UNH Magazine Spring/Summer 2014

SPRING/SUMMER 2014

Saving Great Bay

Is it too late for the Seacoast's crown jewel?

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Campus Upgrades 16 | Another Look Inside The Office 18 | Life Lessons with Susan Mercandetti ’75

THE NEXUS FOR N.H. BUSINESS PETER T. PAUL COLLEGE OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS paulcollege.unh.edu

Where education is more than a matter of degree

Contents 4 | Letters

5 | View from T-Hall 6 | Campus Currents

A major gift of art, campus upgrades, supporting

student-athlete excellence, and more.

13 | Crossword Puzzle

14 | Inquiring Minds

Horseshoe health, good news for evergreens, weighing snow.

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39 | Book Reviews If Only You People Could Follow Directions,

by Jessica Hendry Nelson ’06 and Fatal Harbor,

by Brendan Dubois ’82.

40 | Alumni News 42 | Class Notes

Profiles of Daniel Ford ’54, Joan Stolar Smith ’73, Deborah Wiener ’80, and Erik Wochholz ’01, ’07.

61 | In Memoriam 64 | On Ben’s Farm

M A R K B O LTO N

AND THE DIPLOMA GOES TO... Academy Award-winning "Frozen" screenwriter and director Jennifer Lee ’92 encouraged the Class of 2014 to banish self-doubt at UNH's 144th Commencement on May 17.

Heavy skies lifted just in time for some 2,200 undergraduate and 488 graduate students ranging in age from 20 to 74 and representing 42 states and 17 foreign countries to receive their degrees.

16 | The Office No, it’s not a toy store—it’s the office of Carol Fisher, senior lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Dance and UNH’s only instructor in puppetry.

18 | The Road I’ve Traveled Forget about the corporate ladder. Sometimes the path to success is a series of moveable stepstools.

By Susan Mercandetti ’75

24 | Saving our Shores 40 years after Aristotle Onassis tried to build a massive oil refinery on its shores, Great Bay’s future is more precarious than ever.

By Suki Casanave ’86G

36 | Bay Man For decades, a reference to “Prof” on the UNH campus meant just one man: marine scientist C. Floyd Jackson.

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Letters to the Editor Many Hands

Kudos on the impressive winter 2014 UNH Magazine! The lavish section on UNH alumni in Hollywood is outstanding and from cover to cover the issue is first class, filled with fascinating articles and photographs.

My husband and I are flattered to have an article about our life in the Foreign Service included in the same pages. We thank you for including us with a very well written piece, and would like to add one more bit of family history: At Commencement 2010, the university awarded our son, Lee Miller Morin ’74, an honorary Doctor of Science degree.

We have always been proud of our ties to the university and are delighted to see it prosper.

Ann Miller Morin ’46 and Laurent Morin ’43 Charlotte, N.C.

Editor-in-Chief Kristin Waterfield Duisberg Art Director Valerie Lester ◆

Editorial Office 15 Strafford Ave., Durham, NH 03824 Advertising: (603) 862-6000 Email: alumni.editor@unh.edu Website: www.unhmagazine.unh.edu ◆

Publication Board of Directors Mark W. Huddleston President, University of New Hampshire Debbie Dutton Vice President, Advancement Joel Seligman Chief Communications Officer Tina Sawtelle Vice President of Finance, Advancement and Interim Associate Vice President, Alumni Association Shelagh Newton Michaud ’95 President, UNH Alumni Association

Your recent article “Many Hands,” which was excellent, referenced a project whose focus was glossy buckthorn. The picture you included was of common buckthorn. Would you please note the correction?

Steve Eisenhaure ’93, ’04, ’06G UNH Office of Woodlands and Natural Areas

Bridget Finnegan Creative Director Kim Billings ’81 Marketing Director ◆

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ROCKET SCIENTIST: Lee Miller Morin ’74 receiving his honorary Doctor of Science degree at UNH Commencement, May 22, 2010.

Happily Puzzled Ed. Note: Glossy-looking, indeed, but it does appear that the image we ran, above left, is of common buckthorn. Glossy buckthorn is pictured at right. Our apologies for the error.

Please keep Brendan Emmett Quigley’s crossword puzzles in future issues of the magazine. Love this addition!

Nancy Hobbs ’80 Colorado Springs, CO Continued on Page 12

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Photography by Lisa Nugent Design by Brown & Company, Portsmouth, N.H. University of New Hampshire Magazine is published in the fall, winter, and spring by the University of New Hampshire Office of University Communications and Public Affairs and the Office of the President. © 2014, University of New Hampshire.

Readers may send address changes, letters, news items, and email address changes to University of New Hampshire Magazine, 15 Strafford Ave., Durham, NH 03824 or email alumni.editor@unh.edu.

BE LO W R IGH T: R OBE R T H . MOH L E N BR O C K @ U S D A - N R CS PL A N T S D ATA B A S E / U S D A S CS . 19 89 .

It was so nice to see two of the women who did yard work on behalf of our organization [One Sky Community Services] pictured in the “Many Hands” article in the winter issue of UNH Magazine. A dozen men and women participating in the Residential Life Day of Service raked leaves, cut brush, cleaned gutters, and planted bulbs at the Newmarket home of three people living with disabilities. We enjoyed sharing donuts and cider, working hard, and planting bulbs—and the students learned a little about people living with a disability. We are looking forward to seeing those bulbs bloom in the spring and continuing our relationship with the students in the residential life program.

Many hands and good hearts do indeed make a difference in people’s lives.

Martha Bonneau ’82 Portsmouth, N.H.

Volume 16, #3, Spring/Summer 2014

World View

The View from T-Hall

The Student Perspective

By President Mark W. Huddleston

B R U C E C R A M E R / S N AV E LY A S S O C I AT E S

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hen I began visiting high schools across New Hampshire this spring to talk with students about the importance of higher education, one of my first stops was Manchester West, in a school district where many families struggle financially. Nearly 50 percent of its students qualify for free- or reduced-price lunch and just 28 percent of its graduates go on to a four-year college or university—well below the statewide average of 48 percent.

So, as you might imagine, there were a few skeptical young faces when I met with more than 100 sophomores and juniors at Manchester West in April.

At the outset, I explained that my goal in these visits is not to promote UNH exclusively. Instead, I want to get students to think about pursing education beyond high school—and to know that New Hampshire offers great options, including two-year community colleges and technical schools and four-year institutions, ranging from small liberal arts colleges to UNH and Dartmouth.

I love talking with high school students, partly because they ask great, pointed questions. In Manchester, the most common was, “How can I afford college?”

I understand why finances define these students’ view of college. Higher education is expensive. At UNH, the four-year cost of attendance for in-state students is now about $110,000 and $160,000 for out-of state students. If a family sends two children to college, that’s the equivalent of buying a single-family house in many New Hampshire communities—a debt few families can absorb. As a result, the students who do attend often pay by taking out astronomically large student loans.

As president of UNH, I see how well students from all walks of life perform here once they enroll. Thanks in large part to alumni donors, we can help many of them with scholarships.

We also have increased financial aid in recent years. And I am proud that we have been able to freeze in-state tuition for this past academic year and next. All of these efforts reflect our deep commitment to keeping UNH affordable and accessible.

Yet, I know it is not enough. And too often, high school students from financially challenged families assume that college is simply out of reach.

Fortunately, at Manchester West, I was able to offer great examples of UNH students like them in the Class of 2014. In fact, nearly one-third of our graduates are first-generation college students, and some 80 percent receive financial aid. Among our graduates are students who, just five years ago, may have also wondered if college was a worthwhile investment.

I was also able to share examples of our successful alumni, such Academy Award winner Jennifer Lee ’92, writer/director of the animated Disney movie, “Frozen.”

(Maybe you’ve heard of it.) Our keynote speaker at Commencement in Durham, Lee talked about her family’s financial challenges when she was growing up. And she spoke about the incredible education she received at UNH and how the lifetime friendships she developed here helped erase her crushing self-doubts.

“When you are free from self-doubt, you fail better,” Lee told our graduates.

“Because you don’t have your defenses up, and you can accept criticism and listen.

You don’t become so preoccupied with that failure, either, that you forget how to learn and how to grow. When you believe in yourself, you succeed better.”

Commencement is a wonderful celebration of academic success. And in honoring the Class of 2014, we also recognize the hard work and support of the families, friends, mentors and educators who have helped our graduates realize their full potential from day one. In this way, Commencement reminds us of how important it is to reach out to the next generation. When I visit with students at high schools such as Manchester West, I see so much hope and potential—and so many future college graduates.

I know how much we all want them to succeed, and I thank you for helping us to ensure that affordability is not a barrier to the many opportunities that UNH provides. ~

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Campus Currents Hackers Beware Cyber defense competition brings region’s brightest to UNH.

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secure. But people in our ‘company’ need to be able to work at the same time.”

And while the team’s focus is technical, Hilston says the interpersonal skills of communication, organization, leadership, and teamwork are equally important. “This isn’t a one-person show,” he says. “In order to succeed we must all work together and contribute our own personal excellences in our own personal ways.”

Despite the many hours devoted to the team, Hilston and Holmes call the work fun and a terrific way to boost their classroom studies with real-world experience. Indeed, many students leave the competition with job offers—employers eager for the opportunity to connect with bright young minds in the increasingly relevant field of cyber security support the competition in part for the opportunity to recruit there.

While the relatively young Wildhats team was not among the top-three finishers in March, they’re upbeat about their performance and their future prospects. “Every year I am so impressed with how much the students learn about what it takes to secure real-world systems,” says coach and event organizer Ken Graf, an instructor in the computer science department. “The competition is keen, the attackers are world class.”

—Beth Potier

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MIKE ROSS

MIND GAMES—They waved banners and wore face paint, but the screaming fans who filled Lundholm Gym to capacity March 6 and 7 weren’t in Durham for a sports event—they were teams facing off in a FIRST Robotics competition that drew some 2,000 high school-age engineers from schools around New England. Forty teams had designed and constructed their own robots to compete in a series of tasks that showcased the students’ computer programming and engineering skills, all for a shot at the national FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) contest and one of nearly 900 college scholarships. In between matches, teams toured the UNH campus, learned about the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, and met members of the university’s own WildCats robotics team.

CREDIT

his spring, some of the world’s wiliest hackers gathered at UNH in an attempt to bring down powerful corporate networks.

But no one on campus was worried; in fact, the hackers were welcomed. They went up against student cyber defense teams from 10 universities in the seventh annual Northeast Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, hosted by UNH’s computer science department.

“Hosting proves that we are serious and invested in excelling in the area of cyber security,” says Greg Hilston ’15, team captain of the UNH Cyber Security Club Wildhats.

For the competition, each of the 10 teams runs a common set of systems typical to a small business: email, websites, VPN (virtual private network), remote access, and others. During the threeday event, as each team’s “CEO” makes requests to these ersatz IT departments, hackers from the U.S. military, government, and top security firms try to attack the teams’ systems. Prevailing in the competition amounts to foiling the attackers’ attempts.

“It’s a few months’ IT work in a weekend,” says Wildhats president Adam Holmes ’14. “It’s our job to go in completely blind and make sure ever ything is

Home Improvement Campus upgrades underway.

FUTURE PERFECT: A complete renovation of iconic Hamilton Smith Hall will begin after the end of the 2014-15 academic year. The front section of the building will be restored to its former glory and new additions to the back will bring more classroom seats, informal meeting areas, hi-tech classrooms, and improved office space.

The newest of the university’s three dining halls, Holloway Commons is also the most popular. An expansion that will increase seating capacity by 365, to address the current shortage of seats and to accommodate future enrollment increases, is slated to begin in May 2015 and should be complete when students return in late August.

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BELOW: PERRY SMITH(2); LISA NUGENT

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eginning this summer, the university will undertake much-needed renovations on a trio of campus landmarks—Hamilton Smith Hall, Holloway Commons, and the outdoor pool—as part of a larger project to bring all UNH facilities up to standards that meet or exceed the needs of the campus and community. Work will begin this summer with the outdoor pool, which was built in 1937 as part of the Roosevelt Works Progress Administration and closed in 2013. The new pool, which is anticipated to open in time for the university’s summer 2015 programs, will incorporate many of the most popular features of the original, including a zero-depth entry section and lap lanes, and offer such community-friendly enhancements as expanded social areas and a bathhouse.

Renovations of iconic Hamilton Smith Hall, home to the English department and one of the campus’s most heavily used classroom buildings, will begin in 2015. The long-overdue project will include a 12 percent increase in the number of classroom seats, renovation of classroom and office spaces, and the addition of two technology-enabled labs.

Construction will be completed in the summer of 2017.

in Santa Catarina, Brazil. Harris and Safford will return to UNH in 2015 to share the fruits of their studies with students and colleagues here.

FAMILY TIES: On April 1, wildlife ecologist Jennifer Seavey became executive director of the Shoals Marine Laboratory, operated jointly by UNH and Cornell on Appledore Island.

Seavey is the first executive director to be based at UNH— and also the first to have a familial connection to the Isles of Shoals, an archipelago of nine islands six miles off the New Hampshire shoreline. Seavey Island, one of Appledore’s smaller neighbors, is named after her ancestor, William Seavey. Seavey comes to the lab

from the University of Florida’s Seahorse Key Marine Laboratory and brings “an ideal combination of academic credibility and relevant marine lab leadership experience,” says Larry Mayer, director of UNH’s School of Marine Science and Ocean Engineering.

TRANSITION: This summer, former state Supreme Court Chief Justice John T. Broderick will step down as dean of UNH Law to become the school’s first Warren B. Rudman Chair and executive director of its Rudman Center for Justice, Leadership, and Public Policy.

Taking Broderick’s place at the helm of the law school is Jordan Budd, who joined the faculty in 2006 and currently serves as associate dean for academic affairs. Budd, who was centrally involved in the school’s 2010 integration with UNH, has been appointed to a three-year interim term.

PAUL CHAIR: Joseph Dwyer, one of the leading lightning experts in the academic community, has been named the new Peter T. Paul Chair in Spaces Sciences at UNH. Credited with creating a new field of research on highenergy physics in lightning, Dwyer currently heads up the Lightning Research Group at Florida Institute of Technology’s Geospace Physics Laboratory.

He will join the UNH faculty at the start of the fall semester, with dual appointments in the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences and the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space (EOS).

“The EOS Space Science Center is one of the best places in the world to do space-based research and will provide me with the opportunity to expand my research in exciting new directions,” Dwyer says.

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News Briefs

KUDOS: Two UNH professors will be taking their talents abroad this fall as recipients of Fulbright awards, which are among the most prestigious awards a faculty member can receive.

J. William Harris, professor of history, has been named to the Fulbright Distinguished Research Chair at the Roosevelt Study Center in the Netherlands, where he will work on a book about the history of the American South since the Civil War. Tom Safford, associate professor of sociology, received a Fulbright Scholar award to study science and coastal development planning

Campus Currents

A Gifted Collection The generosity of Marilyn ’48 and Lawrence Staples ’49, ’50G transforms the holdings of the Museum of Art.

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help guide his work. “To have his work as a print is amazing,” said Durocher.

Durocher said the breadth of the Staples collection is so varied and valuable that UNH students will have myriad opportunities to study and learn. “The Staples collection has renewed interest and enthusiasm for print study.

Students will work with the collection to catalog and frame, and to study the historical, political, and biographical contexts,” says Durocher, who expects students from a variety of disciplines will benefit. “It enhances the museum as a resource for the entire university.”

For their part, Larry and Marilyn Staples were confident that UNH would provide a good home for a collection that they accumulated over seven decades and a pair of successful careers in medicine and education, respectively. “We are very fond of UNH,” Marilyn Staples says.

“It gave us the foundation for the following years.

We hope the art will be enjoyed by others and be a resource for the art department.”

“Graphicornucopia” will run from September 4 to October 19. The exhibit will include many of the Staples’ prints and also some complementary pieces from the museum’s permanent collection of 1,700 works of art, which includes paintings, drawings, prints, photography, ceramics, and sculpture. — Katie Fiermonti

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STARPOWER: The Staples’ collection includes works by a broad range of mid-20th century artistic luminaries. From top: Untitled, Sam Francis, 1968; Park Place Variations, Wayne Thibaud, 1995; Target With Four Faces, Jasper Johns, 1979; Untitled, Eduardo Chillida, 1970.

Above right: Artist and Model, David Hockney, 1974.

hen the exhibit “Graphicornucopia” opens at the UNH Museum of Art in September, the university community will get a look at new artwork that enhances the museum’s greater collection and provides major research opportunities for students and staff, thanks to the generous donation of two alums.

Sixty-two prints, a portion of which will be exhibited in the fall, have been donated by Dr. Lawrence Staples ’49,’50G and Marilyn Staples ’48 of Des Moines, Iowa. It’s a wide-ranging collection of modern prints by mid-20th century American and European artists that Kristina Durocher, director of the museum, describes as a significant gift. “It fills in a huge gap for us,” Durocher says. “Many of these artists were not represented in our collection, and some of the artists are very well known.”

The collection, which includes work by such artistic luminaries as Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Jim Dine, David Hockney, and Robert Motherwell, represents a period of great change and innovation in art, and is a vivid glimpse into life in the decades between the 1960s and 1990s.

Visitors to the exhibit will see still life, landscapes, figurative work, collages, and geometric abstractions. A colorful Richard Estes print of airplanes parked at an airport is a linear nod to the golden age of flight, and is juxtaposed with the more fluidly abstract bursts of color in Sam Francis’s work. Still another, a William Bailey still life of softly colored ceramic crockery, is a study of calm. “There is just so much variety to view, and so many opportunities for learning about art, culture, and history,” Durocher says.

Some of the works are representative of artists working from photographs or experimenting with the newer technology of the time, or are rare examples of artists using the print medium as a part of their own creative process. For example, one large piece depicts a grizzled human head on a pedestal. Artist Robert Arneson, considered the father of the 1960s ceramic Funk movement, was primarily a sculptor but created the print to

Reduce, Reuse, Peecycle Senior project gets students to think before they flush.

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MIKE ROSS

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isitors to downtown Durham this spring might have noticed students sporting an unusual accessory: a sticker with a yellow droplet on it proclaiming “I donated my nitrogen.”

No personal sacrifice was involved in the donation; rather, students did something they likely needed to do, badly. They patronized a custom-built Porta-Potty dubbed the Peebus.

Officially called Durham Urine Diversion & Recycle, the effort was the senior capstone project for three environmental engineering students and a business major, who solicited their well-hydrated fellow students to divert nitrogen-rich urine from Durham’s wastewater treatment plant and onto actual plants, where it could be used as fertilizer. Along the way, the students —environmental engineering majors Taylor Walter ’14, Alyson Packhem ’14, and Adam Carignan ’14, and business major Liz McCrary ’14—educated their classmates to think beyond the flush.

“Everybody pees and nobody thinks about where your pee goes,” says Walter. In fact, it goes to the town’s wastewater treatment plant, where much of its nitrogen must be filtered out before it enters the Great Bay estuary. Yet that same nitrogen makes urine a very productive fertilizer; a secondary goal of the project involved exploring the use of pasteurized urine as a fertilizer for hay crops.

Over four weekend nights in March and April, the students parked their Peebus at several well-traveled campus crossroads to solicit “donations.” The response was overwhelmingly positive, with nearly 400 students participating. The stickers generated buzz as they became the spring’s must-have fashion accessory in Durham bars.

EVERYBODY DOES IT: This spring, business major Liz McCrary ’14 and environmental engineering students Taylor Walter ’14 and Alyson Packhem ’14 solicited an unusual donation from their classmates: urine. Diverting urine from the local wastewater treatment plant can significantly reduce the amount of harmful nitrogen that makes its way into local rivers and bays.

The Peebus students worked closely with Durham town engineer David Cedarholm ’94G, who initiated the project after noticing spikes in nitrogen entering the plant on weekend evenings. He approached his former professor Nancy Kinner, professor of environmental engineering, who in turn pitched the project to the students.

“People don’t realize that urine is actually a valuable resource,” says Cedarholm, who drew inspiration for this project from the Rich Earth Institute of Brattleboro, Vt., a larger-scale urine reuse project.

In the end, the students fell far short of collecting the 1,000 gallons needed to fertilize one acre of hay crop, so they shifted their goal toward education, helping a wide audience get beyond the “ick factor” and understand the complex environmental issues behind the flush. “We did the donors a service, they did us a service, so it’s a win-win. And they learned something,” said Walter.

Plus, she added, “they got a sticker.”

— Beth Potier

BLAST FROM THE PAST: Louise Broom-Peltz ’83 didn’t remember losing her wallet as a UNH undergrad some 30 years ago—and she certainly wasn’t expecting the phone call that came on April 21, telling her that it had been found. While pitching in on a campus cleanup event on April 18 as a member of the Phi Mu Delta fraternity, Ryan Ross ’15 came across the battered leather billfold in a wooded stretch behind Horton Hall and initially thought it must belong to one of his fellow volunteers. The wallet’s contents, including several credit cards and a driver’s license dated 1982, were intact, and Broom-Peltz herself proved to be only a short Google search away in Windham, N.H. “She seemed pretty shocked and excited to hear from us,” says Ross. Broom-Peltz will pass on using the 30-year-old wallet, but she was delighted to get it back from Ross and his Phi Mu Delta brothers. “It’s quite the artifact,” she says. She got a particular chuckle from the “hideous haircut” in her license photo.

“I made the foolish mistake of cutting my hair extra short before going on Semester at Sea so I wouldn’t have to deal with getting it cut during the four months away,” she says. “Big mistake!”

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Campus Currents

A Home for Excellence New center emphasizes the student in student-athlete.

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rotation and a near-perfect floor routine

by Erin Machado ’14, the squad earned its fifth-highest score in program history and an automatic bid to the NCAA Regional Championships. The Wildcats finished fifth at

Sports Shorts

the April 5 event, held at Penn State in State College, Pennsylvania.

BACK TO BACK(STROKE): In February, the women’s swimming and diving team earned its second-straight America East championship with a record-breaking 877-point performance at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute

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Scarano isn’t the only one who feels that way. Anchored by an anonymous lead gift of $500,000, the $1.9 million project will be completed with private funds. “Without the support of a small, distinguished group of our most ardent supporters, this Center would still be on our dream list,” Scarano says. “We are immensely grateful for their generosity and belief in UNH.”

Sports and Recreation Center. It was the team’s sixth-ever America East championship and the third time in program history that the Wildcats have claimed backto-back titles. Three swimmers in individual events and the 400-yard freestyle relay team all contributed first-place finishes to the record performance, including Lauren McCandless ’14, who took her thirdconsecutive America East title in the 1,650yard freestyle and was

tabbed for the inaugural Dave Alexander Coaches Award at the end of the meet. Head coach Josh Willman and his staff were named the America East Coaches of the Year for the fifthstraight season.

ON ICE: In April, the women’s ice hockey team named Hilary Witt as the new head coach of the 37-year-old program.

A standout player for Northeastern University and the U.S. National Team, Witt’s coaching

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SOARING: The women’s gymnastics team didn’t have far to take its trophy when the squad earned its secondever East Atlantic Gymnastics League (EAGL) championship on March 22. The event brought eight teams from as far away as Pittsburgh and North Carolina to UNH’s Whittemore Center, the first time since 2003 the Wildcats have hosted the championship. With multiple First Team performances in every

hold up to 72 people. In addition to student-athletes who compete for UNH’s 20 Division 1 teams, the space will be available to elite athletes in the UNHbased adaptive sports and recreation program Northeast Passage. The fully ADA compliant facility will be accessible by a new elevator in the main lobby of the Field House, just outside Lundholm.

A key piece of the university’s overall emphasis on “the whole student,” the facility will have academic support staff and life skills staff as well as advisers and tutors.

Athletic director Marty Scarano says it significantly enhances his department’s ability to offer student-athletes the best opportunity to achieve academic excellence and develop skills for life beyond UNH. “This center has been a long-term priority of ours, and we couldn’t be more excited to see it finally come to fruition,” he says.

MIKE ROSS; BELOW: LISA NUGENT

he squeak of basketball shoes, the heavy clank of weights, the— sound of silence as students dig in on term papers and study for tests?

Starting this fall, the hottest spot in the always-busy Field House may not be Lundholm Gymnasium or the Jerry Azumah Performance Center but the new Student-Athlete Center for Excellence, which will offer a dedicated space and staff to student-athletes for academic support, career planning, and programs to help balance the demands of academics and a Division 1 sports schedule.

Under construction now, the new facility will take over space currently occupied by f ive decommissioned racquetball and squash courts on the second floor of the Field House. The center will offer quiet study rooms modeled after those in the university’s Dimond Library, a fully equipped resource room, breakout rooms, and a team/group meeting space that can

Golden Boy Taylor Chace ’11 is one of four alums who made their mark in Sochi.

CREDIT BELOW: LIS A NUGENT; RIGHT: CHERYL SENTER

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ith a Paralympic gold medal and a bronze already to his name, Taylor Chace ’11 could have been forgiven for being a little blasé about winning gold as a member of the U.S. Paralympic sled hockey team in Sochi, Russia, in March.

But the Hampton Falls, N.H., native and veteran defenseman is anything but. “Russia is probably my favorite,” he says of the medal, which came in a 1-0 victory over the Russian team on March 15.

Joining his 2006 bronze from Turin, Italy, and his 2010 gold from Vancouver, the Sochi medal marks the first time a team has earned back-to-back gold medals in Paralympic sled hockey. “This one is really special,” he says. Chace, who was partially paralyzed by a hockey injury in 2002, credits the UNH-based adaptive sports program Northeast Passage with helping him to recover and eventually find his new passion in sled hockey. A former Northeast Passage staffer, he’s not ruling out taking a shot at the 2016 sled hockey squad and a potential three-peat. (See Winter 2010 issue for a feature story on Chace and Northeast Passage.)

Chace wasn’t the only UNH alum to leave Sochi’s Bolshoy Ice Dome with new hardware. Women’s ice hockey player Kacey Bellamy ’08 and women’s ice hockey head coach Katey Stone ’89 took the podium February 20 as members of the U.S. Olympic team, which earned silver against Canada. And Alpine skier Laurie Stephens ’07 earned three Paralympic bronzes at Sochi for her performances in the slalom, downhill, and Super-G races in March.

decorated Witt as one of the all-time great players in women’s hockey, UNH athletic director Marty Scarano says, “she and knows exactly what it takes to succeed at this level and we look forward to her leadership in rebuilding UNH into a national contender.”

credentials include serving as assistant coach of the 2014 U.S. Women’s Olympic Ice Hockey team under head

coach Katey Stone ’89 as well as coaching positions at Northeastern and Yale University.

