Council rep. All three were in Waterville in June, MB with her husband, Jon, and children, Kelly, 9, and Sean, 6 that weekend! Carol


had a lot to say about her room in the basement of Treworgy. The bright point was that her neighbors down there were Tim Dean and his family. I think the basement brought back “interesting” memories for Tim! . . . That’s it for now. I have a great list of names of people that I saw in June, but please tell me what you want people to know about you. —Janice McKeown

83  Dear classmates, you have been

so kind to trust me with writing this column four times yearly for 17 years, and I cannot thank you enough for the unique opportunity to serve you and to serve our alma mater. While I have agonized many times as to the content and format for each column, I have always been challenged, and that is a positive by-product of the process. This particular column comes to you devoid of news from our class family and friends but not because I had no format or ideas of what to say—only because you have not written. There is no question in my mind about what you all may be doing in general: you’re all busy living (some are even facing dying). You’re all working or playing; you’re all feeling fulfilled or so far from it you do not want to talk about that. You are camping out. You are camping in. You are paper or plastic one day and a little of both the next. You are waiting and hesitating, and you are acting and choosing. Every day you generate trash and you breathe the sometimes clean air. You love and you hate. People respect you and some people are jealous of you at the same time. You forget some of the details. You remember to buy postage. You found a parking space. You gave another person room to grow. You are interested in how to create a better community just in your own home. You just quit your job. You vaguely remember 1979. Your parents made you go to Colby. You do not connect with your Colby classmates. Or do you? My dear classmates, I hope you’ll try to connect since we have so much in common when we least expect it. As always, my sincere wishes to all of you. —Sally Lovegren Merchant

84  Hello to all. I apologize for

missing last quarter’s column, but I had just had a baby and things fell to the wayside. Anthony and I welcomed Hudson Samuel to the family in March. He joins Forrest, our 2-year-old son. We also moved again. Our bubble burst out in San

Francisco about the same time the dot-com bubble started to deflate. We are back in Darien, Conn. . . . A few news articles mentioning a number of classmates have made it my way. Keith Wilson was appointed vice president of technology for a drug discovery firm called Syrrx Inc. He is managing the company’s structural biology groups. . . . Gail Hutchinson Conley is a senior vice president at KeyBank’s private banking and investing division and is responsible for management of the private banking team of financial advisers for central, coastal, western and southern Maine as well as Portland. Gail is living in Winthrop with her family. She has served on the boards of the Children’s Center and Consumer Credit Counseling of Maine. She is also active in the United Way and has coached the Winthrop YMCA soccer league. . . . News of Dr. Elias John Nawfel’s engagement made a number of local papers, and according to the papers he and his fiancée, Elena Maria Lampros, were planning a May wedding—hope all went well! He is a dentist. . . . Bob Brooks was named executive vice president at Seniorlink, a Boston-based company that provides nationwide care management services to families supporting an aging parent. . . . In case you missed the item in last winter’s Colby magazine, Don McMillan’s short story, “A Hymn for Hannah Marie,” placed second in Worcester Magazine’s annual short story contest. Don is chair of the English department at Bancroft School in Worcester, Mass. He is married and has two boys. . . . Susan Hahn Rieck wrote me a letter to say she’s busy working, chauffeuring her two boys and occasionally playing tennis. . . . I spoke with Lauren Mogensen, who has given up life in the law firm for life at the bank. She is working for Fleet Bank as the head of corporate development. . . . I hope to hear from more of you. —Cynthia Mulliken-Lazzara

86  Wendy Lapham writes, “Life

is still chaotic, but I do have some news to report. I just got a new job as the public information officer for Brandywine School District in Wilmington, Del. I’m looking forward to the challenges of the job but hope to still find time to write.” . . . Brent Harris writes, “Jill, Jake (10) and Brad (17) will finally be making a move back to New England this summer after living in D.C. and then Northern Cal for 15 years. Brent will be starting up his

own lab as a faculty member at Dartmouth. Jill hopes to create a venture philanthropy organization to make strategic investments in nonprofit revenue-generating enterprises in N.H.” . . . Cathy Woodward Gill, class president, e-mailed: “We had a great reunion in June. Dick Whitmore was an incredible speaker, and I think everyone generally had a good time (I know I enjoyed catching up with classmates). Our 25th reunion is not far off!” . . . Barb Falcone Smith writes, “Lars and I want to announce the birth of our daughter, Lindsey Elizabeth Smith, born on Sept. 12, 2001. We are thrilled beyond belief. She especially uplifted our spirits given the terrible September this country had. We relocated to Louisville, Ky., in June of 2000 so Lars could become a professor at the law school at the University of Louisville. I’m primarily a stay-at-home mom but do work occasionally as a physical therapist in outpatient clinics around Louisville.” . . . Patricia McClellan Miller wrote that she and her husband, Jeff, had a baby girl, Fionna Miller, in August 2001. She joins her big brother, Baird, who was 4 in April. Patricia has worked in recruiting and sales for Adecco, an employment agency, for eight years. She says they love their life in Madison, Wis. . . . Roanoke Times and World News, April 3, 2002, headline: “Hungry To Play, Scott Perry Goes For Broke For The Blues.” The story: “Scott Perry has performed in some of the great hothouses of blues music. Chicago street corners, South Carolina nightclubs and rural Floyd County. Perry, 37, is becoming a sturdy member of the growing music scene between Roanoke and the one-stoplight town of Floyd. He and harmonica-playing pal Rich Rittenhouse comprise the blues duo Broke ’n’ Hungry.” Scott and his wife, Lisa Kae, moved to Floyd County from Charleston, S.C., in 1999 and currently live “a homesteaders’ existence.” . . . Jonathan Greene e-mailed that “All is well here in Seattle—no contact with the Colby crowd; however, I speak with or see Critter (Chris Brogan) and Cindy Lloyd Brogan every few years, but that’s it. Every now and then I’ll drive past a Volvo with a Colby sticker and I’ll honk and wave. I’m yet to get back to Waterville since 6/86. But my two boys (10 and 12) already know about Colby, so I’ll have to plan a visit someday soon.” . . . Norma Delaney writes, “Good things come to those who wait! It’s been an odyssey, but we (husband Patrick) are

happy to report that we put an offer in on a house that was accepted. It’s in Yardley, Pa., a beautiful little town that lies along the Delaware River separating Pa. and N.J.” Norma is the director of marketing for Prince in Bordentown, N.J. . . . InfoVista, a global provider of service assurance software solutions, appointed Joseph Bergera as vice president of worldwide marketing. He is responsible for the global marketing program as the company aims to increase its worldwide market presence. . . . On May 2, 2002, Peter Taubkin, VP government relations and public affairs for Time Warner Cable, was honored as one of the “40 Under 40” named by the Capital District Business Review. The award recognizes individuals 39 or younger for “exhibiting the personal and professional qualities of leadership necessary to keep New York’s Capital Region growing and whose records of professional success and community involvement label them as leaders.” Not to be outdone was Peter’s son, Nathan, who at just 3 1/2 was named fan of the month for March by Hammond B-3 organ jazz great Joey Defrancesco. (Previously unannounced in this publication is daughter Madeline Rose, 1, who gets an award just for smiling all the time). . . . David Mace, journalist and state house reporter for the Rutland Herald and Barre Times Argus, writes that he is “Learning the ropes during my first full year covering the Vermont Legislature—looking forward to a couple of months off before campaign season starts, and trying to spend that time getting my handicap down and doing some hiking.” —Andrea V. Sarris

87  Hoping you all had a fun and

safe summer. This is my last column as I’m handing on the duties to Kathi Harnett Linger, who volunteered to be our class correspondent for the next five years. Thanks, Kath! And thanks to all who have made it so easy to write your news on a consistent basis. . . . Congrats to Natasha and Brian Low on the birth of Meagan in June. She joins her big brothers, Spencer and Jacob, in Topsfield, Mass. . . . Many of us gathered for the 15th reunion in June. We enjoyed perfect weather, great accommodations and lots of time to really catch up with classmates. We stayed in the senior apartments, and they are incredible! Each family had its own suite, which consisted of a kitchen, living area and C O L B Y   •  F A L L  2 0 0 2

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Alumni at Large

1980s-1990s

bathroom and up to four bedrooms. A far cry from the tiny rooms four of us crammed into during senior year, ’87! Colby had great kids’ programs set up all weekend so our kids had as much fun as we did. It was wonderful to see old friends hanging out together, with or without their children (I’m sorry if I forget to mention anyone who was there): Rob and Louisa Bell Paushter, Reihl and Sheri Reyn­ old Mahoney, Kim (Burnham ’86) and Zak Nashed, Ciara Reynolds, Lisa Bothwick Wilson, Andrew Rudman, Andy and Sharon Ducey Niles, Dorisann Weber Wagner, Tim and Jean Kroeck Aiken, and Karen Welling. Kathy and Mike Archibald came from Canton, N.Y., with their four kids, two of whom are teenagers! Alison and Jim Feeley drove up from Darien, Conn., with their two children, Caitlin and Jack. Jack looks like he might be pitching for Colby baseball in 2014. Katie and Eric Green brought their two older girls, Annie and Maggie. Mitch and Jeanne Morrison Cook drove out from Michigan with two of their three sons (Jeanne expected number four in September, a girl!) along with Elizabeth Warren Bogo and two of her three kids, Martha and Holly. They all survived their 14-hour van ride, and the kids all had a blast cruising the campus on their scooters. Pam Blanchard Harrington flew out from Tiburon, Calif., leaving her family at home as she combined the trip with business. Allyson Siwik was there with her daughter, Gabriela. Tim and Teri Scally Kinsella, who drove up from Newburyport, Mass., also left their two kids, Cole and James, at home and enjoyed a carefree weekend. Brendan and Sue Costello-Nolan came with Bridget and Madeline, who loved the moonwalk as much as all the other kids did. Dave and I brought our three boys, who loved rollerblading and running around campus. I did take one of them to a classroom in Lovejoy so he could see what you actually do at college! Ann and RB Klinkenberg came from Burlington, Vt., with Anders and Ingrid. Susan and Peter Marshall came from N.Y. and had a peaceful weekend without their three boys. Ann and Geoff Johnson came with Cate and Sam from Amesbury, Mass. Vicki and Chris Van Horne were competing for the longest drive award as they made it from Virginia. Tom Tompkins and Jeff Silverman proved they haven’t changed a bit, in a good way! Mary McCarty came up 54  |

