Founder of The Andover Shop Charlie Davidson ’48 was a man of many passions. His friend and employee Mor Sene (shown here holding a photo of Charlie) shared both his talent for tailoring and his taste in music.
22 Dream Weaver
Like Elvis, a role he sometimes plays as a performer, lawyer Derry Rundlett ’68 says all his dreams have come true.
24 What the World Needs Now
Employers in the Bowdoin community tell us what qualities we need most in young workers and what students can do to best prepare for their careers.
42 Long Overdue
Her own 25th Reunion COVID-postponed, Elise Juska ’95 channeled her feelings into a new novel, Reunion, excerpted here.
34 Prince of Tweeds
5 Cultivating Courage: As a student, Paul Wang ’24 worked to make Bowdoin Student Government more united and effective, felt inspired by those around him— and fished whenever he could.
7 Dine: New York Times recipe contributor and new cookbook author Lidey Heuck ’13 shares a recipe for a perfect summer salad.
8 The Art of Conversation: Associate Professor of English Aaron Kitch taught a class that examines what it means, in this digital era, to genuinely talk to one another.
11 The Giving Tree: Brunswick residents Ruth and Rupert White ’55 grew a black walnut tree from a seed given them by Steph Fay ’72 and donated it to Bowdoin, where it would have room to grow, after Fay’s death.
13 Saluting Native Life: Indigenous groups from Maine and beyond, including all the Maine tribes, gathered at Bowdoin for a tribal powwow celebration.
48 Worst Club, Best Members: Rob Reider ’07 and Jay Tansey ’07 teamed up with Chris Piasecki, husband of Sarah Piasecki ’09, to form Sad Dads Club, a peer-to-peer community to support dads through the grief of loss.
COLLECTIVE JOY
Ally Savagian ’24 dances during an extemporaneous hip-hop circle experience called a cypher. In a spin on the usual spring show, dance students and faculty invited the community to a culminating event that was equal parts performance and party.
Photo by Alex Cornell du Houx ’06
Respond
Never Again
“Bowdoin students have been surfing in Maine since at least the mid-70s…” [“Second to Nature,” Winter 2024]. Before that, on a weekday in January 1969, George Van Cott ’71 and I decided to surf Popham on the back side of a passing nor’easter. We loaded our boards onto my Volvo, skipped class, and headed out. George had a wetsuit with a hood. Mine didn’t. Neither of us had gloves or booties. We decided to surf one after another, perhaps the only good decision of the day. George didn’t last long: the waves were big, disorganized, and the beach was closed out. I went out next. It must have taken me a half hour to smash through the breakers. I fell on the first wave, and my board washed into the beach. (This was before leashes.) I didn’t have the energy to swim, so I decided to body surf. For several wonderful seconds I experienced frictionless travel, until I went over the falls. I was tumbled until I had no idea which direction was up. I ran out of air and had a “life passing before my eyes” moment. Instead of dying, I washed into the shallows, and George waded out and helped me to my feet. We were so cold that getting out of our wetsuits was out of the question. We turned the heater up to high and drove back to campus. I got into the shower for about an hour and never did that again. Bruce Brown ’71
ALONG FOR THE JOURNEY
Some beautiful writing in this [Winter 2024] issue—thank you Samantha [Francis-Taylor ’09, “What Lasts”], Chaké [Higgison ’78, “Loss, Love, and Silver Linings”], and Barbara [Held, “A Rightful Pride”]. Particularly appreciated as I continue on my own journey with words.
Kathy Billings, director of donor relations 1989–2008
WHAT COOPERATION?
This [“Bound Together,” Winter 2024] obviously anti-Republican screed marks an unwelcome development in your editorial policy. When someone uses terms “agendas of corporate profit,” “politics of greed,” “policies that serve only the powerful,” and “republican lawmakers,” you can be certain the “cooperation” called for means acceptance of a far-left agenda. The reasons for
not cooperating with Democrats except when absolutely necessary are legion. Two quick examples: In the presidential election of 1864, the Democrat party platform called for a civil-war ceasefire and allowing southern states to continue slavery. At the conclusion of Trump’s State of the Union speech, Speaker Pelosi stood up and tore up a copy of the speech. And finally, a syntax critique: “around the country and across the globe”?
John Hansen ’58
BOWDOIN AND BEYOND
What a lovely cover and powerful story you created with “Circling the Stories” [Spring/ Summer 2023]. Having taught English for thirty-eight years and loving The Odyssey, I found the conversation a pleasure to read. Also, I just wanted to add that the essays in “Roots
of Virtues” [Winter 2024] are so good. Finally, I taught Luke Wilson as a seventh grader (at Noble & Greenough School); he was full of wisdom and humor then too! It was fun to watch him flourish at Nobles (and apparently at Bowdoin and beyond).
Sarah Dickenson Snyder ’77, P’11
CORRECTION
In our last issue, we incorrectly identified Nick Wechsler as an actor, rather than a producer, in the Class News entry about Steve Schwartz ’70 and Anniversary, a film he and his wife, Paula Mae Schwartz, are producing. In a second error, both Wechsler and Kate Churchill were identified as actors in a caption for the photo related to the entry. Like the Schwartzes, both Wechsler and Churchill are producers on the film.
MAGAZINE STAFF
Editor
Alison Bennie
Designer and Art Director
Melissa Wells
Managing Editor
Leanne Dech
Senior Editor
Doug Cook
Design Consultant
2Communiqué
Editorial Consultant
Laura J. Cole
Contributors
Jim Caton
John Cross
Isa Cruz ’27
Cheryl Della Pietra
Rebecca Goldfine
Scott Hood
Neiman Mocombe ’26
Janie Porche
Tom Porter
On the Cover: Illustrations by Holly Stapleton
BOWDOIN MAGAZINE (ISSN: 0895-2604) is published three times a year by Bowdoin College, 4104 College Station, Brunswick, Maine, 04011. Printed by Penmor Lithographers, Lewiston, Maine. Sent free of charge to all Bowdoin alumni, parents of current and recent undergraduates, members of the senior class, faculty and staff, and members of the Association of Bowdoin Friends.
Opinions expressed in this magazine are those of the authors.
Please send address changes, ideas, or letters to the editor to the address above or by email to bowdoineditor@bowdoin.edu. Send class news to classnews@bowdoin.edu or to the address above.
PHOTO: HEATHER PERRY
PAUL WANG ’24
CULTIVATING COURAGE
I attended a small high school where the closeknit community emphasized the importance of meaningful connections. This experience led me to Bowdoin, where nurturing these genuine relationships has been a defining part of my college experience.
At Bowdoin, I’ve found inspiration in my peers, and professors like Connie Chiang have profoundly shaped me. Her belief in my potential has inspired me to reach beyond my perceived limits and grow immensely. My experiences with dining staff at Moulton have been equally inspiring. The creativity and respect they show, and their dedication and kindness, have deeply influenced my understanding of commitment and service to community.
Fishing is a tradition in my family. From quiet mornings with my brother, grandfather, and father to sharing the calm of Maine’s waters with friends, fishing provides an escape from the pressures of daily life and a way to connect with nature and people. It grounds me and renews my spirit.
I’m going to miss everything about this place, but my favorite memory at Bowdoin was leading a pre-orientation trip to Merritt Island, bonding with lovely people against a backdrop of Maine’s breathtaking beauty.
People might perceive me as self-assured, but I can grapple with anxiety about decisions and outcomes. This year has been a journey in cultivating courage and learning to act from a place of conviction, even when it’s challenging. Initially, I steered clear of Bowdoin Student Government. When I saw its potential, I decided to get involved and focused on making us more united and effective. One of the proudest moments of my time here was passing the extended Thanksgiving Break initiative through BSG. The idea of establishing something with lasting impact, though I won’t personally benefit, reminds me of planting trees whose shade others will enjoy.
For more from this interview, visit bowdoin.edu/magazine.
FROM BOWDOIN AND BEYOND
PHOTO: MICHELE STAPLETON
BSG president Paul Wang ’24 cherishes moments of solitude at his favorite Maine fishing spots.
Community
Building Bridges
No more immune to the forces of polarization than other groups, a local retirement community gets help from Bowdoin volunteers in spanning their divide.
POLITICAL DIVISIONS fracturing the country have affected cities, towns, and neighborhoods of all sizes and types––even reaching the 183 residents at the Thornton Oaks Retirement Community in Brunswick.
We have a “very active, engaging, and diverse group of residents,” said Deb O’Neill, Thornton Oak’s health and wellness coordinator. She recently reached out to a Bowdoin dean asking whether the College had an expert who could speak to the community about fostering positive relations among the residents, who have found themselves in conflict more than usual since COVID.
“We are looking for an experienced resource to share information regarding healthy means of communication, given varied beliefs,” she added.
O’Neill’s email quickly found its way to the inboxes of Whitney Hogan and Kate O’Grady, who lead Bowdoin’s Program for Nonviolence and Conflict Resolution. They launched their mediation program in 2018 “to promote a college community in which members can navigate conflict peacefully and in a way that promotes self-reflection and accountability,” according to their website.
When O’Grady and Hogan spoke at Thornton Oaks about the work they’re doing at Bowdoin,
they left their audience inspired and buzzing with enthusiasm, said the facility’s executive director, Cindy Sullivan.
“They were very well-received, just wonderful presenters,” Sullivan said. “The way they delivered the information was easy to digest, and people in the audience could make the correlation between what is happening at Bowdoin and what is happening here and around the world—that divide.”
The community has asked Hogan and O’Grady to return in June to lead a facilitated “circle” discussion, an exercise that O’Grady said can “help small groups of people strengthen community, clarify values, create common ground, address conflict and harm, and enable peacekeeping.”
Faculty
A LITTLE EXTRA
In addition to his role as a professor of theater, Davis Robinson likes to dabble in a bit of Hollywood. He’s been a day player in The Holdovers, Julia, and The Next Karate Kid. A day player is one step up from an extra: you have a line or lines, a dressing room and wardrobe, your name in the credits, and royalties. Extras are visible on screen but don’t have lines or any of the other perks.
To try out for roles (he has a rule that he doesn’t travel farther than Boston to audition), Robinson said he must be intrigued by the director or cast members of a project. And while the making of make believe is a fun side lark, he says it also helps his teaching.
“We’re in an academic field that is connected to pop culture, so it is great for students to know that what we’re studying in theory and practice in class has direct application to the real world,” he said. Also, in seeing directly how movies are made, he can apply observations to his own classes or productions, such as the choreography of fight scenes.
Sometimes, he says, when you’re hanging around the set, you have a chance to be useful—like the time he helped Meryl Streep disentangle her hair from her headset—or for a good conversation. He tells the story of seeing Philip Seymour Hoffman sitting by himself during lunch on a movie filmed in Maine (State and Main), and going over to keep him company.
“Philip saw I was reading Death of a Salesman for my class, and we talked about that, because he had just played that role on Broadway or was about to,” Robinson said. “That was sweet, just to sit there and talk about acting.”
Davis Robinson (right) with Chad Lowe and Hilary Swank on the set of The Next Karate Kid.
Tomato and Peach Salad with Toasted Farro and Mozzarella
Recipe by Lidey Heuck ’13
This recipe is a twist on the classic caprese, adding peaches to the mix. Any cherry tomatoes will work, but orange ones make a beautiful sunset hue in combination with the peaches.
¼ cup pearled farro, rinsed
Kosher salt
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved through the stem
2 peaches, pitted and cut into ½-inch wedges
4 ounces fresh mozzarella cheese, torn into large shreds (about ¾ cup)
1 tablespoon champagne vinegar or white wine vinegar
¼ cup fresh mint leaves, chopped
Freshly ground black pepper
DID YOU KNOW?
When people first began cultivating their own peach trees in Europe centuries ago, it was common to share abundant crops with family and neighbors who didn’t have them. According to many linguists, receiving this generous gift led to the expression of feeling “peachy” or “peachy keen.” And the person giving away the fruit? They earned a nickname too—a “real peach.”
Fill a medium saucepan with water and bring to a boil over high heat. Add 1 tablespoon salt and the farro. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer, uncovered, until the farro is tender, about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
When the farro is cooked, drain it thoroughly in a colander, then immediately transfer it to a sheet pan, spreading it out with a wooden spoon. Cool completely, then drizzle the farro with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and ¼ teaspoon salt and toss well. Spread the farro back out into an even layer, then toast in the oven until the grains begin to look browned at the edges, 15 to 20 minutes, tossing once halfway through. Set aside to cool.
Spread half of the farro on a large flat platter. Arrange the tomatoes, peaches, and mozzarella on top. In a large glass measuring cup, whisk together the remaining 3 tablespoons olive oil, the vinegar, and ¼ teaspoon salt. Drizzle the dressing evenly over the salad, then top with the remaining farro and the mint. Sprinkle lightly with salt and black pepper and serve at room temperature.
Lidey Heuck ’13 is a cook, writer, and creator based in New York’s Hudson Valley. A recipe contributor to The New York Times who began her career as Ina Garten’s assistant, Heuck has just published her first cookbook. This recipe is reproduced from Cooking in Real Life: Delicious and Doable Recipes for Every Day, copyright 2024 by Lidey Heuck, by permission of Simon Element, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
Dine
Did You Know?
The Art of Conversation
In an era when digital communication often takes the place of talking face to face, making meaningful connections with real people in real time matters more than ever.
Illustration by Laura Liedo
English professor Aaron Kitch taught a class this spring that examines what it means to talk, genuinely talk, to one another. How to do it, why we do it, what it means and does for us as individuals and for us as a collective. In readings, podcasts, and videos ranging from Plato to bell hooks and from Shakespeare to Sanjay Gupta, the class explores conversation as both a vital cultural practice and form of human expression central to literature, drama, and philosophy. It also considers both the obstacles and opportunities posed by digital media, while inviting students to enhance their own conversation skills through talking to each other and with special guests—artists, musicians, administrators, and more—from campus and beyond.
HOW TO DISAGREE
With growing tendencies to surround ourselves exclusively with people who think the way we do, the extended family dinner table can be one of the few places we find ourselves faced with opposing points of view. In this part of the course, students learn how disagreement is central to healthy social groups both big and small.
SMALL TALK
Author and researcher
Sherry Turkle calls conversation “the most human—and humanizing—thing that we do.” In this module, students learn the ways that everyday conversations make a difference in terms of happiness, productivity, and learning.
CONVERSATION TACTICS
This section covers ground that is alternately hilarious and alarming, with specific talk about active listening and why you need friends to exploring the idea that there is truly no topic that should be off-limits (that’s where the comedy is).
MUSICAL CONVERSATION
In a world in which thousands of things compete for our gaze at every instant, students find the value of engaging in rapt and focused attention using their ears and minds as well as their eyes.
TALKING ABOUT RACE
Difficult, uncomfortable, necessary—race talk is all of those things to just about everyone. Students learn through readings and assignments how silence can be a way of dodging responsibility for oppression and racism.
FORMS OF ATTENTION
Students learn that attributes we value in people—things like imagination, warmth, and wit—have manifestations in art. And that what is intended by art matters, but not above all.
LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL
Conversation is not just an essential social glue—it is also pleasurable. In this module, students learn the history of salons and what it means to be “men and women whose minds have learned to move easily and fearlessly in the perilous jungle of ideas.”
VIRTUAL CONVERSATIONS
Do we want more from technology and less from each other? Or is it the other way around? Discuss.
Forward
On the Shelf
I Could Have Been More Wrong
KEVIN MCCAFFREY ’79
(Four Winds Press, 2024)
Declaring that the spirit of life is the spirit of play, Kevin McCaffrey delights in confronting the cacophonies of experience and trying to make them rhyme in this new collection of poems, which oscillates between erudition and slapstick. The author of a novel, Nightmare Therapy, and a 2014 volume of poetry, Laughing Cult, McCaffrey lives in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
An Anonymous Gift
EDIE HAZARD BIRNEY ’83
(Indie Author Books, 2024)
Live for a Living: How to Create Your Career Journey to Work Happier, Not Harder ANDY PALMER ’88
(Fast Company Press, 2023)
Ways of Walking
ANN DE FOREST ’77
(New Door Books, 2022)
On the Knife Edge
S. MASON PRATT ’61
(Deer Run Press, 2024)
A current player caught a ball signed by his grandfather—and others on the 1938 team.
Connections
Rolling Back the Years
A Bowdoin employee and his baseball player nephew unearth a baseball signed some eighty-six years ago by star athlete—and their father and grandfather— Oakley Melendy ’39.
“MY PITCHING COACH texted me and said, ‘Are you related to Oak Melendy? Because we found a ball lying around with his name on it.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, he was my grandfather.’” Jackson Melendy ’26 says he never really knew Oakley Melendy—a shortstop and outfielder who aided Bowdoin to a state crown—“So it’s kind of cool to have the ball he played with.”
The ball was signed by several members of Bowdoin’s 1938 team, including another hall of famer, Nels Cory ’39, and Andrew Haldane ’41, who was killed in action during World War II and in whose name the College awards the Haldane Cup for leadership. In 1939, Melendy went on to captain the team.
“People remember my dad as a gifted year-round athlete, because he started on the baseball, basketball, hockey, football, and track teams,” says Marko Melendy, Bowdoin’s animal welfare and facilities manager for biology and neuroscience. It was not unknown for his father to change uniforms between innings and go and throw the javelin—another sport in which he was a state champion—before rejoining the baseball game. As well as being an athlete, adds Marko, Oakley was also class president and a physics major who went on to study medicine at Columbia, serve as an army doctor during the war, and enjoy a long career as a surgeon.
PHOTO: JANIE PORCHE
Grounds
THE GIVING TREE
A graceful tree with high arcing branches grows along the footpath in front of Searles Science Building. It is a black walnut—the campus’s only one—donated by Ruth and Rupert White ’55 in honor of their beloved friend Stephen “Steph” Fay ’72, who died in 1980 in a construction accident and in whose memory the Whites established a scholarship. Steph’s brother, Sidney Fay ’74, died in a diving accident two years later.
Steph was a biology and chemistry major who met the Whites when he rented their Mere Point “goat barn” after he graduated. When he started to worry about the accommodations getting too cold for his pregnant golden retriever, the Whites invited them both to stay in their McKeen Street home. “He and his dog moved in, and they left ten years later,” Ruth said.
After visiting his parents in Ohio in 1979, Steph presented the Brunswick couple with a black walnut seed, “just a little nut,” Ruth said. She planted it in her garden, but it struggled to grow and caused other plants in their yard to suffer.
“The thing about walnuts is their roots secrete a chemical that inhibits growth of nearby vegetation,” said Tim Vail, Bowdoin’s arborist from 1985 to 2018. He suggested the Whites donate their special but venomous little tree to Bowdoin, relocating it to the Quad, where it would have room to grow without harming other vegetation.
Since it was moved in the late 1980s, the tree has thrived, and could live for another hundred years, Vail said. Each spring, the walnut tree puts out little yellow-green catkins, a hopeful gesture toward reproducing. But there are no nearby walnut trees to help its effort. “The dating scene in Brunswick is not great,” Vail said.
Steph’s connection to the tree isn’t official, but Ruth pointed to the words carved in stone above a Searles doorway: Nature’s laws are God’s thoughts “Steph would have appreciated that,” she said.
Game On
Coach of Champions
A national figure in women’s rugby, MaryBeth Mathews is considered a pioneering champion of the sport. Mathews helmed Bowdoin’s program for twenty-nine years, working to create and sustain a team culture that emphasizes respect, hard work, a growth mindset, and having fun.
Mathews was honored in early May with a reception and dinner on campus to recognize her contributions. Along with her husband, Bob, Mathews was instrumental in establishing Bowdoin’s, and the nation’s, first varsity women’s rugby team and lifted the team to a pair of New England championships and a 37-17-2 mark in its pre-varsity status. In 2003, she played a critical role in the establishment of Bowdoin as the first varsity women’s rugby program in the nation and lifted the team to its greatest heights with a 146-48-1 record, winning more than 75 percent of its matches and accumulating numerous post-season honors. Under her leadership, the team won the 2007 New England Rugby Football Union championship, four consecutive New England Small College Rugby Conference championships from 2012 to 2015, and, most recently, the inaugural National Intercollegiate Rugby Association varsity women’s rugby championship in 2019, a title the program successfully defended in 2021 and 2022. Last year, she was named one of eight recipients of the US Women’s Rugby Foundation’s inaugural Kathy Flores Lifetime Achievement Award. The recent celebration also brought the announcement that a cross-section of women’s rugby alumni and families helped establish the MaryBeth and Bob Mathews Fund for Women’s Rugby to provide support for the team over and above the program’s annual budget.