Describing the highly

SOCCER PITCH: Steve Welham was named the new head coach of the women’s soccer program on May 22.

Welham has spent the last eight years with

the women’s soccer program at Stony Brook University in New York, first as assistant coach and as associate coach since 2009. A magna

cum laude graduate of Seton Hall who also

holds a master’s degree in counseling and sport psychology from Boston University, Welham played professionally with the South Jersey Barons of the United Soccer League and was invited to try out with the Major League Soccer New York/New Jersey MetroStars. Former colleagues praise him as a “high character” and “high quality” coach, with the knowledge and skill to build an America East Championshipcaliber team.

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Letters to the Editor (Continued from Page 4) Keeping in Touch

Thank you for always putting together a wonderful magazine for the alumni.

I have just finished the winter edition, which was particularly special to me because of the interview with Shelagh Newton Michaud ’95, whom I had the pleasure of having as a student at Portsmouth High School many years ago. I remember how she thought about where to go to college and that being just up the road in Durham did not seem like being away at college. I remember saying to classes that college was what you made of it; I was from Dover and when I was in high school UNH was on my dream list. I was lucky enough to be accepted to the Class of 1970 and my four years were wonderful. I lived on campus and made a college life six miles from my parent’s front door. The university gave me a great

education in social studies that enabled me to teach many subjects in the field for 35 years.

I am so glad Shelagh enjoyed her UNH experience and I am positive she will excel in her new role as UNH Alumni Association board president.

Thank you for the magazine and I look forward to the spring edition.

Ann E. Boulanger ’70 Milton, N.H.

Act Two

While reading the story “Act Two” about Laurie Folkes ’70 in the winter 2014 UNH Magazine, I couldn’t help but think of the skit Laurie and I performed together in the early fall of 1967 as teammates on the UNH football team.

Following the end of our “double sessions” (double workouts) for coach

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Joe Yukica, members of the team were allowed to perform a skit. Laurie, Bob Paul, and I sang “My Girl” by the Temptations as our skit and in thankfulness that double sessions were over! Laurie was our lead singer and also played guitar, while Bob and I sang back-up vocals. It was a lot of fun and something I never forgot.

Laurie’s voice and style were amazing and I knew that he had performed many times before. While Laurie may be having success as an actor in TV and film, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had gone into the music industry. He was that good. Congrats, though, Laurie, on your successful acting career.

Thanks for making UNH Magazine so enjoyable to read with its relevant and diverse articles.

Jim Fiore ’70 Latham, N.Y.

ILLUSTRATION BY NATHANIEL GOLD

Get Puzzled!

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rendan Emmett Quigley ’96 is a professional puzzlemaker whose work appears regularly in The New York Times.

Among other outlets, Quigley’s puzzles also run in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Sun, Tribune Media Services, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post—and now UNH Magazine! You’ll be able to find the puzzle solution online; this issue’s answers are at unhmagazine. unh.edu/s14/puzzle.

CREDIT

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37 Battle cry of Durham’s “Brigade of Housewives” 42 Priests: Abbr.

43 Sunday song 44 Go head to head 46 Letters from desperate people 47 Unmannerly guy 48 U.S. Senator Judd ______ 50 Great Bay’s chemical villain 53 Nero’s year 54 Business tycoon Onassis who tried to buy up Durham Point 55 CEPS grad.

57 Contents of printer cartridges 58 See 4-Down 61 Great Bay’s natural filtration system 65 Skilled enough for 66 Funny Brooks 67 Peep hole?

68 More insolent 69 Rams fan?

70 “Superman” foe Luthor

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ACROSS 1 Shrink back from shore 4 Strike quickly 7 Sui ___ (unique) 14 Train stop: Abbr.

15 Must be 16 “Bring it!”

17 70’s Durham newspaper _______ Occurrences 19 Founding father of marine science at UNH Floyd _______ 20 Aching 21 Tribe in “The Time Machine” 23 RN’s dispense it 24 Sitting still 26 Bellwether aquatic flora of Great Bay 29 Old fort on the Oregon Trail 31 RN’s tubes 32 Sounds of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva 33 Leo the Lion’s co.

34 Bad habit 36 Superannuated

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DOWN 1 Mind reader’s specialty, for short 2 Air conditioning unit: Abbr.

3 Kind of beans also known as butterbeans 4 With 58-Across, stony solution to nonpoint pollution problem 5 Path of a fly ball 6 Small dog 7 Action figures with dog tags 8 It may have an attachment 9 Energy Reorg. Act of 1974 creation 10 “Mice!”

11 Followers of Bob Marley’s music 12 Groupies follow them 13 Harmonies 18 Wine barrel sediment 22 Ring move in gymnastics where the body is stationary in a horizontal position 24 Chip maker 25 Four-legged sewage sniffers 27 Prepare for a bomb?

28 Subtraction result: Abbr.

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30 “Be it ___ humble” 31 Hospital div.

35 Android alternative for smartphones 36 E = IR formulator 38 “___ Vendetta” 39 Old cartoonist Hoff 40 Symbol of stability 41 Converse silently 45 Kind of mania 46 Cause, as trouble 47 Office held by Cato the Elder 49 Go into a tirade 50 Actor Conrad of “The Kiss” 51 Mesopotamian, today 52 People, in Pisa 56 Saint Peter’s Church locale 57 Saint Thomas or Saint Martin 59 Drop bait gently 60 Gin inventor Whitney 62 Evergreen tree with elastic wood 63 Catcher’s spot?

64 Kind of appeal

S pr i ng/S umme r 2014 • Uni ve rs ity o f Ne w Hamps h i r e Mag azine • 13

Inquiring Minds

Highlights from UNH research

Bluebloods

Horseshoe crabs’ contribution to modern medicine comes at a cost. pring is the season of horseshoe crab love, when thousands of females come up on beaches at high tide to spawn, and the smaller males hitch a ride on their backs or scuttle behind them to fertilize their eggs.

Spring is also the season of the horseshoe crab harvest, when fishermen working for biomedical companies pluck them from beaches and take them to labs to extract their precious blue blood. It’s the only known source of a clotting agent— Limulus amoebocyte lysate—that’s used to test vaccines and medical devices for bacterial contamination. After removing 30 to 40 percent of each animal’s blood, the labs put the crabs back in the water or sell them as bait.

New research from UNH and Plymouth State suggests that biomedical bleeding of horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) might be playing a larger role in their decline than previously thought.

The primitive, odd-looking horseshoes play a vital role in coastal ecosystems from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Atlantic, plowing the muck in bays and estuaries to bring up buried nutrients that feed countless other creatures. Their eggs are also a major refueling food for red knots and other seabirds that fly from South America to the Arctic Circle each spring.

And while the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) limits the number of horseshoe crabs than can be killed for bait in the eel and conch fisheries, it does not regulate the biomedical harvest, though it does suggest “best practices.”

Biomedical companies harvested 530,000 live horseshoe crabs in 2012, according to data gathered by the ASMFC. The companies prefer females

S

because they are bigger and have more blood. Marin Hawk, the ASMFC’s horseshoe crab coordinator, says that reports indicate that fewer than 5 percent of the crabs die during extraction and transportation. But no one really knows how the live ones fare after release.

That was the question the team led by Win Watson, UNH professor of zoology, and Christopher Chabot, PSU professor of biology, tried to answer.

The team captured 56 horseshoe crabs in Great Bay and divided them among outdoor tanks at UNH’s Jackson Estuarine Lab and indoor tanks at PSU. For two weeks, the scientists monitored the crabs’ movements using tiny accelerometers duct-taped to their backs, video observation, or running wheels (like underwater hamster wheels). Then they mimicked the conditions of industry transport, pulling half the crabs out of the water, placing them in barrels in the sun as if they were on a boat deck, trucking them around for a couple of hours, and—after removing 20

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to 30 percent of their blood—reversing those steps.

The results were alarming. Of the crabs that had been bled, 18 percent died. And two weeks after returning to their tanks, the surviving crabs were much less active; their internal tidal clocks—which tell them when to spawn, as well as when to come up on mudflats to eat and when to return to deeper water so they won’t get stranded— were disrupted; and they suffered low levels of hemocyanin, a blood protein that carries oxygen throughout their bodies.

“They might not die right away, but they may die prematurely, they may behave abnormally, or they may not mate that year,” Watson says.

Although horseshoe crabs can survive without oxygen, being out of water for 24 to 48 hours is debilitating, as is exposure to heat –stresses that can be avoided by transporting them in tanks of cold, welloxygenated seawater, Watson says. He says regulators should consider enforcing such “best practices,” as well as banning

RIGHT: MIKE ROS S

WEIGHT WATCHERS: Winter 2014’s snowstorms and attendant roof collapse warnings may be a distant memory now, but a team of students and professors at UNH-Manchester has 2015 in its sights with a product that can help businesses and homeowners measure rooftop snow loads. Through the summer, six students led by Mihaela Sabin, associate professor of computer science, and Christopher LeBlanc, assistant professor of electrical engineering, will be working with civil engineering alumnus and entrepreneur Chris Dundorf ’02 to adapt his company’s SnowScale—a system designed to measure water content in snow loads in industrial settings—for commercial rooftop use. Based out of the Manchester’s campus brand-new Engineering and Technology Laboratory, which was launched by LeBlanc, the project received funding from two competitive grants awarded by New Hampshire Innovation Research Center and NH EPScoR.

all harvesting during spawning season inquiry,” says Dr. Barrett Rock, professor and limiting the number of females the emeritus of forestry and botany. industry can take. He also thinks the bioRock started the program in 1991— medical companies should be required to coincidentally, a year after a massive fund independent research on the impact overhaul of the federal Clean Air Act— of their industry. because he was alarmed at the deterio“What you really want is for the people ration in the region’s white pines and who are making all the money to help suspected it was due to air pollution. figure out how to do this in a more sustain- White pines are a sentinel species whose able manner, the same way that some of condition is a good indicator of overall the money from fishing licenses goes into forest health or distress. research about fish,” he says.

Each school chooses five white pines

—Katharine Webster on or near campus. And each spring, students—armed with simple measuring tools they make themselves from toilet paper tubes, paper, string, and steel Healthier air means healthier trees. nuts—measure each tree’s diameter, magine a class full of students arrayed height, and canopy density. Then they around a white pine tree in a 30-meter examine the needles for chlorophyll and square, staring up through toilet paper moisture levels, as well as damage from tubes at the foliage. Now imagine a sat- ground-level ozone, or smog. They also ellite 500 miles above the earth taking send needle samples to UNH for analyphotos of that same tree, in an effort to sis in a spectrometer, and their canopy measure the density and health of the for- observations are matched to the satellite est canopy. And imagine researchers at pictures using precise GPS coordinates.

UNH matching the students’ data to the “The satellite sees what the spectromsatellite images, square to pixel. eter sees, and the spectrometer sees what This is what citizen science looked like the students see, using homemade tools,” before the term was even coined. It’s all Rock says. part of the Forest Watch program, which Two decades of student research show for 23 years has enlisted science teach- the trees have grown healthier overall since ers and students at schools around New 1991. But trees on the Seacoast, where England to help UNH scientists monitor there is more smog, fare worse than trees in the region’s forests. the mountains, where there is less pollution.

“The program is fantastic for students Now Forest Watch researchers have because it’s authentic, hands-on, scientific received further validation of the students’

Forest Sentinels

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observations. Data on ground-level ozone collected by the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services shows that 1991 was the worst year for smog—and that as ozone levels have dropped, thanks to ever-tighter Clean Air Act limits, the pines have flourished, Rock says.

“It’s quite shocking. I didn’t expect this dramatic a correlation,” he says. “These environmental policy decisions can make a real difference. They can make the air healthier for us to breathe, and they can help the trees.”

—K.W.

S pr i ng /S ummer 2014 • Uni ve rs ity o f Ne w Hamps h i r e Mag azine • 15

I made this guy in a master class at a national puppetry festival. We had a block of foam and 30 minutes to come up with something.

f Of

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e h

Mouth puppets made from recycled materials are a regular part of my introductory class.

Strega Nona was made by a nontraditional student in one of my advanced classes—a nursing major, who was taking the class just for fun. We’ve lost touch, but she was really very talented.

16 • Uni ve rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p s h i r e Ma g a z i n e • S p r i ng/S ummer 2014

erful t and Pow The Grea z . . . one of the fO Wizard o ts I built with a pe p u p first ut four He’s abo th and t. n e d stu u m with a o feet tall, ove. His eyes tm eyes tha t up, as well. ligh

Foam is probably my favorite medium to work with for making puppets, because its very flexible and forgiving. Some people around here call me the “foam queen.”

f

f visitors don’t know ahead of time that Carol Fisher (below) has a thing for puppets, they certainly get the memo the instant they open the door to her office in the Paul Creative Arts Center. Hundreds of puppets—from delicate paper shadow puppets to oversized foam figures—crowd bookcases and shelves and the ledge behind Fisher’s desk. UNH’s only puppetry instructor

ce

and one of a handful in the country, Fisher has been accumulating her collection for more than 20 years, a mix of student projects, puppetry conference purchases, and her own handiwork. In this second installment in an occasional series about UNH professors’ natural habitats, Fisher takes us on a quick tour of some of her favorites.

Bill Baird created the puppets for the original “Sound of Music” and was the most famous puppeteer of his time.

Carol Lucha Burns gave me this poster when she retired—I’ll have to find another “Carol” at UNH to pass it along to eventually!

PHOTOGR APHY BY LIS A NUGENT

I bought this dress form at Marshalls, actually. It’s meant to be decorative, but it’s perfect for building puppet costumes on.

Even at age four I knew I was interested in theatre.

My parents were older and I had full-grown siblings, so I spent a lot of time by myself in creative play.

even I don’t ber where et remem letop pupp b this ta m, but fro tand came fun. You s e o ’r they the table t d e n t i c h ra r be a cha ppet, e t a e r u c half-p that’s rson. e half-p

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THE ROAD I’VE TRAVELED

SUSAN MERCANDETTI

What Corporate Ladder?

Define success for yourself—and then keep redefining it.

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FULL DISCLOSURE: I FLUNKED ITALIAN MY SENIOR YEAR. This was galling, particularly to my Italian parents. Thinking the class would be an easy A, I’d spent my mornings hosting a news broadcast on WUNH invece di frequentare il corso di italiano (instead of going to class—I’ve learned a little since). No class, no pass. And no more tuition money in the parental coffers.

I was the first in my family to go to college. The humiliating prospect of not graduating, to say nothing of the fear of having to move back in with my parents, sent me into despair. To my parents’ generation, success meant a steady job, preferably one with benefits. My mother suggested I work with her at the telephone company.

The thought of eating lunch with mom in the Ma Bell cafeteria stiffened my resolve to find my own path. Though I may have

skipped a class or two, I had written for The New Hampshire, Channel 11, and WUNH radio, so Bill Simms, a wonderful professor and adviser, took pity and arranged for me to make up my final credits with an internship at the White House. The White House! My first question was, could I wear work boots? I didn’t even own real shoes.

Leaving behind the wreckage in my Young Drive duplex, I started my internship in Washington. My job was to condense newspaper and television news stories into a tidy document and deliver the binder to the Secret Service office to be read the following day (this was the 1970s) by the President of the United States. No one was more shocked than I when, at the end of my two-month internship, I was offered a job as an editor of the White House news summary.

By Susan Mercandetti ’75

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Life was a tree filled with professional and personal possibilities.

I never wanted just one. But now it seemed that not choosing had closed off one avenue.

With my first paycheck I bought my parents a microwave, a symbol to them—and to me—that their daughter was on her way.

Which made it all the more unfortunate when, on the first night editing the summary on my own, I made a whopper of a mistake.

While writing a few paragraphs on the topic of the day, organic farming, I mistakenly wrote orgasmic farming throughout.

The next day my boss flung the binder across the room, knocking my UNH mug to the floor. In red ink, President Ford had circled all the “orgasmics” (I recall there were seven) and had scribbled in the margin, “What were you girls thinking last night?” I could have died; it would have been less painful.

But I lived to work another day, and before I knew it I’d plunged into a fullthrottle career that raced from the U.S. Senate to network television, through national magazines and book publishing and back to TV. Each job was demanding and came with a steep learning curve. Each was exactly right for me at the moment. I didn’t worry about where it was all leading; I just immersed myself in each step until the next opportunity came along.

Though I didn’t realize it for years, I was mapping out a life in segments. When you’re young, moving around is not only expected but lauded. As you grow older and more established in a career, change starts

feeling like a risk that might damage your hard-won reputation. The truth is, though, that few of us live anymore in the world my parents wanted for me, the one where you scale a single corporate ladder, get your 30-year appreciation plaque, and sit back to count the days till retirement. Especially for women, the corporate stepladder has fragmented into a series of movable stepstools whose varying heights can accommodate choice, desire, or necessity—in other words, life.

Those stepstools, along with the necessary change in mindset, became my path to sanity. But the story could easily have gone another way. When I was a producer for ABC’s “Nightline,” I was having a rare leisurely lunch one day with my thenboyfriend. We agreed to go to the theater the next night; expensive tickets were purchased. But, as often happened, news trumped the date and I hastily left to cover a story in the Philippines.

I landed in Manila only to receive an urgent message: My boyfriend was frantic that I had not shown up at the theater.

I’d completely forgotten to tell him I was leaving. I returned six weeks later having covered a hijacking in Pakistan, the release of Benazir Bhutto from prison, and who knows what in Hong Kong. I’d loved every second and didn’t stop for one moment to mourn a lost relationship.

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There were other tales too embarrassing to mention. I loved my kick-ass job.

The pace was dizzying; the adrenaline was rocket fuel. We were the TV girls covering stories around the world and creating an award-winning broadcast. Work was my life. For me, that was the very definition of success.

Then one night at a party, a powerful, older, unmarried woman was listening as I rattled off my recent wins: the big “gets,” the promotion, my upcoming blah, blah, blah.

Boy, I was amazing, right? Her response hit me like a tub of ice. “Don’t make the same mistake I did,” she cautioned, finger wagging. “Your job is more interesting than any man could ever be.” She was flagging the trap that lay right in front of me, the one I’d failed to see: I was unintentionally married to my work.

Lodged in the back of my mind had always been a passage from Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, the book that rocked my world in high school. Lamenting her fear of choosing one path over another, Plath wrote, “I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest.”

I was paralyzed by the thought of having to choose. Life was a tree filled with

professional and personal possibilities. I never wanted just one. But now it seemed that not choosing had closed off one avenue.

Luckily, I soon met a wonderful man who was more interesting than my job.

Wary of marrying a stressed-out crazy person, he said, “Do what you want to do, but I can’t fit in that world.” I was done with crazy anyway. Having already tested the bounds of child-bearing to their limit, I traded my leather “ready bag”—which all producers kept packed and handy for speedy getaways—for a plastic sack filled with diapers and spit-up rags. When I moved my stepstool away from the intense producer world I had ferociously pursued, to my amazement, something wonderful happened: I discovered a kind of success that looked far different from the one I’d left behind.

Thankfully, our financial situation allowed me to become a full-time mom with a part-time job—which didn’t mean I worked less, just more on my own terms.

Watching from the sidelines as my friends secured those top jobs I’d once coveted, the ones with demands and accolades as big as their paychecks, my aha moment was realizing that I was O.K. I worked at home as an editor for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, sometimes in my pajamas, while my children built sheet forts under my desk. For my life right then, flexibility was more valuable than any expense account. I redefined success in the shape of reading copy in the carpool line.

Once rid of the shackles of other people’s definitions, I was free to pursue what worked for me and my family. In various segments of my life, that has meant clinging to the flexibility of a part-time job or, once the kids were out of the house, throwing myself into the challenges of a large company. Once I gave myself permission to design my own career trajectory, I found the stepstools that worked for me. I found value in something other than a title.

The itch to change does not mean you’re fickle; it’s a necessary recalibration. By stopping now and then to redefine what

success means, we can experiment with the cocktail that is our lives and know that, in different segments, the percentages of charge-ahead and hang-back will vary. For me, re-evaluating success seems to happen about once a decade. Sometimes it requires a small tune-up, other times a total gut job.

I know how lucky I am to have the luxury of making these decisions. Not everyone can afford to do that—and even those who can, often don’t. I live in a city where running as fast as you can, because that’s what we’re programmed to do, is an Olympic sport. Every day I see powerful, successful women who have financial and personal choices but don’t act on them. The prospect of having no answer to the question “What do you do?” simply unnerves them.

In an episode of the TV series “The Good Wife,” the main character, Alicia Florrick, answers the question “What do you want?” this way: “I want a happy life.

And I want to control my fate.” With four decades of a career under my Spanx, I continue to reimagine what success will look like in the next decade. While I don’t know what’s coming, I’d bet a bushel of figs it won’t look like the decades past. ~ A FULL-THROTTLE CAREER: Mercandetti’s early jobs included a stint as a news editor in President Ford’s White House and as an associate producer at “Good Morning America,” where she worked with David Hartman (L) and Steve Bell (R). As a “Nightline” producer in 1981, she secured the first prison interview with Sirhan Sirhan, convicted of assassinating Robert Kennedy in 1968.

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‘E VERY THING THAT WA S IMPORTANT TO LE ARN, Susan Mercandetti was multimedia long before multimedia became a household word. After jobs in the White House and the Senate, she moved to TV, becoming the first news booker at “Good Morning America” and then a producer for “Nightline” from the show’s start in 1979 during the Iran hostage crisis.

Next she moved to magazines, as an editor for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, and then to books as senior editor of Miramax Books and an executive editor of Random House. Now she’s back at ABC News as vice president for business development and partnerships. Mercandetti and her husband, Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, live in New York and have a son and daughter in college.

She spoke with Jane Harrigan in her office at ABC.

Q: HOW DID THE KID IN WORK BOOTS WHO LEFT DURHAM FOR A WHITE HOUSE INTERNSHIP FIND HER WAY TO TV? I arrived at the White House with my newly purchased black loafers and skirt.

The guard had my name, and the assistant to the press secretary came downstairs and she knew my name, and I thought, “This is it, the brass ring; I’ve got it. Now I have to prove I belong here.”

For me, TV was the promised land.

Someone told me that before you get to heaven you have to go to purgatory, and that was Capitol Hill for me. When we (Ford administration) lost the White House, I knocked on doors and Sen. Ed Brooke hired me. I loved the job, but politics was not my passion.

So I stalked the networks. I would hang around the bars across from ABC and talk to the producers and directors about the news. I was a news groupie. I heard about a job with “Good Morning America,” and that led to “Nightline.”

Q: WAS BEING A “NIGHTLINE” PRODUCER AS EXCITING AS IT SOUNDS? It was fun and exhilarating and important. We’d wake up in the morning and have a conference call and say, “What’s the most interesting story in the world today?” And

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then we’d go do it. We felt it was our responsibility to bring important stories to life.

Ted Koppel is the most brilliant storyteller there ever was, and we were all his acolytes. The show became my graduate education; every day was a crash course in something.

Q: SO WHY DID YOU LEAVE? It’s hard to have a full life when you work in news. I had no trouble committing to it for many years; it suited my personality so perfectly. Then I met Richard. I was a crazy producer working berserk hours. I had stopped being satisfied with that life.

He was 40; I was 38. It was time.

The first morning I woke up with no job, I felt utter panic. I had never not worked since I was 14­—never, not for a minute. I remember sitting in my little house in my little den with my coffee cup and clutching the chair thinking, “What have I done?”

I’m a first-generation American. My parents came from Italy. My mother worked in a sweatshop; my father worked in a meatpacking plant. I just always had this yearning, this drive to be part of a bigger world.

When I told my mother I was going to take time away from work, she said, “You’ll last six days.” I lasted four and a half.

COVER STORIES: As a book editor, Mercandetti’s strategy was simply to contact interesting people and encourage them to write. Her first author was Dr. Jerri Nielsen, who had to treat herself for cancer while stranded at the South Pole—and had kept enough paper and video diaries for both a book and a TV movie. From that first success, Mercandetti moved on to many other high-profile book projects.

I LE ARNED AT THE ALL-NIGHT DINER’ Q: YOUR NEXT FEW CHAPTERS ALL RELATED TO TINA BROWN? T he S unday af ter I qui t Koppel Communications, I had a brunch, and this woman walked in who worked for Tina Brown. We started talking, and she said, “Come meet Tina; she has projects in Washington for Vanity Fair.”

Projects? I can do projects. Producers call ourselves “the get s--- done people.”

That worked for Tina because she was all about making stuff happen. I came up with a million ideas for her, and then I’d find people to do them and then help shape the story. When she went to The New Yorker, she asked me to come with her, and I did the same thing there.

Q: BOOK PUBLISHING IS A DIFFERENT WORLD FROM MAGAZINES AND TV. HOW DID YOU BREAK IN? I had always loved the idea of being a book editor but couldn’t figure out how to get there. When Tina left The New Yorker to start Talk magazine, I said no, I don’t want to do a startup magazine. She said let’s start a television wing, and I said no, I don’t want to do TV again with two small kids.

Then she said, “Well, there’s a small book imprint,” and I said BINGO! It was

like manna from heaven. Because I didn’t have any history in the book business, agents were not coming to me with projects, so I went and got my own. I would go to people I found interesting and say, “Hey, why don’t you write a book?” I did that with Tim Russert and with Rudy Giuliani. Later I worked with Queen Noor and Madeleine Albright.

Senate press releases, at “Nightline,” at magazines, in books. (This job) is more of a left-hand turn. It’s developing the story of what ABC News can be, beyond a news division.

What gets me up in the morning are ideas and the ability to execute ideas. I feel so grateful that I get to do that. My parents could never have imagined all this for me.

Q: AND THEN YOU WOUND UP BACK IN TV. WHAT DID ALL YOUR MOVES HAVE IN COMMON?

Q: WHAT WAS YOUR BEST JOB EVER?

I loved being a book editor. I still felt like I had so much to learn about the business.

But when great opportunities come along, I just say, “Why not?”

Vice president of business development and partnerships at ABC means I work directly for the president of the news division, who is a visionary. I work on growthrelated groundbreaking projects like helping to develop Fusion, a cable channel for millennials. ABC and Univision got married and had a baby, and the baby is Fusion.

This is a crazy new challenge unlike anything else I’ve done. I have never been a suit; I’ve always been a worker. But everything I’ve ever done involves telling a story.

