Bowdoin Magazine, Vol. 90, No. 2, Winter 2019

WINTER 2019 VOL. 90 NO. 2

An old man like me and a young man like you were walking together to the train station.

The old man was carrying heavy luggage; the young man had none.

Who gets there first?

Contents WINTER 2019 VOL. 90 NO. 2

20 Each Day Anew

Professor Fritz Koelln, an intellectual whirlwind and deeply kind soul, imparted more than a life’s worth of lessons to his student and friend Neill Reilly ’71.

36 A Magnificent Obsession

Percival Baxter, Class of 1898, spent more than half his life creating a wild legacy in northern Maine.

30 Destination Uwajimaya

24 Happy People Ski Faster

Head cross-country skiing coach Nathan Alsobrook ’97 has a winning formula with a not-so-secret key ingredient.

Denise Moriguchi ’98, president and CEO of Seattle’s famous Uwajimaya, balances a remarkable history with necessary change.

44 Q&A with Charles Dorn

The professor talks about the state of higher education.

Forward 5

A Family Affair: Mother-daughter duo Lisa and Stephanie Rendall talk College connections.

7

Dine: Pastry chef and cookbook author Lauren

Chattman ’83 offers a zesty twist on pancakes.

8

On the Record: Alumni share colorful sound bites

about Bowdoin. Illustrated by Dave Homer.

13

By the Numbers: Don’t miss twenty-six down in this New York Times Crossword.

17

Cutting Their Teeth: Actor Paul Adelstein ’91

workshops with students on campus.

Connect 47 Robert Packard ’58 climbs high points and takes numbers.

53 Carrie Niederman ’82 cares for horses’ teeth in Texas.

56 Joe Adu ’07 takes a human approach to technology.

In Every Issue 4

Respond

46 Whispering Pines 64 Discuss

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2  BOWDOIN MAGAZINE WINTER 2019 | CLASSNEWS@BOWDOIN.EDU

PHOTO: HEATHER PERRY

On November 3, 2018, photographer Heather Perry captured the Bowdoin swimming and diving team in their element in Greason Pool. “We wanted to showcase the divers in a few pictures, so I had them perform tricks underwater with the swimmers standing on the bottom of the pool watching,� Perry explains.

For more by Heather Perry, visit heatherperryphoto.com.

Respond GRAPPLING

Returning I READ WITH INTEREST the memories of those members of the Class of 1968 and their feelings regarding the Vietnam War. While that was a year of anxiety for those faced with the possibility of going into the military, it was doubly traumatic for many of [us] returning home from the war. April 4, 1968, my last night in Vietnam, word came through of the assassination of Martin Luther King, a revered man whom I had heard speak four years before at First Parish Church. I wondered what kind of a country I was returning to. I found out within twenty-four hours. At the San Francisco airport, I was taunted by a gauntlet of demonstrators. Despite their signs, I didn’t feel I was a war criminal and certainly wasn’t a baby killer. The anxiety felt by those facing possible military service in 1968 is long gone. For those who returned home that year, the effects have never left.

Joe Gorman ’65

I was pleased to see my old Orient colleague Nat Harrison responding to the shock of fifty sudden years by exploring his classmates’ memories of 1968 and their responses when faced with participating in the Vietnam War. Nat’s selections reflect the variety of personal history and philosophy that Bowdoin students brought to their decisions.

All these years later, the stories we tell express the principles, and the occasional tortured rationalizations, that we all used in grappling with the dominant moral question of our time.

consequences during the Vietnam War era.

And I also remember and appreciate the respect my classmates showed one another regardless of the content of those choices.

I would also like to mention the Bowdoin Peace Movement, which operated in a small room above Day’s News and Variety Store on Maine Street.

The space was supported and managed

by Bowdoin students… [and] served as a resource and counseling agency. An article about the Ladd Peace Center was published in The Bowdoin Orient, April 18, 1968.

Editor Matthew J. O’Donnell Consulting Editor Scott C. Schaiberger ’95 Executive Editor Alison M. Bennie Designer and Art Director Melissa Wells Design Consultant 2COMMUNIQUÉ Contributors James Caton John R. Cross ’76 Leanne Dech Rebecca Goldfine Scott W. Hood Janie Porche Tom Porter

Sam Rettman ’68

Bruce Griffin ’69

CLARIFICATION FROM FALL:

PEACE CENTER

Charlie Butt coached women’s swimming at Bowdoin for twenty-four years and men’s swimming for thirty-nine.

Kudos to Nathaniel Harrison for documenting the reflections of members of the Class of 1968 who were faced with an uncertain future as they approached graduation. I recall vividly the dynamics of making decisions and abiding their

MAGAZINE STAFF

On the cover: Find the answer to Professor Fritz Koelln’s riddle on page 22.

Illustration by Andrea Ventura.

BOWDOIN MAGAZINE (ISSN: 0895-2604) is published three times a year by Bowdoin College, 4104 College Station, Brunswick, Maine, 04011.

Printed by J.S. McCarthy, Augusta, 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.

STAY IN TOUCH! What have you been up to since graduation? Send us an email at classnews@ bowdoin.edu.

Opinions expressed in this magazine are those of the authors.

To read the full versions of these excerpted letters, plus additional mail, visit bowdoin.edu/magazine.

facebook.com/bowdoin

@BowdoinCollege

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@bowdoincollege

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.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: (VIETNAM PHOTO) PATRICK CHRISTAIN/STRINGER; (HAWTHORNE-LONGFELLOW LIBRARY PHOTO) DAVE WILKINSON ’67

Forward A FAMILY AFFAIR Lisa Rendall just celebrated her twentieth year working at Bowdoin, and her daughter Stephanie Rendall is halfway through her first.

LR: The Bowdoin connection goes back further than me! My grandfather Terry Curran was one of the first housekeepers to work in the Senior Center (now Coles Tower) in 1964. He also tended bar in the Cram Alumni House, where I held my wedding reception.

SR: My memories of Bowdoin are shaped so much by how my mother chose to commit to her professional role. I grew up attending so many sporting events, December Dance Concerts, The Vagina Monologues, plays by Henrik Ibsen, The Improvabilities performances, art exhibits, and so much more.

LR: I love working here because everyone is so willing to help one another. When Stephanie told me she was applying for the assistant first-year dean position, I was very excited that she might join such a wonderful place.

SR: I knew Bowdoin was where I wanted to be when I began work as the interim coordinator of the Women’s Resource Center. Working with students throughout the year, sharing in their highs and lows, was such a joy.

LR: We now have a shared weekly meeting in Student Affairs, and we discuss any housing-related first-year issues on a regular basis. Initially I thought it might be awkward, but from my perspective it has been great—though Stephanie might have a different view!

SR: For a very long time, our relationship was solely mother-daughter, but that’s not our dynamic as colleagues! Surprisingly, referring to her as “Lisa” has come quite easily within our professional roles.

LR: Honestly, I still occasionally struggle with my email signature. “Mom” just isn’t appropriate on a work email!

For a longer version of our interview with Lisa and Stephanie, visit bowdoin.edu/magazine.

PHOTO: GRETA RYBUS

FROM BOWDOIN AND BEYOND

Stephanie Rendall (left), assistant dean of first-year students, and her mother, Lisa Rendall, director of residential and housing operations, are now colleagues.

Forward

Campus Life

Bowdoin Reads EVERY MONTH for the past ten years, a student,

employee, or faculty member at Bowdoin has written about a favorite book for a popular library blog called Bowdoin Reads (bcl.bowdoin.edu/bowdoin-reads). In that time, Bowdoin Reads has accumulated an impressive reading list of more than two hundred books. In February, the Library threw a party celebrating the program and reading in general, complete with a cake resembling a leather-bound book, and readings by members of the Bowdoin community. You can see all of the recommended Bowdoin Reads titles on a special Goodreads page, but here are the titles by authors who have been recommended at least twice by Bowdoin readers over the years.

Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami Bel Canto, Ann Patchett The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison In the Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez

IN SEASON Katherine Cavanagh ’19 with a black crappie that she caught (and released) on Pleasant Pond, during a Bowdoin ice-fishing day organized by Maine fishing expert Macauley Lord ’77 in February.

The Maine Woods, Henry David Thoreau Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson Herzog, Saul Bellow For the full list of recommendations, visit bowdo.in/goodreads.

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PHOTO: KENNY LAM ’20

Dine

Cranberry-Orange Pancakes

Stir together the flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, and cinnamon in a large mixing bowl.

Recipe by Lauren Chattman ’83

Measure the milk into a large glass measuring cup.

Crack the egg into the cup and beat lightly with a fork to break up the egg. Stir in the cooled melted butter.

Makes about twelve four-inch pancakes 1 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder ¼ teaspoon salt 3 tablespoons sugar ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon 1 ½ cups whole or reduced-fat milk 1 large egg 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled 1 ½ teaspoons grated zest, from one large orange 1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries, stems discarded Nonstick cooking spray Pure maple syrup for serving DID YOU KNOW? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “Flat as a pancake” has been a catchphrase since at least 1611.

Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until the dry ingredients are moistened and the batter is well mixed. Don’t worry if there are some small lumps. Stir in the orange zest and cranberries.

Spray the surface of a griddle or a large skillet with cooking spray. Heat it over medium-high heat. Test the griddle or skillet after a couple of minutes by drizzling a few drops of water onto the cooking surface. If the drops sizzle and evaporate, the surface is hot enough to begin cooking the pancakes.

For each pancake, spoon or ladle about a ¼ cup batter onto the cooking surface, cooking as many at a time as you can comfortably turn on the size surface you have. Cook until the top begins to bubble and the bottom is golden, two to four minutes (this will take a minute or two longer if you are using frozen cranberries). Check occasionally to make sure the pancakes aren’t cooking too quickly, and adjust the heat if necessary. Flip each pancake and cook it until it is golden on the second side, and then an additional minute or two more. Serve the pancakes immediately with maple syrup or keep them warm in a preheated 200-degree oven on a platter loosely covered with aluminum foil. Repeat with the remaining batter, removing the pan from the heat and spraying the cooking surface with more cooking spray before beginning each new batch.

A former pastry chef, Lauren Chattman ’83 is the author of nine cookbooks and coauthor of numerous other books, including Dessert University, with former White House pastry chef Roland Mesnier.

Her recipes have appeared in Food & Wine, Bon Appétit, Cook’s Illustrated, The New York Times, and Redbook, among others. Her newest book, Living Bread, coauthored with artisan baking expert Daniel Leader, will be published next fall by Penguin Random House. She lives with her husband in Cutchogue, New York.

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Forward

Did You Know?

On the Record Alumni share stories of their time at Bowdoin.

Illustration by Dave Homer DURING REUNION WEEKEND last year, the Library’s Special Collections & Archives department helped alumni tell their Bowdoin stories.

Attendees were invited to sign up and share memories of how they came to Bowdoin, campus life, study abroad, and the faculty and students who helped to shape their experiences on campus. The College’s influence on their lives after graduation was also a popular topic. Special Collections & Archives has made these audio recordings available online, and the opportunity to participate in the Alumni Oral History Project will be offered again during Reunion Weekend, May 30–June 2, 2019. Some snippets from the fifteen people who participated are illustrated here—learn more at bowdo.in/stories.

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Interviews were recorded with: David Anderson ’55 and Phoebe Girard, Ken Carpenter ’58, Edward Koch ’58, Paul Todd ’58, Jon ’68 and Beverly Fuller, JoAnn Chrisman ’73, Abdullah Muhammad ’73, Jean Brountas ’83, Jim Jenson ’82, Deborah Jenson ’83, Whitney Sanford ’83, Jane Warren ’83, and Mariya Ilyas ’13.

Forward Sound Bite

World

“ I continue to believe that the law matters and deserves our attention as we assess the resilience of institutions in the face of contemporary pressures.”

—ALLEN SPRINGER, NEWLY NAMED WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL PROFESSOR OF CONSTITUTIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL LAW AND GOVERNMENT, DURING HIS INAUGURAL LECTURE: “INSTITUTIONAL RESILIENCE IN TURBULENT TIMES.”

Alumni Life

Serviam Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jonathan R. Farmer ’03 was among nineteen people—including four Americans—killed January 16, 2019, when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest inside a restaurant in the Syrian city of Manbij. Farmer, a US Army Green Beret assigned to 3rd Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Fort Campbell, Kentucky, is the first Bowdoin alumnus to be killed while serving on active military duty since the Vietnam War. He will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery and his name will be added to the Bowdoin Memorial located between Hubbard Hall and Gibson Hall. Farmer leaves behind a wife and four young children.

A trust has been established for the family: Jonathan R. Farmer Family Care Trust c/o McDonald Hopkins LLC, 505 S. Flagler Drive, Suite 300, West Palm Beach, FL 33401.

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PLAY BOWDOIN MAGAZINE Listen to the new Bowdoin Magazine Podcast! We take deep dives into recent editions, go behind the scenes to expand on articles, showcase extra content, and tell new Bowdoin stories. Available from our website (bowdoin.edu/magazine) and Soundcloud. The Bowdoin Magazine Podcast skill will be available in the Alexa App Store soon.

PHOTO OF JONATHAN R. FARMER: US ARMY

Game On

Up, Up, and Away!

Mason Freeman ’22

PHOTO: BRIAN BEARD

BOWDOIN TRACK AND FIELD athlete Mason Freeman ’22 flies above the long jump runway during the Bowdoin Invitational on January 12, 2019, at Farley Field House, where his jump of 21 feet, 1.25 inches earned third place. Freeman helped the Polar Bears to a pair of wins during the indoor season, and to a second-place finish at the Maine Intercollegiate Championship on February 2, at USM, where he won the long jump with a distance of 22 feet, 2.25 inches, and where teammates Reid Brawer ’21 and Reed Foster ’21 took second and third, respectively, for a Bowdoin long jump sweep.

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Forward On the Shelf Hockey: A Global History STEPHEN HARDY ’70 AND ANDREW C. HOLMAN

(University of Illinois Press, 2018)

Campus Life

Nearly a half-century after hanging up his skates, former Bowdoin standout Steve Hardy ’70 finds his passion for the sport of ice hockey remains undiminished.

A retired UNH professor of kinesiology and history, Hardy draws on twenty-five years of research to produce a book described as “the monumental end-to-end history of the sport.”

Mud, Sand, and Snow

Wayne’s War

CHARLOTTE AGELL ’81

WAYNE M. BURTON ’67

(Islandport Press, 2019)

(Maine Authors Publishing, 2019)

The Social Fact: News and Knowledge in a Networked World

On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope

JOHN P. WIHBEY ’98

DERAY MCKESSON ’07

(MIT Press, 2019)

(Viking, 2018)

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Carolyn Finney connected with the capacity Roux Center audience.

Where Is Everyone?

Addressing a glaring disparity in access to the outdoors AT THE INVITATION of the Bowdoin Outing Club (BOC), writer and cultural geographer Carolyn Finney, author of Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors, visited Bowdoin on January 31, 2019, to discuss why people of color have historically been overlooked by the outdoor industry and the environmental movement—and how to change that. Finney spent the day with BOC members, faculty, and staff, and spoke to a packed audience in the Roux Center lantern that evening. The visit was part of the

BOC’s ongoing effort to ensure every student feels welcome inside its Schwartz Outdoor Leadership Center and outside in nature.

Finney’s book, which BOC leaders read over winter break, discusses how the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and racial violence have left lingering footprints, shaping people’s ideas of who belongs in the outdoors and who fights for environmental causes. “I’m glad she encouraged students to get out of their comfort zone and take risks,” said Darius Riley ’19, “because that is the only way we’re going to grow.”