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from Boston and used her speech-writing talents to help Teri and me with the questionnaire results for Saturday night’s dinner entertainment. Scott Lainer blessed us with his insightful, thought-provoking and moving speech at dinner. Once again, Scott, thank you! Our dinner ended with a visit from After Eight, an a cappella group of Colby graduates from the last 12 years. They were wonderful, and it was a great send-off as we headed to the band at the student center (now Cotter Union) and a DJ at the pub. Thanks to all who came to reunion and to those who gave so generously to our class gift. Andrew Rudman led the gift-giving charge, and the results were outstanding. Look in the next annual report and you’ll be so proud of what the Class of 1987 did together. . . . Enjoy the fall and send in lots of news to Kathi. —Jane Nicol Manuel

89  It’s been a slow three months for

news of the Class of ’89, so I’ll open this column with a help wanted ad. We need someone to manage our class Web site! Anestes Fotiades did a great job on it for years (and we’d love to have him back), but with no one managing the site we don’t have anything on the Web. If you’re interested, check out www.alumniconnections.com/olc/ pub/CLY/, or e-mail Colby’s Web manager at web@colby.edu. It would be great to have a class site again! . . . Colby sent me a long AP article about the accomplishments of Majester Abdul-Jalil. Majester is a medical student at Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, and the article details his study of problems poor people in rural areas have with transportation, which often affects their access to health care. If you’re interested in reading the article, let me know, or search the AP wire—the story ran on March 26, 2002. . . . Pamela Woolley wrote from Brussels, where she is enjoying her new son, Henry Samuel, born in January. . . . And Jerry ’90 and Amy Curtis Philippon had a son, Bruno, born on March 31. . . . In between writing for Celebrity Death Match and appearing in a twoperson comedy show in N.Y.C., John Reynolds somehow found the time to get married. He and Michele Galanter were wed on June 1 in New York. You invite me to your shows but not your wedding, Johnny P. I’m offended! . . . After many years living in Moscow, Maria Douglass and her family hoped to relocate to the U.S. some time this

spring or summer. Maria sent me an e-mail that I somehow lost, so if there’s more to tell, Maria, write me again. . . . I got to hang out for a few hours with Doug St. Lawrence and Tracy Gion­ friddo over Memorial Day weekend at Tracy’s place in Connecticut. Doug is teaching ESL kids in Massachusetts, and Tracy works as an environmental consultant at a law firm in Hartford. . . . I know there’s more going on out there, so keep in touch. —Anita L. Terry

90  I think the Class of 1990 has

welcomed its first set of twins! Jill Cote Rakowski and her husband, Robb, announce the arrival of Mia Kathryn and Mitchell Robert, born April 13. Mama and babies are doing well. I do really think this is the first set of twins among our classmates, but if I’m wrong, then I call upon the proud (and sleep-deprived) parents to let me know! . . . I recently heard from my freshman-year roommate, Deb St. Louis Terao ’89, that she and her husband, Brian, had a daughter named Hannah. Their son is about 4 now. They live in Riverside, Calif., where Deb works for the university as a grants administrator and Brian is a student. . . . Kristen Pettersen and her husband, David Miller, moved from Anchorage to Juneau. Karen is an attorney and is working from an office in her home, and David is establishing a laparascopic surgery practice. . . . My fiancé and I had a great time working with the Colby Club of Boston’s Habitat for Humanity volunteer event. So many Boston area alums wanted to help out that they split us up into two teams to work on two projects in Providence, R.I. It was hard work, but it was interesting to learn more about Habitat’s work and to make some small contribution to solving the problem of affordable housing here in the crowded and expensive Northeast. . . . As you’ve noticed, this column is short on news, so I want to hear more and from more of you! Why not drop me a note, even if it’s just “what I did on my summer vacation,” eh? Take care, and keep those cards and letters coming! —Laura Senier

91  I hope everyone’s summer was

filled with long, lazy days, fabulous adventures and good times spent with friends and family. I also hope it was filled with news you would like to share with your classmates! . . . A while back I ran into Christine Ker­ rigan and begged her to e-mail me

some class news. Her report: “I was almost on my way to Thunderbird (international business school) when I had an epiphany and wound up in art school instead. I went to Mass Art (evenings) and then received a B.F.A. in graphic design from the Art Institute of Boston. I’ve worked full time and freelanced for a few design studios since graduating in 2000. Co-wrote, production designed and art directed my first feature film last year (to be released sometime next year). Worked on some short films and a music video project and will be starting an entrepreneurial venture with a life-long friend of mine in the months to come. I live in Davis Square, Somerville, and look forward to keeping the creative juices flow’n.” Christine also filled me in on a few other classmates. Rabia Mirza was married about five or six years ago and now has a baby girl, Izra. She and her husband, Adnan, live in Houston, Texas. . . . Sara Vacco and Brian Carlson just moved to Maine from Colorado, where they’ve been living for the last several years. . . . Lynne Garrity-Ryan got her Ph.D. from Harvard in 1998 and is now living in San Francisco. She is working at the Engles Lab at the University of California, San Francisco. . . . Kath­ erine Dauge-Roth lives in Maine with her husband, Alexandre DaugeRoth. She is an assistant professor of romance languages at Bowdoin, and her husband is a visiting assistant professor at Bowdoin. Katherine teaches courses in French language, history, literature, culture and society. She and her husband are the proud parents of an adorable daughter, Claire. . . . Christine also filled me in on the whereabouts of two of the French exchange students who were with us at Colby. Sylvine Baumeister Pischel lives in London with her husband, Steve ’90. Christine visited with them in the summer of ’01. Sylvine is a scientist and works for a pharmaceutical company, and Steve is an investment banker at Societé General. Isabelle Derouet got married about three years ago (Christine attended their wedding in Normandy, France) and had a baby boy last year. She and her husband, Hubert, live a few hours outside of Paris. . . . In other news, Todd Ver Hoeven ’92 has opened an import/export wine business from Croatia. . . . Chris Brown is taking time from his construction business to finish his own home in Richmond, Vt. . . . Becca Pratt has returned from the West Coast to become a doctor of Chinese medicine and will be going to


NEWSMAKERS Mark T. Panek ’90, a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, was named the 2002 recipient of the Francis Davis Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. The award committee sponsored his attendance at the Hawaii Great Teachers Seminar in August    Adrienne B. Clay ’97 has received an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies, which provides financial support for the first year of study in a Ph.D. program. The Colby sociology major is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University    A lengthy Investment Advisor article, “The New Faces of Planning,” featured financial planner Beth Johnson Searing ’99 of Tofias P.C. in Cambridge, Mass. (See pg. 58)

MILESTONES Births: A son, Noah James Nemiccolo, to Amy and Andrew Nemiccolo ’93    A daughter, Abigail Fantasia Hayes, to Matt and Emily Fantasia Hayes ’95. Marriages: Keith A. Spear ’90 to Cathy R. Black in San Francisco, Calif.     Rebecca L. Birrell ’92 to John T. Smith ’93 in Williamstown, Mass.    Elizabeth V. Cimino ’92 to Jeffrey B. Pierce in Portland, Maine    Steven B. Holsten Jr. ’93 to Erin L. Zodrow in West Point, Ga.    Emily T. Muldoon ’93 to Scott N. Kathan in Andover, Mass.    Cina R. Wertheim ’94 to Adam S. Doctoroff in Barre, Mass.    Alyson M. Angino ’95 to Joseph A. Germain in Boston, Mass.    Stephanie J. Paul ’96 to James K. Lynch in Florence, Italy    Tyler S. Walker ’96 to Juliet T. Hansel in Keene, N.H.    Kelley A. Winchester ’97 to Matthew A. Nelson ’97 on Kiawah Island, S.C.    Suzanne N. Stonehouse ’98 to Wojciech Wieck­ owski ’00 at a Massachusetts seaside wedding    Julee C. Wood ’98 to Jeremy L. Gibson in Yarmouth, Maine    Craig B. Jude ’99 to Brooke A. Frappier ’00 in Cumberland, R.I.    Kristy L. Tracy ’99 to John Dawes II in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Deaths: Sebastian Herbstein ’96, June 20, 2002, in New York, N.Y., at 28. school in the Boston area this fall. . . . Kurt Whited saw Carla Swanson in Providence as they worked on a housing project for Habitat for Humanity with the Colby Club of Boston. . . . Cory Snow and his wife, Sheila, have bought a house in Portland, Maine. . . . I heard through the grapevine that Margaret Mauran Zuccotti was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the Brooks School in Andover, Mass. When I called the school to find out more details, I discovered that this was quite an achievement! The inductees spanned seven decades of accomplishments in sports at The Brooks School. Margaret was one of 15 people inducted in this inaugural celebration and one of only two women to receive this honor. Brooks celebrated Margaret for being a “dominant force in every sport she played,” for possessing “that rare combination of tremendous strength with grace and control of motion” and for leading “with a smile and easy laugh that made her an asset on any team.” Congratulations, Margaret! . . . It has been wonderful

hearing about what everyone is up to, and Lesley and I look forward to receiving your news soon! —Jennifer Flynn

92  All right, classmates, here we

go! A few months ago I received a piece of mail listing the nominees for class officers. Somehow my name showed up as the only candidate for class secretary, and rumor has it I won with a landslide vote tally of 4 to 0. I think I have Jess D’Ercole Stanton to thank for that one. That being said, I intend to approach this job with full vigor. As for me, two years ago I moved back from the Midwest and joined several friends at their employee benefit consulting practice. I am living in Hingham, Mass., with my wife, Lauren, and sons, Frank and Jake. As I took my son for his first haircut about a month ago I ran into Chris Ward and his daughter, Lilly, who are also living in Hingham. He informed me that Mark Boles is also living in our town, so the Colby Club of Hingham is well on its way. A few weeks ago I met up with Terry Reidy, who is now an assistant D.A.

for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Also in attendance was Chuck DiGrande, an underwriter with the Andover Companies, who is living in Nahant, Mass., with his wife, Erin (Kelly ’91), and daughters, Maggie and Grace. Rounding off our group was John Brockelman, now working with Fidelity Investments and living in Swampscott, Mass., with his wife, Theresa (Sullivan ’91) and son, Jack. . . . Jim Brown, or I should say, Dr. James Brown, is living in Lynn, Mass., with his wife, Mary Kelly Brown (Bates ’91), and is in his second year of residency at Salem Hospital. . . . As I write this, David Sullivan, a sales executive with EMC, is in the process of getting his tux fitted to get married Labor Day weekend, with a large Colby contingent expected. Mitch Rogers ’93 was to fly in from Michigan, where he is the regional sales manager for Standard Insurance. He and his wife recently welcomed Kaleigh Marie, their first child, born on June 21. . . . Dan Connolly ’93, a sales manager with Nortel Networks, is living in the San Francisco area with his wife, Kimberly, and his son and daughter, Ryan and Sarah Elizabeth. Dan has been great keeping in touch via his Blackberry handheld device. . . . Zach Shapiro and his partner, Ron Galperin, were married in Beverly Hills on July 21. Zach tells me that it was a wonderful ceremony with close to 175 guests. Congratulations! . . . Pete Andrews, after four years in Colorado, has settled in the suburbs of Philadelphia with his wife, Heather, and two kids, Abigail and Alex. Pete is a lawyer with Marshall, Dennehy, Warner, Coleman & Goggin in Philadelphia and is practicing securities litigation. I am sure he is busy these days. . . . While reading the April 5 copy of the Morning Sentinel (I just embellished a bit . . . the article was sent to me) I noticed that Todd Alexander is working with the Portland-based economic development firm Maine & Company. Todd is currently involved with an effort to keep the doors of Waterville’s CF Hathaway Company open for business. . . . Traci Marquis-Eydman, M.D., has recently joined the Madison Family Physicians. . . . Kristin Short is engaged to Dr. Jason West. A May wedding is planned. . . . Rebecca Birrell and John Smith married. . . . Peter Hocknell has earned his Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. . . . As I finish this up I realize that we have all done okay . . .