It was storytelling at the White House, in

At UNH I went home every weekend to work as a waitress at an all-night diner. It was the ultimate place of great stories.

People always want to talk to the waitress at 3 in the morning. How to interact with all kinds of people; how to be fast; how to be clever; how to charm the crusty grill guy so I got my orders first—everything that was important to learn, I learned at the all-night diner.

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LARRY LANDOLFI

BAY WATCH

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By Suki Casanave ’86G

The man in the black Cadillac showed up late in the summer of 1973. Plenty of people had seen him, driving back and forth along Bay Road, the ribbon of pavement that winds around the edge of New Hampshire’s Great Bay between Durham and Newmarket. He was knocking on doors as he went, talking to property owners one by one. He wanted to buy land, he told them. For a bird sanctuary. For a family estate. For a golf course. People were mystified.

Rumor had it there was money to be made. Lots of it.

S pr i ng/S umme r 2014 • Uni ve rs ity o f Ne w Hamps h i r e Mag azine • 25

When the mysterious stranger in a black trench coat showed up on the doorstep of Nancy Sandberg’s farmhouse, she bit her tongue and listened. No, she told him, she wasn’t interested in selling. As soon as he was out of the driveway, Sandberg called her neighbors. Then she called a meeting. “We were all suspicious,” she says. “We decided we needed to try to figure things out. So we got organized, then and there.” The group appointed Sandberg as their chair and, just like that, the 27-year-old mother became a citizen activist.

The midnight phone call came in September, shortly after the visit from the trench coat-wearing stranger. Phyllis Bennett,

one of Sandberg’s neighbors, was still at work at the fledgling newspaper she’d launched just weeks earlier, and the voice on the line was urgent. He had a tip. Bennett assigned a reporter to investigate, and a few days later Publick Occurrences broke the story with a front-page headline: “Dark Shadow Over Durham.”

Another story followed shortly: “Pipeline Coming to Durham?”

The truth, it turns out, was more incredible than all the rumors: Aristotle Onassis was planning to build the world’s largest oil refinery on the shores of Great Bay. “When I saw those headlines, I hooted with laughter,” recalls Dudley Webster Dudley ’59, who was a freshman legislator in

Number of acres of open waters and wetlands encompassed by the Great Bay S 9 Square miles of floor exposed S 5,000 Average number of birds recorded in the NH Fish and Game Department’s home in the Great Bay estuary S 50 Number species of waterfowl, shorebirds, and wading birds that use the bay

7,300

26 • Uni ve rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p s h i r e Ma g a z i n e • S p r i ng/S ummer 2014

LARRY LANDOLFI

the New Hampshire House at the time. A 400,000-barrel-aday refinery on Great Bay? It sounded like fiction. As the stories continued, more details emerged: Supertankers would pull up to a terminal at the Isles of Shoals, the crude oil would be piped underwater to Rye, then over land to Durham, where it would be refined in giant tanks covering 3,500 acres of land on Durham Point and cooled with fresh water piped in from Lake Winnipesaukee. “It sounds far-fetched now,” says Dudley, “but Onassis had a lot of power behind him, including Governor Meldrim Thomson and William Loeb, publisher of the Manchester Union Leader. It was a tough group to go up against.”

So began a David-and-Goliath battle for the future of New Hampshire’s Great Bay. One of the country’s most important inland estuary ecosystems, the bay includes more than 7,000 acres of open water and wetlands and is home to more than 23 threatened or endangered species. Fed by fresh water from seven rivers, the bay’s mudflats, saltmarshes, and eelgrass meadows are awash in a nutrient-rich brackish mix that provides vital habitat and feeding ground for wildlife, as well as critical storm water control and a beautiful setting for boating and fishing.

And yet the bay, which lies 15 miles inland from the ocean was—and still is—a mystery for many residents and visitors, who

water in Great Bay at high tide; at low tide, water covers only 4.2 square miles, leaving nearly 50 percent of the bay annual winter waterfowl count on Great Bay S 23 Number of threatened or endangered species that make their as a wintering area or migratory stopover S pr i ng /S ummer 2014 • Uni ve rs ity o f Ne w Hamps h i r e Mag azine • 27

“Wouldn’t it be ironic to have done all this work . . . and then have the bay collapse?”

—Peter Wellenberger ’74 do little more than admire its shimmering beauty as they drive across the bridges that span its northern waters where it meets the Piscataqua River. “We realized that we’d better fight for this jewel, or we might lose it forever,” says Sharon Meeker ’75G, who had just moved to Durham in 1973 and wasn’t about to watch Onassis swoop in and destroy the very thing that had drawn her to the New Hampshire Seacoast in the first place.

In most of the state, though, public opinion leaned in favor of the refinery project. The energy crisis that gripped the country was in full swing, with lines of cars backed up for miles at the gas pumps. Capitalizing on the spreading panic, Onassis, Thomson, and Loeb relentlessly promoted the refinery’s benefits: Jobs for all! No more property taxes! Cheaper gas! “They struck while the iron was hot,” says Bennett. “It was hard economic times, and they had some convincing arguments.”

But the activists had their own ammunition—and Sandberg’s “brigade of housewives” to lead the charge. “Save Our Shores,” or SOS, became their battle cry—and the name of their group, which grew to several thousand members.

They created handouts, wrote newsletters, and circulated a giant petition. “We taped it end-to-end, and it ran the length of Main Street,” recalls Meeker, who also helped coordinate and distribute papers by 14 UNH professors addressing a slew of economic and environmental issues surrounding the refinery. Publick Occurrences published every word of their findings, devoting entire editions to the battle and providing activists with the facts they needed to fight back.

Jobs for all? Refineries require highly specialized labor, which meant most of the jobs would go to out-of-state experts, not to locals. Tax relief? Because an oil tank is considered “machinery,” which is not taxable in New Hampshire, most of the 3,500-acre refinery would remain tax-free. As for cheaper gas, research confirmed that prices near refineries in New Jersey and Texas were actually slightly higher than gas prices in

New England. And lines at the pumps were longer.

On March 3, 1974, the Olympic Oil Refinery team made a public presentation at the invitation of Durham’s selectmen.

NBC’s “Today Show” was in town for the event, and a standing-room-only crowd was gathered at the UNH Field House.

Students in flannel shirts and hiking boots faced off with Texas oil executives in suits.

Questions flew. Claims were made. One of the oilmen, recalls Dudley, responded to concerns about the refinery with this reassurance: “It’ll be clean as a clinic, and at night, with all the lights on, it’ll be lit up pretty as a Christmas tree.” The crowd roared.

Three days later, at the Durham town meeting, zoning changes that would have permitted the refinery project to go forward were soundly defeated. But it was the vote that happened, coincidentally, the very next day, in a special session of the Legislature, that quietly made history. Dudley’s so-called “Home Rule Bill,” House Bill 15, reaffirmed the right of individual towns to make their own decisions on large projects—such as an oil refinery. “The timing was incredibly serendipitous,” she says. “The legislators knew that if it was their town, and someone wanted to come in and do something big, they’d want the right to say no, too.”

In the end, “the most important thing that happened in Seacoast New Hampshire was what did not happen,” notes local historian J. Dennis Robinson ’73, recalling the 1974 defeat of the oil refinery on SeacoastNH.com. Thanks to a miracle of timing and events—a determined young legislator who wasn’t afraid to take on the governor, motivated citizens who threw everything into the fight, an upstart paper that helped to change history—nothing happened. But the Onassis chapter, as it turns out, was just the beginning of a much longer, more complicated, story—one whose ending has yet to be written.

Number of towns in the Great Bay watershed (42 in New Hampshire; 10 in Maine) S 20 Percentage increase in increase in impervious surface (roads, parking lots, driveways, rooftops) in the last 20 years—an increase of water quality (Some communities in the region are already at 12 percent) S 2,000 Acres of new impervious surface

52

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P E T E R W E L L E N B E R G E R ’74 LISA NUGENT [2]

Good News, Bad News A reserve is born—and another dark cloud gathers “I owe my career to Onassis,” says Peter Wellenberger ’74, who joined the student chapter of Save Our Shores when he was at UNH and has logged an awful lot of miles since, hiking the shores of Great Bay. He’s seen great blue herons wing past overhead and watched the fog shift and settle over the tidal marshlands—and he’s spent more than 20 years helping to preserve some of the very land the shipping magnate had been eyeing for his oil tanks.

“The refinery scared people,” says Wellenberger. “The bay had been spared this time, but it was still vulnerable.” Concerned

about what could be done to protect the bay in the future, former SOS members formed the Great Bay Estuarine System Conservation Trust, and in 1989, the Great Bay was accepted into a network of 28 protected coastal areas of national significance.

The dedication took place on the property of UNH physical education professor Evelyn Browne ‘62G (the site today of the university’s Browne Center) and was attended by many who had fought the refinery—including Wellenberger, who was appointed director of the new reserve in 1990.

With thousands of acres around the bay in private ownership—and ripe for development—Wellenberger and others took action, forming the Great Bay Resource Protection Partnership,

the last 20 years in population in the Great Bay watershed, the fastest growing region of the state S 120 Percentage six times the population growth. S 10 Percentage of impervious surface in a community that causes a decline in created in the Seacoast each year S pr i ng/S umme r 2014 • Uni ve rs ity o f Ne w Hamps h i r e Mag azine • 29

a coalition of conservation organizations focused on land pro- the Seacoast—and decided to stay—development skyrocketed. tection. In 1996, the partnership went to Washington in search Between 1990 and 2010, the region’s population grew 20 of funding—and came back with $20 million for the next four percent—faster than anywhere else in the state. Paved areas, years. Thanks to New Hampshire’s Senator Judd Gregg, the rooftops, and other “impervious surfaces” shot up 120 percent, money kept coming—$5 million each year for 12 years. Asked sending rain water straight into the bay without seeping into the one time by a reporter about whether all that money was an ex- earth for “filtering” en route. Meanwhile, the water quality in ample of pork, Gregg, standing on the shore of the bay, famously Great Bay was plummeting. By 2009, the EPA declared the quipped: “No, this isn’t pork.This is filet mignon steak.” By the Great Bay officially “impaired,” citing nitrogen overload and istime Wellenberger retired in 2012, the partnership had protected suing tougher standards for the 18 New Hampshire wastewater 107 properties totaling just over 6,000 acres. treatment plants that discharge directly into the estuary.

But even as the partnership went to work, another “dark “It really crept up on us,” says Wellenberger. “We were patting cloud” was gathering. As more people discovered the beauty of ourselves on the back, but one day I was gazing out at the bay and

1,600

Number of acres of eelgrass in Great Bay as of 2012 S acres of eelgrass in Little Bay, adjacent to Great Bay S in 35 countries started thanks to UNH research

3 0 • Un i ve rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p s h i r e Ma g a z i n e • S p r i ng/S umme r 2014

1,500 Number of acres of eelgrass lost in $54,000 An estimate of the annual value

[Fred] Short has been keeping an eye on the bay for 30 years —and what he sees has him worried. it hit me: Wouldn’t it be ironic to have done all this work, protected all this land—and then have the bay collapse?”

LISA NUGENT [2]

FRED SHORT

The Battle Continues Eelgrass, nitrogen, and the complexities of sewage On an August morning shimmering with late-summer heat, Fred Short, research professor of natural resources and marine science, leans over the gunwales of his skiff, strands of emerald eelgrass draped across his open palm. “Here, look at this,” he says.

“The blades are too thin.” He runs his longhandled hook through the water, stirring up a swirl of sediment. The eelgrass here grows in sparse clumps along the bottom, sometimes hard to spot in the murky stew of loose sediment. “This was a lush bed last year,” he says, hooking another piece of vegetation. This time, it’s a dripping chunk of sea lettuce, an invasive seaweed that thrives on nitrogen, hogging the light from above and eventually suffocating the delicate eelgrass.

Short has been keeping an eye on the bay for 30 years—and what he sees has him worried. Not only is the total area of eelgrass coverage shrinking, but density within the beds has also decreased dramatically. He steers the boat to a healthy bed, and it’s easy to see the difference. Here, the water shimmers clear and green, the sediment anchored by thick mounds of emerald eelgrass waving just below the surface. These days, he doesn’t see beds like this one very often. Many are at 40 or 50 percent of their original density. In adjacent Little Bay, the eelgrass has vanished. It’s also disappeared along some stretches of heavily developed shoreline in Great Bay. Zostera marina, commonly known as marine eelgrass, has been putting down roots for thousands of years, but until recently, most people had never heard of it. Today this underwater flowering plant, often called an “ecosystem engineer” for its

ability to stabilize the seabed and slow currents, has become the unlikely focus in a new battle for the bay. The enemy this time is nitrogen, hidden in wastewater treatment plants and septic tanks, parking lots and lawns, rain and snow and the air we breathe.

There are other threats, too—phosphorous, chlorophyll, hydrocarbons, sediments—all of it accumulating over time and, if left untreated, slowly smothering the life out of the bay.

And so the EPA recently stepped in with a new rule: 3 milligrams per liter is the new maximum acceptable concentration of nitrogen in water discharged from treatment plants. It’s a number with daunting implications for communities throughout the Seacoast, which collectively dump 20 million gallons of wastewater into Great Bay each day—none of it treated for nitrogen.

In fact, the wastewater discharge from some of the towns has been measured at up to 10 times the EPA’s acceptable level. For some communities, achieving compliance could require hugely expensive updates for outdated treatment plants, leading to the doubling or tripling of resident sewer fees.

And there’s another issue. Wastewater treatment plants are only one source of the problem. Of the 1,200 tons of nitrogen that makes its way into the bay each year, as much as 70 percent comes from so-called nonpoint sources—runoff from roadways, parking lots, farm land, and lawns, as well as groundwater that picks up the outflow from countless septic tanks. “While everyone agrees that we need to care for the bay, opinions differ on what that means and where the source of the problem lies,” says Rachel Rouillard, director of the Piscataqua Region Estuaries Partnership, a UNH-based, EPA-funded collaborative program that works to protect the health of the bay.

Those in favor of accepting the new limits argue that working on wastewater nitrogen is the fastest route forward—an identifiable source that can be targeted and fixed. They also point out that more than half the nitrogen overload in the bay comes from human waste, much of it from sewage treatment

Great Bay since 1996 S 76 Percentage of eelgrass biomass lost in Great Bay since 1996 S 0 Number of remaining of ecosystem services provided by one acre of eelgrass in Great Bay S 135 Number of seagrass monitoring sites

S pr i ng/S umme r 2014 • Uni ve rs ity o f Ne w Hamps h i r e Mag azine • 31

Last spring, the town [of Newmarket] became the first community in the Great Bay watershed to accept the new EPA permit. plants. But communities battling the EPA say it’s unfair to focus on treatment plants when so much of the problem is caused by nonpoint sources, and some insist that the science is inconclusive.

Indicator species like eelgrass, they say, are affected by weather, disease, and natural cycles, making definitive conclusions difficult.

Some towns have been so adamant about opposing the new EPA discharge levels that they banded together to form the Municipal Coalition to challenge the new limits. The town of Newmarket, meanwhile, decided to forge ahead on a sewage treatment upgrade, thanks in large part to education efforts that featured scientists like Michelle Daley, associate director of UNH’s Water Resources Research Center, who reeled off a slew of facts during information meetings: Dissolved inorganic nitrogen is up 42 percent in the past five years. Eelgrass biomass declined by 64 percent between 1990 and 2008. Oyster populations have plummeted. Last spring, the town voted 81 percent in favor of funding upgrades for the treatment plant, becoming the first community in the Great Bay watershed to accept the new EPA permit. But solving the sewage problem isn’t enough, warns Peter Wellenberger, who participated in the education efforts behind the Newmarket vote. “The question is,” he says, “how much more can the bay take?”

As Short wraps up his 2013 eelgrass survey, he pauses and looks across the water, his arm sweeping toward the horizon.

The scene speaks for itself. The tide is going out, slowly exposing an expanse of eelgrass growing along the edge of a vast mudflat. Along the line of receding water, a gathering of herons, egrets, and other wading birds stand poised, waiting, a cluster of spindly legs and beaks silhouetted against the morning sky. The rolling water carries all the tiny fish and other invertebrates that depend on eelgrass for survival, serving them up

to the winged customers, who snap their beaks and haul up breakfast as it rushes past. “It’s the ultimate bird buffet,” says Short, who worries that time is running out. Eelgrass is resilient, he notes, recounting success stories where nitrogen cleanup has sparked a return of aquatic vegetation.

But if we wait too long, he warns, the buffet may close for good.

Pollution Solutions Smart dogs, smart pavement, smart gardens On a breezy summer afternoon, Sable and Logan have their noses to the ground, sniffing. The two dogs are hard at work in the town of Durham, on the hunt for stinky sewage from leaky pipes, bad plumbing joints, seeping septic systems—anywhere untreated wastewater is escaping. When he picks up a telltale scent, Sable, a German shepherd mix, announces his discovery with a bark; Logan, a collie, promptly sits. These doggie detectives from Environmental Canine Services in Michigan are saving money for towns tracking contaminated water. Unlike standard laboratory testing, which can exceed $100,000 and take many weeks, this eight-legged team costs only $5,000-$10,000 for a week of work—and can provide immediate results.

Sable and Logan are on the cutting edge—smart canines who are sniffing out new solutions to the daunting problem of nonpoint source pollution. Plus, they’re photogenic, which is more than you can say for most pollution solutions. James Houle ’95, program manager for UNH’s Stormwater Center, admits a few cute dogs could come in handy in his line of work, where it can be tough to get people to pay attention. While the highly charged debate around Seacoast wastewater treatment plants generates headlines, nonpoint source pollution tends to suffer from invisibility. It’s hard to get people excited about policies and parking lots, notes Houle. “But we need to be moving on all fronts.

Gallons of wastewater dumped into Great Bay each day. S 18 Number of municipal in Great Bay each year (30-50 percent from wastewater treatment plants, the rest from to be reduced for eelgrass to thrive again S 450 Number of storm water drains in Portsmouth that empty into the

20,000,000

32 • Uni ve rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p s hi r e Ma g a z i n e • S p r i ng/S umme r 2014

MICHELLE DALEY (L) ANNA KOBYLINSKI (R) LISA NUGENT [2]

Sometimes tackling pollution can feel like playing whac-a-mole,” he says. “You go after one problem, but then another crops up.

It’s a very complex issue.”

It wasn’t always this way. Historically, gravity and dilution took care of most pollution. Rain fell to earth, and contaminants were taken up by vegetation or “cleaned” as water seeped through the ground and then further diluted in the giant wash of water flowing into the ocean. Today, though, more and more communities are reaching 10 percent impervious surface area—the point at which water quality begins to degrade. In big cities, impervious surface areas can be as high as 90 percent. The earth can’t keep up. Which is why Houle gets so excited about a particular plot

of pavement at a shopping complex in Greenland, N.H. A mere five percent of the sprawling parking lot in front of Target and Lowe’s, the small section of porous pavement has been so successful at cleaning runoff that the water flowing back into Pickering Brook—and eventually into the bay—is cleaner than the water in the brook itself. “What we did was try to mimic the hydrology of the forest,” says Houle. “Underneath the porous pavement we built a giant storage area full of gravel—essentially a reservoir.” Water from the rest of the parking lot is directed into this underground area, where naturally occurring, beneficial bacteria go to work. “Basically, we slow down the water,” says Houle, “and return it to the brook clean.”

treatment plants that discharge into the estuary (10 into the bay; 8 into the rivers) S 1,200 Tons of nitrogen dumped nonpoint source pollution, including fertilizers and leaking septic systems) S 45 Percent by which nitrogen needs bay (or a tributary)—none of which are tested for nitrogen S pr i ng /S ummer 2014 • Uni versity o f New Hampsh i r e Magaz ine • 33

There’s even hope for older developments, according to Sharon Meeker, who went on after volunteering with SOS to Houle. In Dover, the Hannaford shopping center that was built spend her career as a marine specialist in the New Hampshire along Berry Brook sprawls over 11 acres. “For years, all the SeaGrant Program, says motivating people and communities to water that fell on the pavement and rooftops in that development make changes is a constant challenge. “One of the hardest things went straight into the brook untreated,” says Houle. “And from is coming together around something that doesn’t seem like an there it flowed to the Cocheco and into the bay.” Five years and emergency,” she says. “The key is getting people to understand 13 manmade gravel wetlands later, the impervious surface has that we all have a stake in what happens.” been cut nearly in half—from 30 percent to 17 percent. The A new state-funded initiative called Soak up the Rain Great ultimate goal is 9.5 percent, below that critical 10 percent thresh- Bay is helping homeowners become stakeholders simply by takold where water quality starts to degrade. “Our goal would be ing action in their own yards—building rain gardens to catch to have every neighborhood transformed like this,” says Houle. runoff from driveways and lawns before it reaches Great Bay. “But it won’t happen overnight.”

Peter Wellenberger, head of the Great Bay Stewards who are

Acres of oyster beds existing in Great Bay before 1970 S 80 Acres of native oyster beds existing in and The Nature Conservancy S 30 Tons of shells collected from area restaurants in the past three years place in 10 years S 12 Number of oyster farms in Great Bay—up from just one a few years ago S 20 Number of

900

34 • Uni ve rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p s h i r e Ma g a z i n e • S p r i ng/S umme r 2014

“I feel some real responsibility to take care of this planet.”

— Oyster farmer Steve Weglarz ‘83

ABOVE: L ARRY L ANDOLFI; RIGHT: LIS A NUGENT

spearheading the effort, says planting a garden may seem like a small thing. “But if you do a thousand of them,” he says, “it starts to add up.”

awards for Best Survival Rate, Greatest Number of Oysters in One Cage, Cleanest Oysters Ever, and, of course, Biggest Oyster.

On the menu for the 2013 ceremony were Cedar Point oysters grown by Steve Weglarz ’83, one of about 10 oyster farmers who have recently set up shop in Great Bay—and become part of the Hope on the Halfshell restoration team. High-density farms, explains Konisky, where The humble mollusk: superhero thousands of mollusks grow suspended in a relatively small space, And then there’s the oyster, an unlikely could become an important supplement to reef rebuilding efforts. superhero that has recently been enlisted A few weeks after the awards ceremony, on a raw November to help save the bay. Because a single oys- afternoon, Weglarz and his four kids are standing at the edge of ter filters up to 40 gallons of water a day the bay hauling oyster gear from the water. It’s the last task of the simply by dining on plankton, oyster reefs season before winter settles in. To the west, just below the spot on create massive natural filtration systems. the opposite shore where the sun is slipping from view, 200,000 “They function like kidneys for the bay,” oysters stacked in two dozen 4-foot high “condos” float in the icy says Ray Grizzle, research professor of brine, ready to wait out the winter in hibernation. Weglarz’s three zoology at UNH. boys, Dylan, Jake, and Liam, untangle ropes and buoys, pulling Not so long ago, the Great Bay es- bits of sea lettuce from the empty condos, then strap the gear to tuary was loaded with oysters—more the trailer. Back home, they’ll repair and rig the equipment for than 1,000 acres of them. Today, there spring, when the boat will go back in the water, and it’ll be time are barely 100 acres left, the population decimated by disease, pollution, and over harvesting. But Grizzle and Ray Konisky ’03G, marine conservation ecologist for The Nature Conservancy’s Oyster Conservationist Program, are on a mission to restore the humble mollusk—as are some 58 local “oyster sitters” who have volunteered to help reestablish the population.

Restoring oyster beds is painstaking work. It starts with clamshells—100 tons of them—trucked in from a Rhode Island seafood processor, cleaned and dried, and then loaded onto a barge. Next, a 150-horsepower pump rigged to a power hose blasts shell across the water in 50-foot swaths, covering the muddy bottom, creating a starter home for baby oysters, which need a solid surface to cling to start working the farm again. Little sister Mia grabs a mesh to as they grow. The idea is that, with a head start, the mollusks bag, empty of oysters and in need of cleaning. “I feel some real will rebuild a reef, creating a giant natural water-filtering machine. responsibility to take care of this planet,” says Weglarz, who It’s slow going, though. It’s taken five years to build just 15 acres. hopes that his oyster farm will play a small part in the ongoing The citizen oyster program provides just a fraction of the effort to “save our shores” and that he himself will be part of oysters for the restored reefs, but the program is growing and has another group of determined citizens banding together to change been such a success that each season concludes with an awards history. If we do it right, he hopes, his own children will find a ceremony. The good-natured competition can be fierce, with better bay waiting for them when they grow up. ~

the bay today S 13 Acres of oyster beds restored in the past five years thanks to a joint effort between UNH and donated to the oyster restoration effort S 200 Acres of oyster beds the restoration program hopes to have in gallons of water a single oyster can filter in one day S pr i ng/S umme r 2014 • Uni versity o f New Hampsh i r e Magaz ine • 35

Prof

BEFORE SAVE OUR SHORES AND THE GREAT BAY RESOURCE PROTECTION PARTNERSHIP THERE WAS FLOYD JACKSON, UNH’S FIRST MARINE SCIENTIST

By Jeff Bolster

F

AND AN EARLY CHAMPION OF THE BAY.

loyd Jackson could do just about anything. Skin a mouse with surgical precision, make wine, explore the northern wilderness by dog sled, change lives. He started by remaking his own: having come to UNH from the Midwest as a landlocked specialist on “plant lice,” or aphids, he became an expert on marine life, geology, and zoology—an ecologist even before the word had been invented.

For decades, on a campus of professors, a reference to “Prof” meant just one man. Teacher, chair of the UNH Biological Institute, dean of the College of Liberal Arts—Jackson inspired generations of students, and the marine science lab he founded in 1928 on the Isles of Shoals remains a special learning environment today. But Jackson’s legacy extends well beyond the marine science community; everyone in the Seacoast entranced by the special beauty of Great Bay, Little Bay, and the mighty Piscataqua River is in debt to Floyd Jackson, who promoted stewardship of the estuary long before such caring was fashionable. Ironically, he also advocated its development. And with the Piscataqua’s health and future once again in the news, the story of the UNH biologist who began to investigate this enchanting ecosystem a century ago reveals a defining paradox: how attention to the conservation of marine resources has long co-existed with actions that degrade them.

Christened Cicero Floyd, Jackson was born in White County, Indiana, in 1883. His career in zoology began with childhood

afternoons spent catching frogs and other small animals, and by high school he’d been sufficiently bitten by the biology bug to purchase his first microscope. That would have been around 1900, when the best and brightest minds in American biology were utilitarians, striving to understand organisms so as to better exploit or restrain them.

