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of one Maritime family at the Mount Moosehead Breweries in New Brunswick. Two of Ella and George’s daughters, Margaret and Helen Oland, came to the Mount next. It was while visiting his two sisters at the Mount in 1905, that Sidney met and fell in love with Herlinda “Linda” DeBedia, ACAD ’09, who came to the Mount from Cuba. (Her sisters, Fidelina and Amada, were here at the same time.) After Linda returned to Cuba, Sidney had to travel there three times before Linda accepted his marriage proposal. Sidney and Linda are Penelope’s grandparents. There are scholarships offered at the Mount still today that bear the names of these family members: the Margaret E. Oland Jubilee Endowed Scholarship was established by Philip W. Oland in memory of his aunt, and the Linda Oland Endowed Scholarship was established by Colonel Sidney Oland in memory of his wife. The Mount tradition continued when Linda and Sidney Oland sent their only daughter, Amadita (Oland) Stanbury, ACAD ’33, to the Mount. Amadita’s New Brunswick cousin, Adine “Dids” Oland, joined her. Also attending the Mount was Mary Stanbury, ACAD
’37, who is Penelope’s aunt and godmother. Mary was a younger sister of Norman Stanbury, who was Victor Oland’s best friend. Norman secretly proposed to Amadita at sea while returning from Berlin in 1937. They married, and later sent Penelope, their eldest daughter, to the Mount from 1950-56. Family members often had the same teachers while at the Mount. Sister Rosalie taught painting to Linda, Amadita and Mary. Penelope was taught by many of the nuns who had taught her ancestors. “Sister Mary Eustella taught public speaking to three generations: my grandmother, my mother and me,” she recalls. Penelope remembers writing and delivering a speech every week, as well as studying piano, voice, and elocution. While a grade eight student, she acted in the role of Elizabeth Seton in a play written by one of the nuns called So Earnest Was Every Heart, nurturing her lifetime love of the performing arts. In her final year at the Mount, Penelope was editor of Folia Montana, which at that time was the Academy yearbook. Penelope was on campus at a seminal moment in the Mount’s history: the great fire of January 1951, which
1. Ella (Bauld) Oland. 2. Colonel Sidney Oland and Linda (DeBedia) Oland 3. Penelope (Stanbury) Russell flanked by her parents, Norman Stanbury and Amadita (Oland) Stanbury 4. Penelope (Stanbury) Russell’s picture as editor of Folia Montana, 1955-56.
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