1990s Correspondents 1990 Laura Senier 38 Pitts Street Natick, MA 01760 508-653-7927 classnews1990@alum.colby.edu 1991 Lesley Eydenberg Bouvier 26 Swallow Drive Hollis, NH 03049 Jennifer Flynn 16 Lakeville Road #12A Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 classnews1991@alum.colby.edu 1992 William Higgins 31 Colonial Road Hingham, MA 02043-3638 781-749-4746 bill.higgins@ebinsurance.com classnews1992@alum.colby.edu 1993 Beth Curran 64 Dane Street #1 Somerville, MA 02143 classnews1993@alum.colby.edu 1994 Tracy K. Larsen 1821 Pacific Coast Highway #1 Hermosa Beach, CA 90254 classnews1994@alum.colby.edu 1995 Yuhgo Yamaguchi 124 Oxford Street #4 Cambridge, MA 02140 617-354-0289 classnews1995@alum.colby.edu 1996 Kim Schock 7432 Major Avenue Norfolk, VA 23294 757-423-3072 classnews1996@alum.colby.edu 1997 Kimberly N. Parker 37 Melendy Avenue #2 Watertown, MA 02472-4108 classnews1997@alum.colby.edu 1998 Brian M. Gill 24 Concord Avenue, Apt. 213 Cambridge, MA 02138 617-230-2254 bmgill2576@yahoo.com classnews1998@alum.colby.edu 1999 Lindsay Hayes 130 Long Neck Point Road Darien, CT 06820 203-655-4664 classnews1999@alum.colby.edu

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what a great feeling. Please keep the news coming and let me know what else is happening via e-mail or even a phone call. —William Higgins

93  Friends, I am really light on

news this time around. Please take a moment to e-mail me (classnews­1993@alumni.colby.edu) and tell me what you are up to! Pronto-like! . . . Speaking of Spanish, Jessica Graef Anderson and her husband, Gary ’92, have lived for almost three years in Mexico City and are the proud parents of twins, Grace and Garrett, born July 17, 2001. Gary is a professor of economics, and Jessica went back to work part time at the U.S. Agency

for International Development in the American Embassy. They planned on moving to Washington, D.C., this summer. . . . I owe a big thanks to Scott Reed for sending along a barrelful of great news—most important, his marriage to Jen Comstock, which 35-plus Colby guests joined in celebrating. The newlyweds currently live in Westport, Conn., with their yellow Lab, Timber. Scott recently went to Jazz Fest in New Orleans for Marshall Dostal’s bachelor party. Other Colby attendees included Mike Rosenblum, Bill Michels, Ed Ramirez ’94, Dan Harris, Sandy Graham ’92, Josh Steinberger ’92, Torin Taylor ’92, Chris Wilder, Aaron Davis ’92 and Mike Gosk ’92. Po’boys all around, and

laissez les bons temps rouler! Marshall recently moved to Los Angeles, and Mike, Bill, Dan and Chris all live in N.Y.C. Scott also filled me in on some baby news: Ed and his wife, Cara, recently had a baby and are living in the Boston area; Heather Bucha became a mom recently as well; Lisen Biersach Kern and her husband live in N.H. with their 2-year-old son, Caleb; and Molly Bach Marston lives in Newport, R.I., with her husband and baby girl, Emma. . . . Sarah Nagle Spataro lives in Corona del Mar, Calif., with her husband, Perry, and their son, Ryan. They were ready to welcome their second child into the world in July, though they didn’t know if it was to be a boy or a girl. . . . Kate Mackenzie

Gerdsen was born to Cassi and Rod Gerdsen in Pennington, N.J., on March 16, 2002, and Rod wrote that mom, dad and baby are all doing great. . . . Kathryn Steele got married to Ken Zoldan in October 2001 in Philadelphia, Pa., at the Hotel Sofitel. Colby grads in attendance were bridesmaid Laurie Girard Eidt, Laura Moore ’95 and Shawn Keeler ’94. Kathryn and Ken honeymooned in Australia and just bought a house in suburban Philadelphia, where Kathryn has been with Capital Resource Advisors for six years. A management consultant, she designs strategic plans and compensation plans for investment management firms. Ken is from Montreal, Que., and graduated from McGill University

julia mcdonald ’99 Desert Doctor

Spring in Maine was “like a big drink of water” to Julia McDonald ’99. As she leaned out the window upon her recent return to Colby she was dazzled by the spring colors. To others it may have looked, well, green. But they hadn’t spent two years living in the desert, where spring lasts for 15 minutes when the acacia blossoms erupt, only to be devoured by camels. Aside from fading henna on her hands and nails, there were few clues that Julia McDonald had spent the last two years working as a hygiene and sanitation volunteer for the Peace Corps in a remote village in the Saharan desert. Yet the experience has clearly transformed her life, steering the theater and geology major toward a career in medicine. Joining the Peace Corps had been a childhood dream for McDonald. After working in theater and publishing for a year after graduation, “I remembered I had lost that dream,” she said. She got an application and packed her bags. She was posted to southeastern Morocco, where she learned the Berber language, Tashelhait, and dressed in the traditional manner, which required several layers plus head scarf even in 140-degree heat. Her journey began with a seemingly endless drive through the desert. After several days, the bus driver dropped her off “in this flat expanse of nothingness—brown and gray rock that’s beaten flat by the sun.” Tadakouste, her final destination, was still another 20 kilometers away, along a dirt road. Living without electricity with people who had never known a Westerner, she shared her knowledge of health care while learning from the

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villagers, who became her friends. “I’ll never forget sitting out in the desert under a full moon with the women, having conversations I rarely even have in English,” she said. She clearly feels she received much more than she gave: “My plan was not to go over and teach people how to live their lives, but rather to share ideas with people about how to do things.” Her days were filled with home visits with the sick and those giving birth or in mourning. “I would often have a theme for the day, like dental hygiene, and I would try to work in an informal lesson while I was sitting there, washing vegetables or kneading bread,” she said. While she found her work immensely satisfying, there were also frustrations with the lack of medicine and poor hygiene. The nearest health center was 20 kilometers away, back down that dirt road. In the second year, McDonald helped the village build latrines and develop a system for bringing tap water into individual homes. Unfortunately, McDonald’s stay in Morocco was abruptly terminated when she was evacuated because of a health problem. She had planned to go back to finish her term and even do a third year, but during her recovery, McDonald’s plans changed again. Reflecting on her time in Morocco, she realized how much she loved the work she was doing. Becoming a doctor is “something that I’ve always wanted, but I’ve always been too intimidated by the science courses. After two years in Morocco, and seeing some of the worldwide health needs, I recognized that not only can I be a good doctor, but I think I would be a good doctor,” she said. This fall, McDonald made plans to bite the bullet and enter a pre-med program. Though she wants to specialize in women’s health, McDonald was not sure yet whether she wants to practice at home or abroad. The last few years have taught her the wisdom of the Arabic proverb, “the wind does not always blow the sailor in the direction he intended.” — Rebecca Green


and Temple University Law School. He is a lawyer in Center City, Philadelphia, specializing in civil litigation and immigration law. . . . Lenny Baker was to marry Dawn Cunningham in August. Lenny is a science teacher at Smithfield High School in Rhode Island. . . . Dev Tandon just finished a joint program at the graduate business and film schools at NYU. He is now working as VP of product development at Crown Media in New York City (email: devtandon@yahoo.com). —Beth Curran

94  Some news that I couldn’t get

into the summer issue leads off. Maria DeSimone was to marry Wayne Carlson in the spring or summer. She is the manager of information systems at Environmental Health and Engineering, an air quality consulting firm in Newton, Mass. Wayne is an industrial engineer at EH&E. . . . Paulo Marnoto and Sheri Petelle ’93 planned a winter 2002 wedding. He is an attorney, and she is a teacher at Manchester Essex Regional High School. . . . Alison Meyer Hong was appointed to the faculty at Newton (Mass.) Country Day School of the Sacred Heart. She is the director of college guidance and the faculty advisor to the yearbook committee. . . . Karlene Burrell-McCrae is the associate director of the intercultural center at the University of Pennsylvania. . . . Josh and Laura Pavlenko Lutton are living in Cambridge, Mass. Josh finished his M.B.A. at the University of Chicago in June 2001 and is now working at an alternative energy company called Nuvera Fuel Cells in business development and strategic planning. Laura is telecommuting for Morningstar, the stock and mutual fund research firm that she has worked for since the fall of 1999. She is an editor and mutual fund analyst for the company. They often see Adam Zois and Ken Dupuis. Laura is also in contact with Jonathan Kaplan, who taught a Jan Plan course at Colby last winter on politics and the media. He and his wife are living in N.Y.C., where he is working as a freelance writer. He recently had a story published in The New York Times about an Olympic short-track cyclist who is now competing in longer road races. . . . Congratulations to Ted and Missy Fraser Gramer! They had a baby girl, Abigail Melissa, on April 12. Abby weighed 8 lbs., 3 oz., and was 20 inches long. Abby and her mom are doing well. . . . Tracy Karsch married Tony Palumbo

in Garden City, N.Y., on April 27. Barbara Coulon and I were bridesmaids. Other Colby attendees were Christy Lynch, Marika Schwartz­ man, Brooke Skulley, Soy Ahn and Alex Bici. Tracy and Tony went to St. John for their honeymoon. Marika is living in Cambridge and working in finance for Boston Scientific. Alex and his fiancée, Danielle, got married in June in Washington, D.C. Barbara is living part time in Boston and part time in New York City working for a market research company called Youth Intelligence. She and I went island hopping in the Greek Islands for 10 days in May. . . . Ethan Spencer was to marry Erica Templeton in August in Vermont, and Matt Trudeau was to marry Claire Valle over Labor Day weekend in Portsmouth, N.H. . . . Aram Goudsouzian got his Ph.D. in history from Purdue University. . . . Pat and Brooke Porteous Skulley bought a house in Bedford, Mass. . . . Rebekah Freeman recently became engaged to Louis Schulze when he whisked her away to Bermuda for the weekend. The wedding is planned for September 2003. . . . As always, thanks for all of the information. —Tracy K. Larsen