Jackson believed that biology contributed to the promise of American life, and that nature should benefit society. After graduating with a master’s degree from Ohio State University, where he taught histology and embryology, he landed a job in 1908 as assistant entomologist at the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, thanks in large part to his Midwestern aphid work. The turning point in his career came several years later, in 1913 or 1914, shortly after the publication of his textbook, Elementary Entymology. Floyd Jackson got access to a boat.

The Oyster River flowed south near the muddy unfinished campus that had been Ben Thompson’s farm, over the fall-line at Newmarket Road and toward the inviting expanse of the Little Bay and Great Bay estuary. Much of the mud flats between the Bellamy River and Broad Cove were densely covered with eelgrass, ideal habitat for eels, minnows, sticklebacks, and small flounder, and while surveying vertebrate distribution, Jackson became enchanted with the bay and the rich marine life living there. His “Ecological Features of Great Bay, New Hamp-

36 • Un i ve rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p s hi r e Ma g a z i n e • S p r i ng/S ummer 2014

shire,” published in 1922, became the first scientific study of the estuary ever produced, its findings a record of how much we have lost.

“Opposite the mouth of the Oyster River,” Jackson noted, was a strip of hard sand in about 30 feet of water known as the “Cod Grounds,” where in early spring and late fall one could find “a considerable school of codfish ranging in weight from six to fifteen pounds,” in addition to large cunners, sculpin, flounders, and the occasional skate. Today, of course, such fish would swim there only in anglers’ dreams, but significant human impacts already had occurred by the time Jackson assessed the Great Bay ecosystem in 1915. “Considerable sewage” he noted, was being “poured either directly or indirectly into the waters” by surrounding towns, and many species of fish, once indigenous to the system, had already disappeared thanks to human activities—Atlantic salmon, common sturgeon, shad, mackerel, bluefish, and striped bass.

Great Bay whetted Jackson’s appetite for studying larger marine systems and he soon purchased a gasoline-powered launch capable of operating in coastal waters. Naming the boat Shankhassick, the Native American term for the Oyster River, he set his sights on the Isles of Shoals. There, he thought, “every marine condition imaginable” would be within easy access for students. “The islands themselves,” he wrote, “although bleak and barren, hold a charm which is very difficult to explain.”

Jackson’s Marine Zoological Laboratory made its debut in the summer of 1928, operating out of a handful of buildings on Appledore—the largest island—that had been abandoned when the Appledore Hotel burned.

The logistics were daunting: everything for the colony of 50-60 people had to be carried in and out by boat, buildings had to be reconditioned and a wharf constructed, and it was so cold that the 14 hardy students who had signed on that first year burned everything in sight—including renowned 19th century poet Celia Thaxter’s garden gate. Enrollments grew steadily, however, and by the eleventh season Jackson was justifiably proud that his program had “produced a proportionally large number of biological celebrities” who went on to medical school or became research scientists.

Prof’s infatuation with oceanography and the Shoals did not prevent him from pursu-

ACADEMIC EXPLORER: Prof wrote some of the definitive text books on zoology, geology, and marine life of his day, but nothing made him happier than field work. His specimen “collecting trips” took him from Labrador to North Carolina.

HIS GRUELING WINTER E XPEDITIONS, WHE THER IN NORTHERN NE W H A MP SHIRE OR L A BR A DOR, A LWAYS DEPENDED ON THE C A PA BLE SLED DOGS R A ISED AT HIS HOME NE A R JACK SON’S L A NDING, IN DURH A M. HE LOV ED THOSE DOGS. ing other scientific interests. A self-styled biological explorer committed to field work, he made regular “collecting trips” for specimens. August 1931 found him at Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. A few months later, Prof canoed through North Carolina’s cypress swamps, wearing his signature fedora hat. At the tail end of the summer of 1932 he explored the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, including southern Labrador.

Ultimately he made 15 trips there. Using his canoe in summer and his sled and Siberian Huskies in winter, Prof discovered—among other things—a new subspecies of deer mice.

His grueling winter expeditions, whether in northern New Hampshire or Labrador, always depended on the capable sled dogs raised at his home near Jackson’s Landing, in Durham. He loved those dogs.

In 1942, World War II shuttered Jackson’s beloved Shoals laboratory, which wouldn’t reopen until Cornell professor John Kingsbury hosted a two-week undergraduate marine biology program there almost 30 years later. But the setback did not diminish Prof’s commitment to marine science or his interest in the bay. Despite numerous impediments, including gasoline rationing and the induction of one after another of his researchers into the armed forces, he spent the war years researching and writing “A Biological Survey of Great Bay New Hampshire.” It was a curious document. On the one hand, it was pure science, with measurements of pH, nitrates, turbidity, and “over 4,000 separate bacteriological cultures” that quantified dreadful fecal contamination in the estuary. At the same time, however, it was a promotional piece, enthusing that “the Great Bay area offers ideal post-war projects.” One section went so far as to lay out the best locations for summer cottages.

Jackson believed that improvement of the bay hinged on several factors. Proper sewage disposal came first. After that, remedying fishes’ access to breeding grounds was important, as was his hope that his Biological Institute would be able to find “disease-

MESSING ABOUT IN BOATS: Floyd Jackson set his sights on the Isles of Shoals after he acquired a gasoline-powered launch he named Shankhassick, the Native American term for the Oyster River.

resisting strains of eel-grass” to combat the wasting disease that ravaged beds during the 1930s—and that, unfortunately, continues to this day.

He retired from teaching in 1952, but Jackson never stopped researching, writing, or messing about in boats. Each spring he and his boating buddies, William L. Prince II ’30 and George Frick, an emeritus natural resources professor known as Curly, set the channel marker poles in the Oyster River.

Prof always wore a necktie.

Jackson died in 1970 at the age of 87.

Several months after his death, UNH dedicated the Jackson Estuarine Laboratory at Adams Point, inviting Eugene P. Odum, the most respected ecologist in the nation, to deliver the dedication address.

The choice was at once fitting and ironic: Odum’s path-breaking textbook Fundamentals of Ecology appeared in 1953—just after Jackson’s retirement. The book profoundly influenced the next generation of biologists, emphasizing the conservation and zoological interconnectedness with

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which Jackson had experimented, while eclipsing the purely utilitarian approaches on which Prof had been raised, and which he never entirely shook.

Prof was of a different generation. He wrote about New Hampshire’s stunning estuary and coastal ocean for nearly 50 years with a curious amalgam of inquiry, developmental enthusiasm, and conservation, documenting human impacts such as the heavy pollution of Exeter’s Squamscott River with an unsparing eye. As his heirs, we do well to remember that Jackson’s legacy is not only his passion and inspiration, but his understanding that the ecosystem through which he defined himself—and whose restoration he sought—remains vulnerable to the often unwitting actions of those who lean too heavily upon it. ~ Jeff Bolster is a professor of history at UNH. His most recent book, The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail (2012), won four awards, including the Bancroft Prize.

Book Reviews Of Note

If Only You People Could Follow Directions Her brother’s keeper

A The Blessings

by Elise Juska ’97G, Grand Central Publishing, 2014.

Out on a Limb: What Black Bears Have Taught Me About Intelligence and Intuition

by Ben Kilham ’74, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013.

t a grandfather’s funeral, Jessica Hendry Nelson ’06 finds her brother dressed in a yellow jumpsuit and handcuffs. After the service, other mourners go to the cemetery. Eric, serving time for theft, heads back to jail in a police van.

This remarkable scene crystalizes a recurring theme of If Only You People Could Follow Directions (Counterpoint, 2014), a collection of linked autobiographical essays about a rough-and-tumble childhood and its aftereffects in early adulthood. Growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Nelson lived by her wits as, time and again, the important people in her life were physically or mentally absent. Her father spent years away from home—in jail, rehab, or a halfway house—and died when she was in high school. Her mother drank and carried a case in her purse with marijuana and a glass pipe. Eric, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, survived a heroin overdose.

Hendry Nelson tells her story in an impressionistic, nonlinear style that jump-cuts back and forth in time

and space as she maps the psychological carnage, especially that caused by a brother whom she loves but from whom she has had to distance herself for her own well-being. She at first blamed herself for some of Eric’s crises, but over time realized their roles had been “written in our DNA.” A turning point seems to have occurred after she left home—first for UNH, then for graduate school at Sarah Lawrence and ultimately for life in Vermont with a man who offered the stability her family couldn’t provide. In her Acknowledgments, Hendry Nelson credits UNH teachers Andy Merton and Meredith Hall for giving her “the tools and encouragement that have sustained me these many years.” But she wisely avoids the unnaturally rosy tone of memoirists who imply that the effects of troubled childhoods don’t linger. She seems instead to share the guarded hope of a professor who told her, “We find what sustains us, and if we are very careful, or very lucky, we do not lose it.”

—Janice Harayda ’70

Fatal Harbor A New Hampshire mystery

W Toxic Staple: How Gluten May Be Wreching Your Health—And What You Can Do about It! by Anne Sarkisian ’64, Max Health Press, 2013.

Web Extra For more books by alumni and faculty members, see unhmagazine. unh.edu.

hy isn’t suspense novelist Brendan DuBois ’82 police detective Diane Woods, in a coma after a vicious better known? Perhaps fittingly, it’s a mystery. assault outside a local power plant. In his latest outing, Consider a few of the honors won by DuBois, the Cole remains outraged by the attack and sets out to find author of 16 novels and more than 120 short stories. the assailant. His early stops include Durham, where One of his stories appeared in The Best American he seeks out a UNH student who has ties to the antiMystery Stories of the Century along with nuclear activist with who injured his friend. work by O. Henry, Raymond Chandler, The young woman links a UNH philosophy and Flannery O’Connor. Another earned instructor to the violent protestors. him a spot in The Best American Noir of the Cole follows leads from Washington, Century, which included fiction by Elmore D.C., to the White Mountains, and faces Leonard, Dennis Lehane, and Joyce Carol escalating threats to his life from a killer with Oates. And yet he lacks the fame of the litera radical political agenda. Part of the fun ary superstars with whom he keeps company of his story lies in guessing the identities of in anthologies. the fictionalized New Hampshire spots he DuBois may catch up if his books remain visits: Is the Falconer nuclear power plant as engaging as his eighth mystery about the New Hamp- Seabrook? Was the Layfayette House hotel inspired shire-based amateur sleuth Lewis Cole. Fatal Harbor by Wentworth-by-the-Sea? DuBois provides clues (Pegasus, 2014) is a snappy, fast-paced sequel to the that, if you still aren’t sure, may inspire you to do some 2011 Deadly Cove that ended with Cole’s best friend, sleuthing of your own. ~ —J.H.

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A l umni Ne w s main draw! Students wanted to know if I’d ever met David Ortiz or other players. That kind of thing. But there were also a lot of very thoughtful questions about finding work-life balance and what kinds of skills employers are seeking.

Covering all the Bases A conversation with Red Sox director of special projects Fred Olsen ’97.

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By Dave Moore

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hen the Boston Red Sox lined up at Fenway Park to receive their championship rings on opening day this spring, Fred Olsen ’97 was there to claim his—right along with David “Big Papi” Ortiz, Jon Lester, and his favorite player, Dustin Pedroia.

Not every member of owner John Henry’s front-office staff got a ring. But when one of your chief responsibilities is to manage postseason operations—and 2013 marked one of the greatest postseason operations in Red Sox history—you get one.

Were you always interested in baseball?

I loved playing sports as a kid, especially basketball and soccer.

T-ball was about as far as I got with baseball, although I came to love the sport and became a lifelong Red Sox fan at an early age.

How did you land your job with the Sox? In 2005, my wife and I had just moved to Boston from Washington, D.C., where I earned a master’s degree in international commerce at George Mason University while working at the European Institute, a public policy forum that focuses on transatlantic relations. I managed to get a job in the Red Sox ticket office. In one way, I felt lucky to land anything at this kind of organization.

On the other hand, it was a bit of a risky move after “power jobs” in Washington and Wall Street.

I chose to take the long view.

And that was?

Relentless networking and taking on extra assignments with the goal of advancement. And that’s exactly what I did. My break came in 2009, when the organiza-

tion needed a project director for the NHL’s Winter Classic hockey contest at Fenway Park. There had already been two classics in other U.S. venues, but we decided to expand the Classic to include two college games. We dubbed it “Frozen Fenway.” You may recall it featured a dramatic come-frombehind win over Northeastern by the UNH women’s hockey team?

Anyway, the event was so successful I soon found myself in charge of all non-baseball events at Fenway, including movie nights, international soccer friendlies, and postseason operations.

You were recently back on campus?

As a business administration major at UNH, I was very active in international education—I’m a dual citizen of the U.S. and France.

To this day, I count my internship in Greece and study abroad in France as highlights of my undergraduate years. This spring, I was invited to deliver a series of lectures about my UNH years and subsequent career by the Center for International Education.

How were you received?

Well, I’d be lying if I said the Red Sox connection wasn’t the

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What is your philosophy?

I’ve always had a sense of adventure and a willingness to jump into new experiences. So much of what we mistake for luck—for “being at the right place at the right time”— comes from wanting to be a part of things and stepping up when the opportunity is presented. As far as work-life balance goes, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. When you’re making a run at a World Series, you miss a lot of home meals.

Speaking of championships, how’s the team looking this year?

Nothing can compare to the feeling we last year with the Boston Strong movement. Coming out of nowhere and having a lot to prove after our disastrous 2011 collapse, we really did feel as though we were part of something bigger than baseball.

This year, it’s more business as usual, although the pressure is even greater on us as defending champs. The other teams have retooled and adjusted their rosters for the express purpose of knocking us off our perch. But I wouldn’t be where I am if I didn’t love the competition. ~

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What did you tell the students?

As for career development, I’ve always been less focused on acquiring skill sets than on living by my philosophy of life.

In the Spotlight PL AN TO AT TEND ... ☛ Alumni Association/Liberty Mutual annual golf tournament, June 30, Somersworth, N.H. ☛ Perona Farms summer picnic, July 20, Andover N.J. ☛ Northern California Alumni Chapter welcome reception, Sept. 20, San Francisco ☛ Boston Alumni Chapter welcome reception, Sept. 24, Boston ☛ Chicago Alumni Chapter welcome reception, Sept. 25, Chicago ☛ New York City Alumni Chapter welcome reception, Oct. 1, NYC ☛ Football game and reception at Elon College, Oct. 4, Elon, N.C. ☛ Homecoming and Reunion Weekend, Oct. 10-11, Durham ☛ Lakes Region Alumni Chapter reception, Oct. 23, Meredith, N.H. ☛ Southwest Florida Alumni Chapter cruise, Nov. 12, Venice, FL Write alumni@unh. edu to receive email notice of events.

Working on the Right Thing Awards pile up for Honeywell CEO David Cote ’76.

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ince becoming CEO of Honeywell in 2002, David Cote ’76 has amassed a list of honors nearly as long as his company’s list of products (everything from thermostats to turbochargers). One of the latest, induction into the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, recognizes Cote not just for his success running a $40 billion global company with 132,000 employees, but also for his working-class New Hampshire roots.

Each year the Horatio Alger Association inducts 10 Americans whose hard work and determination have propelled them past obstacles to achieve their goals—like the heroes of the 19th-century novels Alger wrote. Cote often cites the lessons of his humble start, growing up the oldest of five children in Suncook, the downtown mill area shared by Pembroke and Allenstown. But when he spoke in April to high school students receiving Alger scholarships at an event in Washington, Cote warned that hard work alone is not enough.

In his junior year at UNH, Cote worked full-time at night in a factory that made jet engine parts. His GPA dropped to 1.8. Then he and a friend bought a boat, and Cote quit school to become a commercial fisherman. Though the two young men poured all their time and energy into the boat, they never managed to make money fishing. So Cote returned to UNH and earned a GPA of 4.0.

“If you’re working on the wrong thing, it really doesn’t matter how hard you work,” Cote told the students. “Make sure you’re working at all times on the right thing.”

Today, the right things for Cote relate to both business and government. In March he was elected a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a position that links the government’s central bank with the private sector to help ensure that monetary policy reflects real economic conditions.

A Republican, he was named by President Obama as co-chair of the U.S.-India CEO Forum and a member of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, a bipartisan group charged with proposing ideas for balancing the fed-

eral budget. In addition, he serves on the steering committee of the nonprofit Campaign to Fix the Debt.

Meanwhile, Honeywell’s turnaround under his leadership—a 71 percent sales increase, total shareholder return of 240 percent, and development of a “One Honeywell” culture that brought dozens of diverse companies together—has led to a raft of awards from the private sector. Cote was Chief Executive magazine’s 2013 CEO of the Year. He has appeared for two consecutive years on Barron’s list of World’s Best CEOs, is Institutional Investor’s Best CEO in his category for 2014, and has won other awards from groups as diverse as the Asia Society and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

Still, nearly every published story about Cote notes that he wears jeans, blares rap music in his office, and comes across as completely unpretentious. High school friend Donald Keeler says that portrait is not just corporate puffery. Cote still attends class reunions at Pembroke Academy, the public high school from which he graduated in 1970, chatting about old times on the basketball team and at the summer camp in northern New Hampshire where he worked with a bunch of friends.

“He remembers the names of people from that camp that none of the rest of us have thought of in 40 years,” Keeler says. Though his former classmates know about his current life, Keeler says Cote never boasts, even if he’s off-handedly mentioning a meeting at the White House.

“He was just one of the guys back in high school,” says Keeler, “and when he comes up here, he still is.”

—Jane Harrigan

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SPRING/SUMMER 2014

CL A S S NOTE S Send Us Your News!

Share your adventures, accomplishments, updates, and more! Here’s how to reach us: Email your class secretary (listed at the end of each column) or alumni.editor@unh.edu. Post a class note on UNH Connect (unhconnect. unh.edu), our new online alumni community. Or send a note through the mail: UNH Magazine, 15 Strafford Ave., Durham, NH 03824.

The deadline for the fall issue is August 15.

1930

Ed’s Note: If you have news for the Class of ’30 or any of the classes not shown here, please send it to: UNH Magazine, 15 Strafford Ave., Durham, NH 03824 or alumni.editor@unh.edu.

1935

From Virginia Walker Dichard ’35K: On behalf of my brother Fred ’61 and my sisters Barbara and Ann, I want to close out this last entry for the wonderful Wildcats of ’35 by saying it has been my sincere privilege to “take up the pen” on behalf of my parents, your classmates Fred and Ruth Witham Walker. For the past 10 years, I have been able to carry on the class letter in their memory, and during that time I was able to connect with several classmates personally or through family members. Those communications were very special to me. UNH, where Dad and Mother met, was near and dear to them and they often shared wonderful memories of their campus life experiences. Dad’s continued connection with the university spoke to the pride he had and the high regard in which he held his alma mater. All hail! Ed’s Note: Please submit future news for the class of 1935 to: UNH Magazine, 15 Strafford Ave., Durham, NH 03824 or alumni.editor@unh.edu

1940

Wow, this July I’ll be 96. How about all you class members?

We still have about 90 classmates left from a class of 427. I’m looking forward to our 74th alumni anniversary lunch in June. I have been laid up with a broken shoulder blade for two months. I fell —instead of zigging, I zagged. So have been sleeping in a recliner. In looking at names on the obituary list I see our classmate Raymond O’Connor passed away. His name brings back fond memories of Freshman Week, when it was noted that three sets of twins were entered in the class of 1940. Me and my brother Harold. Francis and Franklin Ayer, and Regis and Raymond O’Connor. I am the sole survivor. John Hooper called me from Florida. Remember he was class of ’40 but left UNH after two years to the join the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. I’m sorry to report that Rosetta West Rady-

A WILDCAT REMEMBERED: Eleanor (“Lonnie”) Gould Bryant ’41 passed away on March 14 in Dover, N.H., three months after falling and breaking her hip. Lonnie served as class secretary from 1966 until the time of her death, most recently with the help of her daughter Nancy Bryant, who will continue on as class secretary in her mother’s memory. azo died Jan. 4, 2014. She lived in Annapolis, MD, and was a homemaker who later worked for the Department of Agriculture, NASA, and the U.S. Postal Service. She is survived by eight of her nine children, 21 grandchildren, and 27 great grandchildren.

—Dan Sweet, 275 Piscassic Rd., Newfields, NH 03856; dan.sweet@alumni.unh.edu

1941

Thanks to Eleanor “Lonnie” Gould Bryant, who was our faithful class secretary since 1966. Her daughter Nancy Bryant assisted her in writing this column in recent years and has graciously offered to continue the column in her memory.

Nancy writes: Lonnie passed away on March 14 in Dover, NH, after falling and breaking her hip in December. She will be greatly missed!

Lonnie was born in Newport, NH, on April 26, 1919. She did post-graduate work at Harvard

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University and taught at Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, MA. She then taught high school English and history in Newport and Claremont, NH. Lonnie married attorney Donald Bryant in 1944 and they raised their family in Dover. Lonnie was extremely active in community affairs and volunteer organizations in Dover and throughout the state. She received the UNH Meritorious Service Award in 1980 in recognition of her “unselfish loyalty and devotion” to the university. Her UNH positions included class secretary (since 1966!), member of the Alumni Association Board of Directors and its Executive Committee, treasurer for Alpha Xi Delta, and many others.

Lonnie had a zest for life with her “live it up” motto! Her favorite spot of all was Merrymeeting Lake in New Durham. Lonnie was predeceased by her husband Don in 2009, and is survived by her children Judy ’67, Dave, Nancy, and Bob ’81; her granddaughters Karen and Elizabeth; her niece Barbara Gould ’89; and many nephews. Wilson “Bill” Brunel passed away in March 2014 in Longmeadow, MA. Bill lettered in hockey and lacrosse at UNH and served in the Army in World War II. He worked as a director for Mass Mutual Life Insurance Company and was president of the Third National Bank in Springfield, MA. Bill enjoyed golfing, skiing, and gardening. He was predeceased by his wife Doris in 2008, and is survived by his son Jeffrey ’69 and one granddaughter. Lonnie loved writing the newsletter and keeping in touch with alumni. I am going to try my best to continue her tradition, so, as she would say: “please send me your news!”

—Nancy Bryant ’41K, 56A Blossomcrest Road, Lexington, MA 02421; 781-863-5537

1942

My freshman year roommate was a beautiful Irish lass with sparkling blue eyes, clear and very white skin, and black curly hair. Her name was Maureen.

She loved the boys and the boys loved her.

Think back—remember that freshman girls had to be in the dorm by 7 on weeknights and 9 on weekends. Imprisonment! Balderdash!

So said Maureen vehemently. She would have none of that when the autumn leaves rustled beguilingly in College Woods, and the blond, handsome ROTC lad beckoned. Note: limited space requires that I continue this saga in my next letter. Meanwhile, think back to the fall of 1938—you may remember Maureen. Now to the unpleasant report. We lost David Crockett last Nov. 17, 2013. Following graduation he married classmate Dotty Jasper, and by October ’42 he was sailing to Europe on the HMS Queen Mary as an Army lieutenant. Following training operations in Ireland, Dave served with

A LY S S A A LM E I D A D U N C A N P H OTO G R A P H Y

The Write Stuff CREDIT

The past is personal for writer Dan Ford ’54.

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riters deal with criticism in different ways, but Dan Ford ’54 is likely one of the few to have responded by becoming a pilot. When his 1991 book, The Flying Tigers, about a band of American mercenary fighter pilots based in Burma in the early days of World War II, was released, a member of an online aviation newsgroup lashed out with complaints. “He would always end [his posts] with, ‘Ford is not a pilot, what does he know?’ It annoyed me so much that in 1999, I started taking lessons,” Ford says. He received his pilot’s certification at the age of 69 and flew a Piper Cub for 11 years.

Ford is the sort of writer for whom the past is personal. “History happens to one person at a time,” he writes in his new book, Poland’s Daughter, and that statement doubles as the guiding principle behind all his work, which spans a dozen novels and works of nonfiction. He sold his first novel, Now Comes Theodora, in 1965, and used the advance to travel to Vietnam. There, he wrote for The Nation, covering the early days of America’s involvement in the war, and those dispatches formed the basis for his next novel, Incident at Muc Wa, which made it to the big screen as “Go Tell the Spartans,” starring Burt Lancaster, in 1978.

Ford studied political science, then called simply “government,” at UNH, but his true passion was writing. Although there was no journalism major, he took as many writing courses as he could. His fondest memories are of working at The New Hampshire, where he began as a staff writer and worked his way up to editor.

“It was a big deal for me,” he says. “I was a hillbilly. I came down from Pine Hill Road in Wolfeboro. To me, Durham was Paris, it was Cambridge.

It was great.”

Ford’s time at UNH eventually led him to Europe, where, as a young Fulbright scholar studying modern European history at England’s University of Manchester in 1954, he met Basia Deszberg and fell madly in love. That love story forms the core of Poland’s Daughter, which weaves together the story of Deszberg’s family—forced out of their home in Poland in 1940 and sent to a gulag and Kazakhstan—and the tale of her travels across Europe with Ford in the summer of 1955. Published earlier this year, it is his most personal story yet.

“We went to Paris, and we hitchhiked, and we went to Italy. We lived in a castle for a while on the Mediterranean coast. It was just a great adventure,” Ford says. He was in love; Deszberg wasn’t. They parted ways, eventually, on the steps of that castle, and that was the end of their story—until 2011, when they reconnected, first through email and then in person. In 2012, Ford and his wife, Sally, ventured to England to meet Deszberg, and they began collaborating. “Sally was the first one who said this should be a book,” he says. “She was a very good sport about it, and still is.”

Ford’s latest project is a return to military aviation history. Rising Sun Over Burma examines the Flying Tigers from the Japanese Imperial Army’s perspective. He writes every day and prefers self-publishing and e-books. “As you get older, you have much less patience,” he says. “I don’t want to wait for gratification, so I self-publish them.”

His work has garnered praise and a faithful readership. As for that angry aviation newsgroup member? “We became good friends in the end,” Ford says.

—Larry Clow ’12G

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CL A SS NOTES the Fifth Army Antiaircraft Artillery campaigns in North Africa. Italy, France, and Germany.