MaryBeth Mathews
Goddess
Familiar Face
Hettie Anderson’s face and form are preserved in works of art at Bowdoin and beyond.
NEXT TIME you visit the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, take a look at the lunate mural Athens in the museum rotunda. The figure in the middle of the painting is striking, to be sure. Does she also look a little bit familiar? She might. The model for the middle figure in John LaFarge’s painting was Hettie Anderson, a Black artists’ model whose image can be found in many famous works. Much in demand both for her beauty and her patience—The New York Journal and Advertiser wrote of her in 1899, “There is nothing in Greek sculpture finer than her figure”—she was the model for the Winged Victory figure in the General William Tecumseh Sherman Monument in New York City, by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. A particular favorite of Saint-Gaudens, she appears on his famous twenty-dollar gold coin, the double eagle, in the face of Minerva at the Boston Public Library, and in many more works. Swedish painter Anders Zorn features both artist and muse in an 1897 etching, Saint-Gaudens seated at the edge of a bed, Anderson nude behind him.
Academics
BOOK BOOM
Hawthorne-Longfellow Library went all in to support a new Hispanic studies class that Professor Nadia Celis taught this semester called A New Boom? Latin American Twenty-First Century Women Writers. In consultation with Celis, Humanities Librarian Carmen Greenlee bought more than three hundred books by women authors for students and scholars of Latin American literature. There’s a lot to explore in what is a challenging collection, but Celis recommends starting with these three novels translated into English.
WHEN WOMEN KILL: FOUR CRIMES RETOLD
, by Alia Trabucco Zerán
A work of nonfiction, the book explores four cases in which women were accused of killing men in Chile. By examining the crimes’ press coverage and the public response, Zerán “challenges our assumptions of women as objects versus subjects of violence,” Celis said.
SEASON, by Fernanda Melchor
Describing this novel by a Mexican writer as a “macro-novel,” Celis said the story on one level describes a crime against a trans woman by one of her lovers and his friend. In other deeper layers, the book explores how “every member of the social landscape is marginalized and exploited in some way, causing them to become perpetrators of violence.” Told through the voices of five characters, the book depicts in a dark and graphic manner the struggle to be human in a dehumanizing world. “It is not an easy book; it’s like a stream of consciousness, like a cascade of talking by each character,” Celis said.
JAWBONE, by Mónica Ojeda
Jawbone, a psychological thriller, is “horrific!” Celis said, despite recommending it (perhaps for braver readers). The story is about a schoolteacher who has kidnapped a student who belongs to a clique of mean girls. “It is a portrait of how crazy adolescence can be,” Celis said. “The student is narrating the circumstances of being tied up in the teacher’s house, and we have to figure out what happened.”
HURRICANE
PHOTO: NORMAN L. COE STUDIO, COURTESY WILLOW HAGANS
Hettie Anderson
Celebration
SALUTING NATIVE LIFE
There were unfamiliar sights and sounds on the Bowdoin Quad recently as Indigenous groups from Maine and across the continent gathered for a tribal powwow.
“A powwow at heart is a celebration to honor traditions passed down through generations,” said Kailey Bennett ’14, senior program and events coordinator for the Harvard University Native American Program, who played a key role in organizing the event.
The May 4 powwow, she explained, was a chance for members of different tribal groups to get together and showcase their cultures through song, language, dancing, and drumming.
The event featured at least fourteen tribal nations. This included all the Maine tribes—the Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot, known collectively as the Wabanaki nations—and populations from further afield, including the Cherokee and Comanche Nations in Oklahoma and the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua from Oregon.
Like all powwows, this one started with a grand entry, as the dancers paraded through the “powwow circle,” lining up in age range, from youngest to oldest. “It’s one of the most moving parts of a powwow, to see all communities represented,” said Bennett, herself a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. “The opening procession also included a veterans’ song and a flag song, as well as an opening prayer given by two elders.” One of those elders was Bennett’s grandfather, who delivered his words in the Kiowa language.
PHOTO:
Hector LeBeau, a member of the host drum group Rez Dogs, dances at Bowdoin’s first powwow.
2
medals at the
71
8s/8+
2
29
7
Combined number of medals (top-three finishes) at 2022
1,227
Combined
in
By the Numbers
Row It Forward
We have it on good authority that everyone questions their dedication to the sport of rowing when the alarm sounds at 5:30 a.m. It is dark; it is cold—and a slight breeze on campus means a strong wind on the water. Those early mornings in myriad conditions haven’t stopped the program from expanding in a variety of ways. In large part because students can learn to row in college and compete at a high level within a short period of time, the rowing team has steadily grown over the past decade. The team’s fleet has also increased both in the number of boats and in their size. To remain competitive and to enhance safety on the water, the team increasingly uses eight-person shells. To make room for all of this growth, the College is moving ahead with plans for a new boathouse on the New Meadows River. The new building will replace Smith Boathouse, which cannot accommodate the team’s evolution toward larger boats, and will be located on the same site. In addition to housing and protecting the equipment, the new boathouse will include a team area, accessible restrooms, and a safety shower for warming in the event of a capsize.
4,370
2025
3
Current roster of students on the rowing team.
The boathouse will be completed in the spring of next year.
Accessible restrooms in the new building.
Boats in the fleet (eight eight-person shells, eight four-person shells, four two-person shells, nine one-person shells).
ACRA Coaches of the Year: Doug Welling and Ry Hills.
length
feet of all the boats in the fleet.
Gold
2022 American Collegiate Rowing Association (ACRA) National Championships.
Short for eight-person shells.
Dad Vail and ACRA.
Square footage of the new building.
“I’d say the most important thing about Bowdoin was I didn’t learn skills so much as I learned how to think, which has really helped me in my investment career.”
—INVESTMENT LEGEND STANLEY DRUCKENMILLER ’75, SPEAKING VIRTUALLY TO A GROUP OF STUDENTS GATHERED IN DRUCKENMILLER HALL IN APRIL
A
Path to What’s
Been Left Behind
When Dan Dowd isn’t working in the museum, he is often making art himself. Included in many group exhibitions before now, he had his first solo show this spring at a gallery in lower Manhattan.
Support
WARE IT WELL
After earning his MD, Roland Ware Jr. ’54 practiced internal medicine in Montreal and then was chief medical officer at a federal prison in Michigan. Ware didn’t stick with internal medicine (he became a radiologist), but he did stick with Montreal nurse Norma Leinonen, who scrubbed in for a surgery Ware was performing one day. As they told it, their eyes locked over their surgical masks, and it was love at first sight. Renaissance people of varied interests and quietly devoted to Bowdoin, the Wares established a scholarship fund and an endowed professorship. When they died (Roland in 2021 and Norma in 2022), their estates added more than $17 million to those funds, creating three Norma L. and Roland G. Ware Jr. Endowed Professorships in the fields of biochemistry, chemistry, or any other natural science. Professors Mark Battle (physics), Danielle Dube (chemistry), and Hadley Horch (biology, neuroscience) have been named to the new Ware chairs.
DAN DOWD’S first solo exhibition, Resurface, is aptly named. The stuff of Dowd’s artistry—predominantly wall-mounted assemblages that combine clothing, rubber, leather, metal, and other found material—is at once repurposed, reformed, and reborn. In the big house III (2022), Dowd combines a woolen flannel shirt, a piece of rusted tin ceiling, and a piece of heavily patterned drapery into a single elegant composition. These materials exhibit decidedly distinct textures, but together, layered over one another, their surfaces compose an unexpected harmony. This intuitive matching of materials forms the basis of Dowd’s practice. He extends the lifespan of these materials, removing them from the glut of waste so prevalent in our society and elevating their existence to a new plane. Dowd’s work is an exercise in contemplative reuse and provides a path for the aesthete to find, or re-find, joy in the things we have left behind. Dowd, a security officer at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art since 2007, also emerges to new oxygen following a history of group exhibitions mostly in Maine to his debut solo show (May 16–June 19, 2024) at Magenta Plains, a gallery on Canal Street in lower Manhattan.
Creative Life
Above: Dan Dowd, the big house III, 2022. Found wool shirt fragment, found tin ceiling fragment, gifted drapery fragment, 17 x 24 x 2 in.
Student Life
NIGHT HAWK TAKES FLIGHT
Night Hawk, the student band that originally sought inspiration from the paintings of Edward Hopper, played a final gig at Nomad, in Brunswick, May 4. With this local send-off, seniors Colter Adams and Peyton Semjen, along with their bandmates, will take their show on an East Coast tour this summer.
The Nomad concert brought out many devoted fans. Night Hawk fan Kaya Patel ’26 said that many students “at this point know all the words to the songs. We can dance along and have a great time.”
Brynn Wright ’26 said the show drew out a free-spirited and appreciative crowd. “One thing that stood out about their performance is their generosity when giving us new songs,” she added. “A lot of artists will keep that from their fans for a while, but it was just so nice to hear some of the things that they’re creating. It’s a very different sound, and I love it.”
The band’s particular sound, according to Dylan Beckett ’27, is a bit punk, a bit indie rock, “very groovy” and “melodramatic in a lovely, fun way.” Their lyricism is also creative: “It feels like you’re listening to poetry.”
The end-of-semester concert, Beckett said, was magical and moving. “If you get a chance to see them on tour, do it.” (You can find tour dates at nighthawksings.com.)
Music
A Healing Art
Electronic musician Mirza Ramic ’05, a former child refugee from Bosnia, brings his sounds to war-torn Ukraine.
AS A CHILD OF WAR himself, it is perhaps fitting that Mirza Ramic is a regular visitor to Ukraine, where he provides what support he can to the population of the conflict-stricken nation. But it is not as a soldier or an aid worker that Ramic visits Ukraine—he goes as a solo electronic music artist.
Interviewed in a New York Times profile earlier this year, Ramic said he first performed in Ukraine before the Russian invasion of 2022, describing the country as “one of the places that has welcomed me most and been the most supportive of my music.” The invasion has not deterred Ramic from returning.
Ramic knows firsthand the horror war can bring. He grew up in Bosnia, and when he was eleven he lost his father, who was killed in the shelling in the town of Mostar, where his family had lived. He and his mother lived as refugees in several countries before ending up in the US, where Ramic majored in government and east European studies at Bowdoin.
Above: “Letting Go,” a piano-focused single that Ramic released in 2021, is about moving on, regardless of how difficult the path forward might seem.
Student band Night Hawk performed at Nomad on May 4 before heading out on tour this summer.
Maine photographer Benjamin Williamson captured this photo of the northern lights over the Bowdoin Mill, when an unusually strong solar storm caused a late display as far south as North Carolina. “When I came through Brunswick, I knew I needed to stop at Fort Andross and walk across the street to the little park that looks across the Androscoggin River at the green bridge and Bowdoin Mill, which will be a part of history soon,” Williamson said.
PHOTO: BENJAMIN WILLIAMSON
Faculty
A Spin at the Wheel
A Bowdoin staff member met the stars, solved the puzzles, and won the money—but
you probably didn’t get to see him do it.
COREY COLWILL’S head was spinning as soon as he got the call that he would be a contestant on Wheel of Fortune. He was given two weeks to plan his travels to Los Angeles and told to be at the studio for a 6:30 a.m. start.
“It was a lot to process and coordinate at the same time,” said Colwill, associate director of the Center for Cocurricular Opportunities in the Office of Student Fellowships. He had auditioned by Zoom just a few weeks prior, and then there he was in Hollywood, beginning a long day with a star sighting.
“Vanna White came to speak to us around 7:30 a.m. fresh from a jog,” Colwill said. “She hadn’t been to hair and makeup yet but was absolutely stunning. It was surreal.”
If there was any question Colwill and his fellow contestants were at the very center of the game show universe, all doubts were resolved when they were brought across the street to where Jeopardy! is taped to get dressed for their moments in the spotlight.
“They taped six episodes that day, and mine was the second episode to tape,” he said. “But it was so fun to sit in the audience and watch them all. The cohort of contestants I was with were so amazing, and everyone was rooting each other on. There was a really nice sense of camaraderie. We’re all actually in a Facebook group chat together now.”
When it was Colwill’s turn before the cameras, he did well—solving five of the episode’s nine puzzles—but a fellow contestant won the prize puzzle, which was enough to send her to the bonus round.
Colwill walked away with more than $11,000 in cash winnings but not the fifteen minutes of fame he was expecting. His episode, taped on December 14, was preempted locally by Maine Governor Janet Mills’s January 30 “State of the State” address, which bumped the show from its usual 7:00 p.m. time slot to a sleepy 1:00 a.m. airing.
“What are the odds? Mainers aren’t on Wheel very often, so it’s a bummer that nobody in my home state got to see it,” Colwill said. Digging deeper into the actual probability of it all leaves him feeling better about his own slice of television game show history.
“I read that one million people audition to be on the show every year, and only six hundred are selected, so it’s a .6 percent chance of getting on,” he said. “I feel pretty honored! And it’s Pat Sajak’s last season, so I’m glad I got to meet him.”
A POEM OF THE DAY
Writer-in-residence Anthony Walton’s poem “Alzheimer’s” was chosen as the poem of the day in a daily feature for the Academy of American Poets website poets.org in February, bringing it to the attention of about 300,000 subscribers. The poem describes Walton’s father and how his disease has come, in some way, to own him.
“This poem derives from my (and my family’s) experience with the last ten years or so of my father’s life,” Walton said. “It attempts to fathom not only my own confusion and upset but also to understand and be compassionate toward what he himself was experiencing. The circumstance was both sad and tragic, and also angering, because, in my judgment, he in no way deserved what and how he was suffering. He was a husband, a father, a veteran, a church leader, a tireless community leader. So, it is an attempt at making peace, both with myself and the circumstances.”
Left: Corey Colwill was able to record his appearance so he could relive it with his family and friends.
The gene pool in Alex Grand’Pierre’s family is Olympic-sized, and even so, it runneth over.
The rising senior is poised to swim for Haiti in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, following in the swim strokes of his sister Emilie Grand’Pierre ’23, who competed in the Tokyo Games in the summer of 2020, winning her first-ever Olympic heat in the women’s breaststroke 100-meter race just a few seconds shy of qualifying for the semifinals.
Their older sister Naomy swam in Rio in 2016. Younger brother Raphael, a member of the Class of 2027, is on the swimming and diving team and may have Olympic dreams as well.
Another sister, Audree, a member of the Class of 2021, also swam for Bowdoin and is now pursuing her doctorate at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.
The Grand’Pierre Olympians proudly swim under the Haitian flag, their family having immigrated from Haiti to Atlanta in 1997 following a three-year stay in Montreal.
Swimming surfaced in the Grand’Pierre family in response to a few compelling factors.
Three of Alex’s mother’s young cousins had drowned, so although swimming lessons had never been part of her culture, she made sure her five children learned to swim. The other considerations at play were safety and simple logistics. After shuttling all those kids to tennis, gymnastics, and other activities, Alex says his parents figured competitive swimming, with its relatively low injury rate, was a great way to keep them all in the same pool as they trained at various levels.
“Having two Olympians in the family is amazing, and we hope to keep the tradition going this summer,” said Alex, who adds that his family has learned to keep the dinner conversation diverse. “Most of the time swimming isn’t even the topic of discussion. We love to talk about our other interests and pursuits. In a sense, our conversation mimics the liberal arts education, where we discuss a variety of topics from around the world.”
Academics
Practicing Beauty
Students balance aesthetics and skills while learning Chinese calligraphy.
THIS SPRING, Professor of Asian Studies and Cinema Studies Shu-chin Tsui taught a new, one-time course on Chinese calligraphy called Brush and Ink: The Art of Writing and Painting via Calligraphy. “It is the art of writing, the art of printing,” Tsui said. “We so often talk about gender and race in humanities classes, but what about beauty?” Her question was answered definitively––the course filled up fast.
The class was divided into study and practice. Students studied five scripts, as well as classical painting. Once a week, students collected their brushes and a small pot of black ink prepared by Tsui and spent time improving their strokes. “Practicing calligraphy every Friday is amazing. It’s like a meditation,” said Kasei Oma ’26. Adds Yanevith Pena ’25, “There is so much beauty in just one part of a rich and vast culture. And I have been able to connect it to my major, neuroscience. The fine motor skills I’m developing are really helpful when I’m mounting brain slices.”
Athletics
Rising senior Alex Grand’Pierre will represent Haiti in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
A class took students into a world of art where brush and ink are materials of creation and meditation.
Academics
Trust the Music
A new award for composition, named in honor of free jazz pioneer Marion Brown ’74, goes to composer and musician Devon Gates.
BOSTON-BASED COMPOSER and jazz musician
Devon Gates was the first recipient of a new award honoring compositional talent from underrepresented groups. In May, she hosted a student performance of her work on campus.
“I love composing, and I love working with students,” said Gates. “It’s a great way to experiment with your own work and hear how other people interpret it.” She also loves liberal arts colleges with music departments, she added, because everyone has such different realms of experience. “They don’t only specialize in music but also have all this knowledge from other areas, which adds new perspective. You learn a lot from them.”
As well as being a composer, Gates is a jazz bassist and vocalist with a growing reputation in the Boston area, where she recently graduated with a joint degree in anthropology and jazz performance from Harvard University and Berklee College of Music.
She plans to pursue a master’s degree in performance at Berklee, but in the meantime Gates has been welcomed as the newest member of Bowdoin’s musical community: She is the first winner of the Marion Brown prize—an annual residency for up-and-coming composers from underrepresented communities. The award is named in honor of the free jazz pioneer, saxophonist, and composer who earned a degree at Bowdoin in 1974 and who taught classes as an assistant professor of music at the College in the 1970s. Brown came to Bowdoin having already gained a reputation as a leading member of the New York avant-garde jazz scene, playing alongside such legends as John Coltrane and Archie Shepp.
Early in the spring semester, Gates spent several days on campus, where she rehearsed with student instrumental and vocal performers. She returned in May for a performance of three of her pieces by a variety of student groups.
Some of the work is written down in notated form, and some of it is improvised—something that music lecturer Jeff Christmas, who directs the Bowdoin choral ensemble, said the students found exciting.
“Working with Devon was delightful,” he said. “She immediately encouraged the singers to put the sheet music down and intuitively make music together. They were encouraged to improvise and trust themselves while learning. It was so refreshing and will inform our work for the rest of the semester. Frankly, it will inform and influence our work for semesters to come!”
Gates was chosen from some 160 applicants across the globe, said Professor of Music Vineet Shende, including composers from Asia and South America. “Devon herself is a wonderful singer and bass player,” he said, “and one of the things that really appealed to us was that she really tries to create this kind of syncretism between jazz and concert music.”
Artist Ben Butler ’00 works on Northern Sun, the installation commissioned for Barry Mills Hall and funded by Elliott Kanbar ’56.
Devon Gates
A SUN RISES IN MILLS
In March, Ben Butler ’00 installed a sculpture in the high-ceilinged entryway of Barry Mills Hall. It consists of more than 500 poplar wood pieces, which Butler and his team meticulously cut and sanded to form smooth polygonal shapes, each displaying a unique character. The golden hue of the blocks matches the natural light flooding the atrium.
Larger blocks are positioned closer to the balcony, while smaller ones radiate toward the center of the room, making it uncertain whether the piece is meant to be exploding or contracting. Some students perceive it as a sun, while others, like neuroscience major Chrissy Francis ’26, liken it to mitochondria.
“My work is abstract,” Butler said, addressing the question. “And I always intend it to be many-layered and ambiguous, but Maine geology was one of the formative images in my mind—the rock formations on the coast and rock outcroppings.”
Northern Sun reflects the modern design aesthetic of Mills Hall, as well as harkens back to the Maine timber industry. Butler’s choice of wood points to Bowdoin’s decision to use sustainable materials in its construction. In these many ways, the art piece serves as a metaphor for the sun, for light, for opportunity within the building, and for a contemporary sprit of vibrancy.