95  Holly Martin is a science

and algebra teacher at The Catholic Memorial School in West Roxbury, Mass. She was recently the assistant athletic director at the Belmont Hill School in Belmont, Mass. In addition to her teaching duties, she coached the CM middle school soccer team. . . . T.J. Maines has been a social studies teacher at the Whitefield School in Maine for the past four years. He volunteered to have his head shaved if students raised $1,000 to help the families of New York Firefighters following the September 11 terrorist attacks. The kids exceeded their goal, raising a total of $1,777.41, which was sent to the New York Firefighters 9-11 Disaster Relief Fund. “It was a way to help out,” T.J. said. “That’s a lot of money, and a tribute to what the kids were willing to do.” T.J. earned his master’s in education at the University of Maine and planned a June 2002 wedding to Brenda Creamer, a language arts teacher at the Whitefield School. . . . Rev. Arthur Fairbrother will succeed the Rev. Lewis Cushman, retiring pastor of the Unionville Church of God in Steuben, Maine. Art grew up in Belfast, where Cushman was his pastor. Art said that he and his wife, Jennifer, a registered nurse, think of their min-

istry as a team effort: “I never make a decision about the ministry without consulting her first.” They had their first child last year and have moved into the parsonage in the Unionville section of Steuben. . . . James Porter received his master’s degree in physics from Cornell University in 1999 and his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Cornell in August 2001. He has a post-doctoral position as a research associate in the Dartmouth College chemistry department. . . . Brett Medwick completed a year of research at Yale University’s endocrinology department and graduated from Sackler Medical School. He is now a second-year surgical resident at Columbia University St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospitals in N.Y.C. He was engaged to Keren Habari and planned a December 2001 wedding in Israel. . . . Lisa DeHahn is currently working with the homeless population in San Diego. “It’s very challenging, but very rewarding. Living in San Diego is like living in another country. I’ve had the chance to brush up on my Spanish,” she wrote. Last summer she was a bridesmaid for Naomi Devlin, daughter of ex-Colby professor Keith Devlin, at her wedding in Monterey Bay, Calif. “The highlight for me,” Lisa said, “was dancing with Keith—I’ve had a crush on him since MA 111 my first year!” . . . Mike Rosenthal is living in San Francisco, working for Handspring. . . . Andrew Vernon and I had dinner with Hannah Beech and Beth Herbert a few months ago. Hannah is a Beijing correspondent for Time Magazine and is engaged to Brook Larmer, a correspondent for Newsweek. . . . Steph Cleaves moved to California with her fiancé. They are both park rangers at Yosemite National Park. . . . Rick Catino and his wife, Chrissy, welcomed daughter Anna Therese Catino on March 21, 2002. . . . Drew Matus and Rebecca Smith got married on April 13. Colby groomsmen included John Griffin and Mark Merzon. Drew works for Lehman Brothers in New York City as a vice president and senior U.S. financial markets economist, and Rebecca is employed by Pacific Investment Management Corp. as a financial writer. They live in New York City. . . . Peter Bennett ’96 is working for the U.S. Geological Survey in Sacramento, Calif. When he’s not working he’s white-water kayaking in the Sierra Nevadas. He recently got back from kayaking in Ecuador. . . . Peter Karos married Sophia

Bouloukos of Winnipeg, Manitoba, last Feb. 23 in Minneapolis, Minn. . . . Alyson Angino and Joe Germain were married on June 1, 2002. Michelle Grdina, Alisa Masson and Michelle Wyemura were bridesmaids at the wedding. Also in attendance were Jen Benwood and Barb Buse. Michelle Grdina survived her first Harvard reunion as the university’s coordinator for the 25th reunion children’s program. Alisa is working for GE Capital in Connecticut. Michelle Wyemura and Jen are both living in Seattle, Wash., and working in physical therapy after graduating from Northwestern University and Temple University respectively this past spring. . . . Regina Wlodarski Kruger and her husband, Keith, had their first baby, Megan Sophia Kruger, born March 25, 2002. —Yuhgo Yamaguchi

96  Carol Strawn married Jim

Fielbelkorn ’98 in June 2001 in St. Paul, Minn. Carol is a program manager for an environmental remediation firm and is completing her master’s thesis in environmental health. They live in Ann Arbor, Mich., with their 6-year-old Siberian husky, Stoli. . . . Rob Gold, who lives in St. Paul doing a dental residency in the Minneapolis Veterans Hospital, received a visit from Aran Ryan, who was on a five-state tour of 10 Super Eight motels. . . . Erica Casano Spater lives in New York City with her husband, Kitter, and works as a business analyst with Columbia House. They were married last December in Saratoga, N.Y. . . . Kylie Jessica Taphorn is an attorney at a small Sacramento, Calif., firm that specializes in juvenile law. In May she married Chris Thoma in Mendocino, Calif. . . . Linnea Basu is working at Northwestern Mutual in Boston. . . . Don Saucier married Mary Cain, with Sandler Passman as his best man and David Palmieri ’97 as an usher. His Ph.D. in experimental social psychology earned him a faculty position in the psychology department at the University of Kentucky. . . . Rebecca Tru­ fant married Christopher White last September in Massachusetts. Rebecca works for Investors Bank and Trust, and Christopher is with Hemisphere Financial Services. . . . In April 2001, Michael and Elizabeth Dunn Allen had twin boys, Nicholas Durham and Jakob Kenneth. . . . Meghan Fossum is director of leadership giving at Trident United Way. . . . Karen Goodrich married Stuart Wales last September. C O L B Y   •  F A L L  2 0 0 2

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Alumni at Large

1990s-2000s

BETH JOHNSON SEARING ’99 What she’s doing Financial planning at Tofias P.C., Cambridge, Mass. Who’s more surprised by that than she is Nobody. What she does that she didn’t do when she studied psychology at Colby Charts asset allocations, gives financial advice to people twice her age. What she thinks of that “It’s fun, I like it, and I can help people in different ways.” What she bought recently Her first business suit. What else she does Karate, kickboxing, hospice volunteer work, yoga. Karen works at Oxygen Media, and Stu works for Thomas Weisel Partners. . . . Jill Picard lives in the San Francisco Bay area and married Michael Paine in August 2001. Jill is a software designer for the GAP, and Michael is the director of Costa Rican Adventures. They met in Lesotho, Africa, while Michael was a Peace Corps volunteer and Jill was a Watson Fellow. Jill sees Jess Wolk, who is a massage therapist and getting her master’s degree. . . . Todd Guilfoyle married Sarah Leach in June 2002. Todd is a senior client manager at Fidelity Investments, and Sarah is an account executive on the Royal Caribbean advertising account at Arnold Worldwide, Boston. . . . Danielle Beaudin and Iain Bamford married in April 2002. She earned her M.L.S. at UNC-Chapel Hill; Iain received his M.B.A. from Duke. . . . Keith Albert successfully defended his chemistry Ph.D. thesis, titled “Microbead Array-based Artificial Nose: Explosives Detection and Simple/Complex Odor Discrimination.” Yes, he used an artificial nose to detect explosives. His work was featured on ABCnews.com as well as in a Tufts journal. . . . Tamela Spaulding Perkins entered a master’s program in early intervention/early childhood special education. . . . Jonathan Bardzik is in the Isenberg School of Management M.B.A. program at UMass. . . . Cathy (Neuger ’97) and Gregg LeBlanc bought a house in Sudbury, Mass. Gregg is a senior associate with PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Cathy is a senior researcher with Deloitte and Touche. . . . James Howley, a consultant for Valve Source, Inc., was married in May 2002 to Renee Jalbert, a biomedical engineer at Bio­ merieux. . . . Lori Kalisz married Ryan Stattenfeld in Pittsfield, Maine, in June 2001. Lori is a history teacher, Ryan is a chemistry teacher, and they live in Sterling, Va. . . . Kerry Ackerman enrolled in the full-time cabinet- and furniture-making program at North Bennet Street School in Boston. . . . Melissa Taylor finished her intern58  |

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ship at UMass Memorial in Worcester and is currently in her pediatric residency. She is looking forward to Bernadette Graham’s wedding in February 2003. . . . Anna Goldsmith has been doing screenwriting in her free time. . . . Daniel Deitch started his own business a few years ago, providing technology and computer training and counseling to individuals, home offices and small businesses. . . . Dave Marx started his own photography business in Montana and did a beautiful job providing the photography at Tim Lieberman’s wedding. Tim is working at Amazon.com as a product manager for eBooks and digital music and sees Conrad Saam, who just moved to Seattle and is the director of sales and marketing for an interactive agency called Smashing Ideas. . . . Casey McCullough began his urologic surgical residency at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, Pa. In his free time he has been writing book chapters as well as snowboarding and playing forward on his old medical school’s roller hockey team. . . . Andrew Meeks finished his second year at the University of Vermont law school, where he will graduate with a joint degree in law and a master’s in environmental law. He is enjoying Vermont with his 2year-old golden retriever, Skyler, who he says helps keep him sane. Andrew also likes to escape to Boston to catch up with Chris Greenfield. Chris and Cate Kneece Wnek had a busy year. Chris started Tufts Dental School, and Cate completed her M.B.A. at the University of Maine last May, finishing first in her class. They bought a condo in Salem, Mass., and Cate is working as an analyst at Fleet Global Market. . . . Woody ’97 and Anne Robinson Pollack live near San Francisco and had a boy named Nolan Foster in September 2001. Anne works in a law firm in Oakland representing cities and public agencies. Woody works for a start-up called Panasas. . . . Grace Jeanes completed an M.B.A. at UMass

and has been raising money for the Merrimack Valley Animal Shelter in Lowell. . . . Roger Binggeli and his wife, Melanie Macbeth ’97, live in Waltham, Mass. Roger recently started a business program at Suffolk University while also working as a senior compliance specialist. Melanie is a student at the New England College of Optometry. —Kim Schock