After the war, Dave worked at Crockett’s Dairy Farm in New London, and then helped to manage Jasper Poultry Farms in Hudson. Dave and Dotty joined the Hudson Players, an amateur but prolific theatre group. He was a talented actor and went on to perform in many plays with the Nashua Theatre Guild. Dave’s work experiences also included stints selling school buses and milk truck chassis, as a comptroller at Sanders Associates in Nashua, and commercial construction. He also had his own custom carpentry business. He was a longtime member of the Hudson Community Church, and a 32nd degree Scottish Rite Mason for over 60 years. There is an “In Memoriam” for him on page 61. Norman L. Turcotte died Jan. 22, 2014, in North Fort Meyers, FL. Norm served in WWII as a staff sergeant in the Army and was honorably discharged in 1945. He met and married Elizabeth Horne in 1945 while serving in England. Together they raised four children while owning and administering nursing homes in the New England area. Norm was a collector of books and country records, and a stock market follower. He was a high school teacher, a businessman, an entrepreneur, and an indomitable spirit. He is survived by four children. Harrison E. Smith died Jan. 28, 2014. He graduated with a degree in economics and history. After college he joined the Army, serving with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, where he met his wife. He was commissioned a first lieutenant and a paratrooper in the European theatre.

He later served in the National Guard, where he attained the rank of captain. After the war he attended Cornell Law School, was admitted to the New Hampshire Bar in 1948, and practiced law for over 50 years in Nashua. He was active in many organizations, including the Community Church of Hudson, Nashua Council of Churches, Greater Nashua Boys and Girls Club, United Way, Odd Fellows, and the Nashua Senior Center. He is survived by wife, children, and grandchildren. Happy summer days to you.

Be of good cheer.

—Mary Louise Hancock, 33 Washington St., Concord, NH 03301; mlhdeerisland@alumni.unh.edu

1943

Please send your news.

—Dorothy Kimball Kraft, 2 Lilac Ln., Wolfeboro, NH 03894; d.m.kraft@alumni.unh.edu

1944 1945 1946

Send your news to alumni.editor@unh.edu.

Send your news to alumni.editor@unh.edu.

After spending yesterday in Durham attending the UNH greenhouse open house and the Seacoast Home and Garden show at the Whittemore Center, I am really in the mood to write a column for the magazine. It was nice to be on campus and

see a bit of spring after this long, cold, snowy winter! I was fortunate to be able to spend two weeks in Fort Myers Beach, FL. The airlines are very helpful to us senior travelers. A nice note from Ann Miller Morin arrived just in time to be included in this issue. She was very flattered to see the story about her family in the winter issue. Ann wants to correct one error in the article: she was not married after her freshman year, but left school after her sophomore year to do war work. She and Lonnie ’43 were married before he was sent overseas. Originally with the class of ’45, she returned to finish her degree and graduated in May 1946. I am sorry to report the deaths of two of our classmates. Ann Parker Chase died on Nov. 28, 2013, in Peterborough, NH. She married Robert Chase ’45 in 1946 while he was at Yale Medical School. They lived in Palo Alto, CA, for 47 years and traveled extensively in numerous lands, Italy being their favorite. During their many moves and travels they maintained their home in Jaffrey, NH. Ann leaves her husband, three children, nine grandchildren, and 12 great-grandchildren.

Ruth Flanders Hight Woodbury passed away on March 12 in Manchester, NH. An occupational therapist, Ruth received her master’s degree from Kent State University. She lived in Ohio for 16 years and then the last 40 years in Peterborough, NH. She leaves her husband, Philip, two children, several step-children, 11 grandchildren, and 13 great-grandchildren.

Hope you are all well. Please send news. Many of us will be turning 90 this year—there must be some celebrations going on!

—Jeanne Steacie Harriman, 14 Old Mill Dr., P.O. Box 670, Wolfeboro, NH 03894

1947

Warren “Sandy” Brainerd writes, “I don’t often write letters to the editor or any of that, but with this one, I figured, ‘Why not?’ So here goes. . . Back on that fateful day many long Decembers ago, six of us driving back from UVM in Burlington, Vermont, got the news Japan had attacked us. Jack Constable and I enlisted the next day at the Kittery, Maine, Navy Yard. We were in the class of ’44 but I now call ’47 my graduating year. Lloyd Stanley Farwell and I were both heading out to work in the hotel industry. He continued but I got ‘waylaid.’

My wife of 45 years, Marge, died in 1993 and I was remarried more than a year later to Marilyn French. For the past 20 years, we traveled the world over with our combined family of grandchildren. Marilyn has real estate investments that still keep her active. I took up golf after retirement from Pfizer and still get out to play at least once a year (at age 93!). The Richard Nixon Library here in Yorba Linda, Calif., still lets me volunteer. Keeping our Newport Beach house in shape for summer keeps us on our toes all winter. Thanks, Sandy! ’47ers, please submit your class news to: UNH Magazine, 15 Strafford Ave., Durham, NH 03824 or alumni. editor@unh.edu

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1948

Put on your thinking cap. Remember way back to UNH freshman year, 1944. Your roommate with meal ticket frequently urged you to “hurry up, or we’ll be late to lunch!” From Congreve South to Commons was merely a ten-minute walk, although seeming longer in winter. Often, you stood in line awhile outside of Commons. But the cafeteria line was actually a three-timesa-day social event, where you could meet and greet friends from other dorms. And the slowmoving line offered the chance to scope out the myriad food choices—always wholesome, if not always personal favorites. If you can, take the opportunity to check out Commons today.

Renamed “Huddleston Ballroom,” it was the setting for the annual Great Works luncheon in March—a celebration of scholars and benefactors. Transformed with UNH-blue tablecloths on 20 round tables for 10, the room’s ambiance was one of gentrified elegance. The gourmet luncheon, served by black-uniformed student waiters, was garnished with fuchsia edible orchids and topped off by delicious chocolate mousse tarts. Outstanding scholars Madelyn Ball ’14 and Cory McKenzie ’15 shared details of their remarkable scholarship-supported educational experiences. Their futures are so very bright with promise. Remarks by President Mark Huddleston and Deborah Dutton, vice president of University Advancement, inspired a deep sense of pride in all attending benefactors. The Fiscal 2013 Endowed Fund Report expounds the fact that UNH had a banner year—in fact, an historic year—raising $36 million and breaking all university fundraising records. Our Class of 1948 Endowed Scholarship Fund provided freshman Lindsey Perkins ’17 of Hampton Falls, NH, with support in her major, nutrition. Atkinson, NH’s Kelsey Bogdanovich ’14 received scholarship support from our Class Trust Fund in his senior year liberal arts musical endeavors. If you have questions about our class lasting legacy, please contact Paige Amick in the Advancement office at 603-862-0193 or email paige.amick@unh. edu. Finally, our sincere sympathy goes to the families and friends of the following dearly departed classmates: Rodney Adams, Pollack, LA; Evelyn Eilers, Owls Head, ME, Eliot Easterbrook Sr., Naughatuck, MA; Estelle Isherwood Munroe, Hampton Bays, NY; Helen Constantinidis Otis, Saugus, MA; Charles A. Pierce, Round Rock, TX; William Richardson, Amesbury MA; Mary L. Sullivan, Portsmouth, NH; Joseph Swekla, Nashua, NH. —Betty MacAskill Shea, P.O. Box 1975, Exeter, NH 03833; eshea@alumni.unh.edu

1949

“Time will go back and fetch the Age of Gold.” That’s what I quoted in our ’49er yearbook, and so we will if you return to our 65th Reunion Luncheon in Durham on Saturday, June 14. The classes of 19451963 will be meeting from noon-1:30 for lunch with a faculty lecture (no notes need be taken).

Our president, Dick Dart, wrote: “I am recovering from a rotator cuff operation; but I plan to be ready to meet you and many others at our 65th Reunion Luncheon. I also think that Jack Hird will be coming, too.” I think I have talked Phyllis Karpinski Martin into joining us. I promised her a blue ribbon for raising eight children, and loving 16 grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

This year, we have given scholarship support to two NH freshmen through our class endowment fund. Caitlin Connare ’17 from Auburn is majoring in business administration, and Nicholas Voisine ’17 from Manchester is studying computer engineering. Richard “Dick” Nichols passed away last October in Wilmington, NC, where his wife of 65 years and son Paul and his family live. Dick and Barbara enjoyed 21 retirement years in Florida, where Dick taught sailing and wind surfing to young people and played tennis. Dick worked for 35 years for Public Service of NH. The Nichols also have a daughter, Anne, and another son, Charles, as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Margaret Bishop Nixon, who was born in Berlin, NH, and became an”outstanding skier,” died last July. Did you know she conquered her fear of flying by getting her pilot’s license? Margaret and her husband of 65 years, L. Richard Nixon ’50, who survives her, lived in Granby, CT, from 1950 until 1982, where they raised three children: Russell, now of Conway; Karen, of California; and Sally, of Granby. Margaret and Richard retired to Garden City, SC, where

they enjoyed a long golf season. Please note, sadly, many ’49er obituary notices in the back of this magazine. Golfer Matt Kuchar, grandson of “Jay” Jeannette Matthews and “Mo” Maurice Kuchar came in fifth at the Masters Golf Classic on April 13 in Augusta, GA. Wow! —Joan Boodey Lamson, 51 Lamson Ln., New London, NH 03257; (603) 526-6648

1950

Betty Ahern Lamphier enjoyed her annual Christmas trek to Park City, UT, where five of her six children live. She celebrated New Year’s with her daughter Becky, who had recently moved to Sun Valley, ID. According to Betty, the skiing was great as usual.

In March she enjoyed a camping and kayaking experience in the Exama Cays, Bahamas, with friends from her hometown, Marshfield Hills, MA. Casey Wolcott and wife Joann ’51 attended the annual Florida Southwest Chapter luncheon at the Venice country club. They are staying in their winter home in Sarasota, FL, longer each year while Casey is still working to perfect his golf game. We were saddened to learn of the passing of Joe Duffy, who gave so much of his time and dedication to many of our class projects and events. He leaves Mary, his wife of 60 years of marriage, as well as a son and two daughters and six grandchildren. For 40 years, Joe worked at a division of General Motors in Bristol, CT, near where he lived. Joe was a caring friend to many of us. I received a wonderful email from Susan Fain ’88, who lov-

ingly summarized her mother’s outstanding life, beginning with her first job at TV station WBZ in Boston. Throughout her life, Ann Silver Fain was a very active volunteer for many community events in the Weston, MA, area and at Temple Beth Avodah. Many of her classmates in Durham will remember Ann’s warm and caring smile. Sincere condolences to the families.

—Anne Marie Flanagan Long, 2601 Newcomb Ct., Sun City, FL 33573; amflong@alumni.unh.edu

1951

NO dues notice=NO news! PANIC! Call Janet Anderson—she visits Havenwood; I make numerous phone calls and no one will admit to anything new to their life!

BUT Mary Beth Crouch Robinson told me about her chairmanship of Concord’s Public Library Board — she is in her third year and loves it ! And I would say that they have been lucky to have had her ministrations and leadership. VOILA !

As I am writing this, the phone rings and it is Arline Delman in Florida returning my call, and we now know that Bernie has Parkinson’s and is right across the street from their condo so it is easy to visit every day. They have a daughter and her family in the area but a son still in Massachusetts kept them up to date about the l-o-n-g winter we had in the Northeast ! There has been a discussion with the Alumni Association about changes in procedure and our class officers have had many calls to Durham before making a decision. Our dues treasury will now go directly to our Class Endowment Fund, which

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CL A SS NOTES is our Class Scholarship Fund—you may note that on your check. Reunions are now divided: the youngsters have a Fall Homecoming for the 25th, 15th, 10th, 5th, and 2nd; the oldsters celebrate in June for 35th, 40th, 50th, 60th, and 70th reunions. Our 70th will be in 2021! A personal comment: despite strong opposition the new UNH logo was adopted. A kind neighbor notified me that Carolyn Brownrigg Nelson died last November in Springerville, AZ. Arthur Coffin from Berlin, NH, died in Montana, also in November, after a great educational journey at Washington State University and many years at Montana State University in Bozeman, where he was head of the English Department. He left us with this homily: ”Nearly always hopeful, yet sometimes disappointed, he resolved early not to take life too seriously.” We have quite a contingent from UNH who reside at Riverwoods in Exeter, NH; two of them, Rudy Smith and Daniel Raizes, passed in February. Rudy lived in Greenland, NH, established his Smith Office Equipment Company in Portsmouth, and sold it after 25 years to enjoy life in Green Valley, AZ, in the winters and to return to Bear Island off Meredith in the summer. He was greatly admired for his accomplishments and contributions to the life around him. Daniel had served his country from 1951 to 1955, and from 1967-1984 operated with his cousin the Nubble Light Dining Room in York ,ME, which his family had owned since 1946 . He lived in Rochester where he was active on many boards and committees and in his Greek Orthodox Church. Our condolences go to the families left behind. Now some light heartedness: I had the pleasure of meeting Bev Lessard Hoover for lunch at Hugo’s in Charleston, SC, in January, and we had a great visit.

—Anne Schultz Cotter, P.O. Box 33, Intervale, NH 03854; a.cotter@alumni.unh.edu

1952

Hi, my mates: As I started this letter to you all, I thought of my dad, who would be 132 if he hadn’t left us at the age of 93. He was the class secretary for the class of 1905 at MIT for 65 years. I remember him telling me, “Ruthie, reporting the deaths of my classmates was the hardest thing for me!”

AMEN to that, Dad! Virginia White Hancock died on Aug. 29, 2013, in Newbury, NH; Roy Johnston died on Dec. 13, 2013, in Canandaigua, NY; Joseph Mulherrin passed away on Dec. 16, 2013, in Wilder, VT; Mary Lue Barton Belden left us on Dec. 23, 2013, in New London, NH; and Art Creighton passed away on Dec. 30, 2013. My thoughts and prayers go out to their families and friends. I spoke with Arthur Leach, and he and his wife Shirley Hopwood ’54, lived 25 years overseas in five continents. Shirley passed away in October 2013. Dick Shapleigh writes, “We bought and sold houses in 10 days and moved to Ormond Beach, FL.” James P. Kelley writes, “I live at the Miacomet golf course on Nantucket. I have met some UNH grads, young and old. I’m in good health at 86 years.”

SKI CATS: Meeting up in March at Ragged Mountain in Danbury, NH, for a day of skiing were, l. to r.: Jere Lundholm ’53 and his wife Harriet Forkey ’54, ’67G and Ellie Rumery Campbell ’53 and Norman Campbell ’53.

Joyce Worden Richardson who lives in FL (NH in the summer), has traveled to many family weddings in NH, Branson, MO, and Austin, TX, Wow, Joyce! Channing Morrison says, “Four years of good living at Huntington of Nashua, NH, with ‘old people’ and everyone is great (including the staff)!” Phyllis Sanderson Scott and daughter Laurie went to the UK and saw two of her grandkids —one in Cardiff, Wales, and another at Regent’s College in London...each there for a semester. Forest “Skip” Little is “enjoying life in TX and very active in Kiwanis Club.

I live in a closed retirement community with 650 retired military officers.” Nancy Webster Peterson had a very hot summer last year in CA and says at our age, “we don’t rebound like we used to.” George Breton, I thank you for such a lovely complimentary letter re: “your great job representing our class these many years.” A big thank you to ALL who have expressed the same sentiments. I hope that when you finally receive your class dues/letter you will please send it back to me with some news for the next issue! May God bless you all and watch over all our troops.

—Ruth Goldthwait Maynard, 723 Bent Ln., Newark, DE 19711; (302) 731-5563; DMayn32445@alumni.unh.edu

1953

Carl Johnson died Aug. 29, 2012.

A mechanical engineering major, he was also a member of campus science societies, ATO, and participated in track. Carl served in the Air Force, was a graduate of the Air Force Institute of Technology, and worked in industry and government to develop nuclear power for space vehicles and to regulate the safety of commercial nuclear power plants. His wife of 59 years, Barbara Eichel ’52, survives him as do three sons. Dave Marquis, Ret. Col.

46 • Un i ve rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p s hi r e Ma g a z i n e • S p r i ng/S ummer 2014

USAF, lives in Des Moines, WA, not IA as stated in the last class notes. Geology major Pat Berry Barker has collected minerals all her life from the seven continents, but last April retired Harvard Mineral Collection curator Bill Metropolis looked at her extensive collection with the idea of dispersing it. Said Pat at the time, “You can imagine how heart wringing it will be to give up my precious ‘chiIdren,’ but I want them to go to places where they will be appreciated.” Pat is active in various mineral clubs, the Campton Historical Society, and on the board of the Quincy Bog Natural Area in Plymouth, NH. After retiring from a career in group insurance sales and marketing and organizing the first youth hockey program in Hampton, NH, Willy Payson moved to Cushing, ME, where he is a selectman and continues “ to stick my nose into government affairs frequently.”

—Ann Merrow Burghardt, 411 Wentworth Hill Rd., Center Sandwich, NH 03227; annjack@alumni.unh.edu

1954

“A plethora of obits,” says the kind assembler of class news, who mailed me a very large packet indeed.

A long overdue shantih (peace) to Stephen Thomas of Rockland, ME, U.S. Army veteran of the Korean War, and former revenue officer for the IRS when he died on Dec. 10, 1989.

Shantih also to Claire Morse Morgan, died Sept.

28, 2013; to Ferdinand Gaukstern of Garland, Maine, who served in the Army Corps of Engineers before settling in Nashua, NH, where he founded the Ferd Company construction business, died Nov. 8; to Donald Wheeler of The Villages, FL, MBA graduate of Syracuse, U.S. Army Ranger, and longtime resident of Tolland, CT, where he worked in industrial sales, died Nov. 28; to Edgar Hobby of North Hampton, NH, a hut

man for the Appalachian Mountain Club before coming to UNH and a pilot afterward, flying for the U.S. Air Force and for Eastern Airlines (and whose home was just under the landing pattern at Hampton Airfield), died Dec. 16; to Maurice Deschenes of Bow, NH, a bank examiner for the state of New Hampshire and Ford Model A buff, died Jan. 16, 2014; to Lt. Col. Elias Kyreages of York Harbor, ME, career Air Force officer and after his retirement a homebuilder and property manager, died Jan. 25; and to Mary Henderson Perra of Winchester, MA, a teacher in Long Island and Massachusetts schools (and married for 57 years to our classmate Serafino “Sal” Perra, to whom I send our warm good wishes), who died March 7.

—Daniel Ford, 433 Bay Rd., Durham, NH 03824; danford@alumni.unh.edu

1955

We would like to say “hi” and tell you that we are honored to try to fill Evie Baker’s very capable shoes as class secretary. On Feb. 8 our class was represented, in Venice, FL, at the Florida Southwest Coast chapter luncheon by John Everson, Norris Brown, Lynn Dickinson Grimshaw, Chan Sanborn, Marge and Bill Johnston, Lorna Kimball, and Harry Beaudin. We enjoyed hearing President Huddleston and various campus representatives fill us in on all the great things going on in Durham and everywhere that UNH is involved. We have received memorial emails and notes from classmates and alums wanting

to know how to contact the family of former class secretary Evie Baker. Here is the contact address: Leslie Baker Brown, 8 Roydon Rd., Marblehead, MA, 01945. Please save the date for June 5-7, 2015, for our 60th Reunion. There will be more details in the fall magazine. Look forward to hearing from all of you!

—Bill and Marge Johnston, 40502 Lenox Park Dr., Novi, MI 48377; billj7485@aol.com; Margej2@att.net

1956

One day short of ‘April Fools’ we were greeted by fresh snow! Not really surprising—have had a cold and snowy winter, with 77 inches here, and well more to the north and west. A few of you have sent news, making for a far more cheerful class letter than just a listing of obituaries! From Jupiter, FL, escaping part of this brutal winter, Anne Seidler Russell reports that she visited “Gibby” Gibson Geoffrion and Bill ’55. They enjoy their seaside home on Florida’s west coast in Venice, returning in the summer to the island on Maine’s Casco Bay. It was good to hear from Ann Danforth Schultz, who still lives in Dover, NH, most of the year, but enjoys a second home in Tamworth. She and John Damon ’61 set out in September 2013 for a year’s RV tour of the West. What a great adventure and learning experience! In October 2013 we lost our classmate, Somersworth, NH, native Marcel Couture, following a long struggle with pulmonary fibrosis. He stayed in O’Fallon, IL , after retiring (Col USAF) with 30 years of service. He leaves his

wife, Jeannette, three children, and five grandchildren. From Titusville, FL, we learned of the death in December 2013 of Anthony Koromilas.

A Dover native, he also studied at the University of Alabama while serving in the Army. Later he pursued a career as a computer systems engineer at the Kennedy Space Center. Survivors include his wife, Frankie, three children, and two grandchildren. Lois Simonds Perlowski of Celebration, FL, also passed away in January. Lois hailed from Keene, NH, and met her husband, classmate John Perlowski, at UNH. They raised their family of four in Rochester, NY, retiring 25 years ago, then spent nearly 20 years on Sanibel Island, FL, before moving to Celebration. Lois was involved in many volunteer activities and, with Jack, traveled the world. Surviving are Jack, their four children, and eight grandchildren. Please remember that your classmates would love to read your news.

It really is so easy to share!

—Joan Zing Holroyd, 5 Timber Ln., Apt. 213, Exeter, NH 03833; j.holroyd__zing@alumni.unh.edu

1957

IMPORTANT: We need news from classmates to include in future class notes. Please send to jandchellen@yahoo.com. Is our class scholarship money active and well? YES! The “Class of 1957 Fund for the Center for International Education,” established at our 40th reunion, had a market value of over $51,000 as of June 30, 2013.

Income from the fund provided support for

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CL A SS NOTES a NH student majoring in economics to participate in her semester abroad program in Argentina. The “Class of 1957 Endowed Scholarship Fund,” established at our 50th reunion, provided scholarship support to two students from NH for the academic year 2013-2014. One student, a freshman, is majoring in hospitality management and the second student is a sophomore and has not yet declared a major.

Class president Fritz Armstrong frequently receives letters from the scholarship recipients thanking the Class of 1957 for making a significant difference in their lives. You can help by contributing to one or both of these funds.

Contact Paige Amick in the UNH Advancement office at 603-862-0193 or email paige.amick@ unh.edu. We hope to hear from you soon!

—Carly and Jim Hellen, 20 Fitts Farm Drive, Durham, NH 03824; jandchellen@yahoo.com

1958

I am pleased to report that Grace Ouellette ’14, a nursing student from Bedford, NH, is the latest recipient of scholarship support from our Class of 1958 Endowed Scholarship Fund. Contributions of $5,420 received between July 1, 2012, and June 30, 2013, increased the value of our Class fund to $84, 306. The February 12, 2014, issue of the Portland Press Herald featured a story on the closure of Century Tires, a landmark Portland business for 88 years. Dick Aronson started working at Century Tires in 1961 and purchased the family-owned company in 1976. Like many businesses, the tire business has changed over the years; this is the last of four locations of Century Tires that is being closed. Dick and his wife Adele plan to spend more time with their family. Several customers wrote very warmly about Dick and his integrity. A recent message from Edwin “Ned” Gould summarized his career: After leaving UNH, he received a master’s from the University of Washington and then spent 26 years in the USAF doing development engineering and project management. Along the way, he received a PhD in electrical engineering from Purdue and enjoyed a fascinating career with assignments in Germany and England as well as several states. He retired from the Air Force in 1985, joining Rockwell in California, where he worked for six more years. He followed this by consulting jobs, fully retiring in 1998. He is now a certified water treatment operator and as a volunteer runs a small water system that treats stream water for 53 cabins to provide drinking water. He and his wife of 53 years, Darlene, have three children.

—Peggy Ann Shea, 100 Tennyson Ave., Nashua, NH 03062; peggy.shea@alumni.unh.edu

1959

Please send your news.

—Carole Vitagliano Carlson, 15 Thatcher Rd., Gloucester, MA 01930; c.v.carlson@alumni.unh.edu

1960

Despite the bad northeast winter, we spent a wonderful March week in Bedford, NH, and fortunately the weather was most cooperative. My husband got together with friends including Roland Lajoie ’58 for some winter hiking. Marty and Kathy Gerbracht ’66 Hall live in Durham, NH, after spending the last 26 years in Ottawa. They are enjoying everything UNH has to offer along with the proximity to places that make New Hampshire so wonderful. Jim Haggerty of Woburn, MA, received a National Medallion Award presented by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America for serving 45 years on the board of directors. The Massachusetts Senate in an “Official Citation” recognized his years of outstanding and dedicated service to the club. In mid-February, he and wife Ruth celebrated 50 years of marriage in the Virgin Islands. Sam and Sally Anthony Paul were in Venice, FL, visiting with Pete and Barbara Benson Davis and Doug and Nancy ’61 Blampied. Henry “Butch” Roy meets monthly with Skip Barrett, Bill Coppins, Paul Marshall, Pete Smilikis, Ted Sobozenski, and Joe Upton.

In November 2013, Dave and Alma Woods celebrated 50 years of marriage with 200 guests at the Unitarian Church of Evanston, IL. The Class of 1960 was well represented in the winter 2014 UNH Magazine. In a letter to the editor, Sara Dundey Koziol of Vernon, CT, gave kudos to the fall 2013 magazine. Secondly, in the article regarding football, lacrosse, and hockey coach Whoop Snively, Sam Paul shared his very personal and touching memory of the coach.

Finally, the first in a series called “The Road I’ve Traveled” was written by the Rev. Richard Fernandez of Philadelphia. If you missed the article and no longer have the issue, I suggest you read it online at www.unhmagaazine.unh. edu. Condolences are extended to the families of the following classmates who have passed away—Conrad E. Klock, Broomfield, C0, Oct. 28, 2013; Michael Alafat, Jr. Lebanon, Jan. 7, 2014; Judith Gove Browning, Oklahoma City, OK, January 13, 2014; Donald Munsey, Jr. Sandwich, MA, January 21, 2014; and John R. Ferguson, Milford, February 11, 2014. There is an “In Memoriam” about Judith Browning on page 62. I received a note from Michele Munro ’88, who wrote of the passing of her mother, Estelle Isherwood Munro, on Jan. 21, 2014, in Hampton Bays, NY. —Estelle “Stella” Belanger Landry, 315 Chickory Trail, Mullica Hill, NJ 08062; (603) 494-2161; stella.landry@alumni.unh.edu

1961

Please send your news.

