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administrative assistant to Gov. Burton M. Cross and was later a state senator. He worked on a bill requiring driver education for teenage drivers and helped Gov. Percival Baxter prepare his home and land on Mackworth Island to become the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf. After an unsuccessful bid for Congress, he started a successful career in insurance and financial planning, which continued into his 80s. Survivors include wife Violet Paquin Curtis; children Georgia Porter, Tracy Curtis, George III, Jerri Tounge, and Scott; 14 grandchildren; and 26 great-grandchildren. Donald Sheldon Day October 1, 2014 Donald Day, one of only 13 of 135 U.S. Army soldiers to survive a botched offensive against the Germans during World War II, lived through enough misery and torture during five months in an all-Jewish POW camp to write in his battlefield diary on the day that Germany surrendered: “Never forget. Never forget. Never forget.” He escaped from that camp using maps given to him by a seriously wounded British paratrooper. In the sweetest of coincidences, it was that paratrooper’s division he “ran into” that gave him safety. He returned to Bates — having grown up in Auburn — finished his degree in economics Phi Beta Kappa, and continued on to Cornell Law School cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa. He joined the firm of Saperston, McNaughton & Saperston in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1948; eventually he became its chairman and the firm became Saperston & Day. From 1981 to 1985, he was chairman of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, an organization of over 1,000 Reform synagogues in the U.S. and Canada. He was president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism 1988–95 and later served as a world union representative on the executive committees of the Conference on Material Claims against Germany (representing Holocaust victims, survivors and families) and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. He was also active in several local hospital boards of directors and charitable associations. He received an honorary doctorate from Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, where he served as a trustee. Survivors include his wife, Edythe Greenberg Day; children Clifford, Richard, and Halee Burg; five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. His late brother was Melvin Day ’43. Daniel W. Gibbs November 29, 2014 Daniel Gibbs’ education at Bates was interrupted by three and a
half years of service in the Army Air Corps during World War II. A warm, caring man with an outgoing personality, he was beloved for his long career in education, as a teacher of social studies in Massachusetts and in many administrative positions, including several principalships and his election as superintendent of schools in Williamstown. He later paused his public school service for several years to become director of the Anglo-American School in Moscow. He and his wife, Louise Gifford Gibbs ’44, loved to travel, and he proudly displayed his photo collections from trips to Europe, the Soviet Union, and Asia. The two were class agents for Bates in the 1990s, co-chairs of their 55th Reunion social committee and members of their 50th Reunion committee. In addition to his wife, survivors include children Thomas Gibbs, Linda Gutterman, and Deborah GibbsBrooks; five grandchildren; and siblings Patricia Russell and Timothy Gibbs. His late brother was Joseph F. Gibbs ’58. Elizabeth Kinney Jones January 11, 2009 Betty Kinney followed brother Bob Kinney ’39 to Bates and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in sociology. She held government jobs during and after the war, then was a social worker until she married Edmund Jones and began a family. Eventually she earned a master’s in teaching from George Washington Univ. and taught elementary school for 16 years. Her husband passed away in 2001. Survivors include sons Russell, Malcolm, and Brian Jones; niece Sally Greenlaw Kinney ’69; and grandniece Samantha Kinney Leone ’93. Her brother, former Bates Trustee E. Robert Kinney ’39, died in 2013; his son, E. Robert Kinney Jr. ’70, died in 2011. Vincent Lee McKusick December 3, 2014 Vincent McKusick could have become a dairy farmer like his father. He could have become an electrical engineer: The U.S. Army singled him out for the Manhattan Project, trained him as an engineer, and even sent him to MIT to earn a bachelor’s and master’s degree. Or he could have followed his identical twin brother, Victor, into medicine. But they had deliberately decided to not dog each other through adult life, and Vincent had always wanted to be a lawyer. That MIT master’s in engineering would come in handy for patent law, he figured. He graduated from Bates summa cum laude in history, which didn’t hurt either. And just as his brother succeeded in his field, so did Vincent: He was president of the Harvard Law Review,