98  The countdown has begun!

We are fast approaching our five-year reunion. You will receive reunion updates in the next few months, so be sure to mark your calendar for June 2003! . . . Earlier this year Far­ rell Burns won the Kiawah Island Women’s Marathon in North Carolina, placing first out of 3,000 runners! Farrell lives in Charlotte, N.C., and continues to excel as a runner. Great job, Farrell! . . . Around the globe . . . After three years serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic, Alice Wong is headed to Johns Hopkins for a joint M.S.N./ M.P.H. degree. Alice spent the spring back home in California working for a nonprofit health organization. . . . Kristen Paratore has traveled the world over the past few years. Her adventures include working in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia for seven months, rock climbing in southern Thailand, hiking and working on an organic farm in New Zealand and traveling through Laos and southwest China. During this period she spent some time working as an editor of an environmental magazine in Washington, D.C. Recently, Kristen landed in Boston, where she is pursuing a master’s program in international educational policy at Harvard’s School of Education. . . . Eric Anderson was called into active duty with the U.S. Marines in the middle of January 2002. He has been in North Carolina training with his unit (Garden City, N.J.) and expects to be on active duty until at least January 2003, with the potential for an additional year. . . . Back in New England . . . Dan Noyes moved back to Boston after living in D.C. for three years. Dan is teaching at Fenway High School, where he “loves the school, the kids, the diversity and the challenge of teaching in an urban environment.” . . . Tricia Claussen is living in Boston with college roommate Liz Shanley, who just recently received a promotion with Putnam Investments as client service associate in downtown Boston. Tricia is busy working

for TRC Environmental as a project manager. Liz and Tricia have spent much time with Sara Woodberry, who has made the trek up to Boston from her third year of vet school at UPenn, and with Kari Christensen, who was promoted from her position with Southwest in Manchester, N.H., to southeast director in Southwest’s Providence office. . . . Out on the West Coast . . . Sandra Hughes Goff and her husband, Marc, celebrated their two-year anniversary in July. Sandra and Marc have been living in L.A., where they are attending a two-year acting program in which Anthony Hopkins volunteers as a teacher. Sandra was cast in an episode of the Drew Carey Show this past spring and hopes to be considered for a regular role in an ABC sitcom this fall. . . . Laura Jordan reports that she is still living in San Francisco—she is working as senior promotions manager at Virgin Mobile—but plans to move to New York with her company in early 2003. Laura runs into Montine Bowen, Justin Fredrickson, Kristin Crowley and Emily Larsen in the Bay Area from time to time and says they are all doing well. . . . After completing his master’s in music performance and composition at the California Institute of the Arts in 2001, Harris Eisen­ stadt has been busy performing in Los Angeles. When he is not traveling for his performances, Harris spends a few days a week teaching music to kids for an arts education organization. . . . In New York City . . . Lizzie Ivry left Washington, D.C., for N.Y.C., where she attends graduate school at NYU. Lizzie is living with Jen Rose, and they were looking forward to attending the wedding of Julie Williams (now Helentjaris) in July. Congratulations, Julie! . . . Also in New York, Kristen Wilson is attending SUNY-New Paltz for her master’s in education and certification to teach high school biology. Before landing at SUNY, Kristen was instructing for Outward Bound in Maine and plans to do so for the next few summers. . . . After graduating from law school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Tara Falsani was heading to New York, where she begins work this fall. . . . In school . . . Kristina Smith is still living in Providence, R.I., where she is in her final year at the Rhode Island School of Design pursuing a master’s in landscape architecture. Kristina plans to complete her degree in May 2003. . . . Emily Levin lives in Arlington, Va., and attends law school at George


Washington University. . . . Kevin Soja moved to the New York area to attend a master’s program in education at Columbia this fall. . . . Kevin Thur­ ston has been traveling the globe while attending the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies in Bologna, Italy. Kevin is back in D.C. this fall for his second year. . . . Alex Sobel graduated from medical school and began a five-year internship and residency in otolaryngology and orofacial plastic surgery in Columbus, Ohio, this fall. . . . Brian Gill was to begin his first year of medical school at Boston University School of Medicine this fall. . . . Wedding bells . . . Ryan Costello was to be married to Tara Weiske on July 13. Ryan and Tara, a graduate of UNH, live in Portsmouth, N.H., where Ryan works in the database department of Liberty Mutual. . . . Kristofer Hamel was to be married to Iva Ilieva ’99 on August 11 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Kris is currently pursuing a master’s in international relations at Georgetown University. . . . And congratulations to Susan Matlock, who is engaged to be married in Oregon on January 11, 2003! . . . Thank you for keeping in touch. I encourage each of you to pick up the phone and say hello to an old Colby pal! —Allison Flynn

99  Kea Watson lives in San Fran-

cisco and works as a stage manager at ACT. This summer she was to go back on tour with the Reduced Shakespeare Company working on their new show, The Reducers. . . . After four months of crazy transition from downtown N.Y.C., Oliver Griswold landed in Arlington, Va., ready to jump into politics, or journalism, or activism, or feminism, or whatever. . . . Will Guthrie works in construction in New Jersey. . . . Jonathan and Andrea Hutchins Sickinger live in Ann Arbor, Mich. Andrea finished her first year of grad school for a master’s in social work at the University of Michigan. Jon is an investment analyst in the university’s investment office, which oversees the endowment. . . . Katharine Lawrence was thrilled to head off to the Harvard Graduate School of Education in the fall. Katie is in the arts in education program and is looking to earn her master’s degree. . . . Jessica Gilbert and her dog, Watts, are loving their lives in Portland, Maine, where Jess works for the local CBS affiliate. . . . Heather Davidson has been working for two years as resource coordinator for the E.F. Schumacher Society, an

environmental nonprofit in southwestern Massachusetts (www.smallisbeautiful.org). She moved to Boston and back into the world of job searching in April and was looking forward to reconnecting with Colby friends there. . . . Anne Hutchinson has been living in Charlottesville, Va., for a year and working for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. She runs the Virginia watershed education program. Anne and her co-leader have a canoe rig and travel all over the non-tidal Virginia watershed running education programs. She loves Charlottesville and is in an art co-op (for fiber art) and lives with her puppy-dog, Banjo. . . . Peter Downing is a staff assistant for Senator Olympia Snowe in D.C. . . . Ben Armiger is a sailing education director for the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michael’s, Md. . . . Billy Riley picked up and moved to Wyoming to relish the lifestyle out west. . . . Craig Jude married Brooke Frappier ’00 last June 22. Both are employed as research assistants at Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. . . . As for Sandra DuBarry Laflamme, please note a correction: On June 9, 2001, Sandra and her husband, Jesse, were married in St. David’s, Pa., not St. Johnsbury, Vt., as was noted in the milestones section of the last issue. Sandra is currently working as a reading and writing teacher for K-2 at the Danville School in Danville, Vt. In the fall Sandra was to enroll in a teacher certification program at the Upper Valley Teaching Institute so that she can become an elementary school teacher. . . . After three years working in D.C., Renee Lajeunesse headed to N.Y.C. in August to go to Columbia University’s Graduate School of Social Work. She is looking forward to N.Y. life. . . . Heather Fine completed her first year at Dickinson law school. She spent the summer in D.C. working for a judge. . . . I graduated from Harvard Graduate School of Education and spent the summer at the Phillips Exeter Academy Summer School working as assistant dean and college counselor. I loved it. This fall I’m working in the dean’s office in residential life at Williams College. . . . Keep the updates coming! —Lindsay Hayes

00  Hello to the Class of 2000!

Hope this finds you happy and healthy. Congratulations to Brooke Frappier and Craig Jude ’99, who were married on June 22, 2002, and to Lisa Cardi­ llo and Gerardo DeMarco, who were

married in Italy at the end of June. . . . Tom Keblin and Sarah Cobleigh are engaged and planning a 2003 wedding. . . . Tacy Conard and Brian Quinn ’99 are also engaged and moved to California in July to go back to school. They are planning a 2004 wedding. . . . Tim McGee and Amy Piaseczny ’99 are planning their fall 2002 wedding in Lorimer Chapel. They are both currently working at Novartis Pharmacogenetics in Maryland and plan to go back to school in 2003. . . . Karen Macke and Will Barron ’01 are also planning a 2003 wedding. Karen is attending Colorado State University for her master’s in sociology, and Will has just begun his first season as a professional Scottish Highlands athlete. Congrats to all! . . . Jaclyn Rollins started graduate school at Salem State College for her master’s in social work. . . . Charles “Chaz” Langelier is living in Salt Lake City and was admitted to the M.D./Ph.D. program at the University of Utah’s College of Medicine. He spent last year volunteering for Habitat for Humanity in Costa Rica. . . . Last year Parke Burmeister taught Latin at Thornton Academy in Maine, and Jessica Porter taught physics and chemistry at Rundlett Middle School in Concord, Mass. . . . Congrats to Patrick Burlingame, who was recently picked for a Fulbright Scholarship in Hungary. He will be attending the University of Szeged. . . . Carolyn Mordas finished her second year of studying physical inorganic chemistry at Princeton University and completed her master’s degree. She is now a candidate for the Ph.D. . . . David Sherwood and Grace Price ’01 are engaged. . . . Jeff Libby and Reba Frederics were married in July at Colby. In attendance were Vanessa Wade, Whitney Lawton, Jeff Zia, Steve Horowitz, Rob Egleston ’01, Ben Schlitt, Jason St. Clair, Mike Farrell, Miranda Jennings and Laura van Gestel. . . . Chrissie Marzano is working at the Wilmark Group as a biotech/pharmaceutical recruiter and living with Lara Bonn and Kathryn Johnson. Chrissie ran in her first two triathlons this summer, and all three are still playing rugby on a national level with the Boston Women’s Rugby Club. . . . Keryn Kwedor is working at Rockport High School in Massachusetts in special education and visited with Mary Larios and Jason Gatlin in Eugene, Ore., this summer. . . . Skip Newberry is in his second year at UConn Law and worked for a federal judge this past summer. . . . Greg

2000s Correspondents 2000

Hilary Smyth 134 Davis Avenue #2 Brookline, MA 02445 781-883-1903 classnews2000@alum.colby.edu 2001 Dana D. Fowler 353 East 78th Street, 11B New York, NY 10022 classnews2001@alum.colby.edu

2002

Lydia Terry P.O. Box 1730 Sun Valley, Idaho 83353 classnews2002@alum.colby.edu Madden just started his first year at UConn Law. . . . Matt Janssen is in his final year of law school at Villanova and plans to clerk with a justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court after graduating and taking the bar exam. . . . Dave Fer­ guson is working on the show Third Watch and is living in New York City. . . . Megan Davis and Jared Wood­ ward-Poor spent the winter out in Denver and Park City. . . . JL Rudman, Brian Hiester and Alex Moskos are living together in Allston, Mass., and Alex is working as a crime analyst in Boston. . . . Sarah Church and Philip Murphy were married in August in New Hampshire. Kate MacLeay, Heather Daur, Mary Ann Schum­ acher and Rebecca Rasmussen were all members of the wedding party, with many other Colby alums in attendance. . . . Annalise Blech received her M.A. in Slavic languages and literatures in August and is currently beginning her Ph.D. requirements by spending nine months as the resident assistant for the UT Undergraduate Study Abroad Moscow Program in Russia. . . . Melissa Bradbury is still working at Cushing Academy in the admissions office and attended Christine Casey and Ted Hutchinson’s wedding in July. Also in attendance were Jenn Multari, Kelly Curlett, Sarah Cleary, Van­ essa Wade, Keryn Kwedor, Dave Famiglietti, Jess Mulready, Carlos Dominguez and Julie Corbo. . . . Morgan McDevitt is living in New York City and joined a rock band, Belle­ vue, this summer. He hopes that any Colby alums in the area will come out and see some of their shows. Join their mailing list at www.coollist.com. . . . Greg Hanson and Ben Stockwell are living in Brookline Village, and Ben is working at an economic consulting firm. They often see Jeremy Dono­ C O L B Y   •  F A L L  2 0 0 2

