FLEX TIME

After fifteen years of creating opportunities for Bowdoin alumni to connect, Rodie Flaherty Lloyd ’80 retired as director of alumni relations last summer to pursue new adventures— more time to spend with those she loves, including both of her engaged sons, hitting the road and having fun.

WHEN I WAS CONSIDERING A CHANGE after nearly twenty-five years at L.L. Bean, there were only two places in Maine I wanted to be: Acadia National Park or Bowdoin College. It was important to me to continue to work for an organization I was very proud to be part of. The best part of my years back at Bowdoin was the opportunity to meet so many incredible people and come full circle with this special place. Forty-seven years after we met in 1976, my Bowdoin roommates and I still get together regularly and often—either for dinners in Portland or trips to celebrate milestones. We’re so lucky!

MY MOM WAS AN AMATEUR WATERCOLOR ARTIST, and now that I have more time, I’m having fun seeing if I inherited that gene. I work a bit at my town library, and I walk every day. It’s all about the flexibility of time!

SINCE I RETIRED, my husband, Doug, and I have been treating retirement like an extended vacation. We bought a pop-up trailer from sports information director Jim Caton and camped all summer in it, and then hit the road for a trip to Shenandoah, Great Smoky Mountains, and New River Gorge National Parks. We’re on a quest to visit as many national parks as we can, and we’re about halfway there!

For more from this interview, visit bowdoin.edu/magazine.

1979

From a bowdoin.edu/news story, April 12, 2023. Dale Arnold will be hanging up his microphone after more than forty years of broadcasting, twenty-four of them reporting on Bruins games for NESN. He announced his retirement during the Bruins’ final regular season home game on April 11. The team paid a video tribute to him, which included shout-outs from hockey greats Cam Neely, Patrice Bergeron, Ray Bourque, Don Sweeney, Charlie Jacobs, and Gord Kluzak.

1980

From the publisher.

“On September 6, 1970, twelve-year-old Martha Hodes and her thirteen-year-old sister were flying unaccompanied back to New York City from Israel when their plane was hijacked and forced to land in the Jordan desert. Too young to understand the sheer gravity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Hodes coped by suppressing her fear and anxiety. Nearly a half-century later, her memories of those six days and nights as a hostage are hazy and scattered. Was it the passage of so much time, or that her family couldn’t endure the full story? Or had trauma made her repress such an intense life-anddeath experience? A professional historian, she wanted to find out. In her new book, My Hijacking: A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering (Harper, June 2023), Hodes draws on deep archival research, childhood memories, and conversations with relatives, friends, and fellow hostages to re-create what happened to her, and what it was like for those at home desperately hoping for her return. Thrown together inside a stifling jetliner, the hostages forged friendships, provoked conflicts, and dreamed up distractions. Learning about the lives and causes of their captors— some of them kind, some frightening—the sisters pondered a deadly divide that continues today.”

Jocelyn Shaw: “I’ve been going to the New York State Sheep and Wool festival in Rhinebeck with my daughter for a number of years. It is one of the largest sheep and wool festivals in the country. This year I tested the waters and entered some handmade items in the Made by Hand competition. I spun some Corriedale wool, designed a fingerless mitt pattern, and hand knit them. They won third prize in the fingerless gloves category! My handwoven scarf won fourth prize in the small woven category, and a 3D woven wall hanging won fifth in the large woven category. I was over the moon, and I’m already planning what I can enter this October.”

1981

Tim Chapin: “Hovey Chapin hosted the Bowdoin golf team at Quail Creek Country Club on their spring trip to Naples, Florida. We joined the team on the golf course and hosted a dinner after golf. It does not seem possible forty-two years have passed since I graduated from Bowdoin! The golf team and coach were very gracious, and it was a joy to have them with us!”

From a bowdoin.edu/news story, March 23, 2023. Barbara Sawhill is Bowdoin’s first Latin American studies graduate, a fact she is justifiably proud of. Her fascination with the region, she said, began before she came to college. “I had gone to Peru as an exchange student in high school and knew that there was something about Latin America that I liked but I didn’t quite know what.” At Bowdoin, Sawhill knew she wanted to study

Spanish but did not necessarily want to major in it, she said. “I became good friends with Hispanic studies professor John Turner, and we came up with the idea of doing a self-designed major in Latin American studies—at that point there wasn’t a Latin American studies department here.” She also got help from history professor Kathleen Waldron, who specialized in Latin American history.