PHOTO: FRED FIELD

m

CLUE OF THE DAY 19TH-CENTURY ART AUTHORS IN THE PREFACE TO A BOOK OF HIS STORIES, HE THANKS A HERPETOLOGIST OF UPPER INDIA & AN ELEPHANT NAMED BAHADUR SHAH FOR THE CORRECT RESPONSE, WATCH JEOPARDY! TONIGHT OR LOOK IN THIS SPACE TOMORROW IN THE TIMES. Yesterday’s Response: Who Are the Romulans?

Watch JEOPARDY! 7 p.m. on Channel 7

Crossword

Edited by Will Shortz PUZZLE BY JOHN WESTWIG

ACROSS 1 Vessel

34

for frying

food 9 Variety

of green

tea 37

15

Word with power or zero

16

Having win after win

38

Beer you make yourself

40

18

Get cell service?

42

19

Lovelace of computing fame

44

17

41

Some West Point grads

48

22

Non-PC?

51

23

Is an agent for, informally

52

25

One end of a kite string

53

20

26

Genuflect, e.g.

27

Indian state known for its tea

29

The moon, e.g.

30

Book leaf

31

Two, to Teo

49

55 56 58

60

33 Answers to Previous Puzzles

N.F.L. star who was a Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year in 2017

61

62 63

Who said “If you’re not ready to die for it, put the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary” Accept the sudden loss of, as an opportunity Children’s author Beverly “Duuuude!”

Flute, e.g.

One doing cat scans?

“Finished!”

Lift Mother-of-pearl Zippo “Here Come the Warm Jets” musician Butts Lead-in to X, Y or Z Lose fizz Classic declaration in Gotham City Burning Not closing before 10 or 11 p.m.

Back from a vacation, say Acceptance from fellow brainiacs, in slang

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE

O H E M I N A V O N A B I B I D D I E C O A I T L E R R O S S I I T A you T E make R TitVinto M O You know you’ve arrived when A J A Q U E E N the New York Times Crossword.

GuessS who L A X U D A N did just that in the December C R13,I 2018, M E Aedition?

I S S or column, andCheck so that out the digits within each E A S where E D T twenty-six down—but that’s using addition, subtraction, multiplication or B E N E F I T M E begin and end. Enjoy the puzzle!

1-4. A 6x6 gridour will hints use 1-6.

E N O K I Y S E R ken. For feedback: nytimes@kenken.com A R I E S M U T E M Y R R H A P S O

By the Numbers

C U F F S

A P O R T

B O R E R

Here’s an Easy One

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES, DECEMBER 13, 2018, ©2018 THE NEW YORK TIMES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY PERMISSION AND PROTECTED BY THE COPYRIGHT LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES. THE PRINTING, COPYING, REDISTRIBUTION, OR RETRANSMISSION OF THIS CONTENT WITHOUT EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION IS PROHIBITED.

A G E N O R M C U E R

N U N C I O

D I R E

O D O R

R E N T

N A Z R I E A S C U T R E L D Y

O W I E

N E T S

E R A S E

T Y P E D

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

15

16

17

18

19

20

23

24

27

28

35

12

13

14

46

47

22 26

29

30

32

33

36

37

38

39

41

42

48

40 43

49

52

44 50

53

56

11

21 25

31 34

10

45 51

54

57

58

60

61

62

63

55 59

12/13/18

DOWN that comes from Arabic for “desert” 2 Dwellings 3 Many graphics on election night 4 Use it for kicks 5 Italy’s thirdlargest island, after Sicily and Sardinia 6 Engine sounds 7 At the original speed, in music 8 Publishing debut of 1851, with “The” 9 Lead-in to T, A or X 10 In short order 11 Bit of ink

12

What might have a large collection of prints

39

Representative sample of a larger group

13

What Gandhi once likened to an ocean

42

Acid holder

43

___ l’oeil (illusion)

45

One-named 1950s TV sex symbol

1 Name

14

Opening of many a speech

21

Swarm

24

Pathetic one

46

Imagine

26

College in Brunswick, Me.

47

Back from a vacation, say

28

Ties up, in a way

49

“Gotcha”

30

Oslo setting

50

Old flame?

32

Furtive

53

33

LinkedIn listing

34

Mixed martial arts champion Conor ___

Like Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard

54

Smooth

57

Burning

59

Spa offering, briefly

35

Multipurpose

36

First ones to bat

Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 9,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords ($39.95 a year).

Read about and comment on each puzzle: nytimes.com/wordplay.

Crosswords for young solvers: nytimes.com/studentcrosswords.

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Forward

Campus Life

Musical Confidence THE ANNUAL first-year/sophomore semiformal dance was held in Sargent Gym on February 2.

In addition to food, photo booths, and, of course, dancing, students enjoyed live music courtesy of Jaden Dixon ’21, a Bowdoin government major and artist and producer from Davenport, Florida. Jaden released his first EP, “Moving Forward,” last fall.

In an October 25, 2018, interview with The Bowdoin Orient, Jaden described his music as being “very diverse and spontaneous, because that’s how life is.

“In sixth grade, I started playing classical piano, and then over the years, I started picking up guitar and a little bit of drums. I started using my voice as an instrument my senior year of high school. I went from singing in the shower to auditioning for a musical, and next thing I knew, I was [playing] Troy Bolton from High School Musical for my senior spring musical.

That was extremely inspiring for me, because I loved being on stage, and I finally gained some sort of confidence.”

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PHOTO: MICHELE STAPLETON

(P) CAPTION_AlignRight

Jaden Dixon ’21 gets the crowd moving in Sargent Gym.

Courses

THE BAUHAUS AND ITS LEGACY: DESIGNING THE MODERN WORLD Jill Pearlman Senior Lecturer in Environmental Studies The centenary of the Bauhaus—the German school of modern design opened in 1919—is being celebrated around the world. More than a school, the Bauhaus connected art to industry, advancing the radical belief that good design will improve the lives of everyone.

We’re studying the Bauhaus during its lifetime and its legacy up to the present day. By giving modernity a distinct physical form, the Bauhaus changed the world.

IMAGINING DISASTER David Hecht Associate Professor of History The focus is on moments of crisis—both natural and technological—and ways that they have shaped recent history. We study the distinction between highly visible disasters (such as Hurricane Katrina or Chernobyl) and ones that unfold slowly over years, even decades. There is also a fascinating interplay between chance and human control in the making of disasters, which are rarely as random or unpredictable as they seem.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MORALITY AND VALUE Andrew Christy Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology This seminar explores major issues and current directions in moral psychology. Through reflective and critical discussion of primary-source readings, we will engage with topics such as the cultural, evolutionary, and developmental origins of morality in human psychology, how people make moral and other value judgments, the role of emotional and motivational processes in moral judgment and behavior, and the social-psychological antecedents and consequences of moral and immoral behaviors.

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Forward

Harriet Beecher

Stowe (1811–1896 Staunch abolitio ) ni st w ho demon the power of fi ction to make so strated cial change While author and aboli

tionist Harr published he iet Beecher r first story Stowe in 1834, she when, in M wa ay 1850, he r family settle s largely unknown In the short d at 63 Fede two years St ral Street. owe spent in she birthed Brunswick, her seventh Main child children, an d wrote Uncle , ran a school for neigh e, borhood Tom’s Cabin an instant su . The novel ccess that br was ought Stowe catapulted th world-wide e antislavery fame, movement to nation’s cons cio th the course of usness, and—many wo e forefront of the uld argue— history. Thou changed after the pu gh St ow e left Brunsw blication of ick Uncle Tom’s resonates th Cabin, her leg shortly roughout th acy e community to this day.