On View
Dream Weaver
Lawyer Derry Rundlett ’68 counts impersonating Elvis Presley, who said “Every dream I ever dreamed has come true a hundred times,” among his many roles.
WHEN LONGFELLOW was sitting in elementary school doing his writing assignments, did he dream that he would someday be a poet whose words would be read by billions of people? When Peary was shoveling his back porch as a teenager, did he dream of discovering the North Pole?
Did my friend and legal idol, Senator George Mitchell, dream he would play a role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland and be honored by the world’s most beloved Queen? And my other superstar friend, Secretary William Cohen, as he played basketball for Bangor High, did he dream his leadership skills on the court would translate into running the Department of Defense during the Clinton administration?
Of course, each faced challenges in their lives. That story is true for me as well. My first trial occurred when I lost my father, Ellsworth Rundlett ’33. I was twelve years old and just getting to know him as a person when, on the night before Halloween in 1958, he had a severe heart attack and died at just forty-seven. He had been manager of a hotel that was closing, and surely the stress did not help. My mother had a breakdown fueled by alcohol use (who can blame her?), and we moved to another hotel, one not as nice as the one we left.
Between the ages of twelve and twenty-two, I had dreams plentiful and huge. I dreamed of being a star athlete, friends with rock stars I listened to on the radio, a famous lawyer meeting other famous lawyers, an author, a radio or TV host, and an actor—lofty dreams, for sure!
What are the chances any of them could come true? As it turned out: 100 percent, every single one. And, as was surely the case with Longfellow, Peary, Mitchell, and Cohen as well, each and every dream I had was planted, grown, or
nourished at Bowdoin, guided by my professors, coaches, and fantastic friends.
In high school in Orono, I was track and cross-country captain but mediocre in talent, and I never won a state championship, let alone a medal. At Bowdoin, I ran distances and could sometimes place, but I would routinely get clocked in races with big schools. In 2001, after running distances all my life, I switched to sprints, hired a trainer, and within two years I
won the first of many state championships in the 100, 200, and 400 in Maine and New Hampshire over the next twenty years, participated in nine national senior Olympic games, and won five national medals and one world medal. In 2015 I was voted into the first class of the Maine Senior Games Hall of Fame. Dream accomplished!
As a teenager, I knew every song and artist. I loved all music, but especially popular rock ’n’ roll. I attended every concert of artists
I dreamed of being a star athlete, friends with rock stars I listened to on the radio, a famous lawyer meeting other famous lawyers, an author, a radio or TV host, and an actor—lofty dreams, for sure!
with number-one records in Brewer, Maine. I saw the Four Seasons, the Beach Boys, the Everly Brothers, and others. I made it my business to shake their hands as they came off the stage. In 1968, I had a show on WBOR, where I picked my top 100, which included songs by artists I never suspected I would go on to meet. In 2013, I met Petula Clark, told her of her accomplishment (she laughed), and met The Association. Since then, I have become friends with Brenda Lee (“Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”), Bobby Rydell (“Volare”), Frankie Avalon, and at least twenty others whose songs were in my top 100. Every one of them learned about my Bowdoin radio show and were amazed by how much I knew about them. When Miranda and Dennis Tufano (The Buckinghams’ “Kind of a Drag”) were performing in New Jersey, I called them during a sound check and said, “Make sure you guys tell the audience you’d be nowhere if I hadn’t put you in my top 100.” LOL, as they say.
As for other dreams, after Bowdoin I worked for two years in television and then as an account executive before law school beckoned. I had been accepted at the University of Virginia and Georgetown but decided on Maine. Smart choice, because I have enjoyed my career, which culminated in a Legendary Trial Lawyer Award in 2017 from the Maine Trial Lawyers Association, so much. My first book was a 2,500-page tome on handling personal injury cases from intake to appeal. So far, sales have been more than $2 million for that book and its supplements.
In 2000, my law partner, Ken Altshuler, created a TV show called Law on the Line. I just
completed my twentieth year with that station, and now my show is seen on screens all over the world. My most recent guests include Gianni Russo, who acted in the Godfather movies; Bebe Buell, mother of Liv Tyler and paramour of many rock stars; Joe Kennedy, and Senators Mitchell and Cohen. Mitchell told the BBC as they were preparing a documentary about him, “Make sure you watch the interview with Rundlett and my relative Rob Baldacci.” That interview rates as my favorite of all time. We also featured famous lawyer F. Lee Bailey just two weeks before he passed away; ours was the last show he appeared on.
In 1967, H. Davison Osgood ’53 appeared on the Portland Players stage in the Odd Couple. As I watched it, I thought, “I want to be up there too, doing what he’s doing.” Nine years later, I was the lead in a comedy at the same theater. I became president of the theater years later, produced several Derry Rundlett Shows, and founded the Portland Players Hall of Fame. Dave was my first inductee. Why did I care for him so much? Because when I married my highschool sweetheart in October of my freshman year, Bowdoin’s rules prevented me from living off campus with my wife and child. We had an apartment, and I was told I would have to drop out. The Canal Bank, which handled the small trust fund I had had since my dad died, had a president who went to Bowdoin, a bank manager in Brunswick who went to Bowdoin, and Osgood, a lawyer. They convinced Dean Kendrick to let me stay and live off campus, as long as I did well in my classes. On Ivies weekend 1965, my daughter, Nicole, was born, but she was then my son, Ellsworth T. Rundlett IV. (She transitioned
when she was forty.) My most recent book, coauthored with her, is Full Circle—A Father’s Journey with a Transgender Child
All five dreams down!
The year my dad died had rated as the worst of my life until two years ago, when I had to put my dear wife in a nursing home and then came down with cancer. At my 45th and 50th Reunions, I sang with the Don Campbell Band. I saw my dear Bowdoin pals in the crowd, smiling as I sang “Gloria,” and, as I looked out into the hazy sun, I felt my father’s presence. “Gee, Dad,” I thought, “does this mean I made it?” That night, our class agent, Bob Lakin, thanked me and my classmate Ken Anderson for helping to organize the scholarship to commemorate our dear friend Dave Doughty and others. I was so moved. Ken, Dana Gallup, Rich Benedetto, Gene Ferraro, Bob Corey, Jim Georgitis, John Delano are all among the men who called, visited, and supported me during my battle with cancer. As an Elvis tribute artist with a $1,500 jumpsuit who met Priscilla Presley in 2016, I can only say to them, “Thank you. Thank you very much.”
I am a fortunate man, one whose seemingly unachievable dreams have come true—thanks to Bowdoin, dream weaver, maker of successful men and women, truly the dearest mother ’neath the sun.
Ellsworth T. Rundlett III ’68 is a senior partner in the law firm of Childs, Rundlett, Fifield, & Altshuler in Portland, Maine, with more than thirty years of experience in the areas of personal injury law, automobile accidents, premises liability, divorce, probate, and civil litigation.
WORLD THE WHAT
INTERVIEW BY ALISON BENNIE
ILLUSTRATIONS BY BRIAN STAUFFER
As higher education faces a limited but loud group of detractors who question everything from college and university values to career and financial outcomes, as uncertainty dominates politics and culture and technology, Bowdoin does what it always has: graduate classes of students who go on to create good in the world and build success for themselves. We asked a group of employers in the Bowdoin community who think about what it takes to be successful in the workplace what they look for now, what qualities we need most in young workers, and what students can do to best prepare for their careers. What do they say? Embrace the unsteadiness. Change is the constant, and evolution is essential—be curious, collaborative, creative.
NEEDS NOW
Mary Inman ’90 is a lawyer who specializes in representing whistleblowers, including Tyler Schultz for Theranos, Frances Haugen for Facebook, and Ed Pearson for Boeing.
Government and Russian major Law school Partner Judicial law clerk
Tim Wallack ’98 is a leader in product design and innovation, having worked for Verizon, Google, IDEO, and JPMorgan Chase before co-founding productXP.
Art history and religious studies major
UX insight and strategy consultant
Executive UX and insight leader
Product and UX advisor
BOWDOIN: One of the questions we get is what is the value of the type of education we offer for students, in the workplace? Parents ask this question a lot. Employers ask this question a lot, and students, particularly when they’re trying to figure out what to major in, wonder how that’s going to translate into marketable skills and experience—like how are they going to get a job?
You’ve thought a lot about what it takes to be successful in the workplace, what you look for in employees—can you help connect the dots. What do you think the current world, with both its problems and where it is poised for success, most needs from young people?
INMAN: I think, particularly now, it is the ability to sit with discomfort and to experience discomfort. I know people like to talk about a growth mindset, but I feel like that’s become too buzzwordy to even mean anything. There’s a wonderful author that I love named Kelly Corrigan. She wrote a book called Lift, and it evoked the metaphor that it’s really turbulence that allows us to get to a higher level. From my fifty-five-year-old eyes, I think I could have benefited from understanding that it’s actually “live and enjoy the discomfort and know that from the discomfort will come change.” Change is good, but we don’t get change—we don’t grow—unless we experience the turbulence.
And I think the flip side is also true, which is you just have to know that we are always constantly evolving. I know that when you’re a younger worker in particular, you look at your elders, people in the workforce, and you think we know all the answers or that we don’t experience these sorts of things. And that’s one of the most important skills, to know that you’re not going to arrive—it’s a constant journey. The more you know that and lean into it, you realize that actually that’s part of the fun, the constant evolution. I actually just launched a brand new law firm three weeks ago, and, while a couple of my friends are retiring at this exact same time, I just think that’s what you need.
BOWDOIN: Anybody have a response to the idea that the ability to sit with discomfort is really important?
WALLACK: I would totally agree. When I graduated in ’98, I think the stat was something like you’re going to have seven careers over the course of your lifetime. Based on what I’ve been seeing and what I anticipate, particularly with AI and particularly with it being fashionable for companies to lay people off when it helps to increase the stock price, I think that rate—I haven’t seen stats on it, but I would guess it would at least double. So people are going to be on sort of unsteady ground for a lot of their professional lives.
So I think being comfortable, as Mary says, with that feeling of discomfort is going to be one. And I think another thing that will be helpful is if people maintain their curiosity about what is changing in the world, that they learn about those things that are changing, they give them a try, and they immerse themselves. And the ability to then adapt to those changes when things get tough, that is going to be, I think, the signature of people who are able to stay relevant and engaged in their work environment.
Another aspect, which Mary also touched on—and I’ve experienced this too—is that people are going to have to cut themselves some slack and have some grace. The thing that I found going from an academic environment into a work environment is that you can’t expect to always have the same success as you go from place to place. There are going to be moments when you’re able to apply the knowledge that you gained and you’ll be able to be very successful. There are moments when you’re going to be in a new environment, a new kind of organization, a new kind of business, doing a new kind of role, when you’re going to take a lot of knocks. And if people can cut themselves some slack and acknowledge that they’re in a growth mode and continue to be curious and adaptable and not expect to move as fast with the same success, I think over the long term they’re going to be happier and more fulfilled.
LOUIE: Can I add on to what Tim just shared, specifically the curiosity piece? Because when I thought about your question, Alison, with everything going on in the world, what’s the hope or what would be the great thing that
young folks can bring—I think one answer is “curiosity.” And maybe a greater inclination to ask why of the people who are further along in their careers. “Why is that?” Part of it is this idea of natural curiosity, and this is where that kind of liberal arts mindset and background really can come into play. Because it can lead you to not only ask why but also to want to actually chase things down from a number of different angles.
That inclination to ask why can also come from being less encumbered than folks who may already be a little bit further down the line in their careers, who feel like they’ve built certain things and don’t want to put those things at risk, whether it’s reputation or relationships or an existing business—something that you don’t want to risk. They’re much closer to being free to ask why and even maybe more free to challenge. I think that’s something that we need. We need to figure out ways to build on, as opposed to attacking, what others are doing and seeing. Starting with being courageous enough or free enough or in the right position to ask why is pretty essential, especially as things change and as we’re seeing things in the world that we might not have seen before, or might not remember. Because history forgets sometimes.
INMAN: I totally agree, and there’s some nice empirical data that supports exactly what Chris is saying. I get to speak to a fair number of business school students, and they all want to know about Elizabeth Holmes or whatever the fraud du jour is, and they ask similar questions. And I always say to them, “Believe it or not, the data says that, because you enter an environment with fresh eyes, you think ‘I’m junior. I’m the least experienced. I’m not going to be a contributor,’ and in fact you have a superpower. And it’s that you come in with fresh eyes.” So I always say to them, “You often will be the person most junior and in the disparity of power probably the least likely to speak up. In fact, it’s honestly most important that you be the one to speak up, because you have a perspective that other people don’t.”
LOUIE: Yeah, you’re clutching to first principles sometimes. You have all this other stuff layered
on by whatever things you think you have to become an expert in.
SIMONDS: I definitely agree. Maybe the other point I would note is the world’s becoming more complex, and so how do you make decisions? It ends up being much more effective to do through network versus more traditional structures, which tend to be more “command and control.” And so, coming in with an orientation toward quickly building and establishing trust and an openness to listen to understand versus to respond, the ability to think critically about what you hear and of your own points of view—in general, trust. How do you establish and build trust? For organizations that rely on mechanisms that are more static, it works fine when you know the patterns that you’ve seen previously are good guides for what you’re encountering today. I just think that happens less and less frequently in today’s more complex world.
BOWDOIN: Given the kinds of things that you’ve talked about, sitting with discomfort, the courage and inclination to ask why and to question things and to develop trust, is there a type of background or experience that you can connect to young people developing those skills and that type of inclination? Do you see it coming from someone who has a certain educational background or work background?
INMAN: Alison, in that question I hear all the nervous parents in the admissions, like, “Which one should they go into? What’s the hot one these days?” And I’m going to say the expected thing, which is the background that you should go into is the one that you’re passionate about. You should not be dictated by what’s the trendy thing. I’m the perfect example. It was very trendy in 1990 to speak Russian, because we thought glasnost was happening and the world was opening. And I loved Dostoyevsky, and I loved reading Eugene Onegin in the original, so I went into it for passion. But that was the trendy thing to do—and then, of course, the doors shut forever more.
I think that is one of the biggest things. Any background you care about is the background
Chris Louie P’27 worked for McKinsey & Company, Nielsen, and LinkedIn before becoming the head of talent development for Thomson Reuters.
Mike Simonds ’96 worked for Unum and McKinsey & Company before becoming the president and CEO of TriNet, a payroll, benefits, and HR compliance firm.
“What do you want in terms of talent? You want people who are going to be able to adapt.”
—TIM WALLACK ’98
that is going to be the recipe to success, because you want a calling. You don’t want a job. And you develop that calling. You’re not going to immediately know it out of Bowdoin, but by starting at Bowdoin and saying, “These are the things that really get my juices flowing and this is what excites me”—I didn’t know I was going to be a whistleblower lawyer and I was going to make my career helping other people speak truth to power. I had no clue. But I was into theater, and that’s a form of speaking up. The path is going to be a circuitous one.
To your question of “Is there a background?”
No. Every background is the background that will get you there. I guess what I would add is any background that can give you experiential learning is important. That’s why I really love students who’ve studied abroad, because they’ve had to put themselves out there. You have to be curious to have studied abroad. People who are risk-averse are going to say it’s safer to stay in the known. So, I guess I can actually connect it in terms of backgrounds. I would say a background where you’re in a field that lets you really put yourself out there.
WALLACK: I would agree a million percent with what Mary just said. I remember when I was picking my major—I studied art history and religious studies—I remember my parents kind of freaking out and saying, “Of the two things you could pick, you just combined the two that are probably the least likely to ever get you a job.”
But I got a job almost immediately after school, in product design. The hiring manager asked me, “So, art history and product design, what do they have in common?” And I said, “Well, in art history you look at an object and then you understand the cultural context around it. In
a product design, you understand the cultural context and you recommend an artifact for it that’s culturally relevant.” He was like, “Boom, that’s it.”
I ended up studying the things I was most interested in. Of course, I kind of followed my heart and my interests and what lit me up. And I think there’s an important inflection point, when you realize a career you want to pursue and you make those kind of interesting, unexpected lateral connections between what you studied and what that organization or industry is about. At least in my case, it impressed a hiring manager. When I’ve been a hiring manager, it impresses me when somebody has sort of an unlikely background and they can kind of connect it to what you’re doing. I always find that to be a really pleasant surprise.
LOUIE: I agree with this, but then I’d like to go deeper. Speaking from a recruiting perspective, what we’re looking for—and I think what we will increasingly be looking for, given the impact we expect from AI, where requirements to study this or get a degree in that are being shaken up because AI can actually address a lot of those entrenched skill sets. You’re left with truly transferable skills and abilities. And those transferable skills and abilities are things like creativity, or the ability to ideate, or the ability to take ideas and figure out how best to execute them. And those things could best come out, as Mary was saying, in things that you’re passionate about. Because passion will lead you to create. Passions will lead you to be entrepreneurial, they’ll lead you to do stuff that actually makes a mark, as opposed to just going through the motions, sitting through the class, showing up to work, and checking the box.
So, we’re going to be looking for “What have you done? What have you accomplished? What have you produced?” as opposed to “What are the bullets on your résumé or on your LinkedIn profile?” The more that people can lean into those things that they find passion in and find those that compel them to go further and actually achieve creation and impact, I think the better off they will be.
SIMONDS: I would just go back to track with all that: Mary and Tim, what you were saying around getting comfortable with discomfort, putting yourself in situations that are not familiar and where the results are uncertain, and your point about curiosity. It’s like, “Show me the stretch.” I’m actually a little less concerned with the specific knowledge you’ve accumulated through your course of study. Increasingly, that kind of knowledge is at your fingertips anyway, to the point that, Chris, you’re making. But are you putting stretch? Are you taking risks? Are you seeking to outperform the norm and maybe what you think is easy, comfortable, achievable, safe? I love seeing very quantitative courses in the middle of a very non-quantitative course of study. I love to see people who take on huge community engagement or huge athletic endeavors or things that are going to put real pressure on them—and, frankly, succeed at some and fail at others. That’s a great candidate.
LOUIE: You hear that stock interview question of “What’s your greatest weakness?” or “When have you failed?” I think, “How have you shown agility in your life, in your career?” Tim, you made the point about AI probably doubling, or maybe even at a greater multiple, the amount of change that we’re seeing in jobs and careers, especially over a lifetime. I think that’s true. I think that’s going to keep increasing. And so what do you want in terms of talent? You want people who are going to be able to adapt, not in a reactive way, but who can lean into that different thing or that next thing that they could be doing. As opposed to getting shell-shocked by the world changing on them to the point they couldn’t produce, either for themselves or for the team.
WALLACK: I’m hoping those AI models get really savvy, so people don’t get weeded out who don’t have the right buzzwords in their résumé. I hope they kind of start to read between the lines and look for things like agility, because I’m not confident—you would know better where we’re at right now—that people aren’t getting weeded out that haven’t been working in AI models.
LOUIE: Yeah. There’s a book—there are many books now coming out around this—called The Algorithm , by an investigative journalist and NYU professor named Hilke Schellmann, that I’d recommend reading. Because it’s all about this. It’s all about the downside of trying to apply AI to different talent processes, including the hiring process.
BOWDOIN: Are you seeing that a lot? Is that something that is happening in many places— instead of screening by a human being, screening of résumés and applications is being trusted to AI?
LOUIE: It’s been out there actually for quite a while. I think you’ve seen it historically in highvolume hiring situations where there’s a lot of turnover: frontline workers, retail workers. There are some large retailers bringing in thousands of candidates in order to make hundreds of hires. I think the change over the last few years is this practice has spread to all kinds of jobs now. And so one of the big efforts within the talent industry has been to really adopt ethical responsibilities of AI, to find what that means, to ensure that a human is in the loop. But, yes, it is somewhat pervasive.
BOWDOIN: Interesting. So, one of the things we’ve seen at Bowdoin is that employers will talk a lot about appreciating the kinds of skills that students develop at Bowdoin—critical thinking, many of the things you’ve been talking about—but then when they come to recruit, they have an opportunity to list the majors that they’re looking for, and they rarely list humanities majors. Do you think that is just a failure of imagination? Do you think that is a disconnect between what the leadership at
these companies say they want and the maybe more junior person who’s on the ground doing the recruiting? What do you think that’s about? And how do you think that we can reassure someone who thinks “They don’t want to even talk to me? How can it be useful for me to be a humanities major?”