—Pat Gagne Coolidge, 80 River Rd., Rollinsford, NH 03869; pat.coolidge@alumni.unh.edu

1962

A big thank you to all who contributed to our Class of 1962 Student Enrichment Fund from Bill Doran, Nancy McIntire, Ginny Theo-Steelman, and student recipient Caroline Ward ’14. Caroline sent Bill a

48 • Un i ve rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p s hi r e Ma g a z i n e • S p r i ng/S ummer 2014

very nice note expressing her appreciation for our gift, funding her summer research project on the interaction between cyanobacteria and vibrio species. She presented her research findings at the Undergraduate Research Conference this spring. She hopes this research will help her earn a research position in a hospital and then hopes to go to medical school.

She is “so incredibly thankful and grateful for the gift award that allowed me to pursue my laboratory research. It was a once in a lifetime chance and I’m so glad for the opportunity.

Thank you for funding my research project, it really made me a better student and person. “ Good luck, Caroline! Bob Hemeon, Laconia, NH, is still a full-time practicing attorney in Laconia. He and Helen ’61 spend a month in the Caribbean each winter. They enjoy sailing their 34-foot sloop along the coast of Maine each summer. James Highet, Jacksonville, FL, worked 25 years for the U.S. Secret Service. He then built a home in Jacksonville, FL, where his wife, Lenore, has her business. He works as a part-time subcontractor for the U.S. State Department’s Antiterrorism Assistance Program.

He and Lenore get together winters with Paul and Carol Flood Richardson in St Augustine, FL. Please send news.

—Judy Dawkins Kennedy, 34 Timber Ridge Rd., Alton Bay, NH 03810; (603) 875-5979; jak@alumni.unh.edu

1963

You will no longer receive class dues notices, so I will no longer get news from you that way. My solution? “Random” phone calls! If I haven’t written about you in years (or ever) I may try you; but if I pop up on your caller ID and don’t leave a message, it means I was impatient and had to fish in other pools. My life is busy: I’m on the Cape Cod board of Church Women United; I’m in a bi-weekly poetry-writing group; and (via a UNH alumni travel promoted trip) my husband Dick and I recently cruised on a Mississippi River sternwheeler. Hence I’ll probably always be doing this column at the last minute; feels like undergraduate days! Diane Dittmar McGowan, diamcg3@aol.com, of Exeter, NH, retired from teaching elementary school, but has published an e-book, Southern Stars, a mystery novel with a historical perspective. Roland Maheu, maheu@maheuinsurance.com, still runs Maheu Insurance Agency in Laconia, NH. He has retired after 20 years from the New Hampshire National Guard. A conflict kept him from attending our 50th reunion, but he’s always glad to read news of classmates in this column. Gail Fiechter McGrail, mcgrailg@aol.com, lives in Greensboro, NC, and is “very” retired. She was a vice president for Hanes (Sara Lee) outlet stores. She’s a volunteer for her church and travels overseas a great deal, most recently with two of her three children to Italy. She has seven grandchildren. She sends a shout-out to her Alpha Chi sisters. You’ll notice my “random”

DAVID MURRAY/CLE AR E YE PHOTO

New School Joan Stolar Smith ’73 saw students struggling—and did something about it.

J

oan Stolar Smith ’73 never planned to make her mark in education. An accomplished harpsichordist who majored in music at UNH, Smith thought her career path was clear. “My plan was to have a family and then get back to my life,” she confesses with a sheepish laugh. But when her sons arrived, Smith quickly realized that she wanted to stay involved in their lives on a daily basis. “I couldn’t imagine giving my 5-year-olds over to someone else’s care, so I decided to start homeschooling our boys and just kept going as long as it seemed right, which was all the way through high school.”

As Smith’s children reached college age, she realized she would miss homeschooling greatly. But while her own experience had been positive, she recognized that many families abandoned the practice as their children entered high school—in some instances because of strained relations between parents and their teens and in others because of concerns about being able to adequately prepare their children for college.

She began to consider the number of children she’d encountered failing to thrive in a traditional learning environment that she believed would prosper if allowed to direct their own education. “I wanted to do something valuable in my life and make a difference for others,” Smith explains. So in 1999, she founded New Hope Tutorials, a faith-based program in Boxford, Massachusetts, designed to support home-based education.

She started with a core group of 13 students and a dedicated staff, offering homeschooling parents access to experienced tutors and thoughtfully conceived tutorials—not, she notes, “classes” and “teachers.” “We were very mindful of the terminology,” she says. “At New Hope, we view parents as the primary educators, and our mission is to support and empower them. We treat each child as an individual and every family as unique. We hire tutors with a passion for teaching and a lot of training in their subject area.”

Today, New Hope serves nearly 150 students and offers a diverse course catalogue to supplement the instruction provided at home.

High school tutorials are offered in 90-minute blocks on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and middle school tutorials take place on Mondays. Parents determine the courses and course load depending on their own knowledge base and the needs of their children. Some enroll their children in tutorials to expose them to new ideas and ways of learning while others join New Hope to enrich their child’s social experience.

New Hope’s results speak for themselves and students have gone on to such institutions as Purdue, MIT, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Northeastern. But while these achievements are impressive, they’re not the milestones that make Smith the proudest. “For me, the best success stories are the children who come to New Hope from a system or setting that wasn’t working for them and thrive,” she says. “Suddenly they feel safe, accepted, and affirmed and they blossom.” Smith has witnessed many parent success stories as well. “I’ve seen a number of parents who’ve enrolled their kids at New Hope and felt liberated. They’re able to back away from the pressure of being both parent and teacher. Once they’re able to share some of the accountability for their child’s education, they can enjoy being a parent again.”

Smith recently stepped down as New Hope’s director, but remains on the board. “I founded the program, but it’s much bigger than me.

It’s thriving and that makes me very happy,” she says. For Smith, New Hope is a ministry—one that exists to support parents who are committed to homeschooling their children and instilling Christian values.

“Teaching children to be compassionate and to value others at least as much as they value themselves—these are the most important lessons we can impart.”

—Lori Ferguson

S pr i ng/S ine •• 49 ng /S umme ummerr 2014 • Uni University versity ooff New New Hampsh Hampshiirree Magaz Maga zine 49

CL A SS NOTES darts landed in the M’s this time; if you’d rather your phone didn’t ring, why not beat me to the punch and send some news directly? Enjoy your summer.

—Alice Miller Batchelor, 37 Rydal Mount Dr., Falmouth, MA 02540; (508) 548-2221; a.m.batchelor@alumni.unh.edu

1964

Greetings to each of you! I have a sneaking suspicion that you may either be reading this AT Reunion or but days after the big event. That being stated, I confess to having only one item of news to send in at this time. The issue after Reunion will, however, be bulging at the seams, don’t you think? Anne Sarkisian is an advocate for celiac disease and gluten-intolerance awareness. She has spent ten years researching literature, interviewing patients, and interacting with leading medical professionals around the world. Her book, Toxic Staple: How Gluten May Be Wrecking Your Health and What You Can Do about It! has been named the recipient of four awards administered by the Independent Publishers of New England (IPNE) for 2014. There’s a mention in the “Of Note” book column on page 39 of this issue; for more information see: : http://www.toxicstaple.com. Congratulations, Anne! Now, all of you, please send me your reports of Reunion, who you delighted in seeing, what special memories came flooding back. Come see me at Reunion and, although I hereby promise you that I won’t be taking notes, I shall once again be wanting to put faces with names. I pass along to you the responsibility of catching me up once we’re all back home. Thank you, each and every one, for your continued interest in this column— wouldn’t be one without you!

—Polly Ashton Daniels, 3190 N. Hwy 89-A, Sedona, AZ 86336; polly.daniels@alumni.unh.edu

1965

Our 50th Reunion Committee is hard at work putting together a wonderful 50th reunion for June 6-8, 2015.

Kicking off the weekend will be a golf tournament being organized even as you read this.

And a lobster bake is also in the planning stage.

Do you realize that is only one year away now?

How quickly these 50 years have gone by.

Many of us will be celebrating 50th wedding anniversaries in 2015, and another milestone event will be our reunion and recollections of the wonderful years at UNH. It’s not too late to volunteer to help with reunion planning. If you’d like to participate, please email Gina Damiano ’02 at the UNH alumni office. The gift of giving to your alma mater is also a big part of commemorating those 50 years. Please be generous when asked for a donation to your university.

The “Golden Granite” is a book of memorabilia that you and your family will cherish long after the reunion itself. So please complete the questionnaire and let us know what you’d like to share about your lives, occupations, families, and more. If you have computer skills and

FOUR-PEAT: Michael York ’71, second from left, was joined at the New Hampshire State House by state senator Lou D’Allesandro ’61, Governor Maggie Hassan, and New Hampshire cultural resources commissioner Van McLeod for his swearing in for a fourth term as New Hampshire State Librarian. would like to help assemble this wonderful remembrance, please also let Gina Damiano know. I am not receiving any class news these days, so I don’t have anything to print in our column. But I will tell you that our president, Ralph Young, has been doing a fabulous job tracking down lost alums and has come up with many new addresses and emails. Thank you so much, Ralph! Feel free to send me your news directly to thompson2004@tds.net, and it will be published as soon as possible.

—Jacqueline Flynn Thompson, P.O. Box 302, Wilmot, NH 03287; j.thompson@alumni.unh.edu

1966

Greetings from Venice, FL, albeit when you read this I will be back in Maine for the summer. In March, I had a nice conversation with Doug Murphy at the UNH Florida Southwest Coast Alumni Chapter tailgate get-together before the Red Sox vs. Baltimore game in Ft. Myers. Doug lives in Naples, FL, and volunteered to help out with our 50th reunion. Welcome aboard, Doug! For a number of classmates, the current focus is the planning of our 50th reunion. Kitty McKay O’Leary and Gail Knox Kingston and other classmates are working on some skits using songs we all knew during our years at UNH. It should be entertaining and fun. If anyone has some ideas, please send them along to jc4me4you@comcast. net. Include your phone number so we can be in touch directly. Our Reunion committee will be having a planning meeting at UNH on June 24, 2014. Any thoughts or ideas you wish to share for that meeting will be greatly appreciated. SAVE THE DATE! We will be celebrating our 50th Reunion June 3-5, 2016. In addition UNH will be celebrating 150 years. If you are interested in helping the Reunion Planning Committee, please contact Gina Damiano ’02 in

50 • Un i ve rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p s hi r e Ma g a z i n e • S p r i ng/S ummer 2014

the Alumni office at gina.damiano@unh.edu or 603.862.2499. Would love to hear more news about your activities. Keep in touch and let’s share your news with fellow classmates. Hope to see all of you at the 50th!

—Lynda Brearey, 2 Roundabout Lane, Cape Elizabeth, ME 04107; lbrearey@alumni.unh.edu

1967

Spring greetings from Florida, where many alums are enjoying the activities sponsored by the Florida Southwest Coast Alumni Chapter: the autumn river/ ocean cruise, annual alumni luncheon with President Huddleston at the Venice Country Club, and the spring training Red Sox game at JetBlue Stadium, aka Fenway South. Classmate and Jessie Doe dorm-mate Mary Lautzenheiser Wasserman of Princeton, NJ, writes that she’s had an adventurous year with trips to London, Montreal, and North Carolina, and a flyover of the Juneau, Alaska, ice fields. Congratulations to Tunxis Community College associate professor of English Terry Cassidy, who recently received the Connecticut Board of Regents Teaching Award for 2014. Terry was honored for his compassion for his students, commitment to innovative teaching practices, and leadership of the faculty professional development initiative. He lives in West Hartford, CT. —Diane Deering, 921 Deerwander Rd., Hollis Center, ME 04042; diane.deering@alumni.unh.edu

1968

Please send your news.

—Angela M. Piper, 1349 S. Prairie Cir., Deltona, FL 32725; a.piper@alumni.unh.edu

1969

Please send your news.

—Jim DesRochers, 1433 S 19th Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85009; jim.desrochers@icloud.com

1970

Have you ever known anyone who was knighted by a foreign government? You have if you met Cynthia Brown when she was living in Devine Hall or spending her junior year abroad at the University of Dijon.

A French professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Cynthia has been named Chevalier (Knight) of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques (Order of Academic Palms) for her outstanding teaching and scholarship in French literature and culture. The Ordre des Palmes Académiques is a chivalric order that was founded by Napoleon to honor members of the University of Paris and that was later opened to others who have made major contributions to French culture. Cynthia specializes in late medieval and early Renaissance French literature, culture, and related topics, and her books include The Cultural and Political Legacy of Anne de Bretagne (Cambridge University Press, 2010). The latest Donald M. Murray Visiting Journalist at UNH is John Christie, editor-in-chief and co-founder of the Maine Center for Public Interest; the visitingjournalist program brings media professionals to Durham for week-long residencies, during which they teach classes, work with students, and inspire the next generation. John is one of many accomplished journalists of “our day” who wrote for The New Hampshire—a group that includes Jon Kellogg, executive editor of Republican-American in the New Haven area, and Ron Winslow ’71, the Wall Street Journal

medical writer and president of the National Association of Science Writers. It was wonderful to hear for the first time in years from Joel and Joyce Bailey Nelson, who live in Wolfeboro, NH. Joel writes that their home “turns into a minihotel every summer with family and friends coming to visit” and that they especially enjoy getting together with other former residents of I-House, the international students’ residence: “We cherish the friendships.” Another former I-House resident, Bonnie Abbott Kelly, has retired as a Boston-area music teacher but remains constantly on the go. Bonnie is in her eighth year on the board of the American Recorder Society, directs women’s a cappella group, and has sung with a large chorus since 1987. If you hope to make music a part of your life in retirement, Bonnie is a font of inspiration and knowledge that she generously share!

—Jan Harayda, 10 North Section St.,#105, Fairhope, AL 36532; haraydajan@alumni.unh.edu

1971

Class of 1971, you need to send me some news! For now, I’ll tell you of my recent trip to Honolulu to attend a system-wide Pan American World Airways reunion. About 400 people attended and it was a fantastic time! Pan Am has been gone since 1991, but the company we all called home will live on in our memories. I can’t think of any other company that inspires such loyalty in former employees. We all wear the big blue ball on our sleeves and in our hearts. The highlight of

the reunion was dinner at the Pacific Aviation Museum on Pearl Harbor. Pan Am played an important role in many conflicts and we are part of the museum exhibits there. Congratulations to Michael York, who was recently sworn in for a fourth term as New Hampshire State Librarian.

The State Library promotes excellence in New Hampshire’s libraries, serves as a resource center for NH, and meets the information needs of our state, county, and municipal governments. Michael earned an MBA from Plymouth State in 1989. He also holds a master’s in library science from LSU. I just got an email from Doug Zechel. Doug, a lifelong runner and sailor, lives in Greenland, NH, with his wife, Nancy Pepin, and their two cats, Molly and Sweet Pea. They have two grown children, a son in Las Vegas and a daughter in southern CA. Doug writes under the pen name of KD Mason. He has drawn upon his years sailing in the Caribbean and New England and the running community for the story ideas in his Jack Beale mystery series. Locale plays an important role in each of the stories.

Each book begins and ends in the fictionalized town of Rye Harbor, NH, but the stories travel from the White Mountains to the North Shore of Massachusetts to Newport, Rhode Island, and even Belize! Jack Beale, the easy-going protagonist, often finds himself involved in situations he’d rather avoid but feels compelled to get mixed up in. He has a volatile relationship with another character, Max, a feisty redheaded bartender. Doug has written five books

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CL A SS NOTES so far and I intend to read every one of them now that I know they exist! Harbor Ice, Changing Tides, Dangerous Shoals, Killer Run, and now Evil Intentions. Doug can be reached by email at doug@kdmason.com or through his website at www.kdmason.com. You can buy the books through the website or at Amazon. Doug is also the founder of the Saunders at Rye Harbor 10K Road Race, which will be held for the 38th consecutive year this August. So, now take a page out of Doug’s book (no pun intended) and send me your news!

—Debbi Martin Fuller, 276 River St., Langdon, NH 03602; (603) 835-6753; debbifuller@alumni.unh.edu

1972

Please send your news.

—Paul Bergeron, 15 Stanstead Pl., Nashua, NH 03063; bergeronpaulr@alumni.unh.edu

1973

Please send your news.

—Joyce Dube Stephens,33 Spruce Ln., Dover, NH 03820; j.d.stephens@alumni.unh.edu

1974

Tim Mayes is retiring on June 30 as superintendent of the Bedford, NH, schools following a 40-year career in education in New Hampshire. Mayes began as a math teacher and sports coach in Salem and later became principal of Concord High

School before ultimately moving on to Bedford. Tim and his wife, Karen, have two children and a three-year-old grandson. Michele Luther McLaughlin has been promoted to assistant vice president of special accounts at Holy Rosary Credit Union in Rochester, NH. She has been with the Credit Union since 2005. Michele lives in Portsmouth. Bill Cote is the new Executive Director of McGregor Memorial EMS in Durham. Please send news.

—Jean Marston-Dockstader, 51 Londonderry Rd., Windham, NH 03807; UNH1974@alumni.unh.edu

1975

This has been a difficult spring for those of us who live out here in Washington State. The Oso landslide is a reminder of how precarious, uncertain, and precious life is. Julia Brown passed away in January after a long battle with Pick’s disease, a rare form of dementia. Julia was a hearings examiner for the New Hampshire Department of Safety. Julia also had her own private law practice for many years. Her favorite place to visit was Plaice Cove Beach in Hampton, NH. Rest in peace, Julia. Dick Bonnet greets us from West Virginia, his home state. After working in plant science for 15 years, Dick had an opportunity to start a plastic recycling company focused on greenhouse scrap. When the market took a down turn, he closed a plant

that at one time had been recycling about 4 million pounds of greenhouse containers per year. Dick now works as a manufacturer’s rep for TorcUP, a line of hydraulic torque wrenches.

He is happily married to Mary McNaughton and has two children and 10 grandchildren. You are so lucky, Dick—I am looking forward to grandchildren some day! Steve Cox just published his first book, No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service, which is available on Amazon. Currently living in Windham, NH, Steve is retired, widowed, and a grandfather of three. His career in international sales and marketing allowed him the opportunity to travel to every continent but Antarctica. Michael Lanza and his wife, Indira, are opening the first dialysis clinic in Guyana.

So many lives will benefit from this project.

The closest dialysis clinic prior to this was in the capital of Georgetown, 2 ½ hours away.

Michael and Indira are delighted to be able to make this happen. Michael Pillsbury is the new director of the highway and civil engineering division for The Lewis Berger Group, where he provides specialized expertise in highway design, operations, and management. He is based in Manchester, NH. Prior to this, Michael was the deputy commissioner for the New Hampshire Department of Transportation. Please send me your latest news! I would love to hear more stories of grandchildren as well as career advancements! Also, the men are definitely showing up the women in our class. Where are all you women? Hope to hear from any and all of my classmates soon.

—Kim Lampson Reiff, 7540 S. E. 71st St., Mercer Island, WA 98040-5317; klampsonreiff@alumni.unh.edu

1976

Joel Berman lives in Boxford, MA, and owns Iatric Systems, a software company. Mary Currie is retiring after 22 years as public affairs director for the Golden Gate Bridge. Mary left her work in botany to do community outreach for a small firm in San Francisco at about the same time the Golden Gate Bridge public relations job was created.

In retirement, Mary plans to do consulting work and spend time with her parents in Connecticut. Dennis Hilliard is the director of the Rhode Island State Crime Laboratory at the University of Rhode Island. He specializes in providing analysis of evidence and court testimony. Hilliard’s role as director enables him to provide educational programs for the law enforcement community and students at URI. Philip “Hawkeye” Pierce retired from the Air Force after 37 ½ years. His career spanned seven presidents, covered all seven continents and seven different Air Force bases. He has been playing adult wood-bat baseball for the past seven summers and is now able to spend more time with his two teenagers. Philip remarked that Florida is looking better after the cold, hard winter in Dayton, OH. Joy Urban (Leslie Joy Turner) taught physical education for three years followed by

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PERRY SMITH

Queen of Clean Mompreneur Debbie Wiener ’80 turned a moment of desperation into an enterprise.

D

ebbie Wiener ’80 describes her home-decorating style as part Martha Stewart, part World Wrestling Entertainment. It’s a mix that has propelled her into the stratosphere as the “Slobproof!” maven, a Maryland-based interior designer who has created a brand for people who want homes and furniture that can stand up to the realities of life in a time-crunched world with kids, pets, and yes, even slobs. She’s written a book, Slob Proof! Real-Life Home Decorating Solutions; developed a line of her own environmentally and family-friendly furniture; and invented a gadget—the Paint Pen—for household touchups. Her company, Designing Solutions, is the top-ranked interior design firm in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.

No small feat for a woman who arrived at UNH planning to become a writer—at least until she took a business class with Manley Irwin, then professor of economics. “That class was like going to a Broadway show,” Wiener says. “He was a brilliant, entertaining, innovative storyteller. This guy became the biggest influence in my life.”

Suddenly she wanted to be a trustbuster for consumers in the nation’s capital. With Irwin’s connections, Wiener headed to Washington her senior year for an internship with the Federal Communications Commission. After that she stayed in D.C. and had a successful career in the chemical industry, advising companies on compliance with EPA regulations. Following the birth of her first son, Sam, in 1991, Wiener decided to be a stay-at-home mother and somehow managed to make ends meet—until the day her credit card was declined at Kmart while buying supplies for a school project. Unable

to find a new job in the chemical industry, she decided her best option was to start her own business, capitalizing on the design advice she had been offering to friends for free.

“All I had going for me was a lot of chutzpah and some good taste,” Wiener says. “But I was also desperate, and I knew I couldn’t afford to fail.”

She set up shop on a folding table in her unfinished basement, started perusing real estate listings in The Washington Post, and began sending handwritten notes touting her business to anyone in the area who had purchased a house worth more than $400,000.

She took paying gigs and spent hours getting on-thejob training at lectures at the Washington Design Center while becoming friendly with other “real” interior designers, calling them in as subcontractors when needed. Unable to afford advertising, Wiener wrote design articles for local newspapers to get her name out.

Her first big break came in 2005, when a client hired her for a multimillion-dollar home redesign. Then, in 2007, a USA Today feature prompted Penguin Publishing to ask if she’d write a home decorating book. “I had never really thought about writing a book, but I had gone to UNH to be a writer,” she says. “When they asked what I’d call it, I said, ‘Slobproof.’”

Soon after, Wiener began working with the owners of Crypton, a furniture fabric that repels stains, to design furniture under her brand. Then came the Paint Pen, a reusable, vacuum-sealed pen filled with paint that came to life after Sam, now a college student, saw her touching up baseboard molding with remnants from old paint cans and remarked that there had to be an easier way. Sam came up with a design and Wiener immediately went online in search of a manufacturer who could build a prototype. As she placed her first order for pens, Wiener met a New York Times reporter to whom she pitched her Paint Pen product in an email; the reporter passed it along to her editor and the Times ran an article in the Home & Garden section. The following morning Wiener had 10,000 orders.

Today the pen is available on Amazon, at select retailers and at her website, Slobproof.com. “I’m always pitching myself, putting myself out there,” Wiener says.

“Sometimes it’s a swing and a hit, sometimes it’s a swing and a miss. But you never know unless you try.”

—Rachel M. Collins ’81

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CL A SS NOTES

1981

Please send your news.

—Caroline McKee Anderson,

8626 Fauntlee Crest SW, Seattle, WA 98136; c.anderson@alumni.unh.edu

1982

Every year, North Carolina State University soil science professor David Lindbo ’84G speaks to scientists and other professionals in dozens of workshops across the country focused on septic systems, land use, wetlands conservation, and other soil-related topics. In 2003, David started working with Envirothon, an annual competition in which middle school and high school teams compete for scholarships by demonstrating their knowledge of environmental science. He now helps students and teachers across North Carolina talk about soil—a key concept in the competition. In addition to his teaching and extension work at North Carolina State University, David has also written two books focused on engaging students in the study of soils. Please send your news!

ACROSS THE POND: On May 1, UNHers gathered at the home of Andrew ’83 and Deborah Katz for “the best UNH reception in London in 150 years.” Pictured from left are Tim Allison ’89, ’11G, Eric Steltzer ’06G, Karen Bretagne ’92, Laurens DeBruijn ’99, Suzanne Portnoy Noble ’83, UNH President Mark W. Huddleston, Christine Banks Clark ’03, Bart Carnahan ’87, Christina Brigati ’05, Henrik Gustavsson ’82, and Katz.

14 years at Liberty Mutual as a computer programmer. She got her MBA from Southern NH University. Joy has spent time as a manufacturing training manager at Cabletron Systems and as a human resources manager for Keane.

In 2005 Joy and her husband, Steve, moved to Ponte Vedra Beach, FL, where they work and enjoy year-round activities. Joy would love to hear from classmates at jsurban2002@yahoo. com . William L. Keith died in January in Rhode Island. After graduating from UNH, he earned a master’s degree from UC Berkeley and a PhD from Cornell University. Bill and his wife, Elaine ’75, spent a lot of time at Canandaigua Lake. He enjoyed a variety of interests including fishing, dogs, music, and amateur beer-making. He traveled extensively for work and pleasure and had a special fondness for Nice, France. Please continue to send your news. Thank you!

years, but in particular the 1970s. Contact Ron Majer ’88 at ronmajer@comcast.net or acacianh.org to update your Acacia profile. Additionally, Acacia is sponsoring a welcome event at UNH Homecoming on October 11, 2014. If you were a member of Acacia and have not been contacted they probably do not have your current information on file.

—Gary Pheasant, 1099 Lanier Blvd., Atlanta, GA 30306; pheasant@alumni.unh.edu

1978 1979

1977

Gerri King received her master’s degree from UNH in 1977 and her PhD from UNH in 1990. She is a social psychologist and organizational consultant and has recently published a book, The Duh! Book of Management and Supervision: Dispelling Common Leadership Myths. She is also a prominent facilitator and works with multinational companies and organizations. Check out her website at http://www.gerriking.com. Acacia Fraternity has launched a program to reconnect UNH fraternity brothers and is working diligently to locate brothers from all pledge

—Carol Scagnelli Edmonds, 75 Wire Rd., Merrimack, NH 03054; c.edmonds@alumni.unh.edu

Did you attend the 35th Reunion?

Please send your news!

—Chris Engel, 268 Washington Ave., Chatham, NJ

—Susan Ackles Alimi, 48 Fairview Dr., Fryeburg, ME 04037; (207) 935-4065; alimi@alumni.unh.edu

Please send your news.

07928; c.engel@alumni.unh.edu

1980

It was a long winter here in the New Hampshire North Country.