Visit Harriet ’s Writing Ro om at 63 Fe more about deral Street Stowe’s life in to lea Brunswick an J. Mitchell D d come to th rn ep e George at the Bowd artment of Special Colle oin College cti on s & Archives Libr collection of material docu ary to explore a growin g menting Stow library.bowdo e’s life and ca in reer. library.bowdo .edu/arch/stowe-house in.edu/arch/ mss/hbsg.sh tml

Archives

Historical All-Stars BUILDING ON THE POPULARITY of the

collectible buttons offered in conjunction with the monthly Birds of America page-turning events, the Library’s Special Collections & Archives department will be introducing trading card keepsakes as a new way to share more about some of the historically rich and interesting people who have been associated with Bowdoin during the past 225 years. “Inspired by nineteenth-century chromolithograph trade cards, the trading card format seemed like a fun, low-barrier way to bring more awareness to our collections,” says Marieke Van Der Steenhoven, special collections education and outreach librarian. Cards featuring Harriet Beecher

Stowe (shown here), Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Kate Furbish, and Oliver Otis Howard will be unveiled over the coming months. “To be included in the set means that we have historical materials about that person at Bowdoin—which researchers can use—and not just that the person has a Bowdoin connection. We want to shine a light on the characters and primary sources that tell their stories to encourage discovery and research within the collections. We hope the trading cards appeal to audiences young and old!”

Learn more about the holdings of Bowdoin College Library’s George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives at library.bowdoin.edu/arch.

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Academics

OP-EDS IN THE REAL WORLD Starting in December, students in Shana Starobin’s government class Environmental Politics and Policy began to see their ideas in a new context—the arena of public debate.

For a class assignment, Starobin, an assistant professor of government and environmental studies, had asked her students to write an op-ed on a subject of their choice, as long as it reflected a theme of the class.

Pitching their pieces to a newspaper for publication was optional, but Starobin encouraged it. “That approach coupled solid-writing skills with real-world grit and persistence,” she said.

In total, nine students’ op-eds have been published so far, out of a class of twenty-two, in papers from New England to Texas to Hawaii.

The students argued about topics ranging from the urgent need for elected officials to address climate change to instituting a ban on Styrofoam.

Ripley Mayfield ’19, whose anti-Styrofoam piece was published in the San Antonio Express News, said Starobin “is definitely not the professor to spew information and expect you to regurgitate it later. She teaches skills that are necessary in the ‘real world’ but that might not be taught in a lot of classrooms.”

Starobin has included this assignment in past classes but has never achieved as high a publication rate. “It definitely raised the bar for future classes and compelled me to further reset my expectations as to what students can accomplish,” she said.

Alumni Life

Cutting Their Teeth IN NOVEMBER, Aziza Janmohamed ’19 invited actor Paul Adelstein ’91 to campus, where he spent two days meeting with students, visiting theater professor Sarah Bay-Cheng’s classes, and offering training for student actors, including a workshop on acting for the camera with Masque and Gown.

“You have to have a fire in your belly, but you can’t be consumed by it. The notion that an artist has to be miserable, that they have to somehow suffer in order to produce or to be creative—that’s a bill of goods that we’ve been sold,” Adelstein told students. “There’s no orthodoxy, there’s no ‘right thing.’

“I was trying to tell the students who are asking about making a life at writing or acting about the importance of community,” Adelstein said. “I was incredibly impressed by the community here on campus already and how the students were talking about one another’s work and how the relate to one another.

“I’m just impressed by the art and the arts and culture scene here. Looking at what’s been done to the theater, talking to the students, seeing the different classes they’re taking, and the projects that are being put up—it’s just really inspiring, and I’m happy that this school has that.

It’s truly exciting.”

Paul Adelstein ’91, currently starring in NBC’s comedy I Feel Bad, is best known for the role of agent Paul Kellerman in the series Prison Break and his role as pediatrician Cooper Freedman in the medical drama Private Practice. A Bowdoin English major and music minor, the Chicago native is also a writer and producer and lead singer of the band Doris. He plays his guitar almost every day and counts turning in his English honors thesis to Professor Marilyn Reizbaum as one of his favorite Bowdoin memories.

PHOTO: ANDREW ESTEY

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Forward

On View

Interweaving a Life Interwoven: The Lives and Works of Martha Hall celebrates fiber and book artist Martha Hall, who passed away from breast cancer in December 2003. For many in Maine, Hall’s name alone conjures a landmark—Martha Hall Yarns, a weaving and knitting store located in Yarmouth during the 1980s, which Hall grew into a national mail-order business. Her commercial success led her to pursue an MBA from Dartmouth. Diagnosed with breast cancer a week before graduation, she went on to hold executive positions at American Express and L.L.Bean while battling multiple occurrences of the disease. She returned to the arts as a means of understanding her illness. No longer physically able to weave or knit, Hall discovered artists’ books, works that are inspired by but transcend the traditional book form. A gifted writer, Hall created powerful narratives and innovative materials to convey her experience living with and ultimately dying from cancer. Hall challenged her doctors, and all readers, to care more, to empathize, and to reflect. Works from her collection, a recent gift to the Bowdoin College Library, are being integrated into courses, including those associated with the new medical humanities cohort, and will be the topic of a panel discussion on April 10, 2019, moderated by Michele Cyr ’76, P’12, chair of the Bowdoin College Board of Trustees.

The exhibition is on view on the second floor gallery in Hawthorne-Longfellow Library through June 3, 2019.

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Martha Hall’s Tattoo interrogates the stereotypes and stigmas of tattoos and cancer. Composed of eight gatherings, bound accordionfold style, each gathering has its own decorative paper wrapper.

PHOTO: DENNIS GRIGGS

Student Life

NIRHAN NURJADIN ’21 Hometown: Jakarta, Indonesia Major: sociology and economics I enjoy giving tours at Bowdoin because I think they are a great way for prospective students to get my personal take on what makes Bowdoin the place it is. During my tours I try to show the incredibly caring and welcoming nature of the people here.

Campus Life

BREAKING GROUND President Rose announced in January the construction of two new buildings that will be positioned near each other and across the street from the Roux Center for the Environment, which opened in October. Mills Hall, named in honor of former Bowdoin President Barry Mills ’72, H’15, will house classrooms, faculty offices, a 200-seat auditorium, and an event space. Adjacent to this new academic destination will be a building dedicated to Arctic studies and the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum. When finished, the structures will help to define an entirely new quadrangle and allow for vistas facing out toward the main Quad. Construction on both projects is expected to begin during summer 2020, and completion is slated for the end of the fall semester in 2021.

For more information, visit bowdoin.edu/news.

PHOTOS: NICOLAS HIBBARD ’21

First Impressions Bowdoin admissions tour guides are the first faces that many visitors see on campus, and they’re always smiling and ready for anything: inclement weather, wandering siblings, campus construction, complex questions, or their least favorite condition—no questions at all.

TESSA PETERSON ’20 Hometown: Nederland, Colorado Major: earth and oceanographic science and francophone studies Trying new things at Bowdoin goes beyond your first year. I’m a junior, but I just finished my first season on the cross-country team. Before Bowdoin I wasn’t a runner, but in December some of my teammates and I drove up to Millinocket and ran a half marathon! It was only two degrees, but there was a beautiful view of Mount Katahdin.

HENRY BREDAR ’19 Hometown: Washington, DC Major: government and legal studies and history One of my favorite parts about Bowdoin is that students actually get to take advantage of where campus is. We can get lunch with our host families on Maine Street, we can take a class out at the Schiller Coastal Studies Center, and we can do everything in between.

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Each Day Anew

BY NEILL REILLY ’71 I WAS BLESSED to have had professor Fritz Koelln as my teacher. He taught

To professor Fritz Koelln, happiness was a by-product of a life well lived, not a goal unto itself.

a senior seminar called Friedrich Nietzsche: A Problematic Figure for Our Time that was the most challenging and rewarding class I have ever taken. Professor Koelln was sixty-nine years old when he taught this course. He spoke seven languages. He was demanding and profound, and he had an inner warmth that was truly heartfelt. The students could barely keep up with his intellectual vitality. He was like a stellar runner who sets the pace. Everyone just tried to stay as close to him as we could.

During class, we respectfully called him “Professor Koelln,” but he was affectionately known as “Fritz.”

Fritz walked into the first class in September of 1970. He had piercing blue eyes and a ruddy, florid face that would become red when he was excited. He was about five-foot-seven, with a body like a short, offensive tackle, broad and stout. His once-red hair had turned shocking white with age. He always wore a white shirt, tie with a tie clip, blue blazer, and gray pants. He carried an old black leather book bag that was weighed down with books. He muttered to himself and opened the bag. As he took out each individual book, he checked and affirmed that he had brought his intended book and delicately placed each one on a table. A dozen books emerged from Fritz’s book bag like a circus trick. He assembled a small library on the table next to his chair.

