College Road was gone. After the family bought a house in Durham, N.C., Langlois ran ropes from the trash can lids up to the deck so that everyone could drop the trash in without going downstairs. “Everything he did was about making, creating, discovering,” says his son Allen. Langlois, 84, died July 2, but the influence of his research continues. He developed a cell culture that allowed a specific cancer-causing virus to be grown in a lab rather than in animals, according to his colleague Kent Weinhold, director of the Center for AIDS Research at Duke. Langlois also was part of a team that screened many compounds, looking for one that could fight HIV. “Out of that research was born AZT,” Weinhold says. Langlois grew up speaking French, and working in the Manchester shoe and textile mills. His Canadian immigrant family called him Bob to try to avoid discrimination. “It was easier to keep your head down with an American-sounding name than to walk around as Alphonse,” says his youngest son, David, who cared for his father through several illnesses. Professorships and Ph.D.s weren’t on the radar when Langlois and his sister—who conducted science experiments together on the back porch of their tenement building—became the first in the family to finish high school. Moving to California in the days before interstate highways was an equally exotic idea, but that’s what Langlois and Marilyn Marsh did. Their “mixed marriage” of Catholic and Protestant, frowned on at first by their families, lasted 62 years, until his death. Marilyn was a nurse, and Langlois, who helped to care for wounded Korean War vets while stationed at Travis Air Force Base, considered becoming a doctor. After his military service, they returned to New Hampshire with two daughters, and Langlois enrolled at UNH on the GI Bill. From his youthful hard times, he carried a hearing loss in one ear (a result of noisy mill machinery) and a drive to do whatever was necessary. He worked his way through college by painting dorms and inventorying trees for Dutch elm disease research. Once he had his bachelor’s degree, he started studying for a master’s in biochemistry, but an offer from Duke lured the family
Mr. William F. Regan ’51 Mr. Frank H. Sehnert ’51 Mr. M. Michael Ananian ’52 Mr. John N. Bowes ’52 Mrs. Jean Coffin Friel ’52 Mr. Richard W. Hurd ’52 Mrs. Esther McKeage Richardson ’52 Mr. Fred H. Schmidt ’52 Mr. Robert T. Bolton ’53 Ms. Barbara N. Gilderdale ’53 Dr. William W. Lothrop ’53, ’54G Mr. Donald R. Mills ’53, ’55G Mr. Theodore G. Mueskes ’53
Ms. Mildred E. Radford ’53 Mr. Arthur M. Rose ’53 Mrs. Margaret Loughlin Splaine ’53G Ms. Ann B. Chase ’54 Mr. William A. Varkas ’54G Mrs. Barbara L. Durgin ’55 Dr. John B. Hoey ’56 Mr. James R. Miller II ’56 Mr. David Rosi ’56G Mr. Kenneth E. Smith ’56 Lt. Col. Alton L. Amidon, Ret. ’57 Mrs. Grace Hayden Blanchard ’57G, ’68G
south. By the time he finished his doctorate in microbiology at age 37 and became a Duke professor, he and Marilyn had six children. All of them knew it was their job to get an education and become as responsible as their parents. “He bootstrapped the whole family through sheer hard work,” Allen says. “He was a great dad, a great example, and a tough act to follow.” —Jane Harrigan
John A. Lindsay ’70, ’83G
He made a career of protecting the oceans he loved.
O
n their first date in 1966, John Lindsay ’70, ’83G and Betty Lausier went to the shore. Before that day, Betty had never seen the ocean. After, her life would be shaped by it. The ocean was Lindsay’s passion, born of boyhood days spent on Wells Beach in Maine and exploring nearby tide pools. He was a gregarious Irishman with an infectious smile, she says. “I couldn’t help but love it, too.” Lindsay, who died on Feb. 13 of mesothelioma, would build a career dedicated to studying and protecting ocean sites around the United States, the last stage focused on a small group of islands about 200 miles from mainland Alaska, where life revolves around the sea. “He really felt that he fulfilled his life’s dream,” Betty Lindsay says. The couple was married with two children, Christine and Cris-Jon, before he graduated from UNH. Early on, Lindsay was a taxonomist for the marine lab at Normandeau Associates in Portsmouth and then worked a stint in southern California. The family returned to Durham, where Lindsay started his own firm, often hiring young marine scientists from the university, and completed his master’s degree, focusing part of his studies on farming clams in New England. Lindsay spent much of his career spearheading environmental restoration projects for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Mr. Armand A. Desruisseaux ’57 Mr. Dean A. Hutchinson ’57 Mrs. Sandra Brown Ryan ’57 Mr. John C. Fisher ’58 Mr. Alphonse J. Langlois ’58 Mr. Paul R. Moore Jr. ’58 Mr. George K. Plummer Jr. ’58 Mr. Charles E. Sandquist ’58 Mr. Eugene F. Sullivan Jr. ’58 Mr. Richard A. Bernard ’59 Mr. Richard F. Hechtl ’59G Mr. Joseph F. Quinn ’59 Mr. Roger H. Stone ’59
62 • Uni ve rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p s h i r e Ma g a z i n e • Fa l l 2013
Ms. Bernadette D. Benard ’60G Mr. Paul L. Bouchard ’60, ’62G Mrs. Lorette D. Dean ’60 Mr. Richard M. Kimball ’60 Mr. Thomas A. King ’60 Mr. Charles B. Knowles ’61 Mr. George H. Monast ’61, ’64G Mr. Bertrand C. Sprague ’61 Ms. Katharine Elliott Stansfield ’61 Mrs. Rovena Scribner Robinson ’62 Mr. Thomas A. Gray ’63 Mr. John D. Hauslein Jr. ’63 Ms. Jean E. Houle ’63
Mr. Robert A. Lamy ’63 Mr. David E. Trask ’63 Mr. Theodosios G. Boulogiane ’64G Dr. Earl S. Perrigo ’64 Mrs. Betty White Phinney ’64G Mrs. Beverley Steele Pollack ’64 Col. Vincent B. Roberts ’64 Capt. Ernest W. Rousseau ’64 Mr. Paul L. Siegler ’64 Mr. George A. Sousa ’64 Dr. Joseph A. Verdone ’64G Mr. Robert H. Wetmore ’64 Major John A. Wilhelm ’64