LOUIE: I’m going to let a non-recruiter respond first to that. [Laughs]
SIMONDS: Yeah, I mean, Chris would certainly know best, but I think that’s a very plausible hypothesis, Alison, that there’s just that little bit of a disconnect. In general, not enough thought goes into the requirements part, so you end up putting things in there that honestly you don’t really care about. We know that, depending on your background, how people identify, they’re going to hold themselves to a higher standard, and then in terms of whether they’ll either reach out and apply if they’re not seeing themselves
on that list? So, I think it’s pretty problematic. And it’s probably a broken process. My practical self would say—my encouragement would be—you’ve got to blow past that. You’ve got to go work the problem, and you’ve got to go get that interview. And if it means stalking somebody at Smith Union or wherever, where people get coffee, and getting time with them. That initiative to get after it I just think is really important and ultimately what they’re looking for anyway.
WALLACK: I would totally agree. And it would echo my experience majoring in what I majored in. I certainly got some management consulting interviews. The only reason I had those was because I had some internships in management consulting when I was at Bowdoin. And the only reason I had that was because—this totally dates me—I went through the Yellow Pages when I was living in Boston and just started calling every management consulting firm, seeing if they
would take on an intern for the summer. That’s how I ended up getting my foot in the door. When I moved to Portland, Oregon, after school and I didn’t have a job, I went to every tall building I could find and looked up what the buildings were and just asked to have a coffee conversation. And that’s what got me in product design. So, I think, relative to somebody who’s studying computer science at MIT, yeah, it might be tougher. The reality of many companies is they want somebody who can get up to speed as quickly as possible and is not going to have as steep of a learning curve.
thinking about who are the people who will be adaptable? That’s the most important piece.
LOUIE: On behalf of the profession [laughter] I agree with all your comments. The perspective I would add is that what you’re seeing is a combination of legacy and numbers. From a legacy standpoint, history, what was on the job requisition previously? Requirements that help cut through large numbers of applicants to get to “great talent,” like a specific business undergraduate program or a set of very technical and specialized programs, which can
“The gap that I’m seeing is they don’t know how to hear a different perspective. And that isn’t their fault necessarily. We’re all being kept in our own bubbles by the algorithm.”
—MARY INMAN ’90
But the reality is that most skills are reasonably easy to pick up if you’re curious and motivated. I think companies just take the path of least resistance. So, oftentimes you have to put a little more effort in at the beginning. But having a belief that you’re capable and sharp and curious and interested in doing great work, if you maintain that belief, you’ll find something really great.
INMAN: Before we turn it over to the professional, I would say that it does show a lack of imagination on the part of the recruiters, if that’s where they are, because the jobs that they’re recruiting for, many of them don’t exist. And so, maybe your requirements work for right now, but like we’ve all said, in a heartbeat that could change. I think you really have to be
be very restrictive, I agree with what Mary and several of you said earlier: If you’re doing it that way, you probably are recruiting to what you need right now, rather than finding talent that could be really great for the job in the future or the one that might not even exist yet. But, again, it’s human nature to fall back into legacy and try to manage the numbers. What does that mean for a liberal arts student, a Bowdoin student? I would emphasize what Mike and Tim said—understand that that’s the reality of the game today whether you like it or not. How do you play that game effectively? Well, again, as the recruiter or as a hiring manager, “show me.” So, if the course isn’t available at Bowdoin, guess what? CXD provides a lot of opportunities for supplementing with business courses and more technical courses—my daughter just got an
email highlighting some options this morning. You can also go out on your own and find those things, whether it’s in the form of an internship or even a community college class you might take over the summer. If you can demonstrate that you’ve gone the extra step to gain some of those skills and capabilities and experiences that the employer might have been looking for, that can bolster your story. And then making human connections to get the chance to tell your story and not get lost in the numbers. That’s my advice to my own daughter, so that would be my advice to the broader set of students as well.
BOWDOIN: We’ve been talking about it from the student’s perspective, like what should they do and how should they prepare themselves. Thinking about it from the employer’s point of view and also the needs of the world, how would you characterize what you see missing in that pool of talent? People like to bemoan how terrible young people are. Are you optimistic? Are you pessimistic? What would you say is the current gap between how people are prepared and how you think they should be prepared or what you think the world needs?
WALLACK: I think the biggest gap I’ve seen and that I definitely experienced is working as part of a team. I think when I was in school I had the belief that you look at the world, you see how broken it is, and you’re like, “Oh, they should just”—whoever “they” are—“they should just do this, and everything would be better.” And then, when you get into the world, you realize that even good ideas don’t mean a whole lot; it’s how do you help others take hold of and own those ideas and collaborate on them and build them and get momentum behind them. That was something I felt wholly unprepared for. I don’t think it was even really on my radar. It was like, “Hey, I study hard, I’m smart, I’ve got good ideas, and I want somebody to listen to them.” But having others actually take hold of them and then build upon them and add an expertise that I don’t have to those ideas, I think that that was the biggest missing piece. And I’ve also seen as new people enter the workforce, it’s more about “me, me, me” and less about “we, we, we” and “What are we able to actually achieve together?”
INMAN: Can I jump on that to say, “Yes, yes, and yes”? There’s actually a great book, since we’re talking about books—David Brooks wrote a book recently called How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen This whole question about team-building and being part of a team, he breaks it down into saying when you’re in the environment, look for diminishers versus illuminators.
I think there are two things that underscore what Tim is saying. First is that we are coming out of COVID, and there’s a loneliness epidemic in this country that the surgeon general warned about. The last time they did a warning was, like, what, cigarettes? And you add social media onto that; I think we’re all in our own bubbles. So, it’s not just that we’re not in teams, it’s that we don’t know how to work in teams. The gap that I’m seeing is they don’t know how to hear a different perspective. And that isn’t their fault necessarily. We’re all being kept in our own bubbles by the algorithm. I think it’s Arthur C. Brooks, who teaches about happiness at Harvard Business School, who cites some research that connects happiness, which I think is also success and contentedness, to getting into contact with people who have a different point of view than yours. I think that’s the gap right now. He gave the example of “Join a bowling league.” I don’t think bowling leagues exist much anymore, but anything that gets you out of your bubble. We’ve always been in bubbles. We all have our own bubble. And so, maybe your bubble is the bowling league and you need to get somewhere else.
But I think that’s the gap, the sense of difficulty to work with others and difficulty to even comprehend different points of view, because your point of view has been so curated. I mean, we’re seeing how divisive it is out there in the world. Young people are being simmered in that. And so, I guess I would just add that onto what Tim said. It’s the inability to work as a team and not even see the importance of connectedness. I think that’s part of it, a failure to see that we’re all connected.
SIMONDS: I guess I have a slightly different point of view, which is—to your specific question—I’m hugely optimistic. Hugely. I agree
with the problems around teaming and the lack of, generally, skills we need around being humble and being open. So I agree with the broad point. But when I think about people entering the workforce right now, I’m so optimistic. I’ve done early career onboarding programs to rotate people through different parts of our organization. And if you ever want to have a great day, start it with those people. The energy—they’re just used to thinking very broadly about things. There’s a boldness to it, some courage.
I think they’ve dealt with a lot of real loss over the last four, five, six years, and uncertainty. There’s this thing about entitlement. I’m not convinced every generation doesn’t think the generation that follows them is entitled. I think the talk track is a repeating theme. I think there’s a resilience to that very challenging stretch of time that we’ve just been through and this whole shared experience that we just have been enduring together that leaves me feeling very good.
And I think there are some of these things where they’re not on an exact or sort of linear path to forever. Some of this is like a pendulum, and it kind of swings back and forth. So, I sort of see things swinging a little bit back more toward an appreciation for each other. I sense a purpose in the work that we do, a little less self-centeredness, and a little more breadth. But that’s just my experience.
LOUIE: Yeah, I’m going to lean on the side of optimism as well, probably for a lot of the same reasons that you just highlighted, Mike. I’ve seen people in general and specifically young people, earlier tenure people, do really amazing things. And I think with the technology in their hands that can allow them to unlock that even more, we’ll see them go even further. At the same time, in terms of where do we go in the future or which way do we go, Alison, it brings up to me one of the other questions that you asked in the prep: what do we owe or what should we provide to young people? I think it is, number one, listening, providing the opportunity to actually make a mark. Listening to that different voice or that sometimes even divergent voice and
TIPS FROM A PRO
Chris Louie P’27 has been a recruiting leader for the past decade at large companies like Nielsen, LinkedIn, and Thomson Reuters. We asked him to share a few tips for current and recent graduates looking to land a job.
Treat it like a job. Finding a job can be fun, but it takes work. Near-term, achievable goals and dedicated time to focus will keep you on track—and sane.
Make things to make things happen. Managers want people who can get stuff done. Creating something concrete demonstrates the kind of skills and inclination that will be even more valuable and attractive in a world of AI.
Work your network. While recruiting has become tech-powered and procedural, ultimately people still hire people. Don’t just “trust the process”! Establish direct, personal connections (including with Bowdoin alums) to learn about opportunities first and stand out from the crowd.
Be a learn-it-all, not a know-it-all. Your education will get you your first job. Your ability to improve and develop new skills will get you the next one—and the one after that. Colleagues are inspired by young people eager to learn; they’re also put off by those most interested in hearing their own voice. Check your ego and LinkedIn profile at the door.
Tell your story. Stories are memorable. You are indisputably the expert on you— your accomplishments, motivations, where you want to go. Practice telling that story in a succinct but compelling and authentic way, and you’ll show your best to potential employers.
taking those views seriously, even if they’re outside the norm.
Providing that support, that role modeling, that scaffolding to ensure that they have the right environment to be able to make mistakes, grow from them, have things pointed out to them, and the chance for connection. Tim, your point around the isolation and the importance of learning how to work with teams, we need to help foster that. I feel like, as a leader within my company, that’s part of my job, to help foster that environment. That’s contributed to some of the stuff we try to talk about in terms of being together in the office. We ask our senior leaders to actually be present more often in the office than we do the broader set of colleagues, because they’re meant to provide those connections, to mentor, provide apprenticeships and
opportunities to people. If we create the right environments, I have a lot of hope for where our future will go, driven in many ways by our younger people. If we don’t, there’s a chance that we can squelch or miss that opportunity and squelch some of that enthusiasm and potential.
BOWDOIN: Anybody have any reactions to that? What do you think, if anything, we owe to our youngest employees?
INMAN: I mean, the only issue I would take for Chris, or just interest in knowing is, how do you have apprenticeships, which I think are vital and totally agree, in a remote environment? It’s just so hard. I know we need to be creative; we need to figure out other ways to do it. I just think it’s one of the harder parts. But I think
everything Chris said is what we owe them. We owe them listening, we owe them apprenticeships and opportunities, and not to coddle but to give them direction. I think what we owe them is to role model. We have to come in and show that—if we believe in connection, then we need to model connection. We need to model what we want.
I have a great anecdote about this. We lived in London for three years. My job gave me an excuse to live there, and just the way the demographics were for the international school where my kids were, most of the ex-pat parents who were working were the fathers, and a lot of the mothers were at home. And this is a particular age when my thirteen-year-old was like, “You are not coming in to speak at Parents Speak Day. You’re just not.” And I remember saying to him—this is sort of my modeling anecdote—I said, “You don’t have to come. It’s totally fine. I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing this for the young women in the room who need to see that it’s not just a parade of men who are in these roles, that there’s a woman.” And it was really interesting because by not speaking down to him—he did go, he sat in the way back of the room, but he basically said, “Mom, all the young women said you were the only one that had come and that was so cool. And they think you’re cool.” I was like, “Whoa. I did not expect that to happen.”
I think that’s the thing, the piece of really showing up and connecting and showing your people what can be done and how you want them to do it.
WALLACK: I think that’s an important aspect. I think maybe another side is inspiration and bringing passion to your work as a leader. I think one of the terms that has had a lot of currency for a while is “the servant leader.” And while I agree that there’s a lot of support and safety and opportunity to fail and provide feedback—those things are super important—but if you’re not also modeling or bringing inspiration to what you’re doing and you’re giving inspiration to an organization and setting vision and bringing things into a new direction…I think it’s always a bad sign when people don’t want to become managers, they don’t want to
become leaders, because they’re like, “That job just looks miserable.” And so, I think being a point of inspiration and somebody you do want to model to make others say, “I want to be that” gives young people something to strive and work for their own way.
BOWDOIN: I’d like to end by asking each of you personally: Is there something that you studied that you had no idea was going to really be useful to you? You didn’t choose it because you thought it would prepare you for a career. You didn’t choose it for any reason, but you keep thinking back on it and thinking, “This was incredibly useful.”
SIMONDS: I immediately have an answer. It was a sociology course on gender, and it was a huge unlock for me. It was an unlock in terms of my professional life, and it was an unlock in my personal life too, and I would highly recommend it. I think we should put it in a required curriculum somehow, because it had all kinds of really interesting ethnographic studies of gender and identity. It was just so rich, so deep, and just reframed a lot of things for me that put me on a journey that’s been immensely helpful.
INMAN: I have a really random one. I’ve already alluded to it. What stuck with me, and I didn’t appreciate it at the time, is I had to read Eugene Onegin in the original Russian. And then, I went to study in Russia, and I’ve since had Russian clients. And that ability to—it makes me think about what Tim was saying about cultural artifacts. Eugene Onegin is a beloved book in Russia the way that, I don’t know, Tom Sawyer is for some here. In Russia that is the book. And to know that unlocked to me the power of what gets lost in translation and the power of connecting with a culture. If I say, in Russian, a few lines from that book, Russian people will love me forever and follow me to the ends of the earth. And I feel like that was a gift that I don’t think I understood at the time. It just taught me that every culture has its proudest author and we lose a lot in translation.
WALLACK: So, I think if we’re going with some books that were really inspirational for us, I
“If we create the right environments, I have a lot of hope for where our future will go, driven in many ways by our younger people.”
—CHRIS LOUIE ’P27
had two. The first was The Elementary Forms of Religious Life , by Émile Durkheim, and I read it in a theories of religion course. And the thing that was very interesting was that he began with just a provocative question, which is “What is the benefit of religion?” So, I think the idea and the power of a good question is something that’s always settled with me.
And then, one of the things that he had found was that, if you wanted to understand a society, you should look at the artifacts that it’s created. So, he studied the aboriginals, and he’s like, “You can understand this culture by the things they created. Is there a large place to study or to worship?” That’s something that’s important. “Do they have a jail?” So, if they have a jail, keeping misbehaving people from non-misbehaving people is important. I think that critical look at artifacts and investments has helped me think about products and, like, a physical or a digital product. What does the product most optimize for, and is that what the user most values? This idea also applies to organizations—if we say we’re the most customer-centric organization, it should follow that we have an empowered customer insight organization, that delighting customers is central to how workers are promoted and incentivized. So, it’s helped me to think critically about those things.
The other book was called Seeing with a Native Eye, by Walter Capps. He’s an anthropologist who wants to study Native American culture, and he realizes that he can’t go there with his own language and perception to describe what’s going on. He needs to understand what’s happening in that local culture and explain things in the language that they understand and use.
And I think the ability to actually see through others’ eyes and experiences is one of the most important things to have. I think the inability to do that is what’s keeping us divided.
LOUIE: All right. I will round us out as the non-Bowdoin, non-liberal arts person on the panel. I actually got three business degrees, including undergrad. But to answer your question, the course that I’ll talk about wasn’t actually a business course. It was the one programming course that I took in undergrad. And when I say programming, I use the term loosely—I was telling somebody who actually has real programming background and knowledge about learning Visual Basic for Applications, and they began sort of laughing at me. Because it’s kind of primitive and kindergarten level.
But the reason it’s had an impact on me is because I learned to learn about technical things. It demystified programming for me, which has been really useful over the course of my career. And so, I think it’s in that spirit of liberal arts and kind of like the learner’s mindset that I share it. Being able to absorb yourself in something different and embrace that passion you were talking about, Mary, and kind of go wherever your heart and mind takes you is a really, really great path.
Alison Bennie is editor of Bowdoin Magazine
Brian Stauffer is an artist and illustrator whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and more than three hundred other publications worldwide. See more of his work at brianstauffer.com.
BY IAN ALDRICH PHOTOGRAPHS BY TRISTAN SPINSKI
If clothes make the man, then Charlie Davidson—a tailor who loved making people look good, who dressed jazz musicians and professors, who briefly graced the Bowdoin campus before heading off to war—is who you want to make the clothes. Davidson loved fashion, and The Andover Shop he founded became a hub for others who did too. But style was more than clothes. Culture, curiosity, and confidence fed both his look and his life.
Opening spread:
Charlie Davidson firmly believed “Every gentleman should have a tweed jacket.” Davidson custom-made this one for his friend and employee Mor Sene.
Opposite page, clockwise from top left:
One of many Davidson mix tapes, no doubt including either Chet Baker or Miles Davis—great friends of Davidson’s and jazz trumpeters who were rivals of a sort. Sene says, “It was like being friends with 2Pac and Biggie at the same time.”
Davidson used a tape measure like this to make clothes that were tailored perfectly, but he took the measure of a man by his conversation.
Duke Ellington, who was in Davidson’s circle of friends, was known for his incredible sense of style.
A favorite tie from The Andover Shop.
IN THE FALL OF 1988, Mor Sene made a phone call that would change his life. Born into a family of tailors, Sene was an experienced clothes maker in his own right. He’d studied cutting and patternmaking in Paris before returning to his home country of Senegal, where he had spent several years teaching at the Fashion Institute of Dakar. When political strife unexpectedly cut the school year short in the winter of 1988, the thirty-five-year-old made his first trip to the United States, where he quickly found permanent work in New York City.
But six months into his stay, Manhattan life had burned him out, and Sene needed a change. He wanted a smaller city, he told himself, one that was still in the Northeast, but near the water and, perhaps, most importantly, one that placed the self-described jazz obsessive closer to Newport, Rhode Island, and its famous summer music festival. Boston seemed like the best bet, and so, one warm September day, Sene boarded a Greyhound bus and headed there for a week of job-hunting.
A friend had first alerted him to The Andover Shop, a high-end men’s clothing retailer, whose two Massachusetts locations—Cambridge and Andover—had quietly become the epicenter of traditional Ivy League fashion over the previous four decades. Its Harvard Square location needed a part-time tailor. Sene phoned up the shop and was immediately handed off to the store’s owner and cofounder, Charlie Davidson ’48.
“He didn’t waste any time,” Sene recalls. “He says: ‘You’re a tailor, but are you a good one?’ I said, ‘I am the best one.’ I think he might have laughed at that. Then he told me to come in the next day to meet him.”
What Sene discovered surprised, even confounded, him. For starters, there was the store building itself—a tidy mid-century structure whose gleaming big windows stood in direct contrast to the stuffy brick that surrounded it. Inside, a second-floor tailoring station hummed along, while the main floor was a crowded but meticulous display of jackets, pants, shirts, and ties that resided on racks and shelves. But it was what lived around the merchandise that caught Sene’s attention: books, records, and art. Many of those items took up space near the front windows, seemingly taking precedence
over the actual attire. An obscure John Coltrane song played in the background. Sene thought to himself: What have I walked into?
At the center of this cultural ecosystem was the owner himself. On the surface, Davidson was an unlikely star: He was short—barely five foot two— and spoke in a deep rasp, the result of a bout of cancer that decades before had damaged his vocal cords. He had endured, however, opening for business in 1948, at the age of twenty-two, in his hometown of Andover, Massachusetts.
But it was his Cambridge location, which he’d launched in 1953 in a building he’d designed himself and worked at almost until his death in 2019, that put him on the map. Whether it was intuition or luck, Davidson built his niche around the Ivy League look—the tweed jackets, penny loafers, chinos, and argyle socks—that blossomed in the 1950s. His shop became an epicenter for not just high fashion, but the world around it. The Andover Shop wasn’t so much a store as it was a literary and cultural salon that catered to the owner’s true passions—a hang-out spot for a litany of famous customers-turned-companions that included Chet Baker, Arthur Murray, and Henry Louis Gates Jr. For many decades, Davidson was Miles Davis’s go-to clothing man, and he grew to be close friends with the writer Ralph Ellison.