This will be the first time since I have been doing the 1980 column that I have no news to report. It gives me the opportunity to share news about my boys at UNH. Christopher ’14 will be graduating this May with a biology degree and Samuel ’16 is finishing up his sophomore year.

He will start his junior year next fall in New Zealand with the UNH EcoQuest program. If you are reading this and have not sent news in a while, please pass on a note for the next issue.

—Anne M. Getchell, P.O. Box 2211, Conway, NH 03818-2211; agetch@alumni.unh.edu

54 • Uni ve rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p s h i r e Ma g a z i n e • S p r i ng/S ummer 2014

—Julie Lake Butterfield, 44 Earle Dr., Lee, NH 03861; j.butterfield@alumni.unh.edu

1983

Roberta Bienvenu is a poet, painter, and former teacher living in northern Vermont. She received her master’s in English at UNH in 1983 and has published poems, essays, and reviews in many journals.

Most recently she published a memoir, It Must Give Pleasure. Please send your news!

—Ilene H. Segal, DVM, 245 Warren Dr., Norfolk, MA 02056; i.h.segal@alumni.unh.edu

1984

John E. Swenson is senior vice president of bank operations for Bank of New Hampshire. Jayne Dean was a member of the gymnastics team and attended UNH on an athletic scholarship. Her gymnastics training led to training in circus and the aerial arts, and she recently opened Connecticut Aerial Yoga in Hartford, CT, where gymnastics, yoga, and the aerial arts come together. She is also a psychotherapist with over 24 years of experience. Learn more at her website: www. ctaerialyoga.com.

—Susan L.S. Choquette, 15 Silver Birch Ln., Haverhill, MA 01832; s.choquette@alumni.unh.edu

1985

Beth Dietz-Tuttle is a senior vice president and commercial loan officer at People’s United Bank in Portsmouth, NH. Beth is a seasoned banker, with more than 25 years of commercial lending experience.

She is active in her community and with NewHeights-Adventures for Teens in Portsmouth.

Please send your news!

—Julie Colligan Spak, 116 Longfields Way, Downingtown, PA 19335; j.colligan@alumni.unh.edu

1986

Ellen Vars Christo, UNH Law ’90, has joined the business group at the law firm of Shaheen & Gordon, with offices

in Concord, Dover, and Manchester, NH. Ellen’s practice is focused on corporate/business law and government relations. Deborah Collings was promoted to clinical director of Miller and Swann CVS Veterinary Practice in Elgin, Scotland. She is married with two children, and enjoys time on their 7,000 acre farm and shooting estate in western Scotland.

—Stephanie Creane King, 92 Channing Rd., Belmont, MA 02478; s.king@alumni.unh.edu

1987

There’s a reason alumni come back to get married.

Actually, there are many.

With more than 20 years of experience in planning and hosting weddings and special celebrations of all varieties and sizes, University of New Hampshire Conferences and Catering has earned its reputation for excellence and professionalism.

Please send your news.

—Tina Napolitano Savoia, 5 Samuel Path, Natick, MA 01760; t.savoia@alumni.unh.edu

1988

Please send your news.

—Beth D. Simpson-Robie, P.O. Box 434, Kennebunk, ME 04043; bgsrobie@alumni.unh.edu

1989

Dan Fasciano has been promoted within BNY Mellon Wealth Management in the Boston office. Dan lives in Swampscott, MA. Debbie Davis Eisenach (debeisenach@yahoo. com) still enjoys living overseas in Berlin, Germany.

She always makes a point to ask the study abroad students she encounters where they come from in the U.S., but has yet to run into a UNH student.

Debbie’s oldest daughter is looking at colleges in the U.S., which brings back a lot of memories from her times at UNH. For any alumni traveling to Berlin, Debbie would be happy to meet you, show you around, or just give you travel advice. Arthur Tzianabos, PhD, has been appointed to the position of chief scientific officer at OvaScience, a life sciences company focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of new treatments for infertility in Boston, MA. Maria Madden Coady writes: “I finished my PhD in bilingualism and education in 2001 from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

I’ve joined the University of Florida’s College of Education and am currently working as professor on Special Assignment for International Education.

I am developing and directing our College’s international programs from this end of the U.S.”

Ph

—David L. Gray, 131 Holmes Ave., Darien, CT 06820; david.gray@alumni.unh.edu

1990

Hello, classmates. Hope you are well. Melissa Pilgrim reports that her popular children’s book “Animal Motions” has now been made into a great, fun, storybook app! As an app it’s now a truly interactive story that will help kids stay even more “creatively fit” with great animation, audio hotspots (so kids can learn the sounds animals make now along with their names and habitats), and professional narration (done

by Melissa, which she says was really fun to do!).

It has “Read To Me,” “Read Myself,” and “Auto Play” options as well. Check out the app and the book at www.AnimalMotions.com.

Contact us today to learn more.

—Amy French, 2709 44th Ave., SW, Seattle, WA 98116; amy.french@alumni.unh.edu

1991

Smartify’s (www.getsmartify.com) board of directors has appointed

Conferences and Catering | (603) 862-1900 | conferences@unh.edu

www.conferences.unh.edu

CL A SS NOTES Carla Bourque as its new CEO. The company is located in Pasadena, CA. Carla was previously the chief revenue officer. As the CEO she will continue to transform Smartify’s operational systems and go-to-market strategy. Suzanne Kingsbury is running a business helping people who are writing books get their work to the point of publication. Suzanne also holds salonstyle writing retreats nationwide and founded a teaching-training program, Gateless Writing, for writers who want to make a living teaching writing.

—Christina Ayers Quinlan, 2316 Beauport Dr., Naperville, IL 60564; c.a.quinlan@alumni.unh.edu

1992

Eric Wasson and his wife, Allison, live in Rochester, NH, with their two children: Zachary, 19, and Chelsea, 17.

Eric is a certified financial planner and owns Aztec Financial Group in Dover, NH. Eric helps people with retirement accounts and works with small businesses with 401(k) plans. He is an active skier and enjoys traveling the world with his family. Birger Stamperdahl has been named interim president & CEO of Give2Asia, a social enterprise that specializes in philanthropic investment to 24 Asian countries. Since its founding in 2001 by The Asia Foundation, Give2Asia has made over $237 million in grants in support of education, health, disaster response, and other diverse fields. An eight-year veteran at Give2Asia, Birger most recently served as the organization’s chief operating officer. Thomas W. Butcher, CPA, has joined STV as chief financial officer. STV provides architectural, engineering, planning, environmental, and construction management services for buildings and facilities, transportation systems, energy, and infrastructure. Prior to joining STV, Thomas was the chief financial officer and treasurer of a privately held civil engineering firm. Dinesh Thakur founded his second start-up, Medassure Global Compliance, in January 2014. He co-founded Sciformix, another startup based in Westborough, MA, in 2007, and served as its president & CEO until 2012.

After receiving his master’s degree at UNH, he worked at Genetics Institute (now Pfizer) in Boston and Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, both in Syracuse, NY and Princeton, NJ. Dinesh continues to be an active UNH alum who serves as a mentor in the UNH Pathways program.

Samantha Langley-Turnbaugh has been named the University of Southern Maine’s associate provost for graduate studies and research, scholarship, and creative activity. In that role, she serves as the university’s chief research officer and oversees graduate admissions and programs. A native of Kittery, ME, Samantha holds a bachelor’s in forest engineering from the University of Maine, a master’s in soil science from UNH, and a PhD in forest soils from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

—Missy Langbein, 744 Johns Rd., Blue Bell, PA 19422; m.l.langbein@alumni.unh.edu

1993

Matthew Pappas writes: I am in my 15th year teaching social studies at Oyster River High School in Durham, NH. In November, 2013, I was elected to serve a two year term on the Rochester, NH, School Board, representing Ward 3.

—Caryn Crotty Eldridge, 2 Steele Rd.,Chiswick, London, W4 5AF, UK; caryn.eldridge@alumni.unh.edu

1994

Hoping this edition of Class Notes finds you all well; it finds me in a rather reflective mood I’m hoping you’ll share we me. I’m writing this the week after Jennifer Lee ’92 of “Frozen” fame delivered the Class of 2014 Commencement. It’s striking to consider a UNHer with whom we shared time on campus (and to see her Kappa Delta reunion at Nick’s on Facebook!) have such a remarkable impact; the best evidence in my house being my three-year-old daughter Brooke, who sleeps every night with her Elsa and Anna dolls while dreaming of Arendelle. It makes me proud that it was a UNHer who finally gave Brooke a strong, independent princess to look up to.

I’m also grateful Jennifer reminds us that we, like Anna, need to be the hero in our own lives.

Even more striking, though, is to consider that we, the Class of 1994, left UNH 20 years ago, a timeframe inconceivable to me at graduation. What have we been doing since our commencement and where on earth have those 20 years gone? I’d encourage you to ponder that question and hope you’ll reach the same conclusion as I: they’ve been filled with wonder, challenge, drama, adventure, and a lot more laughter than tears. In fact, the more I think of those 20 years, the more I realize what a large part of UNH has played in them. With few exceptions my closest friends today are the same I had when I graduated; this coming weekend is Memorial Day Weekend and I’ll spend it doing the Figawi sailboat race with Brian Stowell, Todd Boulanger, Sean Murphy ’95, and Erik Anderson ’95. I’m blessed to have made so many deep friendships at UNH and would advise the Class of 2014 to cherish their UNH friends; they will be the best folk to journey with over the next 20 years and you’ll one day learn there is no replacement for those who know you so well.

I’m blessed to be married to a UNHer, Anne Ricci ’93. Our 10-year wedding anniversary will be happening just about the time you’re reading this; the life we’ve built with our son Hunter and “Frozen”-loving daughter Brooke have brought me more joy and meaning than I could have conceived existed at our graduation. Thank you Anne! While I’m not necessarily advising anything to the Class of 2014 here I would suggest they always keep options open with those college boyfriends/girlfriends. . . after all it might just work out as well for them as it has for me. Considering the past 20 years leaves me certain that my time at UNH was formative in my life, it sparked my sense of adventure and gave me the confidence to be the hero in my

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own life. I hope you take some time to reflect as well and that you come to the same conclusion; when you do please take some time to tell me about the journey you’ve been on—it would be wonderful to share in our next Class Notes.

Godspeed UNH Class of 2014 and Happy 20 year Anniversary to us; the UNH Class of 1994!

—Mike Opal, 26 Rockwood Heights Rd., Manchester, MA 01944; m.opal@alumni.unh.edu

1995

Greetings! Julia Thompson and her husband Simon Kozin of Lexington, MA, welcomed their second daughter, Sierra Lilyann, on Nov. 10, 2013. Sierra joins big sister Adela Rose, age two.. Tricia (Gray) Hayes recently published two romance novels under the pen name Leigh James. The first two books of The Liberty Series (Liberty Begins and Liberty At Last) are available at Amazon. Please send your news!

—Tammy Ross, 22 Saint Anns Ave., Peabody, MA 01960 ; tross8573@yahoo.com/

1996

Please send your news.

—Michael Walsh,

607 Atwood Dr., Downingtown, PA 19335; michaelwalsh@alumni.unh.edu

1997

Emily Day owns a bakery in San Francisco, CA, called Flour &Co. “It’s a modern American bakery featuring sweet and savory baked goods, breakfast, lunch, and great coffee. We focus on the ingredients using mostly organic, all natural, and seasonal produce in our goodies. I also write a blog which can be found at flourandco. wordpress.com . Please send me your news.

—Michael Milbury, 518 South Plymouth St., Culver, IN 46511; milburm@live.com

1998

Please send your news.

—Emily Rines, 23 Tarratine Dr., Brunswick, ME 04011; emily.rines@alumni.unh.edu

1999

Sheridan Brown is an attorney and government relations consultant. Recently, Sheridan led a successful effort with the Loon Preservation Committee and N.H. Lakes Association to pass legislation to protect loons from lead fishing sinkers and jigs, which are toxic. He also worked to successfully defeat a bill that would have allowed the taking of wild owls for falconry. He lives in Grantham, NH, with his wife, Debra. Please send me your news.

—Jaimie Russo Zahoruiko, P.O. Box 287, Haverhill, MA 01831; j.a.russo@alumni.unh.edu

2000

Liz Bischoff McCabe is the new Mrs. New Hampshire 2014 and is excited to be heading to Las Vegas for the Mrs. United States Pageant on July 25. The pageant contestants are judged on their ability to integrate intellect and beauty. Liz works for a top healthcare IT company, which has

given her an opportunity to travel the world and proudly represent businesswomen ,and she is using her platform, “Start Smart Parenting,” to raise awareness in her community on the benefits of early childhood intervention services. She is passionately involved with the NH Easter Seals program, an organization near and dear to her heart, as her daughter, Brooke, is a thriving recipient of its services. In addition to her UNH degree Liz holds a master’s in health management from Suffolk University. Katie Thibodeau Novak is a Title I Director, ELL Director, and Reading coordinator in Chelmsford (MA) Public Schools. She has published a book, UDL Now! A Monday-Morning Guide to Common Core Implementation using Universal Design for Learning. You can read more about it at: http:// katienovakudl.com.

2002

Lela Ames was promoted to partner at Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice in January. Practicing in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, Lela focuses on business litigation, representing clients in complex commercial litigation, real estate disputes, business torts, and products liability cases.

Congratulations to the many classmates who added to their families in recent months. Katelyn Hogan Nickerson and her husband, Rob, welcomed their second daughter, Sarah, on February 4. Ryan and Stephanie Hamel Francoeur welcomed their second son, Cooper Joseph, on February 14. And Jenna McLean Cecot and husband Josh welcomed their first child, Bennett McLean, on February 24. Enjoy your summer!

—Abby Severance Gillis, 19 Chase St., Woburn, MA,

—Becky Roman Hardie, 3715 N. 4th St., Harrisburg, PA 17110; becky.roman@alumni.unh.edu

HERE SHE IS: On July 25, Mrs. New Hampshire Elizabeth Bischoff McCabe ’00 will compete in the Mrs. United States pageant in Las Vegas, NV. Pictured here with her daughter, Brooke, McCabe competed for the New Hampshire title on the platform “Start Smart Parenting,” to raise awareness of the importance of early intervention in the treatment of childhood developmental issues.

2001

Sarah Hewitt is a consultant in the intelligence community with Pathoras Corporation in the Washington, DC area.

Mike Brittan has joined Stevens & Lee, a law firm in Princeton, NJ. He represents employers in a wide variety of employment issues. Mike received a J.D., cum laude, from The George Washington University Law School.

—Elizabeth Merrill Tewksbury, P.O. Box 621, Cornish, ME 04020; etewksbury@alumni.unh.edu

01801; agillis716@alumni.unh.edu

2003

Josif Bicja ’06G has been named the 2014 Young Engineer of the Year by a jury of his peers from New Hampshire’s engineering societies. Josif is a senior structural engineer at Hoyle, Tanner and Associates. He has worked for 10 years on the design, rehabilitation, and inspection of bridges, including steel, concrete, and covered bridges.

He has served as a structural design engineer, construction inspector, and construction administrator on many bridge projects, and has become a leading authority on covered bridges.

Josif and his wife Poli reside in Manchester,

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CL A SS NOTES

2005

NH, with their two daughters, Olivia and Elena.

John Joyce married Amy St. Jacques on Aug. 31, 2013, in Laconia, NH. John is an outreach counselor at Riverbend Children’s Intervention Program in Concord, NH. Evan Czyzowski was named to the list of “40 Under Forty” in New Hampshire by the Union Leader. It’s easy to see why: he has quite the list of accomplishments and responsibilities! Evan is an English teacher and the drama program director at Sanborn Regional High School in Kingston, NH. He is also president of the Sanborn Regional Education Association, and the coordinator for the Pathways program for arts, humanities, and human services. If that weren’t enough, he also serves as a volunteer executive board member on the National Education Association of New Hampshire, and volunteers with the Sino-American Bridge for Education and Health and with the Polish-American English Summer Program. He has traveled to China for the past two summers to collaborate with Chinese teachers on education strategies. We’d love to hear your news in the next issue, so please send it along!

—Shannan Goff Welsh, 77 Hooksett Rd., Auburn, NH 03032; s.goff@alumni.unh.edu

2004

Please send your news.

—Victoria Macgowan Reed,

5 Twilight Dr., Scarborough, ME 04074; victoria.macgowan@alumni.unh.edu

Taylor Rogers and Carly Rodgers were married on August 10, 2013, at the Museum of Science in Boston, MA. Taylor received a master’s degree in architecture from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 2009 and is a project architect at Behnisch Architekten in Boston. Carly is a campaign management director for Nanigans Inc. in Boston. The couple honeymooned in South Africa and currently reside in Boston. Lisa Tamagni and Kurt Sletten were married on August 24, 2013, in Orange, CT. A honeymoon in Spain followed. Lisa received a master’s degree in business administration from Suffolk University and is employed as an engineer at Turner Construction Co. Kurt is a channel account manager at Zix Corp in Burlington, MA. Lisa and Kurt reside in Salem, MA. Kathryn Webb and Jesse Medeiros ’08 were wed on Sept. 14, 2013, at Dowd’s Country Inn in Lyme, NH. Kathryn earned a master’s degree in applied behavior analysis from Simmons College and is director of program services at Apex Behavioral Counseling in Boston. Jesse is the owner of two businesses: JAM Automotive and New England Sustainable Property Management. The couple lives in Nottingham, NH. Congratulations to Alison Bankowski, who made the Union Leader’s “40 Under Forty” in 2014.

Alison is a senior bank loan accountant at State Street Bank & Trust, in Boston MA, and was recognized for her passion for art. Alison is active with Positive Street Art, chairman of iUGO’s Better Living program, and is founder of the Downtown Art Movement. Nashua, NH is home to Alison, and she is involved with Nashua’s Young Professionals Network and she serves on the advisory board for Girls Incorporated of Nashua. Steve Smith is the vice president of sales for EcoFactor, the leader in cloud-based home energy services. Joshua Chin ’05, ’06G, is now working as a media project manager for the key accounts team at Pearson Learning Solutions in Boston. Congratulations to Daniel Townsend, who was named the Portland, Maine, Police Officer of the Month for May 2013. He was also named Officer of the Year for 2013.

Daniel has been with the Portland police force since 2006.

—Megan Stevener, 55 River Road # 7G, Manchester, NH 03104; megan.stevener@alumni.unh.edu

2006 2007

Please send your news.

—Becca Cyr, rlcyr@alumni.unh.edu

Steven Cohen earned a master’s of science degree in sport psychology from Miami University in May 2011.

He lives in Clarksville, TN, and works as a performance expert in Fort Campbell, KY, where he conducts performance enhancement and resilience training to military personnel, including soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division, U.S. Special Operations Forces, and the Wounded Warriors in Transition program. In October 2014, he will be serving as one of eight

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mental-conditioning coaches for the U.S. Army’s Warrior Games team competing at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, CO. Julia Blumenfeld is a sales and marketing coordinator for HEAD/Tyrolia Winter Sports, USA in Boulder, CO. Laura Carpenter returned to the U.S. in 2013 after spending a year living in New Delhi, India. In New Delhi, Laura volunteered full-time with two non-governmental organizations, the Institute of International Education (IIE) and Access Development Services, on projects related to higher education, maternal health, and agricultural and artisanal livelihoods. She is now pursuing her interest in the social enterprise sector, and recently helped plan a hackathon-style event in Boston for the Archimedes Project, the goal of which was to design a large-scale clean water and sanitation social enterprise to end cholera in Haiti. Laura hopes to combine her background and interests in renewable energy and international development next by working with a social enterprise to increase access to clean and affordable energy in developing countries. Katie Mack is returning to her hometown of Dover, NH, as the new membership and business resource manager for the Dover chamber of commerce.

Katie has previously worked in sales, marketing, and recruiting for small businesses in Massachusetts. Bridget Maloney married George Ziegler III at the Woodstock Inn in July 2013. Bridget is pursuing a master’s degree in nursing, and George is a project manager.

They honeymooned in Bermuda and live in Watertown, MA. Finally, I married Heidi Ravina ’09, ’11G in January 2014 at St. Sebastian Church in Providence, RI. I’m an assistant research professor and Heidi is an occupational therapist. We honeymooned in Quebec City, Canada. UNH alums in attendance included Sam Vohr, Natalie Latham, Talia Mercadante, Jackie Walker, Amanda Perl, Brett Hunter ’06 and Steve Calcavecchia.

—Michael Patrick Antosh, 3476 Post Rd., Wakefield, RI 02879; mantosh@alumni.unh.edu

2008

Hello Class of 2008! I hope you’re all doing well, and I hope we’re all enjoying our quick ascent into our late twenties (and beyond). I cannot believe how quickly the time flies. My own journey will soon take a turn, as I will be leaving Cambridge, MA, to set out on an adventure with my girlfriend who will be moving for her job. We’re letting life carry us for a little while, and enjoying the experience.

But, enough about me; let’s see what you’re all up to. Congratulations to Victoria Aviles, who recently shifted her career from sales and has joined the marketing team at Hubspot, one of 2013’s top places to work, according to The Boston Globe. Kelly Tardif works as an elephant caregiver at the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, TN, which you can learn more about at www.elephants.com. Congratulations to Jesse Aaron Medeiros and Kathryn

A LY S S A A LM E I D A D U N C A N P H OTO G R A P H Y

Growing History Erik Wochholz ’01, ’07 cultivates the past as Strawbery Banke’s historical horticulturist.

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n a late winter day, Erik Wochholz ’01,’07 strolls through a Victorian glasshouse at the Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth. He squashes a mealybug on an African tree fern, admires a passion flower, and pinches back a leggy Velma Cox geranium.

In a couple of months, some of these plants will ornament the gardens of the Goodwin Mansion. But for now, the smell of wet, hopeful earth helps him visualize the “carpet gardens” he will recreate this summer using flowering annuals, just as Sarah Goodwin, the wife of Civil War-era Governor Ichabod Goodwin, once did.

“All the Asiatic carpets she had inside her house, she attempted to mimic those in her gardens,” Wochholz says. “For the Victorians it was all about family and friends and entertaining people within the landscape.”

Wochholz is the historical horticulturist at Strawbery Banke, a 10-acre outdoor history museum with homes and small businesses from four centuries. He is responsible for planning and planting eight gardens, from the kitchen garden behind the 1690s Sherburne House—“It was all about food and surviving”—to the “victory garden” beside the World War II-era Marden-Abbott House and grocery store. He also develops programs to teach people how to plant and harvest heirloom seeds, and demonstrates how the early settlers used plants for food, medicine, teas and cider, perfumes, and decorations.

In the off-season, Wochholz assists with hearth cooking workshops, gives lectures, and plans the next summer’s gardens. He strives to make them as historically accurate as possible, drawing on sources as diverse as interviews with elderly former residents of the museum’s homes, photos, lab analysis of pollen recovered in archaeological digs, and the poetry of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, a friend and contemporary of Mark Twain whose work was inspired by his grandparents’ Colonial revival garden at Aldrich House.

It’s a job he largely designed for himself when the museum’s curator of historic landscapes, John Forti, advertised for a new horticulturist two

years ago. Wochholz had worked for five years in commercial floriculture but wanted to get away from sterile hybrids and chemical sprays.

“I wanted to get into heirlooms and the original genetics that connected our heritage and history,” he says. “I was thrilled to come here.”

Wochholz arrived by a winding path. While earning a B.A. in philosophy with a focus on environmental ethics, he went to New Zealand with UNH’s five-week EcoQuest program. He worked on an organic farm, studied composting, and then trekked around the country for another two months. It changed his life.

“New Zealand is all about sustainability and local food,” he says.

“When I came back to the U.S., I knew I wanted to study and learn more about those organic practices.”

He got a job on a vegetable farm in Dover and returned to UNH for a second bachelor’s degree—this time, in environmental horticulture.

He worked at the Woodman and Kingman research farms and interned in composting with the Sustainability Institute. People at UNH still help him: Greenhouse manager David Goudreault grows out heirloom seeds for transplant while John Hart, a professor of horticultural technology at the Thompson School, brings his students to Strawbery Banke each year to prune the fruit trees.

Now, Wochholz is focused on sharing his own knowledge. He plans to start a seed lending library this summer so local gardeners can “check out” heirloom seeds, grow them, and collect seed in the fall to return for the next year’s borrowers. He trains volunteer master gardeners to work in the children’s garden and teaches school groups about planting and saving seeds, composting, and garden journals. He wants to get the next generation thinking about what they eat and how it’s produced.

“The closer we get to nature, the more evident it becomes that we need to preserve it, because it gives us so many things, especially our food,” Wochholz says.

—Katharine Webster

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CL A SS NOTES Webb, who wed this past autumn at Dowd’s Country Inn in Lyme, NH. Tyler Walker recently competed in the Paralympics in Sochi, Russia. He had a scary crash in the downhill race, but fortunately he is fine and has returned home. We hope he has been making a smooth recovery! Previously working as translation intern in Germany for Watching America, Kate Wheeler returned to the US last fall to become an international recruiting coordinator for CIEE in Portland, ME. She will be helping students who want to work seasonally in the US with the J-1 work and travel program. Her assignments have taken her to Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, and Turkey thus far! Congratulations to Cailin Mateleska, who has recently graduated with a master’s degree in art therapy from Leslie University in Cambridge, MA! It is always such a joy to hear what you’ve all been up to since we’ve graduated, and I am always impressed by where your lives have taken you. Keep the news coming! I’d love to hear from all of you! Be well, and stay happy.

—Alexandra Covucci, apo2@alumni.unh.edu

2009

Jessica Dennis is a financial assistant at MIT, in their comparative media studies/writing program. “I completed my M.Ed in Higher Ed Administration in 2012 from Northeastern University. I also founded the website, Gluten Free Boston Girl (www.glutenfreebostongirl.com), a blog dedicated to living a gluten-free lifestyle based primarily in the Boston area.” Please send your news.

—Jenelle DeVits, 187 Woodpoint Rd., Apt. 4, Brooklyn, NY 11211; j.devits@alumni.unh.edu

2010

Congratulations to Kyle Maroney on his Sept. 21, 2013, marriage to Laura Kearny ’09 in Providence, RI. We wish you a long, happy marriage! Melanie Condon has been working as a policy associate at the National Conference of State Legislatures in Washington, DC, where she lobbies the Federal government and Congress around the issues of energy, environment, agriculture, and transportation. Bridget Farmer is also doing great work with her degree from UNH, as she has been an assistant legislative analyst at JLARC in Richmond, VA ,since the summer of 2013.

Great work, Class of 2010!