Waldron and Turner acted as Sawhill’s advisors and put together some classes for her self-designed major, which also involved a lot of off-campus study. Sawhill split her junior year between the University of Connecticut’s Latin American studies institute and the University of the Andes in Bogota, Colombia.

“In Colombia I stayed with a host family, the Uribes, and became particularly good friends with their daughter Diana, who was about my age.” Sawhill went on to secure her self-designed major in Latin American studies and pursue a career in teaching and academia, which included spending more than twenty years on the faculty at Oberlin College in Ohio. In 2017, she returned to her alma mater, where, as visiting lecturer in Spanish, she is teaching two intermediate language classes this semester. Earlier this year, Sawhill was invited to a literary festival in Cartagena, Colombia, where Radio Ambulante was presenting a live show and where, by happy coincidence, she was able to rekindle a forty-year-old friendship. Also taking part in the show was Diana Uribe, my Colombian host sister from 1979 who, as it turns out, is now a well-known radio host and podcast producer, making programs about history and culture. It was so great to reconnect after all these years. It’s also really cool to think that when we last met, I was a Bowdoin student and now I’m a faculty member!”

From a bowdoin.edu/news story, February 27, 2023. Dan Spears has been chosen by the Bowdoin College Board of Trustees to receive the 2023 Common Good Award for being an advocate who opened a world of life-changing opportunities to inner-city youth. Spears has encouraged generations of students in Baltimore to dream of experiencing a transformational education beyond the confines of their local area and worked to make those dreams a reality. He cofounded the nonprofit Bowdoin Bound with the goal of raising the educational sights of inner-city Baltimore students, urging them to aspire to attend colleges like Bowdoin, and motivating them to continue their hard work in the classroom. He then made opportunities attainable for these deserving students, bringing groups to visit Bowdoin’s campus in the summer, matching students with college mentors, and helping prepare students to navigate both the admissions and financial aid processes. In so doing, he provided a springboard for hundreds of young people to change the trajectory of their educational experiences and their post-college lives.

1985 Hossein Sadeghi-Nejad:

“After more than twenty-five years as professor of surgery-urology at Rutgers and service to veterans at VA NJ HCS [VA New Jersey Healthcare Systems], I am embarking on a new journey as professor of urology and director of men’s health at NYU-Langone in Manhattan.” planning what I can enter this October.”

Fellow Bowdoin swimmers

Sarah Holt ’99 and Dave “Ferris” Lawrence reconnected in Doha, Qatar, at Holt’s home in her adopted country. Lawrence was there to the

1993 Reunion

Cat Sperry Beckett: “2023 marks my twenty-third year living in ‘the other Portland’ (Oregon), where I work as a therapist in private practice and adjunct professor. Bowdoin has been at the top of my thoughts because my son Dylan has just enrolled as a Polar Bear, Class of 2027! I’m thrilled for him and so excited to have the excuse to come back east more often.”

1998 Reunion

From a bowdoin.edu/news story, February 23, 2023. Ethan Kent kicked off the long-delayed inaugural event of Bowdoin’s new urban studies program on February 14 with a campus visit and evening talk in Kresge Auditorium. Kent is executive director of PlacemakingX, an organization that advocates for public spaces. He described his campaign to reimagine and redesign public spaces, arguing that they can lead to healthier, more inclusive, and loving communities. The lecture highlighted the concept of placemaking, how it changes the way we shape our shared public spaces, and how it can enable community members to be cocreators of the world beyond their homes. Placemaking, he argued, requires an interdisciplinary approach to prioritizing human connection over individual needs and even aesthetics. Three professors affiliated with the urban studies program— Assistant Professor of Sociology Theo Greene, Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies Rachel Sturman, and Senior Lecturer in Environmental Studies Jill Pearlman (who taught Kent when he was a student)—said that featuring a Bowdoin alumnus who has worked in the bourgeoning field of placemaking fittingly celebrates the new academic program at Bowdoin.