In a 1967 Boston Globe story, jazz pianist Bobby Short said the Cambridge shop was one of only three places in the world he permitted himself to buy his clothes.
“As a matter of fact,” Short said, “Charlie Davidson at The Andover Shop is working up some new things for me right now.”
This was the unlikely store that Mor Sene walked into that September day in 1988. The young tailor introduced himself and was pointed upstairs, where Davidson sat at a table.
“One of the first things I said was, ‘I like the music playing here,’” Sene says. “He looked right at me and said, ‘Oh, you like jazz—who are some of your favorites?’ I wasn’t sure what to make of him. Who was this little white guy asking me if I like jazz? Maybe I say Miles Davis and he doesn’t even know who he is. I told him, ‘I love Louis Armstrong,’ and Charlie looked at me with these big eyes and said: ‘He is a God. You know that, right? He is an absolute God.’ I don’t know how
long we talked, but it was a long time, and all we talked about was jazz.”
Sene got the job, and over the next twenty-five years worked part-time at The Andover Shop. Sene liked the work, but he loved working for Davidson, and as the years passed, the two men grew close. They opened up to each other in ways they didn’t allow for with other people. They celebrated holidays together and shared family celebrations. Davidson, who was the father of four daughters, affectionately referred to Sene as his “son,” while Sene in turn called him “dad.”
“If Charlie liked you, you were in his world, and it didn’t matter where you came from,” says Sene. “He knew clothes, but he knew so much else, and if he was interested in you, there was nothing he wouldn’t do for you. I’ve never met a human being like him before.”
THE STORY of the American Ivy League look is also the story of post-World War II America. For decades, the style had remained cloistered at elite American colleges, propagated by preppy outposts like J. Press, founded on the Yale University campus in 1902. But as the country’s economy roared to life in the late 1940s and the G.I. Bill paved the way for a tidal wave of young American men to go to college, the Ivy League style went mainstream, says Richard Press, former president of his family’s business and grandson of its founder, Jacobi.
“For a time, the booming American economy made it seem as if it were inevitable for everyone to go from No Money to New Money to Old Money,” says Press in the new book Miles, Chet, Ralph, and Charlie, an oral history of Davidson and his shop. “And suddenly everyone wanted to dress this way. It was youthful and cool. A few years later, the jazz musicians gave it a further boost of visibility and cachet and popularity.”
By the 1950s, the market for traditional men’s clothing had exploded, and stores popped up in cities across the country. But Davidson’s shop was always a little different. Foundational to the business Davidson ran were the relationships he formed with his customers. It wasn’t just that Davidson understood the clothes he was selling, says G. Bruce Boyer, longtime friend and former fashion editor at Town & Country—he also understood the people he was selling to.
Mor Sene, holding a photo of Davidson as an Air Force gunner serving in the Pacific during World War II.
“IF CHARLIE LIKED YOU, YOU WERE IN HIS WORLD, AND IT DIDN’T MATTER WHERE YOU CAME FROM.”
—MOR SENE
“People didn’t come out looking like Charlie,” he says. “They came out looking like themselves. He had these people skills. He was interested in you. He had a genuine joy for meeting people, being with them, and understanding them. You go into any old men’s store and ask for a sport jacket, and maybe he only has one in your size but he’ll put it on you and tell you it looks great. Charlie wasn’t like that. If he didn’t think it was for you, he’d tell you that. He was honest like that, and that really attracted people because they knew they would come out of The Andover Shop looking as good as they could. They weren’t just being sold something.”
For those close to Davidson, his generosity came out in spades. “I can’t tell you how many times Charlie would call up and tell me about this new record that had just come out or this new book that I had to read,” says Boyer. “He was curious about the world and wanted to share it with people. I don’t know who said it, but it’s very true: Charlie had a great gift for friendships.”
But Davidson was particular about the culture he oversaw at The Andover Shop. He famously eschewed trends—Nantucket Reds he found to be especially appalling—and delighted in testing the patience of customers he deemed pushy, obnoxiously monied, or who lacked an understanding of the ethos of his store.
In his 1995 article on bow ties for Atlantic Monthly, writer John Spooner recounts the story of a wealthy businessman who’d ordered three custom-made suits. “Charlie took the order and
told the customer they would be ready in ‘about a month,’” writes Spooner. “After five weeks, the customer, whose last name was Zachary, called to inquire after his suits. ‘Not quite yet,’ Charlie said. Another two weeks went by, and Zachary was put off again. Charlie had not made the suits. ‘He’ll get the message,’ Charlie explained. ‘I am not sure I like the cut of his jib.’
Four weeks more, and Zachary called, irate. ‘What the hell do you do over there?’ he asked. ‘Make the clothes alphabetically?’ After hearing this line, Charlie made the suits. Zachary had passed the test.”
For Davidson, the business of men’s fashion offered a constant education, which served the eminently curious storeowner well, says his daughter, Casey Farley. “He learned about clothes as he went along,” she says. “He loved to study it. He was talking to manufacturers all the time. It was all just so personal to him. He wanted people to feel good in their clothes and how they looked in their clothes. You could have a lining in your suit that made it uniquely yours. It would be colorful and hidden, but you knew it was there, so you’d feel bold and you looked good. Those little details were important to him.”
CAREFUL OBSERVATION was in his DNA. Born in 1926, Davidson was the second of four children born into a tight Armenian American family in Andover, where the elite private school Phillips Andover Academy gave the future clothier a front-row seat to the still nascent American preppy style. His capacity for hard work and affinity for working for himself was learned from his father, Leon, a property developer who early on operated a popular burger joint that local schoolkids affectionately called “Doc’s Place.” Later, he would go on to own and operate the Andover Country Club.
“Our father had us do whatever was needed,” remembers Davidson’s younger brother, John. “Short-order cook, keeping the kitchen clean, emptying boxes of Coca-Cola. He was a fanatic about cleanliness and the freshness of the food. It was always about quality with him.”
Davidson worked for his dad, but he had his eye on another job as well. In a storefront that shared the same building address as his father’s
restaurant resided Langrock, a tweedy men’s clothier that operated a scattering of shops around the northeast. With his father’s blessing, Davidson left restaurant work and took a parttime job with his father’s tenant, a prime perch for him to educate himself on fashion and building relationships.
“Charlie got exposed to men’s fashion on a quality basis, and it never left him,” says John. After he graduated from Andover High School in 1944, life took Davidson elsewhere. Across the Pacific, where he served as a belly gunner in WWII; to Brunswick, Maine, where he briefly attended Bowdoin; and to Cambridge to work with J. Press, where, according to legend, he sold a hat to the actor Gregory Peck, which he wore in the 1947 film Gentlemen’s Agreement Davidson couldn’t have been too long at Bowdoin, but most of his friends and many of his customers knew of his connection. “He loved Bowdoin!” says Sene. “He tried to get my son to go there.” David Vazdauskas ’82, P’27 says, “When I was in my first year at Harvard Business School, I needed to find a tuxedo for our winter holiday formal. One of my HBS section mates, who had attended Harvard as an undergrad, told me there was only one place to go: The Andover Shop. When we arrived, I discovered my Bowdoin connection with Charlie, and we shared experiences that were several decades apart. He personally outfitted me with my first tuxedo.”
BY THE LATE 1940S, Davidson had returned to Andover. Langrock had shuttered, leaving an empty storefront, and Davidson had an idea of how to fill it. In 1948, he and his brother-in-law, Virgil Marson, opened for business. By the mid 1950s, the two men had their respective domains: Marson oversaw the Andover location; Davidson ran the Cambridge store. Business acumen certainly drove the decision to expand, but it wasn’t a coincidence that Davidson landed where he did.
“Harvard Square is the epicenter of the universe,” he once explained. “The whole world goes right by and comes in here.”
That world included artistic luminaries like Davis, Ellison, Baker, and Murray. He outfitted Harvard head honchos, Supreme Court justices,
A blue windowpane jacket, like this one he made for Sene, was Charlie Davidson’s signature look.
Sene inherited much of Davidson’s eclectic and extensive music collection, including this Muddy Waters LP.
A tool of the tailoring trade.
Valhouli’s book notes that “Charlie regarded Anita O’Day as one of the greatest female vocalists, surpassed only by Billie Holiday.”
and politicos. When Miles Davis wanted to make a statement at the 1955 Newport Jazz Festival about the new kind of music he was leading, he turned to Davidson to be outfitted. Out went the broad lapels and wide-shouldered jackets the previous generation of band leaders preferred. In came the sleek-fitting suits that Davidson felt best represented the trumpeter. Plus: “I wanted to make sure he looked better than any of the racist [jerks] in the crowd,” Davidson later explained.
In between were all the other lesser-known customers and friends who rounded out Davidson’s life. The accountants, journalists, and professors who came to trust Davidson’s eyes. Constantine Valhouli was one of them, and his longtime admiration of the clothier resulted in Miles, Chet, Ralph, and Charlie. His introduction to Davidson’s world came at the age of ten, when Valhouli’s father took him to The Andover Shop to get a navy blue blazer. Valhouli was a reluctant participant in the transaction, and Davidson sensed it immediately. But rather than rush the exchange through, the shop owner took his time with the boy.
“I get the sense that you’ve always got a book with you,” Davidson said, and encouraged Valhouli to consider a jacket with patch pockets.
“A book will fit more easily in here.”
Some four decades later, Valhouli still marvels at the exchange. “I couldn’t tell you if it was incredible salesmanship or incredible empathy, but he pointed this thing out, then took the book I had with me and slipped it into the
pocket,” says Valhouli. “He saw me for who I was and what was important to me. It felt exciting.”
Valhouli contends that one of the strengths of Davidson is that he was an insider with an outsider’s perspective. He wasn’t a musician, or a writer, or an academic, but he understood their worlds. And while he made his trade in traditional clothing, Davidson was anything but old-fashioned. He never found his place in formal schooling, had been fiercely determined to work for himself, and in an age when some of the country’s most renowned Black musicians and intellectuals couldn’t secure even a hotel room in Boston, Davidson welcomed them into his shop and home.
“He was famously fiery and cantankerous, but also incredibly loyal,” says Valhouli. “At various points he’d give clothing away to people who really needed it. He was someone you could turn to for advice. If someone was going through a divorce or had a sick child, they knew they could talk to Charlie. He was always there for them, and because of that he created all these connections. If you think about some of his most famous customers—Miles Davis is known for St. Louis and New York; Chet Baker was more of a West Coast performer; and Ralph Ellison is connected to the South. But they all came together in Charlie’s store, and they knew one another because of it.”
“PEOPLE SAY how much Harvard Square has changed,” Davidson once said, “but I haven’t noticed. To me nothing’s changed. The ties get wider, then they get narrower—that’s it.”
But that wasn’t completely true. The world got bigger. Tastes evolved. And dress got more casual. Davidson’s shop, however, held a unique status: It was not only one of the first to usher in the new age of American Ivy style, it also became one of its last. “When I first came to Harvard Square, there were ten good men’s stores, and we all had to divide that clientele up between us,” Davidson explained in his later years. “Today there are only two here: me and J. Press. So, you can take that big pie and cut it in ten, or take a small pie, and cut it in two.”
It endures today. Nearly five years since his passing, Charlie Davidson’s legacy lives on. Certainly, you can find it in the Cambridge
store he once presided over. Many of his longtime customers still frequent the place for the tweeds, custom suits, and blue blazers the founder once outfitted them with.
You can also still find it in the work of Mor Sene. Sene struck out on his own in 2014 to open up a tailoring service in Burlington, Massachusetts. But while he left The Andover Shop, he never left Davidson. The two remained in close contact—just a week before his friend passed, Sene and his family celebrated Thanksgiving with Davidson and his partner, Joyce Comfort. On the walls of Sene’s business is the evidence of their friendship. A large photo of Davidson at his store, a framed honor from the City of Cambridge that says “All Hail the King!” as well as cherished posters of Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong that had once been displayed in his friend’s apartment.
Under a row of tables are boxes of books Davidson left Sene. On history, music, and literature—nearly five hundred volumes in all. Elsewhere, Sene has put into storage the more than fifty thousand CDs Davidson collected. What will he do with them all? Sene has a plan. By early 2025, Sene, who will soon turn seventy, will return to Dakar to live, where he is setting up a new tailoring school. A building has already been secured and is being renovated; soon a lineup of new sewing machines from China will make their way to Senegal. The project gives its founder not just a chance to return home but to give something back to his country. It also allows him the chance to spread the legend of Charlie Davidson a little further. The school’s new library will be named after his old friend, and its collection will largely consist of his books and CDs.
“There are people who want success in life— they want the planes, the big house, and the fancy life,” says Sene. “Charlie was never like that. He was about success for life. He cared about the important things—art, music, and people. He was a special man, and I want others to know about him.”
Ian Aldrich is the deputy editor at Yankee Magazine.
Tristan Spinski is a Maine-based photographer, writer, and filmmaker. He earned his master’s degree in journalism from UC–Berkeley.
Clockwise from top left:
EXCERPT FROM THE FIRST CHAPTER OF A NEW NOVEL, REUNION , BY ELISE JUSKA ’95
O Longverdue
ILLUSTRATIONS BY HOLLY STAPLETON
In the spring of 2020, my twenty-fifth Bowdoin reunion was canceled. It was a minor disappointment against the backdrop of a world struggling under the weight of the pandemic, but I had looked forward to being back on campus and reconnecting with my classmates—and the twenty-fifth felt particularly significant. That May, in a not-so-subtle attempt at coping with isolation, I began writing a novel about three friends who, after the pandemic has subsided, attend their rescheduled reunion at a small college in Maine.
At first, writing Reunion was a way of conjuring places I was missing: Maine, a picturesque quad, the beautiful islands nearby. As the story kept unfolding for me, and the world began opening up, the idea of a reunion took on greater relevance and meaning. I was struck by the ways that returning to a college campus—like our collective return to the world—is revisiting a place that no longer exists in quite the same way, one that is both familiar and deeply changed. And I thought more about the phase of life marked by a twenty-fifth reunion and the way that milestones like it can spark introspection and be catalysts for change.
The opening scene takes place on the night before reunion weekend as Hope, a mom of two, reminds her husband that she’s going, “the weary slosh” of doing the dinner dishes a backdrop to their conversation. She’s eagerly anticipating a respite from the stresses of family life, a solo drive, and then two days away after many long months at home, and she’s willing to endure his irritation at the inconvenience to get it.
“I could have sworn you knew this was coming up,” Hope said, carrying a stack of dinner dishes to the kitchen sink.
“It’s right there.” She stopped to nod at the refrigerator, where beside the kids’ most recent school pictures, the calendar was turned to the month of June. “See?”
A year ago, a different calendar had hung in that same spot, a different month of June, the one that had vanished. The squares had remained filled with canceled graduation parties and end-of-year class picnics, day camps, and trips to the Jersey shore. Now, the boxes had filled up again, assuming their hopeful new shapes: Izzy’s eighth-grade dance, Rowan’s indoor karate classes. Ethan’s end-of-semester faculty reception. Reunion. One year later, a different event.
Ethan was still at the kitchen table, wearing the blue T-shirt, blue sweatpants, and bald leather slippers he changed into at the end of every workday online. “Reunion? What reunion?”
“My college reunion. My twenty-fifth—well, twenty-sixth, technically.”
“I thought that was canceled.”
“It was,” Hope said lightly. “That’s why it’s happening now.”
He tunneled his fingers through his hair and frowned, as if questioning her math.
“We talked about this,” Hope said, but kept her eyes on the dishes as she scraped the uneaten noodles into the garbage disposal. It was technically true. They had talked about it, back in April, when the email arrived in Hope’s inbox announcing her reunion had been rescheduled. Ethan had been sitting in that same spot, drinking coffee and reading something on his iPad, while Hope stood by the counter, waiting for Rowan’s waffles to finish toasting and scrolling
on her phone. When she saw the invitation— A Celebration with Classmates, Long Overdue—she’d read it out loud to confirm that it was real.
“Kind of melodramatic, isn’t it?” Ethan had said.
“Is it?” Hope had replied. “Oh, I don’t think so. I think it’s kind of moving, actually.”
“On Zoom?”
“No, no. On campus.”
“So you’ll go?”
“Of course!” she’d said. “I mean, assuming people are going.” And then—what? Izzy had texted from her room that the wireless router needed to be reset again or Rowan had raced into the kitchen declaring he was starving or Ethan had evaporated into another meeting, and they hadn’t resumed the conversation, not then and not ever. Hope had written it on the calendar, but Ethan never noticed the calendar, much less consulted it for information. To him, it was purely decorative, as dated as a rotary phone. In the past year, he’d become even more reliant on technology, AirPods nestled in his ears and his bedside charging station drooling wires. His schedule existed solely in the cloud. Now he blinked at the calendar, as if waiting for a more reasonable explanation to present itself. Appropriately, it was the Walthrop one that the school sent Hope each year for donating to the alumni fund. The photo for the month of June showed the quad in early summer—classic redbrick dorms, flowering pink trees—and the squares beneath it were crowded with Hope’s handwritten notes and reminders. If Ethan ignored wall calendars, Hope relied on them, the ink-filled squares evidence of the fullness of their lives. She was a planner by nature; for her, the shapelessness of the past fifteen months, the inability to look forward, had been one of the hardest parts.
“And this is happening tomorrow?” Ethan said.
“Right.” Hope turned on the faucet, holding a finger under the tap until the water ran hot.
“I’m assuming I’m not going,” he said. “Or did you forget to mention that, too?”
“Oh—I figured you wouldn’t want to,” Hope said, knowing this was true. Ethan had gone to previous Walthrop reunions but never appeared to particularly enjoy them, and had never attended his own reunions, or even seemed to see the point. Maybe because he now worked
in academia, he was no longer able to summon any nostalgia for his own alma mater, a tier-one university fifteen times the size of Hope’s cozy liberal arts college. His relationship to higher education had become largely managerial: a history professor turned dean of the Humanities Department, chair of the Academic Crisis Task Force last spring.
“But you’re taking the kids?” he said.
It was more a statement than a question, and the part of the conversation Hope had been dreading most. “No, actually,” she said, doing her best to sound casual as she pulled open the dishwasher. “Just me.”
Ethan pinched one arm of his glasses, a square two-toned pair Izzy had chosen for him online, and resettled them on his face. “What?”
“I just thought it would be simpler.”
He gave a short laugh. “For whom?”
Hope had rehearsed her reasons. “It’s too big an event to bring them to,” she told him, rinsing a handful of forks. “Too much too soon. And your semester is officially over, right?”
This was all true, too. Though things seemed to be—finally, thankfully—getting back to normal, and the college was taking plenty of precautions, she could argue it was still safer to leave the kids at home. And in theory, Ethan now had some room in his schedule. The week before, he’d attended a modified version of commencement, addressing the graduates and their guests, who sat sprinkled across the football field.
“It is,” Ethan said. “But I was planning to get back to working on my book.”
Hope concentrated on slotting plates in the dishwasher, wanting to point out that Ethan was always working on his book. That Ethan was always working, period. As soon as the academic year wound down, there was the book, a history of global transportation, perpetually urgent and perpetually unfinished. Admittedly, in normal times, Hope didn’t mind that Ethan was so busy: he worked on campus and she stayed home. It was a lifestyle made possible by the generosity of her parents, who had quietly helped them out with down payments and private school tuitions and three years of fertility treatments. Of course, taking care of the kids and house was hard work, too
(more so than Ethan ever seemed to realize), but Hope was aware of the perks that came with it: the moments of solitude on a weekday—a glass of pinot grigio, a midday TV show, an hour spent curled with a book in the sun—pockets of stolen peace and pleasure in exchange for keeping everything running. In the past year, of course, that alone time had disappeared.
The separate parts had all merged: work and home, Ethan’s life, her life. They’d never spent so much time together, not even when they were first dating, Hope prying Ethan away from his research for happy hour with her coworkers from the PR firm or takeout at her Center City apartment. Now Ethan was deeply around, yet deeply absent, most days spending fourteen hours in his office upstairs, emerging irritable and exhausted and leaving Hope to deal with everything else. So, as much as Hope wanted to take offense when he objected to her leaving for the weekend, the truth was that she had purposefully waited to tell him, afraid that to mention it sooner would complicate her plans.