Fritz had left Germany in 1928 at the age of twenty-seven. His American English still had a German accent that was mixed with a Cambridge pronunciation. At first, it sounded a little stilted, but after you became accustomed to it, it sounded distinctively Fritz. When he arrived at Bowdoin in 1929, he audited a course from a fellow professor and continued auditing a course every semester for forty-two years. He laughed that he was the oldest nonmatriculated student in Bowdoin’s history. There is the famous quotation from Chaucer on the steps of the Moulton Union: “And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche” (The Canterbury Tales, General Prologue, line 310). This is the definition of the ideal teacher. Fortunately, I had Fritz, who loved to learn and teach.

ILLUSTRATION: ANDREA VENTURA

At first Fritz appeared difficult to follow in class. He led us through thoughts that seemed disconnected. After a few classes, it became apparent that we were not working hard enough to realize that his digressions and tangents were directly connected with the theme. We were comfortable with linear thoughts. Fritz operated with rhythmic thoughts that were more organic in nature. With Fritz, you could almost see thoughts evolving. They had the structure of a gyre or a spiral. Like a falcon, he circled an idea from various perspectives and then swooped down to make it his own. Fritz’s approach from radically different perspectives would not abide a onesided perspective. One of his constant phrases was “Avoid dogma, avoid dogma.” Fritz espoused creativity. One of his favorite quotations from Goethe was “each day anew.” The longer Goethe quotation provides insight into Fritz’s inner life: “This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew” (Faust, Part II).

Nietzsche with Fritz was like being in a thunderstorm with lightning and thunder all around and inside you. The thoughts were palpable.

Nietzsche wrote dramatic scenes that engaged us, but while he presented the problem, Nietzsche did not offer a solution. Fritz hinted that the solution would come from another person. At the end of the last class, he mentioned Rudolf Steiner and then ended the seminar, put his books into his book bag, and left.

I was amazed that Fritz did not expound on Steiner and later went to Fritz’s home. Fritz and his wife, Bine, resided at 7 Page Street in Brunswick, which formed one of his favorite puns: “When in doubt, turn to Page 7.” This invitation was given to thousands of Bowdoin students, and he meant it. I asked Fritz about Rudolf Steiner.

He smiled, waved his index finger at me, and stated, “Remember, you asked me that question.”

For the next fifteen years we discussed little else but Steiner. I asked why he did not teach a course on Steiner at Bowdoin. Fritz replied, “It cannot

Like a falcon, he circled an idea from various perspectives and then swooped down to make it his own.

Fritz had the amazing ability to listen and to address your question. He was dramatic and funny. He would make you feel like you were in the presence of Nietzsche, Hegel, Wagner, and other great thinkers. He would start to read an English translation, shake his head, and switch to the German, which might have a reference to a Latin or Greek quotation, which he would also recite or read. He was totally engaged in the subject matter. He would act out certain scenes.

After vigorous lectures, he would have worked up a sweat.

During the seminar, Fritz expounded on Nietzsche’s vision that Western civilization had gone into an intellectual and moral abyss and had lost its bearings. Reading and reciting

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be done. Steiner is not an academic subject.”

He paused for effect. “But if a student would ask me to give a free seminar on Steiner, got a classroom, a day, and a time, I would consider it.” I got the hint and asked Fritz if he would allow me to do such. He smiled and said yes.

The free seminar was an oral version of Theosophy, with Fritz describing humanity’s spiritual nature. It was stunning in breadth and depth. Fritz did not use notes. He lived these thoughts, and they were a natural progression for him, like a seed maturing into a plant. Sixty or more people attended his class on Steiner. Twelve students from my class of 220 became involved in anthroposophic activity after graduation. He introduced hundreds to Steiner, the founder of

the Waldorf School and anthroposophy. I have since read Steiner for more than forty-five years.

Even though Fritz was nearly fifty years older than I was, we became close friends. I would often visit his home. Fritz’s study was a small library with shelves of books, a desk, photos, a couch, and a piano. To see Fritz playing the piano was the definition of kinetic activity. He pounded the keys with joy and enthusiasm.

This study became a sanctum sanctorum, where Fritz would have deep conversations. During a conversation on Kamaloca, Fritz described how each individual must purge his earthly desires upon entering the spiritual world. It would be very painful to have unrequited materialistic desires without a body to satiate them. He stated it was very similar to the concept of purgatory.

He then asked me, “What would you desire after you have left your body? What would you miss the most?” I was about to say “running” but thought he would not understand that desire.

So I went to numbers two and three. “Chocolate chip cookies and vanilla ice cream.” Fritz looked at me incredulously, shook his head, kindly smiled at my naiveté, and said, “Maybe this part will not be so hard for you.”

One of Fritz’s favorite questions was to ask Bowdoin seniors what they wanted after graduation. Fritz was stunned that most answered with a Hallmark superficiality. The most common answer was “I want to be happy.” Fritz would then state, “Oh boy, do you have a lot to learn.”

For Fritz, happiness was a by-product of a meaningful life. Happiness was not a goal.

Fritz later taught at Emerson College in England, where I visited him. One day, as we were walking, Fritz asked me a question. “Two men, an old man like me and a young man like you, were walking together to a train station.

The old man was carrying heavy luggage. The young man had no luggage. Who gets there first?” I answered, “The young man.” Fritz smiled and asked me, “What part of ‘together’ do you not understand?”

Fritz had the uncanny ability to judge how much someone could understand of complex ideas and go up to that point and then not beyond the individual’s capacity. He could also remember where the last conversation had left off and proceed from there.

had to wait and they would make themselves known. You would often find Fritz staring at the ground, seemingly in deep thought. He was actually hunting for four-leaf clovers.

Fritz’s kindness extended to people he had never met. When my son Kevin was born, Fritz and Bine wrote him a greeting card that included a four-leaf clover inside. These were their words to a newborn child, almost as if from a fairy tale or myth: Dear little Kevin, thank you for coming to live your earthly life with mother Linda, father Neill, and sister Nicole and all others who will love you. May you be blessed with all the blessings heaven has in store for you. And may you be a blessing for everyone else who comes our way. We wish that your dear mother will recover soon from giving birth to you and also thank your dear father very much for announcing unto us your happy arrival. We rejoice with them.

A young Professor Fritz Koelln (left) with an unidentified student on the steps of Moulton Union.

For five years after retiring from Bowdoin, Fritz taught a three-week Goethe class at the school where I taught. He stayed with my wife and me in our home. Each dinnertime was an advanced course in Christology, Western literature, philosophy, and anthroposophy.

One of the lasting images I have of Fritz is standing outside Kimberton Farms school.

Two young girls were waiting to be picked up by their mother. They were turning graceful cartwheels on the grass. Fritz looked at them, smiled, and said, “I can’t wait to come back and do that again!” Fritz experienced ideas as living realities, not as dead concepts. He suggested trying on an idea as you would a jacket and walking around in it for a while. If it fit, keep it.

If not, discard it. Fritz thought of reincarnation as a Christian idea. We are given an opportunity to amend our previous transgressions and to improve our Christlike nature. To Fritz it was hubris to assume we could do this in one life.

As he got into his eighties, he once showed me where carpenters were installing shelves in a back room of his home. Fritz said, “This is the room where I am going to die.” There was no bed yet, just shelves. “These shelves will have my favorite 3,000 books so I don’t have to go up or down steps.” His books were his friends and companions during life, and he wanted to visit them again and again.

Finding four-leaf clovers was a special skill that Fritz practiced everywhere. He said you just

PHOTO: GEORGE J. MITCHELL DEPARTMENT OF SPECIAL COLLECTIONS & ARCHIVES

Fritz was Michaelic. He was not afraid of confronting evil. At one point he said, “Your generation is very brave!” I had always thought the opposite, that my generation was weak and lacked grit. I looked puzzled. Fritz immediately started talking of how, before we are born, we view the world and its environs as we are incarnating. Fritz said to see the darkness of World War I, World War II, and the Holocaust demanded brave souls who still wanted to incarnate. He then stated that you had to be brave to be born into a modern world that was so spiritually dark.