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Alumni at Large 2000s van, who is living in Coolidge Corner. . . . Stephen Horowitz just started a master’s program at Columbia in East Asian languages and cultures after spending a year and a half in Japan as an apprentice to a Japanese chef. . . . Jim Mason is in his second year of graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and is working on his thesis. He’s studying barred owls. . . . In August, Brian White placed third overall and first in his age group in Ironman Vineman in California! In October he left to teach English in Thailand for a year. . . . Adam Cramer is living in Seattle and is getting married next summer to Jolene Patterson. Adam is currently

the marketing manager in the e-commerce department of Eddie Bauer. . . . Chris Bonafide is in his third year of med school at Penn State and is living with Amanda Adams ’01. . . . Kate Davies is living in Chicago and is in her second year of graduate school in cancer biology at Northwestern Medical School. . . . Jenn Brown and Whitney Thayer are planning a July 2003 wedding and are living in Fort Collins, Colo. . . . Josh Foster was promoted to first lieutenant in the Marine Corps and is living in Meridian, Miss. He is currently in the advanced stage of jet strike training, flying the T-45C Gosshawk. . . . Brenda Yun is back in Hawaii teaching ninth grade

MILESTONES Marriages: Brooke A. Frappier ’00 to Craig B. Jude ’99 in Cumberland, R.I.    Jessica J. Stitt ’00 to Christos S. Hatzidakis ’01 in Watertown, Mass.    Amy S. Adkerman ’01 to Eric S. Groover in Lamoine, Maine    Wojciech Wieckowski ’00 to Suzanne N. Stonehouse ’98 at a Massachusetts seaside wedding. English and living with Diane Carr in Honolulu. . . . Steph Baron is in her second year of physician assistant school in California and was married to Naren Vasudevan ’99 in August. . . . Christie Beveridge spent the summer in Juneau, Alaska, continuing at the Bread Loaf School of English. She is teaching English again this year at the White Mountain School in New

Hampshire. . . . Mari Masuda is living in Coronado, Calif., flying SH-60F helicopters for the Navy. . . . Travis Keeling and Catherine Pinkerton were married in August and honeymooned in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area wilderness in northern Minnesota. They joined the Peace Corps and are leaving for Costa Rica in February! . . . Lindsay Shaker is

todd miner ’01

A Capital Idea

Todd Miner ’01 spent time this past summer with news anchor Jim Lehrer, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor among others. But Miner isn’t a politician, a lobbyist, a journalist or a congressional aide. His entrée to Washington power circles? His job as assistant to the director of the St. Albans School’s new School of Public Service. A four-week summer program for promising high school seniors, SPS immerses its students in the worlds of government and public policy, offering opportunities to meet the best and brightest of both fields. Miner’s duties range from Web consulting to reassuring concerned parents and helping students find lost wallets. “I basically do anything that comes across my desk,” he said. Miner said he was amazed by the bright and idealistic young stars of this past summer’s program. “They’re such good kids," he said. "They’re just like other kids, but they’re also interested in helping people and effecting change.” The 29 students in the program included the president of the Montgomery Million Mom March Youth Chapter 2002, a Teen Jeopardy champion and a Habitat for

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Humanity volunteer in Paraguay. And the roster of people on the students’ daily schedule, which Miner helped organize, reads like a page from President Bush’s daily planner. It includes lobbyists, U.S. senators and representatives, former presidential speechwriters and CIA inspectors general, to name only a few. “It gives these kids time to meet people like this,” Miner said, “so they realize that these people don’t have something that the kids don’t have, they just worked hard to get where they are.” But Miner and his students didn’t just spend four weeks popping in and out of government buildings; their classroom took other forms as well. One of the summer’s most memorable occasions for Miner was a mock official dinner, at which Albright was the guest of honor. Also attended by guests such as former White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, the dinner taught the students the social graces crucial to survival within the political circles of Washington. “Madeleine Albright was by far one of the coolest parts of the program,” Miner said. “She was funny and profound in her descriptions of her experiences as secretary of state. I walked out of there with the biggest smile on my face.” He found that the skills he honed at Colby served him well as he navigated uncharted waters during SPS’s inaugural year. “A lot of the education at Colby is not having an answer that’s the end, but finding a new idea of a larger understanding,” he said. When his tenure at St. Albans ends this winter (he was hired until February), Miner hopes to gain a “larger understanding” of the world on a Peace Corps program. If accepted, he hopes to work in subSaharan Africa as an advisor to local communities, helping them implement and maintain productive trout fisheries. And the long-term future? He’s pondering it, of course, and while he hasn’t fixed on a particular path, Miner does have a definition of success, for himself and his young charges: Success, he says, is finding a way to both maneuver through life “and hold on to your ideals.” —Braxton Williams ’99


getting her master’s in elementary education at Boston College and was engaged in October. She will be getting married next summer on Cape Cod. . . . Krikor Daglian is living in N.Y.C. and is the “city editor” for the New York edition of the Not for Tourists Guide to Manhattan. . . . Kevin James has just begun the environmental law program at Northwestern School of Law in Portland, Ore. . . . Elizabeth Haeussler is living in the mountains of Bozeman, Mont., and is working for an industrial design company as an anthropologist. . . . Keep in touch! —Hilary Smyth

01

Everyone is up to exciting things! Becky Munsterer began her writing career by having an article published in SKI Magazine (April ’02) and finished her first marathon in Ottawa in May! Her college roomie Mandy Cochrane is living the good life in San Diego, working as a teacher in underprivileged neighborhoods, while Becky’s other roomie, Abbie Parker, is living in St. Thomas . . . as is Marc McEwen. . . . Another runner, Lambie Bickford, still loves Austin and has run the Austin Motorola Marathon and the Vancouver Adidas International Marathon. . . . Kathy Manu and Colin McKee were in Ausi, New Zealand and Fiji with students exploring down under. Colin will return to the U.N. environmental program in Geneva, Switzerland. . . . Kimberly Schneider teaches English in Burkina Faso, West Africa, with the Peace Corps. . . . Katie Meyerhans and James LaLiberty ’02 are working as park rangers in Grand Teton National Park and living in Jackson Hole. Katie is part of the fire-fighting team that puts out any wildfires that pop up around the country! . . . Also in Jackson are Ben Schreiner and Michelle Cook. Ben took advantage of J.Hole weather, skiing more days last winter than not. . . . Justin Ehren­werth began his graduate program in philosophy, politics and economics at Brasenose College at Oxford and also began trying to break a bad coffee habit. . . . Whitney Dayton, working on a U.S. Senate campaign in Texas, is in charge of the Dallas fund-raising efforts. . . . Bill Goldman missed school so much, he’s now obtaining an M.S.A./M.B.A. dual-degree at Northeastern University. . . . Having law problems? Jon Engel began his first year of law school at BU, and Beth Festa began her law schooling at UConn. . . . Danielle Fornes will

resume teaching, along with Amy Bonnefond, at the Kent’s Hill School. Danielle teaches French and coaches ice hockey and softball. . . . Congrats are in order for Michelle-Nicholle Rahmings, who is teaching history and English at Kent’s, and Jeff Calereso as they announced their engagement for a summer 2003 wedding. . . . Brad Wand has been promoted from staff assistant to legislative correspondent on Capitol Hill. . . . Kelly Kenney, in Boston, is a sales assistant in a global investment management firm and works with Katie Firth. Kelly sees Michelle Farrell, who teaches Spanish in Methuen. Their bud Jennie

ity but planned to move to N.Y.C. in August. . . . Jen Miller began grad school at Emerson, and Matt Huber began his Ph.D. in sociology at Northeastern. . . . Steve Bigelow teaches at Brighton H.S. . . . Jon Natkin has been doing research at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Sarah Belanger works at Citizens Bank and has a film internship. They miss Alison Aiello, who left for Prague to teach English. . . . Annie Miller works in a Boston University lab while roomie Melinda Mraz rules the financial world at Dove Consulting. . . . Rob Webb jetted off to Vail, Colo. . . . Chad Creelman is a senior sales rep for SprintPCS in San

GEOFF WARD ’02 What he’s doing Running for the New Hampshire House of Representatives. A motivating factor Seeing rising property taxes drive people out of his hometown of Portsmouth. If not property tax, then what? An income tax used solely to fund education. And do what with the money? Work toward smaller class sizes. Where he saw the educational benefit of that You know where. What he’s against Gambling and a sales tax. His other top issues Affordable health care, especially for kids. Other times he thinks about kids When he’s coaching a youth football team, the Little Clippers. Where he cut his teeth in politics The Al Gore primary campaign in 2000 and other Democrats’ races. Coughlin now lives in Australia. . . . Lauren Schaad toured the U.S.A. last spring with the Hampstead Players, a children’s theater group. She and her partner performed two shows, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Greek Heroes, before she left for Italy to study Italian in Lucca. . . . Stacie Galiger worked during the summer at the Leysin American School in Switzerland. Stacie spent her past spring break in Italy with Sarah Martin, who is enthusiastically into her second year at Notre Dame law school. She reports that Marylee Murphy, Jon Weinberg and Mike Liedtke are living in Boulder, Colo., and that Nate Johnson and Wynter Stinch­ field are living in Mass. . . . Lindsey Rowland is working on her master’s degree at Miami University of Ohio. . . . Roommates Janice Greenwald, Liz Oberlin, Stephanie Mendell, Sarah Culbertson and Kelli Hall live in Brighton, Mass. Janice works for Boston.com, and O.B. and Stephanie did City Year Boston (AmeriCorps). Sarah works for Kaplan, and Kelli is a media buyer for Donor Advertising. . . . Lisa Hart works at a day care facil-

Diego, Calif., and is doing a great deal of Web design on the side, surfing “and writing petitions for the Liberation of Sea Horses in the waters of Northern Liberia.” . . . Mike Natenshon began taking acting classes at Suffolk. . . . In N.Y.C., Sarah Castille and Julie Langsdorf work at Columbia University at the Graduate School of Public Health doing research on women living with HIV/AIDS. . . . Tim Cassidy now works in N.Y.C. for Sumitoms, a Japanese trading company. . . . Stuart Luth writes that he moved out of Hoboken and into lower Manhattan. He’s still working in the stock plan services department at Salomon Smith Barney.