2000

Dave “Ferris”

Lawrence: “I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel with my wife and sister to Doha, Qatar, to follow the USMNT [US Men’s National Team] at the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Not only did we get to quench our thirst for worldclass soccer by attending twenty-five games, but the best part of it all was reconnecting with fellow swimmer Sarah Holt ’99. Sarah was the most gracious of hosts....We got to meet her family, she showed us around her adopted country, we attended games together, and she hosted a delicious Thanksgiving meal.”

2008 Reunion

Garrett Grant: “Bowdoin alumni came from all over the country to get to the wonderful celebration of the marriage between Garrett Gates and Margaret Campbell in downtown Kansas City. The wedding took place at St. Agnes Cathedral with the celebration at The American. Even all the canceled flights on Southwest Airlines couldn’t prevent this Bowdoin crew from getting together and celebrating the joyous occasion!”

2009 Sam Tung: “Last August, my wife and I welcomed our first baby. My storyboarding career in Los Angeles continues to go well, with upcoming projects including work for Marvel, A24, Nintendo, and Universal.”

2010

Kauri Ballard:

“I recently got married in Melbourne, Australia, and a few of my Bowdoin friends made the long trip to come celebrate and see where I live....Allie Gunther and Camille Shepherd flew from NYC and Philly.”

From a bowdoin.edu/news story, February 28, 2023. The Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland, Maine, opened its 2023 CMCA Biennial exhibition in late January with thirty-five artists, including four alumni and a Bowdoin professor. The Bowdoin artists include Haley MacKeil, Nick Benfey ’15, Mariah Reading ’16, and Jenny Ibsen ’18, as well as professor of art and chair of the Visual Arts Division of the Department of Art Michael Kolster. The CMCA Biennial, which has been running for forty-five years, supports and celebrates Maine-based artists. The artists in the show live and work in Maine or have significant ties to a specific Maine community, according to the CMCA. From over 400 applicants, the thirty-five selected artists stood out to jurors because of the potential of their artwork to make an impact—not only in an artistic context, but in a social one. “The artists participating together form a resounding chorus of perspectives, reflecting the pivotal moment in which we exist—the societal inequities we push against, our understanding of time and our transience on earth, the drive to understand one’s identity and lineage, and our relationship to the environment and our place within it,” said Misa Jeffereis, another juror and assistant curator at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. All the artists are part of installations spanning the entire 5,500 square feet of the museum.”

2013 Reunion

From a bowdoin.edu/news story, April 3, 2023. Acclaimed journalist and writer Linda Kinstler has secured a prestigious Whiting Award for nonfiction—one of ten prizes recently announced for “exceptional emerging writers.” The awards, each worth $50,000, are given annually to recognize writers of fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry. Kinstler is a contributing writer for The Economist and Jewish Currents, while her work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian, among other places. Additionally, she is deputy editor at the online culture and politics magazine The Dial. Her first book, Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends, was published in August 2022 and nominated for the 2023 Wingate Award. At Bowdoin, Kinstler majored in English and, as a student journalist, was editor-inchief of The Bowdoin Orient. She went on to study in the UK under a prestigious Marshall Scholarship and is currently a PhD candidate in rhetoric at UC Berkeley.

Tricia Thibodeau: “I’ll be starting a new position this fall as an assistant professor at the University of New England, where I’ll be teaching oceanography and continuing my research on plankton in the Gulf of Maine. I’m very excited to be moving back to Maine and hope to collaborate with the wonderful professors from the earth and oceanographic science department who inspired me to pursue this career in the first place.”

You are From Here.

Once a Polar Bear, always a Polar Bear. Stay engaged with Bowdoin in whatever way works for you—volunteer, attend an event, make a gift, or tune into an online program. All of it matters for the campaign, and more importantly, keeps the bonds of the Bowdoin community strong.

2014

Zack Burton: “A paper I authored is just out in Nature’s Scientific Reports Titled ‘Peak Cenozoic warmth enabled deep-sea sand deposition,’ it explores the impact of extreme Eocene climate (high CO2, hot temperatures, higher-frequency extreme weather events, and intensified precipitation ~56–48 million years ago) and sea levels more than 200 feet (>70 m) higher than

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