He became emphatic. “You must carry the light through the darkness, no matter how dark it becomes. Always carry the light. Always carry the light and protect it.”

Fritz Carl August Koelln, Professor of German and George Taylor Files Professor of Modern Languages Emeritus, taught at Bowdoin from 1929–1971. He died at home in Brunswick in 1986 at age eighty-five.

Neill Reilly ’71, director of business development at SS&C Technologies, spent six years as a Waldorf high school English teacher, inspired by his friend and mentor Fritz Koelln. This essay is excerpted from Reilly’s forthcoming book, Look at What We Can Become: Portraits of Five Remarkable Individuals, available via SteinerBooks.com and the Bowdoin Store.

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HAPPY PEOPLE SKI FASTER Led by coach Nathan Alsobrook ’97, the Bowdoin Nordic ski team is quirky, competitive, and above all else, fun.

BY NATHANIEL HERZ ’09

PHOTOGRAPHS BY TRISTAN SPINSKI

T

THE SUMMER BEFORE her senior year at Bowdoin,

Kaitlynn Miller ’14 had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Miller, who grew up in Vermont, received a grant from the National Science Foundation to work on a research project in Alaska. She’d be based out of one of the world’s premier Arctic field stations—a remote site seven hours from Fairbanks on the road truckers drive to the Prudhoe Bay oil fields.

There was one problem: Miller was a member of Bowdoin’s Nordic ski team—and the summer is a critical time for endurance training that pushes ski racers to their best performances in the winter. Alaska would deprive Miller of key ingredients in a well-rounded training plan, like a fully equipped gym or even hills she could run—not to mention working out with teammates.

Miller was a star on the team. She’d already become Bowdoin’s highest-placing woman since the school started competing at the elite Division I level. But she hadn’t wanted skiing to be her life’s main focus—she was thinking about studying to be an Arctic ecologist.

Many high-level coaches would have balked at an athlete planning a summer at a remote field station, but Miller’s coach at Bowdoin, Nathan Alsobrook ’97, embraced her plans.

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“It was like a personal challenge for Nathan to figure out interesting alternative training techniques. And I think part of him kind of enjoyed that,” Miller remembers. “You felt like he had your back in making it work.”

Miller set off for her Alaska summer with training ideas from Alsobrook, along with a shaving cream can-sized device called an Exer-Genie. It would hang from any door: Miller could train by pulling a rope through it to strengthen her arms.

That creativity, flexibility, and persistence has long been a hallmark of Bowdoin’s crosscountry ski team.

With her coach’s endorsement, Miller’s summer in Alaska did not derail her skiing career.

And her subsequent athletic accomplishments parallel successes for Alsobrook and the whole Bowdoin team, which for the past decade has steadily pushed itself up the ranks of the competitive East Coast ski circuit.

Last year, three Bowdoin cross-country skiers qualified for the NCAA national championships— its largest group ever. Jake Adicoff ’18 won a silver medal at the Paralympic Games in South Korea in a race for visually impaired athletes.

And Miller? Two years after winning her first national championship, she made the US Olympic team last winter. But not before she had to

employ some creative training techniques at that Arctic field station.

When Miller was deciding where to go to college, cross-country skiing wasn’t her biggest priority. And in a way, she chose Bowdoin in spite of its ski team.

Miller grew up racing in Vermont, and she was already a junior national champion by the time she arrived in Brunswick. Her ski-racing transcript was a better fit for schools such as Dartmouth, Williams, or the University of Vermont. Bowdoin fielded ski teams that were long on enthusiasm and work ethic, but comparatively short on talent and support. When Peter Caldwell ’78 qualified to race at the NCAA championships decades ago, he said, “I had to go ask for funds to race, and I think I had to rent a car.”

Over the years, the program managed to attract successful athletes sporadically. But many of those athletes came with a common thread: They didn’t want sports to be at the center of their college experience.

“I don’t think I could have lived that life of just skiing, eating, sleeping, training,” said Caldwell, who came from a family of elite skiers.

“I didn’t do sports to get into college. And so, if the ski program wasn’t developing me as much as it could, that wasn’t my top priority. That was one of, like, five priorities.”

The current team conducts many of its workouts off campus, on roads and trails in rural parts of Brunswick and Topsham. While some schools have their own dedicated ski areas, it’s only in the past fifteen years that Bowdoin athletes have had regular access to professionally designed trails. Even now, their winter ski workouts are a thirty-minute drive from campus at Pineland Farms in New Gloucester. Before that, the team made do with multi-use trails in Topsham, groomed by a coach on a snowmobile.

“We had our whole team pitch in, early in the season. We’d be out there with pulaskis and pulling out roots and stumps, getting those trails ready to go,” said Bill Yeo, who coached at Bowdoin between 1994 and 1999.

Cross-country skiing presents an unusual set of physiological demands. It requires heavy full-body strength work, plus long workouts for endurance. Then there are lung-busting sets of hill repeats and higher-speed ski workouts.

The team also has machines at Farley Field House, similar to rowing ergometers, to build arm strength for ski poling. They’re far from the most exciting workout; Athletic Director Tim Ryan describes seeing skiers using the machines and “kind of staring at the wall.”

“The work that goes into participating in a race is not glamorous at all,” he said. “You have to love what you’re doing to put in that amount of preparation.”

Ryan graduated from Bowdoin in 1998 and knew some skiers as a student, but he’d never seen a competition until he returned to the College as a staff member. He came away with a deeper appreciation for the sport.

“Even so much of the competitions take place in obscurity,” he said. “Two-thirds of the race can be in the woods. And that’s similar to the training—a lot of things happen outside of the public eye.”

While the sport calls for tenacity, practically everyone associated with Bowdoin skiing will also tell you the team has always emphasized fun—even when it lagged in race results.

Yeo, a mountaineer and adventurer when he wasn’t coaching, took his athletes winter camping. Today, an annual Quebec training camp includes a team-cooked Thanksgiving dinner.

During Winter Break, athletes divide into

Nordic ski team members (top) Triana Willmert ’22, Russell O’Brien ’20, (middle) Elliot Ketchel ’21, Perrin Milliken ’22, (bottom) Sean Cork ’19, and Renae Anderson ’21.

Opposite page: Skiers warm up before the Quarry Road Opener, a preseason 7.2-kilometer freestyle race at the Quarry Road Recreational Area in Waterville in December.

Opening spread: Elliot Ketchel ’21 at the Quarry Road Opener.

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He admits that the eighteen-year-old version of himself wouldn’t be able to make it today.

miniature teams to compete in events like freethrow shooting, water polo, and word games.

There’s even a staple fall workout in which the team skis on sand at the beach at Morse Mountain in Phippsburg. Under Alsobrook, athletes have adopted a motto: “Happy people ski faster.”

“We bring a lot of good focus when it needs to happen, and intensity,” said Elliot Ketchel ’21, the team’s top male finisher last year. “But as a team, we’re very lighthearted. We joke around with each other a lot.”

Alsobrook skied under Yeo in the 1990s, after growing up in northern Vermont. Alsobrook’s friends describe him as goofy, folksy, and thoughtful, if not an especially gifted athlete. One teammate and longtime friend, Nicole Wobus ’97, said she always thought Alsobrook would be a writer—he graduated

Head Coach Nathan Alsobrook ’97 encourages Kaitlynn Miller ’14 during the 10k freestyle race at the Colby Carnival in January 2014 at Quarry Road in Waterville.

Opposite page: The team took to the beach for a sand skiing workout in Phippsburg in December.

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from Bowdoin with a degree in English. Yeo remembered Alsobrook constantly wearing plaid flannel shirts and having an appetite for junk food that teammates needled him about.

Skiing was barely a focus for Alsobrook when he arrived at college.