—Caitlin LeMay, 18-22 Essex St., Apt 17 Haverhill, MA 01832; caitlin.lemay@alumni.unh.edu

2011

Emma Pritchard writes that she is “currently in my seventh month of Peace Corps service. I am teaching English to both students and teachers at a rural high school in Cambodia. I have also started an art club for high school students with another volunteer. In my free time I study Khmer (Cambodian) and spend time with my wonderful host family. I am looking forward to another

UNH IN HIS BLOOD: Three generations of Wildcats gathered to celebrate the graduation of Jackson Corson ’14 on May 17. Pictured with Jackson (third from left) are his father, Robert Corson ’82; grandfather Peter Corson ’77; aunt Patricia Waldman Corson ’79; uncle William Corson ’79; uncle Geoffrey Corson ’84; and grandmother Cynthia Corson ’75. Cynthia and Peter both attended UNH in their 40s, after Pete retired from the Coast Guard and not long before their own children matriculated. All four of Jackson’s grandparents—William ’31 and Anna Ward ’31 Benedict and Ruth Davis ’31 Corson and Emerson ’33 and Ruth Davis ’31 Corson—attended UNH as well. A University Scholar who earned a B.S. in computer science, Jackson will remain in Durham to earn his master’s in computer science. And he might not be the last Corson to call the university home: his younger sister, Kelley, has the Class of 2019 in her sights. great year and a half of service.” Please send your news.

—Kristina Looney, 117 Central St., Apt #2, Auburn, MA 01524; kLooney@alumni.unh.edu

2012

Alison Heleen teaches music at the Marguerite E. Small Elementary School in West Yarmouth, MA. She earned a five-year master’s degree in music pre-teaching at UNH. Please send your news.

—Bria Oneglia, 436 Winchester Rd., Winsted, CT 06098; bwf9@wildcats.unh.edu

2013

Matt Jones has been living in the outer district of Shenzhen, China, teaching English. He returns to the US in June 2014. Christopher Drew and Kathleen

6 0 • Un i ve rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p s hi r e Ma g a z i n e • S p r i ng/S ummer 2014

Veno were married on May 25, 2013, in Dover, NH. Chris is a financial analyst with Liberty Mutual. Please send your news. Ed note: If you would like to write the column for the class of 2013, email: alumni.editor@unh.edu and let us know!

2014

Congratulations to the UNH Class of 2014 on your May 17 graduation and rest assured this is only the beginning of your lifelong connection to UNH.Ed note: If you would like to write the column for the class of 2014, email: alumni.editor@unh.edu and let us know!

by Karen Tongue Hammond ’64 For more obituaries, and to post comments: unhmagazine.unh.edu

In Memoriam David Richard Crockett ’42

He was a compassionate soldier and talented actor.

CREDIT

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n October 2, 1942, Lt. David Crockett was en route to Great Britain aboard the converted ocean liner HMS Queen Mary. Life with his new bride, Dorothy Jasper Crockett ’42, would be postponed until the end of World War II. While zig-zagging to avoid German U-boats, the massive Queen Mary inadvertently struck an escort cruiser, HMS Curacao.

Cut in half, the Curacao sank within minutes. Ordered not to stop because of the U-boat threat, the Queen Mary steamed on, the 15,000 soldiers aboard watching helplessly as the Curacao’s men struggled in the water.

Ultimately about 108 men were rescued by another escort ship; approximately 338 drowned. It was a tragedy Crockett never forgot, and was among wartime memories he kept to himself until near the end of his life, says his daughter, Julianne Scarks ’84.

Although he enjoyed Italian opera performances, skied in Alsace-Lorraine, and visited famous European monuments during leaves with the 5th Army Antiaircraft Artillery, Crockett also expressed sadness remembering the war’s destruction of businesses and irreplaceable art. He had compassion for the war’s devastating effect on the homes and farms of ordinary citizens, too. From their conversations before he died of congestive heart failure on November 17, 2013, it was obvious that “he had been mulling a lot of things over for a lot of years,” says Julianne.

Discharged in 1946, Crockett worked for Crockett’s Dairy Farm, a family venture in New London, N.H., and later became a comptroller at Sanders Associates in Nashua. In retirement he started a custom carpentry business and worked into his mid-80s.

He and Dorothy shared a lifelong interest in theater. At UNH she worked behind the scenes; he acted and became president of the Mask & Dagger society his senior year. Later, the couple joined several small theater groups, with Crockett relishing his favorite roles as Hamlet and Henry Higgins.

Mr. Charles E. Clark, professor emeritus of history Mr. Nicolas Engalichev, professor emeritus of forestry Mr. Nicholas J. Halias, former UNH chief of police Mr. Albert D. Frost, professor emeritus of electrical engineering Dr. James B. Holter, professor emeritus of dairy science Mrs. Dorothy Colman Wageman ’37 The Honorable Aaron A. Harkaway ’38 Mr. Robert L. Littlefield ’38

Mrs. Ethel McAllister Pinkham ’39 Mr. William Samiec ’39 Mrs. Rosetta West Raduazo ’40 Mr. Herbert E. Thompson ’40 Mrs. Ann Sewall Wilson ’40 Mr. Irving H. Bly ’41 Mr. Wilson Brunel ’41 Mrs. Eleanor Gould Bryant ’41 Mr. Howard W. Burch ’41 Mrs. Dorothy Morrill Dunton ’41 Ms. Natalie Painting ’41 Mr. Ralph L. Grindle ’42 Mrs. Dorothy Perkins O’Neil ’42

He also loved music, says his daughter, Beth Stepancik ’71, and while at UNH had often hitched rides to Boston to hear the big bands play. He made up songs off the top of his head and entertained his children with his acting skills. Stepancik has a warm childhood memory of watching an early television production of “Peter Pan” with him. “I was very excited about all the flying,” she says. Sharing her exuberance, when the performance was over, her father picked her up and “flew” her off to bed.

Gordon “Swifty” Swift ’45

He was a farmer turned master boat builder.

A

t the Thompson School of Applied Science, Gordon “Swifty” Swift milked the campus cows and herded sheep down Main Street with Rex, a border collie. After graduation, he lived above the stallion barn with his wife, Doris Pierce Swift ’47.

“It was very noisy,” recalls Doris. “The horses were always kicking, and when they broke loose Gordon would have to round them up.”

A childhood accident left Swift with a shattered leg that never healed properly. Ineligible for military service, he was one of the few men at UNH during the war years. While the two were dating, an image of Doris and Swifty riding his bicycle around campus appeared in a national women’s magazine with the caption, “Doris Pierce has accomplished the almost impossible these days and gotten a man, Gordon Swift, all to herself.”

After they married, Swift bought a sailboat. On the couple’s first sail in Great Bay, the rudder fell off. Swift jumped in after it, and Doris clung to the mast as the boat drifted away. He managed to save both bride and boat, “but he admitted at that point that he could use some sailing lessons,” says his wife.

Despite this inauspicious introduction, after years of farming, Swift decided to learn boat building at McIntosh Boat Yard in Dover, N.H. He opened Swift Custom Boats in nearby Kensington in 1976 and built custom yachts for 30 years. Doris says

Mr. Harrison E. Smith ’42 Mr. Norman L. Turcotte ’42 Mrs. Elizabeth Piper Crowley ’44 Mr. Norman F. Doucet ’44 Mrs. Gail Daly Forster ’44 Mrs. Natalie Weeks Garrard ’44 Mr. Claude P. Goddard ’44 Mrs. Mary Knowlton Grindle ’44 Mrs. Adrienne Astle Harris ’44 Mrs. Arta Bowle Heaney ’44 Mr. Carl A. Hyldburg Jr. ’44 Mrs. Betty Baker King ’44 Mr. Richard S. Kinniburgh ’44

Ms. Patricia Reynolds Knoll ’44 Mrs. Martha Woodworth Kunze ’44 Mr. Joseph T. Lacey ’44 Ms. Beatrice W. Lord ’44 Mr. Wilber C. Maker ’44 Mr. Russell W. Nettleton ’44 Mr. Vernon E. Sanborn ’44 Mr. Frank J. Scruton ’44 Mrs. Winifred Curtis Stebbins ’44 Mrs. Maxine Libby Wallace ’44 Mr. Albert B. Wright ’44 Mrs. Mary McCarthy Wright ’44 Mr. Albert V. Bratt Jr. ’45

Mrs. Barbara Temple Bruner ’45 Ms. Grace Johnson Pomeroy ’45 Mr. Gordon H. Swift ’45 Mrs. Sylvia Steele Torrey ’44 Mrs. Ann Parker Chase ’46 Mrs. Jacqueline Sanderson Flood ’46 Mrs. Evalyn Saidel Meyers ’47 Mrs. Barbara Young Pagander ’47 Mrs. Gertrude Smart Wells ’47 Mrs. Ruth Flanders Woodbury ’47 Mr. Andrew G. Lariviere ’48 Mr. Richard G. Marden ’48 Mrs. Helen Constantinides Otis ’48

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his philosophy was that boats should not be just for the wealthy and anyone willing to help build their own boat should have one.

John Noon is among those who remember Swift’s generosity and energy. “I didn’t know him when I walked in,” he says of their first meeting, “and I walked out with a handful of tools. And I quickly learned that although Swifty was 30 years older than me, he could work me into the ground.”

For many summers, Swift passed on traditional boat-building skills at the WoodenBoat School in Brooklin, Maine, where the Friendship sloop Belford Gray, which he built with his students, is still used in the seamanship program.

Swift died on February 26. His boat-building days had ended a few years earlier when a blood clot resulted in the amputation of his “good” leg. But he continued to enjoy boating, piloting a motor launch he had adapted years earlier for his two physically disabled grandsons, says his daughter, Laurie McIntosh ’02G. “Little did he realize back when he was renovating the boat for my sons, that he was also renovating it for himself.”

badminton match in Los Angeles. She loved to ski and recently returned from Steamboat Springs, Colorado and what she had told her sister, Jane Tibbetts, was her “best ski trip ever.”

Awarded a Fulbright fellowship to Japan toward the end of her teaching career, Browning immersed herself in local culture, staying at a traditional Japanese inn, or ryokan, and joining other women in the communal baths. It was an experience she wouldn’t have missed, but she admitted preferring her early-morning solitary swims in Ski Island Lake in Oklahoma City.

Retirement opened up even more horizons for Browning. A clarinetist, she took up the violin and joined the Oklahoma City Philharmonic’s Society of Strings. Selected through a competitive process by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the U.S. State Department, she also monitored elections in Russia, Ukraine, and the Balkans for 15 years. Running gear and a bathing suit were always in her suitcase so that she could exercise wherever she traveled.

Browning was a self-taught handywoman who could fix anything in her own house, including the roof, says her sister, and Judith Gove Browning ’60 often helped the neighbors with their own home repairs. Skilled at A competitive athlete, she taught and traveled the world. woodworking, she carved intricate gifts for her family and friends.

Browning asked to have her ashes spread at Millen Lake eace Corps volunteer. Teacher. Sports enthusiast, musician, in Washington, N.H., a request her family will carry out this and woodworker. Judith Gove Browning wore many differspring.

She died on January 13 at age 75 after suffering a cerebral ent hats throughout the course of her full and busy life. vascular accident while playing tennis. Only a few weeks earlier One of the first female Peace Corps volunteers in the Doshe had been traveling around South America. While there, she minican Republic, she arrived in learned to tango. the poorest part of the country in 1964 to teach nutrition and cooking skills. There, she met another Donald Bouchard ’63 volunteer, James Browning. The A modern Renaissance man, he loved literature and philosophy, fly-fishing and family. two fell in love and later married. sked where he found the courage to battle a stage 4 cancer When the Brownings returned diagnosis for several years, Donald Bouchard quoted to the United States, Judy began Nietzsche: “Love your fate.” That he would choose a phiher career as an elementary school losophy of embracing life’s ups and downs and making every physical education teacher in day count did not surprise his friends and family. Whether he Oklahoma City and raised two was studying the classics or reading a spy thriller, teaching a children, a daughter, Julie Browning, and a son, James. Her university course on French structuralist Foucault or fly-fishing classes were unusual for the times, says Julie, because she liked in a quiet river, Bouchard was always happy to be experiencing to include games from other cultures and incorporated a little something new or exploring “idears,” as he liked to say in his history and foreign language.

New Hampshire accent.

An indefatigable sportswoman, Browning excelled at tennis, Originally enrolled at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institue to winning several state-level U.S. Tennis Association singles and study engineering, Bouchard left sophomore year to join the doubles titles. The New Hampshire native was also a state badArmy, where he became a voracious reader. By the time he was minton champion and once beat tennis star Billie Jean King at a

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Mr. A. Charles Pierce ’48 Ms. Mary L. Sullivan ’48, ’56G Mrs. Sally Youmans Zink ’48 Mr. Stanley M. Holiday Jr. ’49 Mr. Raymond E. LaPlante ’49 Mrs. Thelma Marshall Soule ’49 Dr. James T. Bailey ’50, ’52G Mr. Edward P. Castaldo ’50 Mr. Philip A. Chase ’50 Mr. John J. Kazanowski ’50 Mr. Gregorios Koutrelakos ’50 Col. Elizabeth L. Lambertson Ret. ’50 Mrs. Marie Fazzone Little ’50G Mrs. Joan Larsen McCarthy ’50 Mr. George A. Rollins ’50 Mr. Edward P. Wielgos ’50

Mr. Edward P. Wielgos ’50 Mr. George D. Baron ’51 Mr. Robert E. Broad Jr. ’51 Mrs. Elizabeth Bryden Cairney ’51 Dr. Arthur B. Coffin ’51 Mr. Daniel A. Raizes ’51 Mrs. Joan Chaffee Simpson ’51 Mr. Rudolph R. Smith ’51 Mrs. Mary Lue Barton Belden ’52 Col. Arthur F. Creighton Ret. ’52 Dr. James E. DeRocher Jr. ’52 Mrs. Mildred Pratt DeRocher ’52 Mrs. Yvette Bergeron Duffy ’52 Mr. Andrew C. Frechette ’52 Dr. Roy P. Johnston ’52, ’53G Mr. Joseph Mulherrin ’52

Mr. David W. Diehl ’53 Mr. Paul A. Mason ’53 Mr. Warren D. Billings Jr. ’54 Mrs. Frances Beals Black ’54 Mr. Philip W. Blanchard ’54 Mrs. Harriet Collins Blasetti ’54 Mr. Maurice H. Deschenes Jr. ’54 Mr. Guy A. Dodge ’54 Mr. Lester W. Greeley ’54 Mr. Edgar N. Hobby Jr. ’54 Lt. Col. Elias G. Kyreages ’54 Mrs. M. Shirley Hopwood Leach ’54 Mr. Robert H. Leaver ’54 Mrs. Mary Henderson Perra ’54 Mrs. Shirley Peterson Sherrill ’54 Mr. Stephen K. Thomas Jr. ’54

62 • Uni ve rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p s hi r e Ma g a z i n e • S p r i ng/S umme r 2014

Mr. Donald C. Wheeler ’54 Mrs. Evelyn Suutari Baker ’55 Mr. William F. Bryant ’55 Mrs. Ann Deich Genthner ’55 Mrs. Joan McTerney Hickmott ’55 Mr. David R. Proper ’55 Mrs. Janice Heald Stevens-Desherbinin ’55 Dr. John A. Bagonzi ’56 Mr. Anthony Koromilas ’56 Mrs. Lois Simonds Perlowski ’56 Mr. Richard M. Ray ’56 Mr. David L. Baldwin ’57 Mr. Earl D. Russell ’57 Mr. Donald H. Chase ’58 Dr. Frederick R. Holbrook ’58 Ms. Mary A. Long ’58

Mr. Roman B. Aquizap ’59, ’62G Mr. Glenn Arden-Smith Jr. ’59 Mr. Philip F. Casey ’59 Mr. Charles E. Cresswell Jr. ’59 Mrs. Gertrude Knapp Drinkwater ’59 Mr. Andrew E. Janetos ’59 Mr. Stanley W. Knowles ’59, ’70G Mr. Peter Mortenson ’59, ’60 Mr. Armand L. Pelletier ’59 Mr. Michael E. Alafat Jr. ’60 Ms. Judith Gove Browning ’60 Mrs. Elaine Forkey Ciarkowski ’60 Mr. John R. Ferguson Jr. ’60 Mrs. Estelle Isherwood Munro ’60 Mr. Donald T. Munsey Jr. ’60, ’63G Mr. Richard T. Playdon ’60

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discharged he had decided to switch his major to English, and transferred to UNH to complete his degree. He went on to earn a PhD from SUNY-Buffalo and became a professor of English at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

He was a true romantic, says his wife, Bebeann. He sent a single, long-stemmed rose to her office shortly after they met, and proposed to her within three weeks. They were married three months later and celebrated their 50th anniversary shortly before his death at age 76 on March 13.

The couple moved from Montreal to Albuquerque, New Mexico in the 1980s, in search of a warmer climate. A modern-day Renaissance man who loved to travel, published literary criticism on writers as varied as Milton and Hemingway, and played classical piano, he began a new career in computer sales and consulting and helped Bebeann raise their two daughters,Nickay Bouchard Manning and Alessandra Bouchard Calhoun.

Nickay recalls that, when she and Alessandra were young, her father was considered the funniest dad around.

“With a grin, he would say, ‘Hi, boys,’ to all the girls sitting on our front steps,” she says. ”The little girls would then chorus back, “We’re not boys!”

Bouchard was devoted to his family and looked forward to any celebration that would bring them all together. Christmas was a special favorite because it meant eating one of his favorite foods, a French-Canadian tourtiere (pork pie). His annual holiday letter, full of wit and whimsy, was always eagerly awaited by his friends.

Messages of condolence to the family after Bouchard’s death mentioned his wealth of knowledge and wide range of interests. A former McGill colleague called him a brilliant man who “carried his intellect lightly, and always with a warm human dimension.”

Cora Alison Porteous Dolan ’83

She lost her eyesight, but saw possibilities everywhere.

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t age three, Cora Alison Dolan—always known as Alison— put on a brown dress and set off alone on a one-mile walk to the local school. Found by her frantic mother a few hundred yards from her destination, Dolan announced that she just wanted to be a Brownie like her older sister.

It was the first sign of her inquisitive and adventurous personality, but definitely not the last, says her sister, Susan Sisti. A Mr. Norman D. Roberts ’60 Mr. Stanton T. Fitts ’61 Mr. James P. Horn ’61 Dr. Donald A. Normandeau ’61G, ’63G Mr. Richard A. Dumont ’62 Mr. Samuel Q. Nichols ’62 Mr. Donald F. Bouchard ’63 Mr. Richard H. Davis ’63 Dr. Leroy J. Egan ’64, ’68G Mr. Jon S. Fifield ’64 Mr. David N. Henderson ’64 Lt. Col. Wayne N. Hungerford Ret. ’64 Mrs. Dina Handler Kaye ’64 Mr. Peter F. Michaud ’64 Mr. Paul D. Tuttle ’64, ’67G Dr. Arthur H. Cutter III ’65

Dr. James A. Frizzell ’65 Dr. R. Ronald Roy ’65 Mrs. Nancy Wirth Tkach ’65 Mr. Bruce F. Valicenti ’65 Mrs. Elizabeth Blake Benway ’66 Mr. Emery P. Booska ’67G Mr. Armand J. Brassard ’67 Mr. David G. Gilroy ’67 Mr. William A. Loring ’67 Mrs. Ruth Doyle Geary ’68G Mr. Neil D. Smith ’68 Mrs. Maureen Loll Bigelow ’69 The Honorable Lester W. Bradley ’69 Mrs. Ruth Autio Harju ’69, ’73G Mr. Lamont W. Beaudette ’70 Sister Ann F. Hammersley ’70G

childhood diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes didn’t prevent her from taking on challenges that ranged from a college parachute jump to a demanding career in the Central Intelligence Agency. And although the disease took Dolan’s eyesight in the late 1990s, she continued to meet every challenge with grace and humor, right up to her death on January 3. She and her husband, Larry Dolan, traveled extensively, camped and skied, and enjoyed riding their tandem bicycle. At a regatta in Chicago, Dolan competed with a handicapped sailor who steered with his arm strapped to the tiller.

She worked the jib sheets and he was her eyes.

Dolan’s blindness ended her 10-year career with the CIA and additional complications from the diabetes necessitated a kidney and pancreas transplant. After the surgery, she trained with her first guide dog, Colleen, earned a master’s degree, and formed a consulting company to educate people about living with disabilities. Colleen by her side, she became a popular speaker, giving motivational talks to businesses and schools.

A lover of horses, Dolan also became the first visually impaired therapeutic riding instructor in the U.S. to be certified by the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association. She also co-founded a therapeutic and adaptive riding program, Alisons’ Whispers, that provided opportunities for people with autism, multiple sclerosis, and those with special needs.

Grateful for the ways in which Colleen—and her successor, Winnie—had helped her achieve so much in life, Dolan served as an ambassador for Guiding Eyes for the Blind in Yorktown Heights, NY. Sharing her story with volunteers who raise guide dogs and donors who support the organization, she was a dynamic speaker. “When she spoke, everyone paid attention,” Larry says.

Although she was born and raised in the New York area, mourners at a celebration of Dolan’s life recalled her dry New England humor—-a legacy from the Massachusetts grandparents she loved to visit, her sister says. Sisti recalls one time, after Dolan lost her eyesight, that she was in a store when another shopper asked, “Do you realize you have two different shoes on?”

“Yes,” she replied. “And I have a matching pair at home.”

Ms. Susan Kanavel Nash ’70 Mrs. Shirley Kanerva Thompson ’70 Mrs. Gail Vergobbe Tufts ’71 Mr. George R. Crombie ’72 Mr. Frederick W. Griffin Jr. ’72 Mr. Peter H. Oleskey ’72 Mr. Vincent M. Jarosz ’73 Mr. William J. Hybsch ’74 Mrs. Judith Maroone Majewski ’74 Mr. Robert L. Ouellette ’74 Ms. Julia Brown ’75 Ms. Mary M. Dean ’76G Dr. William L. Keith ’76 Mr. Gary S. Lapointe ’76 Mr. Steven A. Friedberg ’77 Mrs. Margaret Clark Gage ’77

Mr. James R. Jones ’77G, ’90G Mr. Gary E. Myers ’77 Mr. Larry R. Mills ’78 Mr. Philip F. McCarthy ’79 Mrs. Carol Armitage Pierstorff ’79G Mr. James A. Burchell ’80 Mr. Jeffrey K. Hall ’80 Mr. Timothy D. Zachman ’80 Mr. Mark J. Blair ’81 Mrs. Joy Gibson Deihim-Panah ’81 Mr. Eric R. Layman ’81 Mrs. Anne Kane Flanagan ’82 Mr. Richard D. Haviland ’82 Mrs. Cora Alison Porteous Dolan ’83 Mr. Shane J. Skidmore ’86 Mrs. Vivian R. Tuttle ’86

Mr. William L. Knight III ’88 Ms. Cynthia Gonnerman ’89 Mrs. Patricia Walsh Lakos ’92 Mr. Daniel R. Vachon ’92 Mr. David D. Gammans ’95G Mr. Jonathan L. Hoyt ’96, ’99G Mrs. Kimberly Adams Tower ’96 Ms. Mandy K. Speaker ’97 Mrs. Jaclyn Lucca Tahboub ’00 Mr. Bruce A. Behan ’04 Mr. Kyle M. Wilson ’08 Ms. Marina E. Slavin ’15

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O n B e n ’s Fa r m

UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

In a Class by Himself Charles Hood was the Class of 1880 the scientific advancements in agriculture—specifically those concerning bacteriology—he’d studied in college. In 1888, his father made him and his brother Gilbert partners in H.P. Hood and Sons, and Charles soon became a pioneer in the sanitary production and distribution of milk, becoming one of the first to practice pasteurization, maintain laboratories for milk analysis, and employ reuseable glass bottles. Upon H.P. Hood’s death in 1900, Charles became president and treasurer of the company.

As the Hood milk business grew, so did the college—and Charles Hood’s involvement with it. He remained active in the agricultural program, once offering a $50 bull from his stock to the student with the highest rank in cattle judging. In 1922, he gave the college 30 shares of H. P. Hood and Sons preferred stock, the income from which was to be used “for the encouragement, aid and benefit of deserving students.” For many years, the money was used for two incentive awards, one for students who showed unusual excellence in the judging of dairy cattle, and the other for “that senior man who shows the greatest promise through character, scholarship, leadership, and usefulness to humanity.” Known as the Hood Achievement Award, the latter prize is still awarded today.

On the 50th anniversary of his solo graduation, in 1930, Hood gave the University of New Hampshire its first major gift from an alumnus: $125,000 for construction and $75,000 for the maintenance of a modern infirmary. One of his requests was for a private room with a bath for the use of his mentor, Dean Charles Pettee, who still frequented his office in Thompson Hall daily.

Hood House was dedicated on June 12, 1932, and served as the campus infirmary until 1989. Hood died on November 23, 1937, at the age of 77. Dean Pettee, then 84 years old, was an honorary pallbearer at the funeral. ~ —Mylinda Woodward ’97

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ighteen-year-old Charlie Hood was in a hay field on his father’s Derry, N.H., dairy farm when a stranger approached him with an unusual opportunity: a chance to earn a college degree.

The year was 1877, and the fledgling New Hampshire College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts was in trouble. After rising steadily in the years following the college’s 1866 incorporation, enrollment had plummeted, and not a single student had showed up to register for the fall of ’78. In an effort to remedy the situation, faculty members Charles Pettee and Clarence Scott had begun traveling the state by horse and buggy, distributing pamphlets about the college and talking to prospective students wherever they might be found.

It was Pettee who approached young Charlie Hood, the eldest son of an enterprising businessman named Harvey P. Hood, known as H.P., who ran a large and successful milk distribution business that covered territory from Boston to southern New Hampshire. Confident that his firstborn son had received sufficient education at Derry’s Pinkerton Academy to continue the family business, H.P. showed little interest in Pettee’s proposal. Mrs. Hood and Charlie, however, were convinced that a college education would be beneficial for all.

At that time, a B.S. degree at the state college could be earned in three years, and Charlie’s score on the college entrance exam qualified him to enter as a second-year student. It was thus that Charles Harvey Hood became the sole member of the Class of 1880.

H.P. Hood had grown his business on his reputation for selling clean, high-quality milk, and after graduation, Charles returned to the farm with a keen interest in applying some of

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