“I’m sorry,” Hope said. “I really thought you knew about it.” She perched the wineglasses in the upper rack of the dishwasher. “But it should be an easy weekend. I already went to the store.” Not that she could remember the last time Ethan had shopped for groceries. Even last year, it was always Hope who braved Whole Foods, waiting in the carefully spaced-out line that wrapped around the parking lot before entering the building. She’d made sure then to stock up on all of Rowan’s favorites, and for this weekend, she’d bought many of those same things—fruit snacks (bunny-shaped), chicken nuggets (dinosaur-shaped)—before swinging by Target for Lucky Charms (nuggets of processed sugar, but in desperate moments, they worked). For Izzy, whose help Hope knew she would rely on for the next few days, she’d picked up vegan ice cream and a case of coconut La Croix.
“I also made that taco casserole Rowan likes,” Hope continued, pouring detergent into the dishwasher. “It’s in the fridge. It just needs to be reheated.”
Ethan typed something into his phone, scratching at his beard. For their first fourteen years of marriage, he had always been cleanshaven, but in the past year he’d grown a thicket
Mostly, though, she liked the prospect of the solo drive—leaving early with her tumbler of coffee, cruising by the service plazas of New Jersey and the shimmering silhouette of New York City and on into New England, where the landscape would exhale, the sky widening and roadsides softening with trees.
of bristles. “And when will you be back?” he asked without looking up.
“Sunday.”
“Yes, but when Sunday?”
“In the evening,” Hope said, quickly adding, “I didn’t want to fly.” Which, if not the complete truth, was certainly credible. The flight to Portland, Maine, was just ninety minutes, but Hope didn’t relish the thought of sitting elbow to elbow in a small, enclosed space. Mostly, though, she liked the prospect of the solo drive—leaving early with her tumbler of coffee, cruising by the service plazas of New Jersey and the shimmering silhouette of New York City and on into New England, where the landscape would exhale, the sky widening and roadsides softening with trees.
“You’re driving?” Ethan said with the perplexed look of someone who had spent the past decade researching transportation and knew this was the least efficient option. “Why?”
“It’s not that far.” Hope shrugged. “I’m used to it.” She’d done the drive many times in college, first with her parents and later when she took her Jetta back and forth to school. “And Izzy will be here. She’ll help with Rowan.” Now that Ethan had been debriefed, Hope could let her daughter know about the reunion and ask her to pitch in. The dishwasher pinged, and she pressed the Start button and shut the door, heard the weary slosh of the wash cycle begin. “She just has that dance on Friday night—don’t worry, she’s getting a ride with Lacy—but other than that she’ll be around. I’m sure at some point you could sneak off to campus. The only thing you really need to remember is OT on Saturday morning.”
Ethan glanced up. “Online?”
“In person,” Hope replied, plucking the sponge off the sink. Ethan had not seen Rowan’s
occupational therapist, in any format, since his initial evaluation, six weeks before the world shut down. The two of them had perched on child-sized chairs in a brightly colored playroom while Ellen, a kind, fit woman around Hope’s age—I’m a parent, too, she told them—spelled out what she’d observed about their son, the sensitivities and anxieties that, since then, had grown only more acute.
“I think it could be nice,” Hope continued, sweeping the sponge along the faucet. “You’ve been working so hard. And I know Rowan wants to spend time with you. It could be good for you to—”
“Please,” Ethan interrupted. “I don’t need you telling me what’s good for me.” He took his glasses off and slid them onto the table. “It’s exhausting.”
Hope stood still, sponge in hand, heartbeat ticking in her chest. Maybe it was because she’d be leaving soon for her reunion that for a moment she zoomed out and observed her husband at an objective distance, as she would a person she hadn’t seen in years. His hair was still more brown than gray, but noticeably thinning, and his hairline was receding. His eyelids looked heavy, probably from fatigue, and his glasses had left two shiny red dents on either side of his nose. But what struck her most was his expression: annoyed, impatient. She thought again about the beginning, when Ethan had seemed so grateful for her stepping in to organize his life, when his dedication to his work had reassured her. She’d mapped out a plan for their future: a tenure-track position for him (East Coast, not too far from her parents), a wedding (August, at the Jersey shore), a baby (before age thirty-four). And for the first few years, it had happened just
as she’d envisioned. She recalled her conversation with Polly—her college roommate, herself the mother of a five-year-old by then—when Hope decided to hold off on going back to work after having Izzy.
A stay-at-home mom? Polly had said. Is that as thankless as it sounds?
Then from upstairs, Rowan shouted: “Mom!” Hope tipped her head toward the sound of his voice. “Yes, Ro?”
“I need you!”
She paused to note his tone, gauging the intensity of the issue: urgent, but probably not serious. He couldn’t find Gray Rabbit. His toothbrush tasted funny. His pajamas were inside out.
“It’s an emergency!”
“What’s the emergency, Ro?”
“I just need you,” he repeated, and, serious or not, Hope could tell from the tremble in his voice that things could escalate quickly.
She fought to sound airy and untroubled as she called back: “Be right there!” though she felt like bursting into tears. Then she returned the sponge to the sink and looked at her husband, and he looked at her, and for a moment Hope feared something would give way, the churning dishwasher might gape open and flood the room, but she only smiled. “It’s just one weekend,” she said.
Elise Juska ’95 is a professor of creative writing whose previous novels include If We Had Known and The Blessings. Her new novel, from which this piece is excerpted, is Reunion, just published in May. She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and son.
Holly Stapleton is an illustrator and painter based in Toronto. See more of her work at hollystapleton.ca.
Jay Tansey ’07 and Elly Pepper ’05 and their friends Rob Reider ’07 and Tehilah Azoulay Reider ’08 suffered devastating stillbirths just eleven months apart. Shortly after, they met Chris Piasecki and Sarah D’Elia Piasecki ’09, who also lost a child. The men went on to found a men’s mental health nonprofit, Sad Dads Club.
Worst Club, Best Members
Are there people who don’t understand why you founded an organization called Sad Dads Club? Earlier generations seemed to feel the only way to manage grief was to not discuss it.
ROB: I would say few people don’t understand why we’re doing this. There are more spaces created for people to be vulnerable and open now—that generational shift seems as though it happened suddenly.
JAY: There’s a woman we’d see in our neighborhood in her early nineties. Elly had been very pregnant when we saw her last, and when she saw us walking with our son she said, “Where’s the baby?” We said, “She died. She was stillborn.” And she said, “My husband and I lost one of our children. She was stillborn, and my husband didn’t talk about it from that moment, through the day he died, never spoke of her again.” And that was interesting, but not surprising. More often than not, for the members of Sad Dads Club, we’re the first people they’ve ever talked to about this. There’s still this reluctance among men. Rob and I talk to grieving dads all the time about this, and I still don’t know what to say when someone loses a child. It’s heartbreaking.
Do you think the world treats sad dads differently than sad moms?
ROB: I think there’s a historic stereotype that men have to be strong, to be steadfast in their ability to not show emotion. In a way, we’re trying to redefine masculinity. Being sad, upset,
confused, lost, angry, and crying, those aren’t signs of weakness. That emotion is inside, and if you don’t have an outlet, it’s not going to just go away. It’s going to compound inside of you. It will erode you. Within our spaces, we’re trying to say that we can be as vulnerable, as emotional, as we want to be. That’s okay. That’s welcomed here. And that is going to help you.
JAY: Rob and Chris and I started this very selfishly—we needed an outlet. Initially we were very focused on our wives, and appropriately so. I know I didn’t tend to my mental health in those early months as much as maybe I should have because I was trying to protect Elly and focus on her. With grief in general, it’s like, oh, that was like, three, six months ago. You’re good now, right? When you lose a child, it’s deep, unsettling grief. It’s not the natural order. At that six-month point, when the meal train has stopped, when all those condolence notes stop coming, that’s when you really need someone to talk to. We’re non-clinical, peer-to-peer. But all three of us believe very deeply in the power of professional mental health counseling. That’s how we all survived the immediate aftermath. But it gets expensive.
There is a huge vulnerability for marriages with this type of loss. How do your wives and partners feel about your work?
ROB: Nothing but resounding support in understanding and encouraging this space created for men. It is such a scarce, I should say nonexistent,
commodity. There is nothing else—and we have looked high and low—that is community-based for men who have experienced a profound loss to go share stories and get peer-to-peer support. There just is not anything else out there. That jarring statistic—last I heard was that 80 percent of marriages or relationships end after going through the loss of a child. Within our community, it will be interesting to see if this is something that can help save relationships, if a dedicated space where men can be emotionally expressive can help them return to places in their own lives where they are needed to show up, like in their marriages, with their living children, within their careers.
Can you talk about the differences between My Child, My Story sessions versus the open hours? What do you hope to achieve with that variety?
ROB: Dads in our community are in different stages of grief. The grief journey and healing journey are parallel, but nonlinear. The more that our community has continued to grow, Jay, Chris, and I have recognized that we need to make room for different conversations. Open Hour focuses on a theme. My Child, My Story is where a father shares the story of their child and family in long form, uninterrupted. We use the hand raise features in Zoom to indicate when people want to share. Dads would be getting into really intimate details, and they’d see all these hands raised and kind of say, “I’m so sorry, I’m going on for too long.” So,
PHOTO: MICHELE STAPLETON
Jay Tansey ’07 (Bella’s dad), left, and Rob Reider ’07 (Lila’s dad) cofounded Sad Dads Club after they and their wives had stillborn children.
we created a space where somebody can tell their story and not worry who else is waiting to speak. As soon as we opened it up, it booked out for a whole calendar year. We’ve started asking dads afterward to provide a testimonial, and overwhelmingly, they say, “This is the first chance I’ve had to say this incredibly difficult story out loud,” and that they felt a weight lifted from them. It really is this unbelievably healing experience.
JAY: Rob and I are best friends. We were college roommates, in each other’s weddings, we’ve known each other forever. We’ve talked at length about each other’s losses. We know each other better than most people. And there were anecdotes and heartbreaking details Rob shared in that forum that I had never heard. Even if you have the best, most supportive friends and family, you don’t often have that opportunity to just tell the whole story. And the fact that people show up—this is what’s so powerful, the support from the community.
Rob, you’ve written about having a strong desire to acknowledge and remember Lila. What does that feel like?
ROB: Just because of my place in life and because people see a wedding ring on my finger, they will ask if I have children. This could be complete strangers in the checkout line, just an innocent question. In the immediate aftermath, I would often answer no. And I would feel something physical inside me tighten. When I started bringing Lila up at every possible chance, it made me feel better. This happened yesterday at the playground, when I was watching my living son, Dallas, and another parent asked if I had more children. I said, “Yes. His sister passed away over six years ago.” This is not me wanting to make somebody else feel uncomfortable. This is me putting what I need first, which is any opportunity that I can talk about Lila, I will take. But we also have dads talking about the fact that, a stranger at a playground, they don’t want to get into that. That’s such a wildly personal detail, and it’s entirely reasonable to not want to share that. There’s no right or wrong. It’s just about really acknowledging that you need to get
in your heart and out of your head to see what feels necessary in those situations for you.
JAY: When someone says, “Something happened that made me think of you and Bella and Elly and your family,” that puts a smile on my face. People ask about Jack, Pepper, and Sunny, our living children, all the time. We hear their names all the time, but you don’t hear Bella’s name as much. There are dads who will talk about how when they go to Starbucks to get a coffee, they’ll give their child’s name for the order because they want to hear somebody else say their child’s name. Grieving parents are just often yearning to hear their child’s name.
How many members do you have?
JAY: It’s thousands globally. I think what’s really powerful is that it’s not just about the dads who are actively engaged. In any given week, any given session, there could be fifty-plus dads. But, when you look at our presence on social media, while a major percentage of the group are sad dads, there’s also a big segment that are loss moms, that are grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends for whom the posts Rob does on an almost daily basis strike a chord with. It really provides this window into what we’re all navigating. As Rob said, it’s non-linear. Bella passed away over seven years ago, but yesterday was Mother’s Day, and that’s still a really hard day for our family. As much as there’s a lot of joy—we have three living children, two rainbow babies who came after Bella—there’s still just the sadness that Bella’s not with us. I don’t know that our family will ever feel complete. And so, there’s the journey that ebbs and flows.
What’s next for Sad Dads?
ROB: What our community does right now, that peer-to-peer non-clinical work, we can absolutely provide that, but we cannot provide professional mental health services because none of us are professionals. It is such a crucial component to healing and grieving. We want to remove the financial barrier, but also come up with a system that removes the logistical barrier. For a father in the immediate aftermath of their loss, executive
functioning is extremely difficult and potentially just nonexistent. Having to sift through potential therapists, especially ones who specialize in the loss of a child, is so overwhelming that the grieving parent often stops looking.
JAY: The rate of stillbirth in the US is one in 175— that’s 21,000 babies a year and 1.9 million globally. I work in the business world, that’s a big TAM, total addressable market. We wish it weren’t the case, we wish it was zero, but that’s not the reality. So we want to be able to reach all those sad dads.
Grief is obviously the connective tissue with you guys, but is there joy in this too?
ROB: We always said it’s our loss that brings us together. And one dad said, it’s actually our children who bring us together. That gave life to our children and a legacy to them. We wouldn’t know one another were it not for our children, and now we’re able to share a space that celebrates them, that honors them. People get together in person too. It’s magic. It is so joyful, and it is our children bringing us that joy.
JAY: We had a dad say, “Hey, I’m defending my dissertation to get my PhD. It’s open to the public. Does anyone want to come?” And the vast majority of the people watching the dissertation defense were Sad Dads Club members. The Bowdoin network is there whether you’re networking for job opportunities or fun, or in the deepest, darkest days. The three cofounders of Sad Dads Club are all very lucky to be married to incredibly smart, strong, successful Bowdoin alumnae. Without Bowdoin, I don’t know that Sad Dads Club would exist.
ROB: Bowdoin showed us the power of community and how far spreading it can be. Chris, he’s an honorary Polar Bear. He was at least smart enough to marry one.
Rob Reider ’07 is a musician, dad, and the executive director of Sad Dads Club. Cofounder with Rob and Chris Piasecki of Sad Dads Club Jay Tansey ’07 is a proud dad, husband, and technology executive at IDEXX.
For more from this interview, visit bowdoin.edu/magazine.
RACHEL BRYAN-AUKER ’10
HONORING THEIR LIGHT
Working with Tribes and Native communities is close to my heart. As a Haida and Tlingit woman, I know how essential it is that attention and resources are directed to Native communities, and that our sovereign Tribal governments are respected.
In addition to being part of exciting collaborations and encouraging meaningful partnerships with Tribes, I love educating folks about Tribal sovereignty and helping those who work in government appreciate the deep and wide implications it has for Tribal partnerships. Tribal sovereignty is foundational, not just to modern Tribal governments, but to the literal creation of America (it’s in the Constitution). And yet a lot of people outside of Native communities know little about it.
When I started at Bowdoin, it was a bit of a culture shock for me, but I became friends with some really wonderful, smart, and compassionate people and gained early experience in organizing—working with Alivia Moore ’09 to establish the Native American Students Association. I went on to work for Native-serving nonprofits, where I learned skills in direct-service roles that are hard to develop anywhere else.
When I’m not working, I love growing tomatoes, sitting in big tubs of geothermal water (I think there should be an option to conduct basically all of life from a hot spring!), and spending time with my husband and two little girls, who are passionate, smart, bright lights. I want to do my part to build a world that honors my daughters’ light instead of dimming it.
For more from this interview, visit bowdoin.edu/magazine.
PHOTO: JIMENA PECK
As the tribal liaison for Colorado’s health department, Rachel Bryan-Auker ’10 works to make systems more responsive, more equitable, and more functional for Tribal communities.
ALUMNI NEWS AND UPDATES
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1960 Jon Brightman:
“We have decided to sell our Chicago condo and move permanently to our home in Arizona near Phoenix. I’m going for the Bob Hope style.... can’t hear, can’t see much, but looks good. Still play poker once a week, though I can’t shuffle the cards. And when someone announced his wife was having a fifty-fifth birthday, well, I just kept my head down.”
1961 Jim Dunn:
“On Thursday, February 1, 2024, Portland High School (PHS) and the Portland Expo did an excellent job in honoring Pete Gribbin for his fifty-five years of service announcing PHS basketball and football contests and for his dedication to his alma mater. The evening began with a reception for Peter and his wife, Ann. As you may guess, several individuals attended. Prior to the game, the emcee noted that no individual had done more for PHS than Peter. This sentiment was greeted with a two-minute ovation. Peter wrote three books about PHS: a history of the school, a history of PHS basketball, and a history of PHS football. In addition, he has been elected to multiple halls of fame for his contributions to Maine sports. The announcing booth at Fitzgerald Stadium in Portland is named after Peter. In a nice touch, PHS coach Joe Russo had Peter’s grandson Josh Gribbin start the game. As such, Peter got to announce his grandson as a starter. One hilarious note: In his entire career as a basketball player at PHS, Peter scored one point, a foul shot at Biddeford. Yes, one point. The anniversary of this shot is February 1; on that date this year, the basketball team will honor Peter’s enduring record. Peter then took over the mic and announced the starting
lineups for both teams. He did so with his usual aplomb. It was all just very nice and very well received.”
1962
Fred Hill:
“Mathias of Maryland: Remembering a Lincoln Republican in the Senate is my latest book, a collection of deeply researched essays by leading members of Congress and senior legislative assistants to Charles Mathias, a remarkable liberal/ moderate Republican senator when many members of that party stood for the rule of law, civil rights, and a bipartisan foreign policy. I was his foreign affairs director in 1985 and 1986, when Mathias led successful passage of the sanctions against South Africa, one of the few times sanctions have really worked. The book, to be published by McFarland Books, is coedited with another senior aide, Monica Healy, who helped him establish the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in our nation’s capital and did major work on the preservation of Chesapeake Bay. Mathias, called ‘the conscience of the Senate’ by Democratic majority leader Mike Mansfield, was one of the very first Republicans to call for an investigation of Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal, along with Bill (William S.) Cohen, then in the early stages of his own outstanding career. The book has endorsements from Cohen and George Mitchell ’54.”
1964 Reunion
Art Ostrander: “Our home base is still Ithaca, New York, where I perform on trombone in two community bands, conduct a church choir that I have directed for over forty years, and serve as president of the board of a nonprofit community
Dick Getchell ’53 enjoyed Saint Patrick’s Day 2024 at the home of daughter Jane Getchell Gildart ’81 and her husband, Dennis.
Mike Coughlin, George Glover, Gerard Haviland, George Gordon, and Mayer Levitt—classmates from the Class of 1961 that Gerard dubbed “Bowdoin’s Brightest”—held their annual winter lunch in February in Punta Gorda, Florida.
Brothers Peter Karofsky ’62 and Paul Karofsky ’66 prove that you’re never too far away from campus to represent your alma mater, as Peter’s car proudly sports a Bowdoin license plate in Wisconsin.
Former roommates Bobby Hooke ’64 and Bill Matthews ’65 got together in Wellington, Florida, in February.