“The thing that I’m proud of as a Bowdoin skier is that I went from being completely terrible to being a solid mid-pack guy,” Alsobrook says.

But by the time he graduated, the sport had become part of his identity, and the glue for his social circle. He left Bowdoin and took a series of coaching jobs, getting a master’s degree in exercise physiology in Montana.

For nearly a decade before Alsobrook arrived back in Brunswick in 2007, Marty Hall, a former US and Canadian national team coach, ran the Bowdoin team. Hall had stepped away from highlevel competition and wanted to get back into coaching, though he wanted a job that wasn’t as all-consuming as work at the international level.

By the time he got to Bowdoin, Hall was in his sixties. He’d been a three-sport athlete at the University of New Hampshire—football, skiing, and track—and served in a special military unit in Alaska that trained athletes in biathlon (skiing and shooting). Accordingly, he brought a level of bluntness, sharpness, and crustiness best summed up by his reaction to a certain strength test that he administered in the Bowdoin weight room.

“You’re weak,” he told me, a then seventeenyear-old high school senior. He then added: “Work hard, and you’ll make gains.”

Hall’s demanding style worked better for some than it did for others. But no one disputes that he was a relentless advocate for the team and dedicated to his athletes, even though few went on to race at the level of the skiers in his past.

Alsobrook credits Hall with creating the structure that allowed Bowdoin’s team to start advancing, like securing money for a paid assistant coach and finding consistent areas for dryland training. When Alsobrook arrived, “all of those foundational blocks were already there,” he said. “I feel like Marty did the hard work. I had what I needed to build a competitive team.”

Alsobrook’s approach to the sport is as serious as that of any of his peers. But his skiers and friends say he still coaches with a kind of

PHOTO (LEFT): STEVE FULLER, @FLYINGPOINT

quiet consistency and a dry sense of humor that leaves his athletes feeling unpressured.

“He’s incredible at making sure people are just happy at Bowdoin, as opposed to just skiing fast,” said Ketchel. “He’s got these fantastic quirks where he’s kind of sarcastic and is really good at keeping everything light and happy, while still being really driven to do well and be super supportive of people.”

When Kaitlynn Miller came to visit Bowdoin in 2009, the school was not at the top of her list. She didn’t even contact Alsobrook on her first visit. And when she came back to meet with him, she found him sharing an office with the volleyball coach.

Miller describes herself as a “quieter person”— her non-skiing hobbies include knitting and painting—and she appreciated that Alsobrook’s idea of a meeting was talking on a walk around campus. She found that her ideas about balancing skiing and college aligned with Alsobrook’s.

“It wasn’t one over the other,” she said.

“I kept reminding myself that the success of the team wasn’t why I was choosing a college. The academics were what I wanted. The coach was what I wanted,” she said. “The building blocks were there to support me.” And that’s why when Miller found herself plotting her summer in Alaska in 2013, she had the backing of her coach.

When she arrived, it turned out that their plan required some changes. There was only one road running past the field station. Miller had hoped to run on it, but it turned out that it was under construction from early in the morning to late at night. Instead, she ran on the camp’s one-mile access road—often wearing a full bug shirt to fend off hordes of mosquitoes. The rest of the people at the field station “thought I was a little nuts,” Miller said.

Then, when the indoor treadmill broke, she did her interval sessions on an elliptical machine. “Which was awful. But it was totally worth it for the experience of being up there,” she said.

The following winter, Miller had Bowdoin’s best-ever finish on the Eastern Intercollegiate Skiing Association circuit—second place at one of the races at Williams College. She set another school record by placing nineteenth at the NCAA championships. That year, James Crimp ’14 skied those races with her, making 2014 the first year Bowdoin qualified two athletes. (Before that, Peter Caldwell ’78 and Nicole Wobus ’97—three times—were the only Bowdoin skiers ever to qualify.)

Last year, Bowdoin sent three skiers to the championships for the first time: Ketchel, Gabrielle Vandendries ’21, and Renae Anderson ’21.

The program’s success has presented Alsobrook with a dilemma: He’s had to start cutting people from the team. And he admits that the eighteen-year-old version of himself wouldn’t be able to make it today. “I would not even be close,” he says.

He’s worked hard to make sure that the team’s improvement hasn’t come at the expense of fun—what he describes as the team’s “soul.”

And his athletes say he’s succeeded.

“That’s in part because of the way that Nathan fosters the team culture. But it’s also because of who’s on the team and who comes here,” said Fiona Ahearne ’20. “We have a reputation now of finally being competitive, but not losing the fun and the love for the sport. I don’t think that you can really be good at skiing if you don’t love it.”

Nathaniel Herz ’09, a former Bowdoin Nordic skier, is based in Anchorage, Alaska, and covers the environment for Alaska Public Media’s Energy Desk.

He spent several years as a reporter at the Anchorage Daily News and has reported on cross-country ski racing and biathlon for FasterSkier.com.

Tristan Spinski’s photos can be found in Audubon, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. He lives in Portland.

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BY PHILIP KIEFER ’18 PHOTOGRAPHS BY BROOKE FITTS

Destination UWAJIMAYA Everyone in Seattle knows Uwajimaya, a mainstay of the city’s famous marketplace for three generations. To see the family-owned business survive and thrive, president and CEO Denise Moriguchi ’98 must balance its remarkable history with necessary change.

U

UWAJIMAYA CALLS TO PEOPLE from across the city.

International students from the University of Washington come down to pick up frozen dumplings. Elderly couples are bused in on Tuesday mornings and stand in the aisles sifting intently through fruit. Young men with flashy pants pick out salmon fillets. It calls to people from across the Puget Sound. Pink-haired teenagers from Puyallup and Aberdeen, dressed in fuzzy boots and anime T-shirts, travel like pilgrims to stand outside the Japanese bookstore. On a school day, field trips release middle school students into the aisles, where they fan out like fish on a reef. They come back to their chaperones bearing Ramune, a fluorescent Japanese soda.

A self-described Asian food and gift market (although the company dabbles in wholesale and real estate), Uwajimaya’s flagship retail store sits on the border between downtown Seattle and the Chinatown-International District. It’s one of those businesses that’s become an institution, symbolic of an entire neighborhood. But, as Denise Moriguchi ’98, Uwajimaya’s president and CEO, is quick to point out, that doesn’t mean the business can rest on its laurels. Moriguchi is the third generation of her family to run Uwajimaya—she took over the

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role in 2017, when her aunt retired—and she finds herself guiding the company through a period of massive regional upheaval, as the tech boom pulls in tens of thousands of high-paid workers. “My family has always been a proponent of growing the International District.

We’ve said, let’s respect its past, but make it somewhere everyone can enjoy.”

She says that the most difficult part of the learning process hasn’t necessarily been adapting to the changing city; it’s been figuring out how to steer a family business. “I have a long history to think about. Whenever you make changes, it can seem like you’re putting a piece of that history away.”

Since taking over, Moriguchi has overseen two major expansions of Uwajimaya. The first, the redevelopment of an historic apartment complex a block north of the flagship store, is the culmination of a longtime goal to bring new residents and vibrancy into the International District. The second expansion is a newer concept—Kai Market, a store in the heart of the high-tech South Lake Union neighborhood.

Kai Market is a place to test out new strategies.

It’s much smaller than the flagship store, or any of the other Uwajimaya grocery stores scattered

around the area. It’s geared less toward grocery shoppers and more toward the twenty- to thirtysomething set seeking complete meals. Kai sells a lot of poke (a sashimi and rice bowl), a cashier tells me, and not much fruit. One of the impetuses for giving the new store a name that is easier to pronounce than Uwajimaya, Moriguchi says, came from watching an interview on TV of former Seattle Seahawks player Michael Bennett, who replied when asked what he liked to make his kids for dinner, “Wagyu steak from Ujimama.” Bennett’s mispronunciation is a testament to Uwajimaya’s brand strength, that you immediately knew exactly what store he meant—what else could it be? But Moriguchi, who has spent much of her professional life in branding and marketing, winces when she tells the story. “It is a really hard name to pronounce,” she says, and that might make it harder to appeal to new Seattleites. (As it happens, figuring out the correct pronunciation—oo-wah-gee-my-yuh—is a Seattle tradition.