clerked for Chief Judge Learned Hand just before he ascended to the Supreme Court, and then for Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. He returned to Maine to begin an illustrious career with Hutchinson, Pierce, Atwood & Scribner. In 1977, Gov. James Longley appointed him chief justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. He was elected to the Bates Board of Overseers in 1952 and elevated to the Board of Trustees in 1972, serving until 1992. He was also honored by Bates with an LL.D. and the Benjamin Mays Medal. In 1991, he became “of counsel” to Pierce Atwood, enjoying an extended career until age 90 as special master on U.S. Supreme Court cases, as counsel on legal matters to his firm and as an arbitrator. The home in Cape Elizabeth that he made with his wife, Nancy Green McKusick, and their four children was a favorite gathering place for four generations of their family and countless friends. In 1993, when his portrait was hung in the Maine Supreme Court courtroom, one of his law clerks noted his “sense of humor, warmth, curiosity, and enthusiasm” that endeared him to his staff. Even after retiring, he was known lovingly to all as “The Chief.” In her tribute, Leigh Ingalls Saufley, current chief justice of the Maine court, wrote that “The Chief was an absolutely brilliant man. He was also the kindest and most collegial and gentlemanly jurist I ever had the pleasure of appearing before. He treated everyone with the absolute respect that is shown by the best of jurists. He was a role model for every one of us.” Every college and university in Maine awarded him an honorary degree of one sort or another, it seems, and the national recognition is no less noteworthy. In 1993, President George H.W. Bush appointed him to the Permanent Committee for the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court of the United States. In addition to his wife, survivors include children Barbara McKusick Liscord ’74, James E. McKusick ’76, Kay Ralston, and Anne McKusick; 10 grandchildren, one of whom is Robert McKusick Lord ’11; and four great-grandchildren. His cousin is Margaret McKusick Gray ’37, and two of his nephews are Karl W. McKusick ’67 and Victor W. McKusick ’87. A son-in-law is Paul Liscord ’74. Other family members, now deceased, include his father, Carroll L. McKusick 1904; uncle Leon R. McKusick 1911; sister Grace McKusick Storms ’30; and brother Harry A. McKusick ’33. In 1989, Bates awarded Vincent’s twin, Victor, a pioneer in genetic medicine, an honorary degree.
1945 Alice Gates Haughwout September 1, 2014 In the records that the college keeps for each student, it required extra room to list all of Penny Gates Haughwout’s activities. And her studies didn’t suffer because of them: She was a dean’s list student every year and listed in Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities. She edited The Garnet, rang the carillon, sang in the choral society, and acted in the Robinson Players. And she won the Senior Prize speaking contest. Music was central to her life; she went on to receive both a bachelor’s and master’s in music from NYU, and to teach organ, piano, and voice lessons for the rest of her life. Her family says that she was known to sniff out abandoned pianos in dark rooms in restaurants and start playing them, just to liven things up; that piano students who’d moved away to college were likely to get a letter from her out of the blue. None of this should surprise anyone: She was born to missionary parents in Burma; her father, Gordon Enoch Gates, was an expert on earthworms at the university there and later at Colby. She used her writing ability to create oral histories for the Greenwich (Conn.) Library’s Oral History Project, interviewing scores of people for their records. She was also active in the revitalization of Williamsburg, Va., and the Lisle Development Project, which funds small development projects around the world through its Global Seed Fund. Her first husband, from whom she was divorced, was the late John F. McDonald ’43. Her second husband, Theodore E. Bott, and third husband, Alex Haughwout, also predeceased her. Survivors include children Nichola and Timothy Bott; and five grandchildren. John Fogg Kneeland Sr. April 7, 2014 John Kneeland started life with a fumble: He nearly dropped an entire tray of dirty dishes into Eleanor Roosevelt’s lap while working as a busboy at Sebasco Estates when he was 15. But he managed to miss her, or the dishes managed to, and good manners prevailed. There is, alas, no photographic evidence. He went on to serve in the European theater during World War II, was commissioned as an officer in France, and came home to Lewiston a lieutenant. He entered Bates as a chemistry major, met Mary Constance Peck ’45, and they married in 1946. He went on to a long career as a chemical salesman for Maine paper mills and other textile producers along the East Coast. Mary died in 1989. Survivors include his second wife, Janalie Fall 2015
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