I am anxious to see him in his first play this December! . . . Anne Cain just

returned from a year in Japan teaching English in Nagano, rice harvesting in the fall, climbing Mt. Fuji in the spring—quite an experience! This fall she is living in San Francisco. . . . Mead Rust works at the History Channel. . . .Tom Savage is still saving failing companies. . . . Emily Brooks whips up the ad campaigns for AT&T wireless at Ogilvy & Mather in N.Y.C. Emily, Julie Langsdorf,

Michelle Chandler, Rachel Rokicki, Melissa Alioto, Caroline Blair and I lived it up this summer in the Hamptons. Michelle hand-selects models for GQ. And I want to announce my upcoming engagement to Bode Miller (I’ll be telling him soon, I’m sure). To others who have already announced marriages, congratulations! Kate Isley married Kenny Rausch this August in Burlington Vt., before heading to Hawaii for the H.Moon! Kate is now looking into law schools. . . . Rob Painter and Anna Randall also are newlyweds. Betsy Loyd attended the wedding, as did Jackie Ogutha, Nyasha Pfukwa (who is getting her master’s in intercultural relations at Lesley University, along with Yuki Kodera), Kate Thurman, Binah Palmer, Laura West, Gareth Osborn and Elizabeth Hoorneman. . . . Grace Price and David Sherwood ’00 got engaged this past July and are planning to be married next June. . . . Kyle Garry is working at the U.S. Golf Association Foundation in Colorado Springs, Colo., and lives with his fiancée, April Hunter, and their yellow Lab, Colby. April works as a counselor for The Children’s Arc, a local facility for troubled adolescent girls. . . . Dave Riss and Sara Lovitz have lived in Boulder, Colo., since October ’01, worked for the Fund for Public Interest Research and campaigned for Greenpeace for a couple of months. Sara played semi-pro soccer for the Mile High Mustangs, and Dave was a kayak instructor and spent all his free time kayaking class-five creeks around the state. Both are now researching grad schools. . . . Asher Ghertner is now at UC-Berkeley for grad school. . . . Ray Mazza enters his second year at Carnegie Mellon, aiming to graduate in 2003 with a master of entertainment technology degree. This summer he worked at Kodak’s research center in Rochester. . . . Liz Frankel is the literary assistant at Manhattan Theatre Club, a large off-Broadway theater. . . . Mark Paustenbach finished a master’s degree in politics at the London School of Economics and is now enrolled at Columbia U. in the Graduate School of Journalism. . . . Lisa Hart now lives in N.Y.C. and is taking classes in interior design. She sees Liz Oberlin, who is working for a start-up City Year group, Bryan Kes­ sler, in his second year of law school at Columbia, and Corey Stranghoener, who lives in Hoboken and works at a fine gifts store. —Dana D. Fowler C O L B Y   •  F A L L  2 0 0 2

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O B I T U A R I E S Marion Merriam Hooper ’25, June 19, 2002, in Waterville, Maine, at 99. She was the owner and operator of Marion’s Beauty Salon in Skowhegan, Maine, for more than 30 years. Her many Colby relatives include her father, Rev. George Merriam 1879, and her grandfather, Rev. Franklin Merriam 1837. Survivors include her son, Robert Hooper ’52, three granddaughters, five great-grandsons and two great-granddaughters. Dorothy Farnum Scott ’26, July 21, 2002, in Annapolis, Md., at 97. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate, she taught mathematics in high schools in Delhi, N.Y., and Winsted, Conn. For 30 years she was a metrologist and scientific mathematician at the U.S. Bureau of Standards in the Philadelphia Gauge Laboratory. She is survived by her sister, Muriel Farnum Medrow ’30. George Holbrook Hawes ’28, April 9, 2002, in Carson City, Nev., at 97. He was a school teacher, principal and coach, air raid warden, volunteer fireman and owner of an automobile dealership, and he held memberships in more than two dozen organizations. He served in the Nevada State Assembly in the 1950s and later was a lobbyist for many organizations. Survivors include his son, David Holbrook Hawes, his brother, John E. Hawes ’41, two grandsons, two great-granddaughters, six nieces and three nephews. Seneca B. Anderson ’30, June 21, 2002, in West Falmouth, Mass., at 90. He practiced law in Memphis, Tenn., before entering the Navy in World War II, then practiced with the New England Mutual Life Insurance Company. For 20 years he was a partner in the Miami, Fla., firm of Shutts & Bowen. He leaves his wife of 59 years, Martha, four children, 14 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Josephine Porter Cunningham ’34, July 24, 2002, in Freeport, Maine, at 90. A lifelong Freeport resident, she worked for the U.S. postal service and at both the town library and the high school library. Survivors include her sons, John, Paul and Daniel Cunningham.

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Robert F. Estes ’35, April 3, 2002, in Oakland, Maine, at 89. He was superintendent of woodlands management for Great Northern Paper Co. After a brief retirement he sold equipment for R.C. Hazelton. He is survived by two sons, Robert Jr. and Stephen Estes, two daughters, Elizabeth Zimba and Elaine Sandoval, nine grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and many nieces and nephews. David R. Hilton ’35, March 23, 2002, in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, at 89. After Army service during World War II he joined Proctor & Bowie Co., a lumber and hardware business in Winslow, Maine. He served local communities as a trustee, volunteer and member of boards and clubs. Predeceased by his wife of 65 years, Ann Trimble Hilton ’35, he is survived by four daughters, 10 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. Robert O. Brown ’36, April 24, 2002, in Benton, Maine, at 86. He worked at Keyes Fibre Co. in Waterville for 41 years, ending his career as director of industrial relations and personnel manager. He was active in town government and served in the Maine State Legislature from 1960 to 1964. He is survived by his wife of 64 years, Katharine Rollins Brown ’36, three sons, 14 grandchildren, eight greatgrandchildren and his sister, Ruth Brown Peabody ’32. Arnold A. Green ’37, March 29, 2001, in Trinidad, Texas, at 86. Before and after World War II, in which he served with the Air Force, he was a merchant in Presque Isle, Maine. In 1950 he moved to Albuquerque, N.M. Joyce Porter Fox ’38, June 6, 2002, in Caribou, Maine, at 84. Active in local civic organizations, she was a teacher before raising her family—a daughter, Jill Fox, and three sons, Gary, Artie and Jeffrey Fox, all of whom survive her. She also leaves seven grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren and two sisters. Ruth Lewis Nowlan ’41, June 14, 2002, in Foxboro, Mass., at 83. A librarian at Boyden Library in Foxboro for many years, she also was active in women’s groups and other community

organizations. She is survived by three daughters, Cynthia Torey, Caren Burrill-Murray and Cheryl Harding, two sisters, a brother, James Lewis ’38, and four grandchildren. Charles W. Heath ’42, April 6, 2002, in Bangor, Maine, at 85. He served in the Army Air Corps in World War II. He served Ricker College in Bangor, Maine, as teacher, business manager and vice president until 1977 and was active on community boards and committees. He is survived by his wife, Ruth M. Heath, three daughters, a son, eight grandchildren, a great-granddaughter, a sister, nieces and nephews. Saul Millstein ’42, May 28, 2001, in Roseburg, Ore., at 81. He was a fighter pilot in the Marine Air Corps during World War II. He was a threadworks salesman and later launched Nylon Spinners Inc. in California. Harold L. Rhodenizer ’42, April 24, 2002, in Bethlehem, Conn., at 81. A veteran of the Royal Canadian Air Force, he was a teacher and coach in Maine before joining MacDermid Inc. in Waterbury, Conn., as a chemical engineer. He leaves a brother, Richard Rhodenizer, three sisters, Greta Gordon, Constance Knight and Jean Rhodenizer Fontaine ’46. Olivia Elam Davis ’43, December 23, 2000, in Dublin, Ohio, at 80. After Colby she attended Simmons College, where she also did graduate work in the School of Social Work. For some years she was a social worker. She is survived by her daughter, Lynne Davis Simoson ’77, her sons, Michael and Neil Davis, and grandchildren. Justin O. Johnson Jr. ’43, November 15, 1999, in Hancock, Maine, at 79. He taught mechanical engineering at the University of Maine before joining Honeywell, where he was employed for more than 20 years. Survivors include his sister, Augusta-Marie Johnson Alexander ’45. Helen Lorraine Carson ’44, September 27, 2001, in Alexandria, Va., at 78. She was an editor with Dun’s Review and later with Fortune magazine.

Kenneth J. Dolan ’45, May 15, 2000, in Bangkok, Thailand, at 75. He entered the Air Force in 1943 and later was a radio technician in Portsmouth, N.H. He was with the U.S. Consulate in Bangkok at the time of his death. Lois F. Manning ’46, September 7, 1997, in Camden, N.J., at 72. Survivors include her daughter, Bonnie Gene Oliver. Donald C. McCoy ’47, February 14, 2002, in California, at 76. The son of Colby football coach Al McCoy, he attended the College briefly before entering the Navy in World War II. He graduated from Harvard and lightheartedly described his work as “computer guru.” Barbara Gaffney Avancena ’51, January 18, 2002, in Rockville, Md., at 72. She worked as a composer for the Rockville Sentinel in the 1960s and for Equus magazine in the 1970s and wrote for Disabled Sports USA in the 1980s. Survivors include three children, Bobbi Bauer, James Avancena and John Avancena, two brothers, a sister and four grandchildren. Charlotte Pettee Johnson ’51, June 10, 2002, in Waterville, Maine, at 72. She earned a master’s degree from the University of Maine and for many years taught in Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts. After retiring she was an antiques dealer in Maine and Massachusetts. Survivors include her companion, Hans Krueger, and her cousin, G. Bart Richardson, and his two daughters. Mary Lo White Shahawy ’51, July 22, 2002, in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, at 72. She traveled extensively in her 20s and 30s and lived abroad for many years. She was president of the Charlotte White Center board. She spent her last years working to better conditions and care for people suffering with mental challenges and was chair of the Bangor Mental Health Institute Quality Improvement Council. She is survived by her daughter, Shireen Shahawy ’85, her sister, Betsey Cousins, a nephew, John White, and a granddaughter, Allison Stinneford.


