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2001 To Brendan Conway ’01, basketball was a ballet with bounces. Brendan Miguel Conway November 7, 2013 To some, basketball is just a whirl of bodies racing back and forth. To others, such as Brendan Conway, it is a ballet with bounces. He loved sharing basketball with others, and excelled at it as a student and teacher. He stood out in high school and college in basketball and tennis, going on to become the athletic director at Deering High School after he graduated with a degree in psychology. He coached basketball for 11 seasons there, and tennis for nearly as many. He also taught specialneeds children at elementary schools, and earned a master’s of social work from USM in 2004. He worked as a family counselor with Opportunity Alliance, and founded a summer camp for low-income families in Portland. Survivors include his girlfriend, Lauren Reid; parents Nazare and Jeremiah Conway; and brother and sister-in-law, Patrick ’07 and Josepha Gonzales Conway ’07.
2009 She didn’t have electricity or indoor plumbing, but Kyra Williams ’09 did have a view of the mountains, and that’s what she wanted. Kyra Jean Williams August 17, 2013 She didn’t have electricity or indoor plumbing, but Kyra Williams did have a view of the mountains, and that’s what she wanted. So she parked her trailer under an apple tree in St. Ignatius, Mont., and sold her organic baby food at the farmers market, a logical career path for an American studies major at Bates, whose thesis was on the “New American Sustainable Agricultural Project,” working with the people from Somalia and Guatemala, among other new Americans, who have settled in Lewiston-Auburn. Survivors include her parents, Chris and Lynne Williams, and siblings Genna, Seth and Joss.
faculty Mishael Maswari Caspi August 4, 2013 Professor Emeritus Mishael Caspi worked to bring together Judaism, Islam and Christianity through his writing and teaching, and regularly convened the “Biblical Characters in Three Traditions Seminar” at the annual international meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature. From 1995 to 2007, he was a visiting professor and lecturer in philosophy and religion at Bates. An internationally recognized scholar, he was known for his work in Yemenite poetry and was a leader in the American Assn. of Professors of Hebrew. He also wrote frequently on the role of women in the Bible: Still Waters Run Deep: Five Women of the Bible Speak and Women on the Biblical Road are two such works. During his years at Bates, he was active in the Lewiston community, directing several symposia, among them “Maine Remembers the Shoah” and “Towards Harmony: Understanding New Diversity in Lewiston-Auburn,” which followed the 2003 Many and One pro-diversity rally prompted by threats of hostility toward recent immigrants from Somalia. After earning a bachelor’s at Hebrew Univ., he came to the U.S. to earn a master’s from UC Santa Clara and a doctorate from UC Berkeley. He died at his home in Haifa, Israel. Survivors include wife Gila Caspi and son Avshalom (Terrie) Caspi. William E. Hannum II February 15, 2013 William Hannum stood before his English classes in Pettigrew Hall before distributing those little blue notebooks at exam time to deliver his disparaging remarks: Why does the college call these hourlies, he would ask. The professors would have to give them every hour then. Grammatically, he was correct. Hourly meant every hour. But that’s what Bates called them: hourlies. Mid-semester exams. And we students were too nervous to laugh — we just wanted to get started. He grew up partly in Southwest Harbor but graduated from The Univ. of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., a bifurcated upbringing that brought a unique outlook to his viewpoint at Bates. He earned a Ph.D. at the Univ. of Virginia and taught for many years at Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va., where a scholarship was named in his honor. Survivors include wife Susan, children William Hannum III and Kirke Lisk; and five grandchildren.
keep adding more rocks to it. Not that it mattered, mind you: Her students adored her and were happy to help. She was known for throwing open her office, home, classroom, even her hospital room to her students if someone needed help. That is the common theme among all of the comments from her students: the amount of help she provided, how available she was to assist them. She started out as an oceanographic technician after graduating from Middlebury with a degree in geology. She went on to Texas A&M for a master’s in geology, where she met William Todd-Brown while looking for rock-climbing partners. They ended up marrying. She earned a Ph.D. at Rice in environmental science and engineering. After her years at Bates in the 1990s, she joined the faculty at Unity College and was equally popular there among students. Besides her husband, survivors include daughters Katherine, Margaret and Jesica Todd-Brown. Emmet Finlay Whittlesey June 8, 2013 E. Finlay Whittlesey taught mathematics at Bates from 1951 to 1954 before moving to Trinity College, where he became a full professor of mathematics. He retired in 1995. Survivors include his wife Betty Navratil Whittlesey; sons Stanislaus, Saunders and Marshall; and one grandchild.
honorary James Isbell Armstrong December 16, 2013 James Armstrong became president of Middlebury College in 1963 — the worst of times. And he made it into the best of times. He turned it into an internationally recognized liberal arts college known for its language programs. For that, Bates awarded him an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree in 1967. He was educated at Princeton, where his father was a professor at the seminary. He himself was a classicist and a Homeric scholar. After completing his doctorate at Princeton,
he joined the faculty and served as associate dean of the graduate school. He left Middlebury after 12 years to become president of the Dana Foundation, familiar to Bates students who become Dana Scholars. He left that post in 1981. He was a trustee of Princeton and the Hazen Foundation; he served on the advisory council of the Braitmayer Foundation and was a director at Merrill Lynch. Survivors include wife Carol Aymar Armstrong; children James Jr. and Elizabeth; and six grandchildren. Sarah Pillsbury Harkness May 22, 2013 If you were to stroll down Alumni Walk and take a gander at the Olin Arts Center, and then take a peek at Ladd Library, you would have just admired two works by Sally Harkness, one of the eight architects who founded The Architects Collaborative in 1945 in Cambridge, Mass., a pioneering firm with Walter Gropius as its inspiring figurehead. These two buildings on the Bates campus were among her most prominent in New England. She had lived almost that long in a house she and her husband, architect and fellow TAC co-founder John Cheesman Harkness, designed at the Six Moon Hill neighborhood in Lexington, Mass., which, he explained recently to The Boston Globe, aimed to build homes for under $15,000. “We were interested in down-to-earth socialist issues.” She studied at the Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, which was affiliated with Smith College, and also received a master’s certificate in architecture. Bates awarded her a Doctor of Fine Arts degree in 1974. The Boston Society of Architects honored her career in 1991. She was a director of the American Institute of Architects of New England from 1973 to 1976 and its vice-president from 1977 to 1998. In addition to her husband, survivors include children Joan Hantz, Alice, Jock, Fred and Nell Harkness, and Sara Super; 10 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
Lois K. Ongley November 16, 2013 The hardest part about being a geologist, Lois Ongley noted, is that your backpack gets heavier the longer you hike, because you
SARAH CROSBY
After her first two daughters were born, she started working as a teacher at the local Montessori high school in Michigan. Besides her husband, survivors include daughters Elaine, Lauren, Audrey and Carolyn.
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