Remember
The following is a list of deaths reported to us since the previous issue. Full obituaries appear online at: obituaries.bowdoin.edu
Donald W. Zahnke ’45
January 13, 2024
Joseph C. Wheeler ’48
February 11, 2024
James H. Whitcomb ’48
March 12, 2024
Timothy G. Greene ’54
January 30, 2024
Harold W. Anthony ’55
July 18, 2023
David P. Bell ’55
April 4, 2024
Harlan I. Prater ’56
March 18, 2024
D. Bruce McGregor ’57
August 11, 2023
Robert F. Martin ’58
March 31, 2024
Robert M. Sargent ’58
April 5, 2024
Paul H. Sibley ’58
December 28, 2023
Robert B. Fritz ’59
April 6, 2024
David E. Graff ’59
May 11, 2023
David R. Roop ’60
April 2, 2024
David W. Belka ’61
January 19, 2024
David L. Cole ’61
February 25, 2024
Cary W. Cooper ’61
April 8, 2024
William Small ’61
March 9, 2024
David L. Roberts ’62
March 16, 2024
Karl Rudolph Galinsky ’63
March 9, 2024
Stephen B. Hand ’63
January 8, 2024
William P. Menz ’63
March 24, 2024
Alan D. Bennett ’64
April 11, 2024
William W. Fish ’66
February 18, 2024
David C. Anthony ’69
March 10, 2024
Joseph A. Calareso ’70
April 28, 2024
Lee C. Moulton ’71
January 16, 2024
Dana R. Strong ’72
January 6, 2024
Jennifer M. Brewster ’73
December 23, 2023
Francis R. Mariner ’74
December 7, 2023
Wayne C. Stevens ’54
March 11, 2024
Richard V. Leavitt ’76
February 18, 2024
Patricia G. Rice ’76
November 6, 2022
David C. Egelson ’77
March 21, 2024
Elizabeth Flanders Campbell ’81
March 8, 2024
George M. Taylor ’41
April 15, 2024
Joseph W. Neary Jr. ’87
January 17, 2024
Edward F. Siudut Jr. ’97
January 26, 2024
K Zhan ’25
March 31, 2024
HONORARY
Joseph H. Brennan H’85
April 6, 2024
Katherine Porter H’92
April 22, 2024
Lucy Anne Poulin H’76
October 14, 2023
GRADUATE
Michael D. True G’69
December 22, 2023
Bowdoin obituaries appear on a dedicated online site, rather than printed in these pages. Updated regularly, the improved obituary format allows additional features that we can’t offer in print, specifically the ability for classmates, families, and friends to post photos and remembrances.
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You Are the Source
Throughout Bowdoin’s history, alumni, parents, and friends have secured the future of the College by including it in their philanthropic plans. Gifts from estates have established programs, enabled growth, and supported priorities year after year— the steady flow of support from these gifts makes Bowdoin the exceptional college it is.
A campaign’s progress is often measured in dollars. Ours is also measured in loyalty, participation, and generous enthusiasm. To all the members of the Bowdoin Pines Society who have honored us with your planned gifts, thank you for the trust and devotion you have shown with support of the three promises to all Bowdoin graduates made in From Here: The Campaign for Bowdoin
Liz Armstrong in the Office of Gift Planning can help you become a member of the Bowdoin Pines Society and create your legacy at Bowdoin.
music school with over five hundred students. We spend summers in Phippsburg, Maine, where Carrie and I have a cabin on the lower Kennebec River near Popham Beach. Our six grandchildren and their parents treat us to a visit there every August. I play trombone with the Bath Municipal Band. Tuesday evenings at 6:30 during the summer, I perform with the Bath Swing Band, playing big band jazz music at the gazebo in the town park next to the library. We spent two months this winter in Fort Myers, Florida, where we shared an enjoyable dinner with Bowdoin classmate Mike Napolitano and his wife.”
Chuck Phillips: “Married fifty-three years to Betsey, with two daughters—one in Anchorage, a polar bear conservator (fitting), and one in Big Sky, Montana, in real estate. Two teenage grandsons in Montana into soccer, ski racing, and baseball. Lots of spectating. Retired in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, from an international organization development practice, having consulted all over the world, affording the opportunity for extensive tourist travel with Betsey for innumerable adventures and learning experiences. Continued ski racing after graduation, competing twenty-plus years in the Masters in New England, with multiple trips to the nationals and world criterium events. Twelve years as board chair of an education/development project in Nshupu, Tanzania—The Precious Project. The project began supporting an orphanage of nine kids and has grown to include an elementary school for 565 kids, a secondary school of 635 kids, and an orphanage for 29 kids. Exceptionally proud that both schools are ranked number one in their district and region. The project was awarded
the Uhuru Torch Award in 2023—a prestigious national award by the Tanzanian president ‘for outstanding educational contributions to underprivileged children.’ Visited with Alice and John Blegen and got to hear John still playing fabulous jazz clarinet. We also hosted them later for a New England fall foliage tour.”
1965
Bill Matthews:
“Former roommate Bobby Hooke ’64 and I got together in Wellington, Florida, in February. Marcia and I drove up from Venice to see the exhibit of his sculptures. He is a wonderfully talented artist. Bobby looked like he could suit up for Nels next week. Think it would take me a bit longer.”
1967
Charlie Stone:
“I was saddened to learn of the death of classmate David Scott in November of last year. I did not know Dave well at all at Bowdoin. We traveled in different circles, apparently. I connected with him at our 40th Reunion. Ted Bush had a gathering at his home in Harpswell that Friday evening, and Dave and I were both there. During the event, I escaped outside to get some of that fresh Maine sea air and saw Dave already standing there on the great lawn that swept down to the bay. We were pretty much alone, and we started to chat. In the course of that conversation, Dave said that he had lost his son a few years prior. He was still in pain over that loss. After a while, I said to him that I knew his pain. He looked at me with questioning eyes and then realized what I was saying. Because I too had lost an adult son. We connected with a depth that only someone who has experienced such a loss can understand. We spent much time together that
night, as did our wives. I think we were of some solace to one another for that moment under a canopy of stars in the dark Maine sky. It has been another seventeen years since that conversation in Harpswell, yet I remember it like it was yesterday. The pain of such a loss never goes away, though it mellows with time. Dave, may you finally rest in peace.”
1975
From a bowdoin.edu/news story, February 15, 2024. Acclaimed photographer Kevin Bubriski’s latest book has been described as a glimpse into a lost world, portraying the life and culture of China’s Uyghur community in their historic capital city of Kashgar before the government’s severe crackdown.
The Uyghurs: Kashgar before the Catastrophe (GTF Publishing, 2023) features over 120 photographs taken by Bubriski in 1998 during time he spent in Kashgar, situated on the ancient Silk Road trade route in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region. Since those photographs were taken, the mostly Muslim Uyghur population has suffered under a widespread Chinese government policy of repression, with more than a million being detained in “reeducation” camps and others subjected to intense surveillance and religious restrictions. Most of the old city of Kashgar, meanwhile, has been demolished. Writing in The Diplomat, photographer and journalist Robert Gerhardt described the book as “a stunning work of art and conscience that reveals a time when Kashgar, beloved city of the Uyghurs, retained much of its traditional life and charm.” He said Bubriski’s images capture the “cultural, economic, familial, religious, and spiritual traditions” of the Uyghurs. “The vibrancy,
beauty, and grit of Kashgar and its people that Bubriski witnessed and photographed more than twenty-five years ago has irrevocably changed, making his photographs even more significant,” wrote Gerhardt. The book also features prose and poetry from Uyghur poet and activist Tahir Hamut Izgil, as well as a historical essay by the late anthropologist Dru Gladney. Texts are presented in both English and Uyghur.
1978
Reed Bunzel: “Just a quick note to let you know that my next thriller, Beyond All Doubt, from Crooked Lane Books in New York, launched March 19. It’s published under the pen name Hilton Reed, and deals with ‘a grieving widower who finds out there are dark secrets surrounding his wife’s death and sets out on a nail-biting chase for the truth. This tense, propulsive thriller is perfect for fans of Joseph Finder and Meg Gardiner.’”
1981
From a Silver Spring, Maryland, Beacon online feature story, January 30, 2024. When Clifford Bernier retired after thirty years at the Association for Advancement of Medical Instrumentation, his employer didn’t give him a gold watch––they gave him a gold Seydel harmonica and a sixteen-hole chromatic Hohner harmonica. They knew him well. Bernier has been playing the harmonica since he was nineteen years old. Now retired, he performs all over the country, combining his harmonica music with poetry, which he studied at Bowdoin. In his performances, Bernier combines his free-verse poetry with harmonica music. “I need to express myself creatively,” Bernier explained in an interview with the Beacon At his Fairfax County home, amid
Class of ’78 roommates Peter Roland, Geoff Gordon, and Cliff Mason reunited in Patagonia for a twoweek hiking adventure. Peter says, “Los tres amigos are still doing it forty-five years later!”
Gail Berson ’75 and Claudia Marroquin ’06 connected during a junior college night at Lycée Français de New York. Berson is the director of college counseling at the school and invited Marroquin, Bowdoin’s dean of admissions and student aid, to be part of a panel discussion there.
Amy Johnson ’84 with colleague Brooke Bouma Kohlsdorf in the studio at Iowa PBS in Des Moines, where she does occasional on-air work in between communications and fundraising projects for the Community Free Health Clinic in her region.
Hovey Chapin ’81 hosted the Bowdoin men’s golf team—Jack Barned ’26, Joey Zheng ’27, Captain Liam Jachetta ’24, Ned Dean ’25, Ian Harris ’27, Andrew Flynn ’27, Matt Cohen ’27, and Coach Jay Durfee—for a round of golf and dinner at Quail Creek Country Club in Naples, Florida, on March 10, 2024. Joining the group was Allen “Happy” Corcoran ’85.
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several tables covered with some of his two hundred harmonicas, Bernier said he cherishes each one for the nuanced sounds he creates from them. He became enamored with the harmonica one evening in 1979, when he heard a housemate play the harmonica in a bluegrass band and decided he wanted to learn too. This was pre-internet and pre-YouTube, and there were no local music classes, so Bernier taught himself to play by listening to his friend. Harmonicas, also called “mouth harps,” “French harps,” and “tin sandwiches,” are featured in blues, jazz, bluegrass, country, and folk music. Over the years, he has become a harmonica music historian, tracing the blues’ West African roots through the deep South’s enslaved communities into the 1930s Great Migration and electrification of the music in Chicago, all of which laid the foundation for rock ’n’ roll, he contends. Bernier especially likes to play jazz and regularly performs on Old Town Alexandria’s lower King Street for outdoor diners. Because a harmonica sounds best when it’s warm, he doesn’t play outside if the temperature is below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Last winter he played indoors at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference in Seattle. He has also played at festivals in Florida, North Carolina, Oregon, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, and New Orleans, Louisiana. In August, Bernier drove to St. Louis for the Society for the Preservation and Advancement of the Harmonica convention, a gathering of around five hundred people from fifteen countries—“a meeting of the tribe,” he quipped. In the meantime, he occasionally drops in at weekly blues jams put on by “Archie’s Barbershop,” the Archie Edwards Blues Heritage
Foundation, held every Saturday afternoon in Hyattsville, Maryland. Bernier also joins jams at the Capitol Hill Blues Society. He has an international audience now too. He recorded during the pandemic with a Portuguese group called Accumulated Dust. He’s featured on the “Post-Colombian America” recording, available on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube. As Bernier’s music career grew, so did his writing career. He has been writing poems since he was ten years old. As an English major at Bowdoin, he studied various greats, from Chaucer to T.S. Eliot. In the early 1990s, he frequented poetry slams in the DC area, stepping up to the microphone to read his work aloud. He read his poems between jazz sets at the now-closed Alexandria restaurant, Bistro Europa. He has read at the Library of Congress twice and appeared on “The Poet and the Poem,” a radio interview broadcast by the Library of Congress. Bernier has published two chapbooks of free-verse poetry, Earth Suite and Dark Berries. In 2011, Arlington-based Gival Press published The Silent Art, a collection of thirty-five of his free-verse poems that explore physics and jazz. These days, Bernier plays blues and spirituals with the Voices of Woodlawn, a mostly Black ensemble of poets who wrote about their experiences visiting the plantation in the context of the estate’s history of slavery. They have performed all over the country and internationally remotely. He also does readings with the Baltimorebased EC Poetry and Prose collective, which published an anthology titled Portraits of Life. Blending harmonica tunes with poetry is a far cry from Bernier’s career working on medical instrumentation and safety and performance standards for
cardiovascular devices, oxygenators, and dialysis equipment. Because Bernier had a full-time job and was raising three sons, it was hard to play or write for around twenty years, he said. But once he retired, he resumed both passions. “Combining my poetry and my music happened naturally,” Bernier said. “Poetry has been accompanied by an instrument since ancient times. Music adds emotion to words, and words add meaning to music. It just happens that my instrument is the harmonica—and I love playing.”
1982
From a bowdoin.edu/news story, April 3, 2024. Marine insurance expert John Miklus, president of the American Institute of Marine Underwriters (AIMU), was quoted in several media outlets following the Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster in Baltimore, which claimed six lives after a container ship ran into the span, causing it to collapse. He told the trade magazine Insurance Business America (IBA) that the incident “is likely to lead to legal wrangling and major claims activity, with reinsurers set to take a heavy hit.” There are “various components to the loss,” explained Miklus. “A big one is going to be rebuilding the bridge and all the loss of revenue and loss of tolls while that’s taking place.” There’s also the salvage operation, which is set to be “huge and costly,” he said, as well as anticipated liability claims from the loss of life and significant supply chain implications. Overall, said Miklus, the Baltimore bridge disaster has the potential to be on the same scale as the sinking of the Costa Concordia cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of Italy in 2012. That event, in which thirty-two people died, drove a
marine insurance loss of $1.5 billion, according to IBA. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this were similar,” he said. Miklus, who majored in government and economics at Bowdoin, has been president of the AIMU—a trade association that represents the interests of the US ocean marine insurance industry—since October 2013.
1983
From an American Dream Real Estate Associates press release, March 4, 2024. Jeffrey L. Brown, broker-owner of American Dream Real Estate Associates of Manchester, New Hampshire, has been inducted as first vice-president/president-elect of the Greater Manchester-Nashua Board of Realtors (GMNBR), in Bedford, New Hampshire. GMNBR is the largest real estate board in the state of New Hampshire, representing the interests of approximately two thousand realtor members across the southern region of the state. He was sworn into office at the board’s annual installation dinner in December 2023. He is serving as president-elect in 2024, and will serve as president in 2025. At the installation dinner, he was also presented with the President’s Coin (the “Realtor’s Own-It” award) for recognition of his tireless devotion to the board and its many charitable activities and fundraising events. Brown is originally from Methuen, Massachusetts. He has been a real estate broker for a dozen years and operated American Dream Real Estate for the last eight. Prior to becoming a real estate broker, he worked as a town manager, the manager of both a financial service company and a law firm, the owner of a consulting firm, and as a professional negotiator for NH’s public employee’s labor union.
1984 Reunion
Amy Johnson: “I’m still happily living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where I do fundraising and communications work for our Community Free Health Clinic. I also do occasional on-air work for Iowa PBS in Des Moines. I send a special shoutout to Richard Mersereau ’69, who was my boss in the Bowdoin office of public relations after graduation. His mentoring and belief in me made my career in broadcast journalism possible!”
1987
Michael Lent: “I have been elected to the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) board of directors, as director of District IX (representing Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Utah). My six-year term begins in June 2024 at the end of the AVMA Convention in Austin, Texas. I have been involved in organized veterinary medicine for almost thirty-two years, starting at Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine, where I served as president of the former student chapter of the AVMA (now SAVMA). I have served as president of the Arizona and Southern Arizona Veterinary Medical Associations and as a member of the Arizona State Veterinary Medical Examining Board. More recently, I have served as Arizona’s alternate delegate and delegate to the AVMA House of Delegates since 2019. I am also a charter member of the Animal Cruelty Task Force of Southern Arizona since its inception in 1998, assisting law enforcement with investigations and educating the public about the link between animal abuse and human violence, especially domestic violence and child abuse. I also have served on
the advisory board of the National Association for Black Veterinarians since 2019.”
1994 Reunion
From an nhl.com online press release, March 5, 2024. David Lehanski, NHL executive vice president of business development and innovation, was named Technology Executive of the Year at the Sports Business Journal’s Sports Business Awards: Tech, held at the Hard Rock Hotel in New York on March 5. Lehanski, who has been with the NHL for more than eighteen years, led two initiatives that were nominated for awards—the “NHL Big City Greens Classic” and NHL Blast on Roblox. He also guided projects that introduced a new NHL Edge IQ analytic called Opportunity Analysis in partnership with Amazon Web Service, an NHL Venue Metrics sustainability platform in partnership with SAP, and guided the launch of the NHL EDGE advanced statistics section on NHL.com in October in collaboration with Sportradar.
1996
From a bowdoin.edu/news story, March 4, 2024. Filmmaker and playwright Tina Satter visited campus in early March to host a screening of her first film, Reality, and talk with students about the process of turning her award-winning play, Is This a Room, into the movie. Both tell the story of Reality Winner, the intelligence analyst and whistleblower jailed for leaking secrets about Russian interference in the 2016 US election. The play and the film depict Winner’s arrest and interrogation over one afternoon. The dialogue was taken directly from a transcript of the interrogation. Satter came across the transcript a few years ago after reading a lengthy online article
ALL IN A DAY
Every day is a day of learning for Brian Ferriso ’88, director and chief curator of the Portland Art Museum in Oregon.
I ALWAYS LOVED ARTMAKING —from elementary school to classes with Mark Wethli at Bowdoin to working with master painter Frank Mason at the Art Students League in New York after college. What triggered my interest in museum work was reading MOMA’s Chief Curator Kirk Varnedoe’s A Fine Disregard. He wrote about two of my passions—art and rugby— and after meeting Kirk in person, I was hooked and inspired.
BOWDOIN EXPANDED MY VISION AND WORLD by encouraging me to not only pursue economics, which Professor Freeman showed me could be applied to almost anything, but also to further my interests in the arts. Surprisingly, my job weds art and economics daily in myriad ways. Bowdoin allowed me to experience such varied things in a single day—art classes, lacrosse or rugby, lobster along the coast with my friends! IT IS A TREMENDOUS HONOR to have been selected, in partnership with SITE Santa Fe, to represent the United States at the 60th Venice Biennale, which is known as the “Olympics of the art world.” We presented the work of Jeffrey Gibson, one of the foremost artists working today and a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, the first solo presentation of an Indigenous artist for the US Pavilion.
For more from this interview, visit bowdoin.edu/magazine.
Brian Ferriso ’88
Catching Up
PHOTO: OWEN CAREY
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WOMEN’S ADVOCATE
When not treating patients, Katrina Mitchell ’00 is promoting informed women’s health and educating families.
MY WORK combines breast surgery, breastfeeding medicine, and perinatal mental health. Surgery is actually the easiest part of this job. With breast cancer, every facet of a patient’s physical and emotional health influences how she experiences the diagnosis and treatment; I tell patients we can treat their cancer, but we want to make sure we care for everything else in their life as well. And breastfeeding medicine involves at least two patients and organ systems—mom and baby.
DURING MY SURGERY RESIDENCY at Cornell’s partner hospital in Tanzania, I realized I could practice breast surgery anywhere in the world, and it had crossover with public health and advocacy. The birth of my son during a breast surgical oncology fellowship spurred my career into breastfeeding and lactation medicine. He is a huge inspiration and led me to write the children’s book Cut Here: A Surgeon Mom’s Letter to Her Little Boy. MY PATH TO THIS CAREER WAS VERY CIRCUITOUS. I was a history major and wrote my senior honors thesis on the sterilization of Native American women. This made me interested in direct patient care, and I eventually went to medical school at Dartmouth. I didn’t realize that a liberal arts education could be the foundation of any profession—it’s the best gift anyone can get before embarking upon adulthood.
For more from this interview, visit bowdoin.edu/magazine.
about Winner in New York magazine. The article linked to another site, which is where Satter encountered a PDF file of the verbatim transcription “‘This looks like a play,’ I thought,” said Satter. “I was on the edge of my seat reading it. There was even a character called ‘unknown male!’” With the success of the stage play, which won numerous awards, Satter decided to move the story to the big screen. After hosting the screening in front of the Bowdoin community, Satter stayed around for a Q&A with students. She also sat in on a couple of classes during her visit.
2001
Marianne Lipa:
“We joyfully welcomed the newest addition to our family, Jasper Sam, in October 2023. Neal (age eight) loves being a big brother. Satish and I live in the Philadelphia suburbs, and I am still working in the career services office at the University of Pennsylvania. Can’t wait to show them Bowdoin’s campus––they already enjoy wearing polar bear outfits.”
2003
Seth Obed:
“This winter I was elected to the board of directors (US) for the Quebec-Labrador Foundation (QLF). I am excited to join QLF’s long-standing efforts to advance community-based conservation and stewardship of natural resources and cultural heritage in Atlantic Canada and New England. QLF was founded by my great uncle Bob Bryan, who inspired my mother, Ellen Bryan Obed, to first go to Labrador in the summer of 1965, where she fell in love with the land. I know the mission of QLF resonates with many Bowdoin alums, including vice-chair Bayard Brokaw ’79. I encourage anyone interested in QLF’s ongoing projects
and initiatives to go to www.qlf.org or to reach out to me! Also, it is great to see the new developments of the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum on campus, as I have fond memories as a student working there.”