Donald W. Gunn ’52, January 20, 2002, in Hanover, Mass., at 72. He was an ironworker and shop manager for the Fred Williams Contracting Company. Survivors include his companion, Delores Trufant, a son, two daughters, a brother and sister and two grandchildren. Ruth Watt Tolford ’52, March 17, 2002, in Falmouth, Maine, at 71. She was a homemaker following her work as a technician in the blood grouping lab at Children’s Hospital in Boston. She is survived by her husband, William Tolford, a son and a daughter. Jean Strout Jewell ’54, February 27, 2002, in Bangor, Maine, at 69. She was a self-employed manager in the Skowhegan, Maine, area. Survivors include her husband, Wayne H. Jewell, two daughters, three sons, two stepchildren, 18 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Anthony M. “Jerry” D’Amico ’57, August 26, 2002, in Bangor, Maine, at 68. He owned and operated Penobscot Paint Products Company for 40 years and also worked on many community projects. He is survived by his wife, Dianne, a son, a daughter, two stepdaughters, six grandchildren, a sister, Lynne D’Amico McKee ’58, nieces and nephews. Gail Gaynor Kirkbride ’57, June 13, 2002, in Cape Cod, Mass., at 66. She worked for Liberty Drug and Surgical in Chatham, Mass. Previously she worked in the foreign marketing and research department of J. Walter Thompson in New York City. Surviving are her husband, Charles, three daughters and four grandchildren. Franklin C. Cowperthwaite ’58, February 13, 2002, in Vienna, Va., at 69. After serving for 20 years in the Navy, he was a residential real estate broker in northern Virginia. Survivors include his two daughters, Anne Doyle and Mary Harris, a son, Thomas Cowperthwaite, two brothers and six grandchildren. Charles R. Gorham ’58, May 11, 2002, in Cheshire, Conn., at 71. After service with the Field Artillery in the

Korean Conflict he was president of the Perfection Fence Company of Waterbury, Conn., for 42 years and a partner in Connecticut Fencemen of Stratford. He leaves his wife, Margaret, a son, two daughters, a brother, a sister and four grandchildren. Michael J. Riordan ’59, March 10, 2002, in Glastonbury, Conn., at 64. After two years of Navy service he joined Pitney-Bowes, Inc. He retired in 1988 from Grey Advertising Co. in New York City and later was an agent with the Nielson Insurance Co. in New Canaan, Conn. He is survived by his wife, Dianne, three daughters, a brother, and three grandchildren. Gerry H. Parker ’61, April 27, 2002, in Biddeford, Maine, at 64. After an outstanding athletic career at the College, he earned an M.B.A. at Cornell University, then joined Maine Surgical Supply Company in Yarmouth, Maine, where he became president and owner. Later he was president of Cuddledown of Maine. Survivors include his wife, Carol Ann, a son, two daughters, two brothers, a sister, two grandchildren and many nieces and nephews. William B. Law ’63, March 28, 2001, in Connecticut, at 59. He was a captain in the U.S. Air Force before making a career as a financial analyst. Edward D. Winkler ’63, June 24, 2002, in Lebanon, N.H., at 60. He worked at Vermont Research Corp. in Springfield, Vt., as controller and retired as CEO in 1993, then started his own financial consulting business, Wink Financial Inc. He served on several local and civic boards. He is survived by his son and daughter, Jeffrey Winkler ’89 and Amy Winkler, two sisters and many nieces, nephews and cousins. Jacqueline Roe Lloyd ’64, August 26, 2002, in Farmington, Conn., at 60. She owned and operated JRL Designs, a landscape design firm, wrote many articles on landscape and garden design and lectured extensively to garden clubs. She was a member of several nursery associations and community organizations. She is survived by her husband, Alex Lloyd ’64, two

daughters, two sons, a grandson and her brother. Tom Korst ’65, June 14, 2002, in Hillerød, Denmark, at 59. He served as a computer specialist for numerous universities and state and local government agencies in the New England area for more than 30 years before he returned to his native Denmark. He is survived by his mother, Rita Korst, and two daughters, Cecilie Bredehoeft and Heidi Barron. Robert E. Comstock Jr. ’67, March 25, 2002, in Westfield, N.J., at 57. Following his service in Vietnam, where he earned a Bronze Star, he received an M.B.A. from Seton Hall University. He was a director of finance and administration for Societé Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautique before retiring. Survivors include his wife, Frances Richter Comstock ’67, two daughters and a brother. Diana Walsh Lockwood ’67, January 13, 2002, in Honolulu, Hawaii, at 57. She received her B.A. from Hawaii Loa College, an M.A. in education from Pepperdine University and an M.F.A. from the University of Hawaii. In the early 1980s she formed the Symbolic Shuttle, dedicated to designing and creating ecclesiastical and secular art. In 1989 she started the Pacific Islands Institute to provide educational travel throughout Hawaii and the South Pacific for participants in Elderhostels and other educational programs. She is survived by her husband, Jack Lockwood ’64, her son, her daughter, Carol Lockwood ’90, her parents and three grandchildren. Amelia Rosenfeld ’71, July 17, 1999, in Chapel Hill, N.C., at 49. She earned a master’s degree in education and was a New York City elementary school teacher and owner-manager of a children’s summer camp. Survivors included her twin daughters, Miriam and Lillian Mindich. Ellen Muzzy Farnham ’72, June 14, 2002, in Brunswick, Maine, at 51. A Navy wife, she was an active volunteer in schools, museums and other community activities at her husband’s several duty stations in

California, Japan, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Maine. Survivors include her husband, John Farnham, two sons, a sister and brother. Thomas Lincoln Downey ’85, June 7, 2002, in Connecticut, at 39. He attended Wayne State University in the field of hazardous materials management. Survivors include his parents, T. Wayne and Joan R. Downey, and his sisters, Sharon Downey and Susan Downey Heston ’89. Sebastian Herbstein ’96, June 20, 2002, in New York, N.Y., at 28. He is survived by his parents, Judith Freidenberg and Diego Herbstein, a brother and a sister. Viswanath S. Naravane, July 2002, in India, at 80. A visiting professor at several colleges and universities in the U.S., including Colby in the 1960s and ’70s, he lectured on Indian art, history, literature and mythology as well as philosophy and religion. He was professor and chair of the philosophy department at the University of Poona and for two decades was on the faculty of the philosophy department at the University of Allahabad. A widower, he had no children. Homer T. “Pete” Hayslett Jr., October 3, 2002, in Belgrade, Maine, at 63. Colby’s Dana Professor of Mathematics, he studied math at Bridgewater College in Virginia and earned a master of science degree at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and a master of arts degree and a Ph.D. at Dartmouth College. He began teaching at Colby in 1962 and continued as an active faculty member even during his final illness. Throughout his 40-year career he taught mathematics and statistics, was chair of the department several times between 1982 and 2001 and served on several College committees, including Educational Policy, Promotion and Tenure, Admissions and Athletics. In 1997-98 he headed Colby’s program in Cork, Ireland. He is survived by his wife, Loyce, their three children, Barbara, Elizabeth and Homer T. III, two grandchildren, his mother, his sister and several aunts, uncles and cousins.

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the last page the spirit of india By Neha Sud ’05

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as four who have been taken from their villages and brought to brothels. Hearing their stories, seeing their living conditions . . . it’s heartbreaking.” And not only were the social problems overwhelming; Emma arrived at a time when nuclear war in the region seemed inevitable. “It’s funny because whenever there was any sort of explosion, I noticed that the whole street would just stop and look up at the sky and I would automatically start sniffing the air,” she says. “I wasn’t paranoid, but it was a very real threat at the time.” Living with the possibility of nuclear war may have been the least challenging of her activities. Apart from rescuing children from brothels, Emma’s team also Emma James ’05 worked with victims of floods in Bangladesh and Nepal, of conflict in Afghanistan, of which she is grateful, she says. Eventually she would droughts in Sri Lanka and India. It was hard work, like to work with the Red Cross or with the United with the occasional touch of the bizarre. Nations on development and disaster response. “There’s been severe droughts going on in Sri And she hopes to return to South Asia. I return Lanka for the last four years now, but the govern- because it’s home. But Emma? ment agencies were denying the existence of the “One time I was backpacking around and I ended drought,” Emma says (Red Cross attention to the up stranded on a railway platform with no money,” situation has since changed the government’s she explains. “I was throwing up because I was stance). “We went in as a Red Cross assessment incredibly ill. This extremely poor beggar girl, stick team. Some people in Sri Lanka live in tree huts thin, with hardly any clothes on came and sat next because elephants from the jungle come in search- to me. She had one piece of bread; she tore it in ing for food, and they kill people on their way. That half and handed me some. It was so emotionally was just something I never expected to hear in my overwhelming, such a moment of connection.” life—death by elephant.” As her eyes light up at that memory, I marvel at We can’t help but smile, yet I wonder how she how a small act of compassion can be a life-changing dealt with seeing and working with immense tragedy. experience. And I find myself hoping that someone “When you’re out on the field you have to make driving by the beggar on “the drip” takes him to a important decisions,” she says, “so you have to hospital, gets him treated and pays his bill. Naïve to block your emotions for that time and focus on think so? Perhaps, but I’ve seen it happen before. what needs to be done.” For it is this unexpected compassion, mercy and Emma returned to Colby in September for her tenderness that define what Emma so aptly calls sophomore year and hopes to continue on to graduate the “spirit of India.” school, if she can find a scholarship. It was the DavisUWC program that allowed her to come to Colby, for FRED FIELD

It’s 9 p.m. in New Delhi and I’m sitting in a cab with Emma James ’05 waiting for the light to turn green. A beggar taps on the window and asks us for spare change. He looks fatigued, hungry. A small plastic bag hangs from a belt on his waist. “Oh my god, I think he’s on a drip,” Emma says. We spot the intravenous tube in his arm and start scrambling around for money. Finally we find a 10-rupee note and hold it out the window, but it’s too late. The light has changed; the cab driver pulls away. Behind us the beggar watches mournfully as his best chance for a meal disappears into the night. Later in Basant Lok, a ritzy area in South Delhi, we pop into a fancy Italian restaurant. We’re surrounded by the Gucci-clad, single-solitaire-flashing Delhi elite. The wine list is longer than a Wal-Mart inventory, and the food looks fabulous. But none of this feels right. We decide to skip dinner and go sit in the park instead. As I watch the traffic pass by, I think about my home city. While there are marble mansions in one part of the city, people live in cardboard boxes in another. The fortunate kids go to school and the less fortunate ones end up on the streets, polishing shoes or selling drugs. It’s a world of inexplicable contrasts, yet it’s the world where I have grown up. It is also the world that Emma has chosen to live and work in. A New Zealander and my classmate in school, Emma first came to India when she was awarded a scholarship to attend Mahindra United World College there. Last summer we got together when she returned to India as part of the South Asian regional delegation of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Her fivemember team was responsible for disaster response in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan from May through August. “India is really second home to me,” she says. “But my experience this summer was very different because I was working on very large-scale problems. “I’m working with child prostitution and human trafficking these days, Neha. There’s girls as young


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