2006 Mary Vargo:
“On January 28, 2024, I married my partner of twelve years, Matthew Crafts, originally from Providence, Rhode Island. We got married in St. John, US Virgin Islands, where we reside with our two children, Connor, age two, and Isabelle, age nine months.”
2007
From a Hight Ford press release, March 15, 2024, and a centralmaine.com online news article, March 14, 2024. Sam Hight, president and dealer principal at Hight Ford, recently announced that the company has once again been recognized with the highest award given by Ford Motor Company, for the fifth time in eight years. The dealership has received the Ford Motor Company President’s Award in 2016, 2019, 2020, 2021, and now for 2023. The President’s Award is one of Ford’s most prestigious awards, recognizing dealers who have achieved the highest levels of customer satisfaction and sales performance. According to Ford Motor Company, the President’s Award is a “celebration of excellence.” Hight Ford stands out as only one of two dealers in the state of Maine to be recognized in 2023, and one of only twelve Ford dealers in New England. Nationally, only 10 percent of Ford dealers won the President’s Award in 2023. The Hight Family of Dealerships operates the oldest family-owned dealership in New England. In 2011, the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) awarded Hight Family of
Katrina Mitchell ’00
Catching Up
PHOTO: INGRID BOSTROM
Dealerships the Century Award— given to dealers that have owned and operated business in the industry continuously under one family for 100 years. Since 1947, only sixty-eight dealers have earned the award, and Hight is the only Century Award winner in New England. Hight was also in the news for chairing the Kennebec Valley Community Action Program, a fundraising committee that has raised $3 million toward building a new consolidated elementary school and early childhood education facility. Those funds, together with $1.9 million approved by Congress as part of the 2024 government funding package, will cover the construction of a $4.4 million early childhood wing planned for the new Margaret Chase Smith Community School in Skowhegan, the first of its kind in the region. “The $3 million demonstrates commitment to a program, but it is only the beginning,” Hight said. “The true success will rely on the ongoing support for quality operations that we have developed.”
2009 Reunion
Julia Lindsey: “We [husband David Hutton and I] were featured in the Stanford alumni magazine (even though neither of us are Stanford alums!) because of our unexpected family connections. Our moms went to Stanford together, and we grew up attending Stanford Sierra Camp together with our families.”
2010 Katherine Finnegan
Leventhal: “Andrew [Leventhal, Davidson College ’03] and I were married in a small wedding ceremony in Glen Arbor, Michigan, on August 19, 2023, and then hosted a wedding reception in Chicago on October 28, 2023.”
Jane Koopman Hepburn:
“After getting married in September we [Jonny Hepburn and I] moved from Vancouver to Nelson, British Columbia, in January and have been so warmly welcomed by a fantastic community here. I moved my dog training and behavior consulting business, In Partnership Dog Training, here and still work intermittently in outdoor leadership education with NOLS. Jonny continues to work as the director of the creative team at an exhibit design company, ngx Interactive. We are stoked to be living closer to nature now and have been enjoying exploring the rivers, mountains, and trails of the Kootenays as well as playing hockey and planting our garden!”
2012
From a Connecticut College online news announcement, April 12, 2024. Kris Klein Hernández, assistant professor of history at Connecticut College, has won a prestigious 2024 Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship administered by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. Klein Hernández, who said he is grateful to be part of the final cohort, is one of only two Conn faculty members to ever win the postdoctoral fellowship. The fellowship will allow him to step away from teaching to complete his first book manuscript, The Color of the Army: Forts and Race-Making in the NineteenthCentury U.S.-Mexico Borderlands This is Klein Hernández’s second Ford fellowship. He received the Ford Dissertation Fellowship in 2019 to complete his dissertation, “Militarizing the Mexican Border: A Study of US Army Forts as Contact Zones.” Along with the stipend, the postdoctoral fellowship includes an invitation to attend the 2024
Natalie Rollhaus Burton, Moy Ogilvie, Margaret Danenbarger Royston, Pat Dowds Harrison, Eileen Carter Williams, Nancy Mahoney O’Leary, Gretchen Herold Nelson, and Susanne Garibaldi Popeo gathered in New Hampshire in November for a fun-filled Bowdoin mini-reunion of the Class of 1990. Eileen adds: “Shout-out to Natalie Rollhaus Burton for flying in from California to join us!”
High school sophomore Emi Runge and her mother, Jennifer Hand Runge ’94, pose in Watson Arena. Emi recently switched from basketball to ice hockey, playing for the combined Yarmouth/Freeport team, and one of her first games was against the Brunswick squad at the Bowdoin rink! Jennifer said, “Imagine my delight.…I played with our women’s team during the winter of ’90–’91 on the old rink. Go U Bears!”
Marianne Lipa ’01 and her husband, Satish, welcomed Jasper Sam into their family in October 2023. Neal (age eight) is clearly happy to be a big brother!
Connect
Marshall Escamilla ’02, Lindsay Patterson (Marshall’s wife), Emmett Escamilla, Nick Lymberopoulos (Rachel’s husband), Cali Lymberopoulos, Rachel Berman ’02, Harry Lymberopoulos, Jamie Escamilla, Simon Mangiaracina ’01, Elliott Mangiaracina, and Nicole Davis ’03 gathered with some Bowdoin friends and their families to view the total solar eclipse in Stowe, Vermont, on April 8.
Rebecca Schouveiller ’10, Lillian Prentice ’10, Kathleen Lewis ’10, Josephine Cameron ’98, Elsbeth Paige-Jeffers ’10, Leah Stecher ’10, Kelsey Howe ’10, Jaclyn Zaborski ’10, and Luke Emerdello ’10 celebrated the May 7 launch of Leah’s debut middle-grade novel, The Things We Miss (Bloomsbury 2024), at Back Cove Books in Portland, Maine.
Connor Rockett ’19 met up with Joan Benoit Samuelson ’79 in Orlando after he finished competing in the US Olympic marathon trial. Not a bad ambassador for the sport to have cheering you on!
Conference of Ford Fellows, a national conference of high-achieving scholars committed to diversifying the professoriate and using diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students, and access to a network of former Ford fellows who have volunteered to provide mentoring and support to current fellows. Historically, between fourteen and twenty-five scholars were awarded this fellowship annually. Klein Hernández is the only Bowdoin alumnus to have received two of these prestigious fellowships, which will no longer be awarded by the Ford Foundation after this year.
From a bowdoin.edu/news story, February 5, 2024. On the fall semester’s last day of classes, Gina Lonati spoke to a crowded room in Druckenmiller Hall about her research on endangered North Atlantic right whales. It is estimated that only two hundred still roam the seas. Professors, students, and staff filled the room over capacity to hear Lonati’s perspectives on her research. Lonati utilizes drone technology to observe right whale body conditions, which are used to build out three-dimensional models of them to better track their survival. She also discussed the thermal elements of the imaging work, explaining how the equipment can measure temperatures inside the whales’ blowholes. The high-resolution footage and thermal images are helping Lonati and other scientists learn more about the health of whales. The data can illuminate how whales’ physical conditions are being affected by human impacts or food availability, and how their health in turn is impacting their survival and reproductive rates. From the perspective of the sea, Lonati explained how her team also has oceanographic sensors to measure vertical
distributions of plankton to predict where the few remaining whales will be by observing where their prey is. Lonati is not the only Bowdoin graduate who has devoted her life to the endangered creatures. Kelsey Howe ’10, an associate research scientist at the New England Aquarium and Lonati’s friend and former volleyball teammate, is part of a group that manages the North Atlantic right whale catalogue, categorizing and sorting all known data on the species into digestible photos and information.
2015
From a bowdoin.edu/news story, March 4, 2024. When Delger Erdenesanaa graduated from Bowdoin with a coordinate major in earth and oceanographic science and environmental studies, she thought that perhaps she had read her last scientific article. But, in fact, reading academic journals is now a regular part of her job at the New York Times. Last June, Erdenesanaa started a one-year fellowship on the newspaper’s climate desk. She reports on current scientific research, as well as the social, economic, and political angles of climate change. Journalism is Erdenesanaa’s second career, following a foray into environmental policy. After Bowdoin, she worked at the World Resources Institute in DC for about four years. But she jumped tracks and earned a master’s degree in science, health, and environmental reporting from New York University in 2021. Her writing gigs before the Times included Inside Climate News, where she was a fellow covering environmental justice, and the Texas Observer, where as a staff writer she wrote about the environment, climate, and related health and economic issues.
2017
From Pamela Zabala Ortiz: “Pamela Zabala Ortiz successfully defended her dissertation and earned her PhD in sociology from Duke University. Dr. Zabala Ortiz, a sociology major at Bowdoin, was happy to have her undergraduate advisor, A. Myrick Freeman Professor of Social Sciences Nancy Riley, in attendance at her doctoral defense.”
2018 From Gina Fickera: “Gina Fickera and Dylan Parsons tied the knot in Maine on September 23, 2023. They met at Bowdoin and started dating their sophomore year in 2016. Along with family and close friends, other Bowdoin members were in attendance, such as their host parents, Jean Shaw, Al Miller (in spirit), and George and Heather McKinnon, Bowdoin housekeeper Vivian Waltz, and best friends Genesis Escalante, Aaron Zweig, and Nate Forlini. Gina and Dylan have since moved from New York to Colorado and are expecting their first baby late this summer!”
2020
From a Ploughshares at Emerson College press release, April 9, 2024. Nathan Blum will have his piece “Starting Over” published in the spring 2024 issue of Ploughshares, an award-winning journal of new writing. The issue also features thirty-four pieces by Mosab Abu Toha, Nathalie Handal, January Gill O’Neil, Farah Abdessamad, Francisco Goldman, Tommy Orange, and more. Blum is an MFA candidate in fiction at Vanderbilt University, where he teaches creative writing and serves as editor-in-chief at Nashville Review. Originally from the Hudson Valley, he has been selected by Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference
and as a finalist for the Iowa Review Award. He is currently working on a novel. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the freshest voices in contemporary American literature, and now provides readers with thoughtful and entertaining literature in a variety of formats.
2022
From a bowdoin.edu/news story, February 25, 2024. In February, Julianna Brown presented her research as the first recipient of a Danzig Fellowship from the Theodore Samuel Danzig Memorial Fund. Working throughout summer 2023 with Barry N. Wish Professor of Government and Social Studies Paul Franco, Brown researched the fair treatment of religion in liberal democracy, drawing on contemporary political and legal theorists, as well as US Supreme Court cases involving the granting of religious exemptions from general laws. This research became the basis of her honors project and was the subject of her talk “Why Consider Religious Exemptions? Supreme Court Challenges to Church-State Separation.” The Theodore Samuel Danzig ’22 Memorial Fund, established by Theo’s family and others in the Bowdoin community, honors Danzig’s legacy by supporting summer fellowships and associated student presentations in the fields of government, law, political theory, or related disciplines on topics that have relevance for understanding contemporary issues in the US or the wider world. The Department of Government and Legal Studies selects the fund’s fellows in coordination with the Office of Student Fellowships and Research and arranges for each selected fellow to deliver both a written and oral presentation of their work.
THE CAMPAIGN FOR BOWDOIN
Finishing Strong
While our campaign has reached the incredible goal of $500 million in gifts and pledges ahead of the deadline of June 30, 2024, there is still work to be done to keep our promises to all Bowdoin graduates. Being engaged in the life of the College matters. Whether you make a gift, volunteer, or attend an event, it all helps propel Bowdoin forward—from here.
There’s still time to join 18,633 alumni, families, and friends who have participated in the campaign. Visit bowdoin.edu/fromhere.
Celebrate
1. Meredith Sullivan ’17 and Jake Pirri (Providence College ’12) were married on December 16, 2023, in Providence, Rhode Island. Pictured: Brandon Lee ’17, Max Nordeen ’17, Kevin Hancock ’88, Katie Kronick ’17, Zak Kokosa ’17, Rachel Norton ’17, Alison Hancock ’90, Dan O’Berry ’17, Sydney Hancock ’17, Tim Sullivan ’69, Jake and Meredith, Hannah Graham ’19, Bridget Snow ’19, Abby Kelly ’19, Mettler Growney ’17, Matt Sullivan ’17, Emily McColgan ’17, Drew Hillman ’17, Stevie Van Siclen ’18, Kimmy Ganong ’17, Rob McGuirk ’69, and Marle Curle ’17.
2. Alice Kim ’17 and Jonathan Cho ’16 were married on October 22, 2023, in Los Angeles, California. Pictured: Colin Waycott ’16, Thomas Ciampi ’16, Alana Luzzio ’17, Oscar Chavarria ’17, Jonathan and Alice, May Kim ’16, Christian Houston-Floyd ’16, Ernesto Garcia ’17, James Wang ’15, Cristina Lima Pistacchio ’17, Kate Paulsen ’17, Circle Qu ’17, Chris Lu ’16, Varun Wadia ’15, Roger Tejada ’14, Luis López ’17, and David Wu ’17.
3. Sydney To ’19 and Aleksia Silverman ’19 were married on March 24, 2024, in Calistoga, California. Pictured: Howard Mu ’18, Victoria Yu ’19, Jack Ward ’19, Aleksia, Eric Silverman ’85, Keith Halperin ’86, Kyubin Kim ’22, Lily Poppen ’22, Sydney, and Cynthia and Clay Chase (Bowdoin host family).
4. Katherine Finnegan ’09 and Andrew Leventhal (Davidson College ’03) were married on August 19, 2023, in Glen Arbor, Michigan, then celebrated their reception on October 28, 2023, at the University Club in Chicago, Illinois. Pictured: Ali Ross ’09, Jim Fitzpatrick ’76, Julia Brody ’09, Lola Yen ’09, Doria Cole ’09, Courtney Stock Callanan ’09, Katherine and Andrew, Caitlin Cooper ’09, Jonah Ross ’08, Ashley Fischer Mabry ’09, Claire Cooper ’09, Pete Fitzpatrick ’84, Linzee Troubh ’09, Meredith Borne ’09, and Emily Ranaghan ’09.
5. Gina Fickera ’18 and Dylan Parsons ’18 were married on September 23, 2023, at The Barn at Flanagan Farm in Buxton, Maine. Pictured: Dylan and Gina.
6. Brian Huynh ’12 and Ashley Wunder (Temple University ’13) were married on February 11, 2024, in Dallas, Texas. Pictured: Rasha Harvey ’12, Ashley and Brian with future 2045 Polar Bear Oliver Huynh, and Francis Huynh ’10.
7. Julia Lindsey ’09 and David Hutton were married on May 31, 2023, at Fallen Leaf Lake, California. Pictured: David and Julia.
8. Jane Koopman ’10 and Jonny Hepburn (Princeton ’05) were married on September 23, 2023, in Naples, Maine. Pictured: Dave Wells ’10, Becca Austin ’10, Mike Woodruff ’87, Siena Ballance ’20,
Alex Roberts-Pierel ’12, Nina Scheepers ’14, Willy Oppenheim ’09, Frankie Oppenheim, Kelly Rula ’07, Jonny and Jane, Seamus Woodruff ’26, Adam Berliner Tinker ’13, Ben Roberts-Pierel ’10, Charlotte Williams ’10, Kit Hamley ’10, SJ Johnson Tinker ’13, and Daire Woodruff.
9. Sam Dinning ’09 and Janice Rottenberg (Penn State ’11) were married on November 11, 2023, in New Gloucester, Massachusetts. Pictured: Eric Harrison ’09, Julia Jacobs ’10, Joho Strom ’09, Rachel Ackerman ’09, Nate Morrow ’09, Jesse Drummond ’08, Lydia Pillsbury ’07, Elena Snavely ’08, Ben Stormo ’08, Sam and Janice, Jeremy Bernfeld ’09, Matt Eshelman ’09, David Leinen ’09, Kelsey Borner ’09, Micah McKay ’09, Louisa Cannell ’13, Adit Basheer ’11, Lindsey Bruett ’09, Jeremy Ross ’09, and Rachel Donahue ’08.
10. Casey Grindon ’13 and Lindsay Gersten (University of California-Los Angeles ’14) were married on July 15, 2023, in Dana Point, California. Pictured: Chris Lord ’14, Andrew Won ’12, Michael Lachance ’13, Gabby Lachance ’14, Sarah Larochelle ’13, Carl Spielvogel ’13, Lindsay and Casey, James Rohman ’13, Michael Bottinelli ’13, Marcus Schneider ’13, Katie Ross Schneider ’14, Sharif Younes ’13, Peyton Kelley ’13, Nicholas Fenichell ’12, Ryan Larochelle ’13, Matt Marr ’13, and Isaac Brower ’13.
The completion of the Maine Turnpike in 1955 brought speeds of sixty miles per hour— and rock ’n’ roll—to the Pine Tree State. For the next two decades, southern Maine saw an influx of rock shows in Old Orchard Beach, Portland, Lewiston, and Brunswick. Maine preservationist Ford S. Reiche meticulously catalogued all of them in his new book, A Long, Long Time Ago. Here, we sample some of the period’s biggest venues—and their biggest headliners.
Good Vibrations
The Pier at Old Orchard Beach hosted the first rock ’n’ roll concert by a major performer in the state. On August 15, 1955, Bill Haley and His Comets played their hits, including “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock.” The song is the first rock ’n’ roll track to hit #1 on Billboard’s pop singles chart, and is considered to have effectively launched the rock era.
Built in 1924, the Palace Ball Room at Old Orchard Beach was a dance hall turned concert venue that hosted more big-name rock bands than any other in Maine in the late ’50s to late ’70s. Peter, Paul, and Mary set the venue’s attendance record in 1963, and a month after their performance, the venue became the third East Coast stop on the Beach Boys’ first national tour. Bill Haley and His Comets (1957), The Four Seasons (1964), and Gary Lewis and the Playboys (1966) performed there before the building was razed in 1967.
Renamed Merrill Auditorium in the 1990s, Portland City Hall Auditorium held its first public performance in 1900—and its first rock concerts in 1958 with Dickey Doo and the Don’ts and Louis Armstrong. Other rock ’n’ roll performers included Ray Charles (1962 and ’76), Velvet Underground (1969), and Bob Seger (1973). In 1964, it also hosted “a handful of adults who braved the wild screaming of some 400 youngsters” for a screening of the Beatles via closed circuit TV.
Pete Seeger played the first major rock concert at Bowdoin College on March 15, 1960. The Smithsonian Institution released an album of the performance. Other notable Bowdoin performances included Simon and Garfunkel (1966), Martha and the Vandellas (1968), B. B. King (1969), Earth, Wind & Fire (1974), and Bonnie Raitt (1977).
On July 9, 1965, the Portland Exposition Building (Portland Expo) exceeded its 5,500-person capacity by roughly 1,000 people when concertgoers packed into the venue for a Beach Boys concert. Designed to “put Portland on the map,” the multipurpose event space opened its doors in 1914. Other performers included James Brown (1969), Jethro Tull (1971), and the Eagles (1973).
After his March 4, 1972, performance at the University of Maine–Portland, Alice Cooper may have become the first person to get door-to-door pizza delivery in southern Maine—offering a shop $100 to bring the pies to his hotel. Between Portland and Gorham, UMaine ultimately hosted some of the biggest shows during this period, including the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, America, and Aerosmith.
On March 16, 1968, Jimi Hendrix played his electric guitar “with his teeth, his tongue, either hand, the microphone stand, anything he could find,” according to Bates College’s student newspaper. The J. Geils Band also performed at the venue, but the city council temporarily reduced the venue’s capacity to 1,500 after 5,700 concertgoers created a “near riot” during Queen’s concert.
In 1977, concerts in southern Maine changed forever with the opening of the Cumberland County Civic Center. It had double the capacity of most other venues at 10,000 people—and hosted nearly three times as many concerts, taking the number of performances from eighteen across all venues annually to forty-eight annually at a single location. ZZ Top played the opening concert for the venue on March 3, and Lynyrd Skynyrd played their first and last Maine concert there that year. Elvis had been scheduled to perform on August 17 but was found dead at his home in Graceland the day before.
Freddie Mercury singing during a Queen concert at the Lewiston Armory on February 19, 1975.