People have been asking for pronunciation advice since the early days of the Internet, and even many in the International District call it “Wajimaya.” It’s named for the Japanese town of Uwajima, where founder Fujimatsu Moriguchi,

Uwajimaya’s main store is a landmark in the International District of Seattle.

Like her father before her, CEO Denise Moriguchi ’98 works alongside Uwajimaya’s employees.

Freshly cooked Dungeness crab for sale at Uwajimaya.

Opening spread: Moriguchi stands in front of colorful Japanese snack packages in the company’s flagship store.

Denise’s grandfather, learned his trade—“Ya” means “store” in Japanese.)

Denise explains that Kai Market is meant to be “an introduction to Uwajimaya. It’s a different concept, so we wanted to brand it differently. To give it an Asian influence, but making it approachable to everyone.” Eventually, she says, the changes at the new store will ripple back to the old one.

“We’re working on a remodel of the main store,” she says. “We want to modernize its look and feel,” which means updating both the offerings and the experience of shopping itself.

“We’re finding that people want more instant things. Take Japanese foods for New Year’s.

There are many different foods with different meanings, but making them is laborious.

People want to support traditions, but they want things to be more convenient.” Convenience isn’t enough, though—she wants to give people a reason to come into the store. The other component of modernization, she tells me, is education. “You have a whole aisle of sauce, but how will someone know the difference between, say, dark soy sauce and light soy sauce?

You could buy a jar of soy sauce from Amazon, but we can help you learn about it. We want to

WHENEVER YOU MAKE CHANGES, IT CAN SEEM LIKE YOU’RE PUTTING A PIECE OF HISTORY AWAY. make shopping something fun, something to look forward to.”

I’m not a disinterested observer in this story: I grew up visiting the flagship store. It was a treat, somewhere with a bookstore full of Japanese comics and mochi ice cream and a food court with bahn mi and loco moco. If you needed it, and couldn’t find it elsewhere, it was there. My grandparents once scoured the city looking for Jerusalem artichokes—a vegetable normally eaten by homesteaders freezing to death on the plains of North Dakota—and, after visiting every store in our neighborhood, gave Uwajimaya a call. Uwajimaya’s produce department not only had it, they set aside an entire case to be picked up that day.

But I don’t want to give the sense that Uwajimaya was a place to tour the exotic. It was a

place that introduced me to living in a city of immigrants. While I read about early Chinese theater in the Wing Luke Museum and visited the Panama Hotel to witness furniture left behind by interned families, at Uwajimaya, I had my own experiences. I ate dragonfruit and Filipino candy and shopped for Japanese office supplies, and those things became part of my city and my home. As Uwajimaya changes, I wonder if it could lose some of that power. In other neighborhoods, development has had a way of scouring away texture, and I wondered if modernizing the store also meant compromising.

The question is on Moriguchi’s mind, too.

“That’s the thing I struggle with every day,” she told me. “We’re always going to be an Asian store, and most people in this area are fortunate—they’re open to flavors from everywhere.

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But fresh salmon is fresh salmon. I don’t want us to be Whole Foods, but I also don’t want to shut people out.”

She also suggested that my question might be based on a misread of the business. Since the 1960s, Uwajimaya has introduced Asian products to a wide audience. “My push is to educate, to bring people into the store. We want to share the culture with everyone.” You can read the changes, like I did initially, as a dilution of the business, or you can read it as fidelity to its core business model: to appeal across cultures.

The story of the Moriguchi family has almost mythic qualities to it. Denise’s grandfather, Fujimatsu, reportedly smuggled himself into Washington from Japan as a young man. He and his wife, Sadako, settled in Tacoma, where they opened a small business selling Japanese snacks to immigrants building the Northwest’s infrastructure. “At first, his target audience

Denise’s grandfather, Fujimatsu, in front of the Uwajimaya booth at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair.

Patrons line up at Uwajimaya’s new Kai Market for lunch.

Poke, a sashimi and rice bowl, one of Kai Market’s most popular items.

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was Japanese laborers working in fisheries, mining, and timber,” said Denise. Her grandparents were successful because they were able to sell a taste of home to those workers, and their family and business grew.

As the United States entered the Second World War, Japanese Americans on the West Coast were forced from their homes by the military, and the Moriguchi family was relocated to an internment camp at Tule Lake. At the end of the war, many Japanese families went east to avoid lingering racism, but the Moriguchi family returned to the Northwest and reopened Uwajimaya. There, they helped rebuild the Japanese business community, offering loans and work to their neighbors. “The reputation became, ‘If you go to Uwajimaya, they will help you,’” Denise’s father said.

By the 1960s, the company had become successful enough to open a booth at the World’s Fair. The fair, nominally a science exposition, also exposed Seattle to its own gastronomic diversity. There, Uwajimaya found a new audience. “It was a turning point for [Fujimatsu], I think. He realized he wanted to move beyond the Japanese community,” says Denise.

Although Fujimatsu died during the summer of the fair, his vision has shaped the course of the business ever since. Uwajimaya has spent the last sixty years expanding and seeking out new audiences. As much as anything else, it’s that forward momentum that defines the business.

That’s a lesson that Moriguchi picked up through a childhood in the store. I may have visited Uwajimaya as a child, but she grew up there. Her father, Tomio, was CEO throughout her childhood, and her entire family worked in the store. She’s told reporters about her memories of holiday events, pounding mochi for New Year’s, but the day-to-day rhythm of the store also left an impression. “I’d go to the store with my dad as a kid, and while he worked, I’d just hang out. My grandma worked in the deli, and I had friends I would go bother. I felt very comfortable just traipsing around the store.”

When she thinks about running the company, her father’s example is always close at hand.

“My dad’s always been a model—the way he led, the way he’d work alongside his employees. I’d always see him picking up trash and

pushing carts. No job too big or too small. Now I make my own daughter do that.” For Moriguchi, respecting her family’s history is as much about how the business is run—an emphasis on customer service, approachability, and innovation—as it is about its cultural role in the International District.

Part of her job is making sure that the next generation learns the same lessons that she did.

“I have two kids who are three and six, and we want to make sure that they feel like they’re part of the business. Even just being around the store, and being involved in the Christmas events. They may not end up working in the business, but it’s important that they know what it means to be part of this.”

Kai Market, the newest addition, sits just on the edge of the main Amazon campus, tucked between developments with names like “Ascent” and “Sprout.” The store, not much larger than a corner grocery, blends in smoothly with the neighborhood: high ceilings, exposed ductwork, iron beams painted matte black. It’s got a sleek, curated feel, accented by old staples in the window: boxes of Pocky, the Japanese biscuit-sticks, six-packs of Sapporo beer. Designing the store was another question of balance,

PHOTO (LEFT): COURTESY MORIGUCHI FAMILY

she says. She wanted to match the feel of the neighborhood but also “wanted to bring things that were uniquely Uwajimaya.” The space is arranged around a long deli counter that offers Uwajimaya’s lunchtime staples: poke, barbecued pork, hum bao. On the front of the counter is a poster: “How to Order Poke.” (The instructions are pretty simple: Choose a grain on the bottom, choose a fish in the middle, put some sesame over the top. The surprise is that you can get poke over wonton nachos.)

The first time I stepped inside, I was alone except for an elderly woman lobbing questions over the poke bar: “You make this fresh? Every day?” Every day, they reassured her, and she went on her way with a bowl of fish. I picked out an ice-cream bar shaped like a fish and approached a cashier. I asked if it was always this quiet. He looked up at me with wide eyes.

Another cashier looked over and laughed.

“Oh no. You should see it at lunch. There’s a line out the door from eleven forty-five to one o’clock, every day.”

So, the next week, I went back for lunch.

The lunch rush begins with a trickle just before noon, as promised, and swells to a torrent in minutes. The food clearly has power: I watched

a couple walk in, shake their heads at the line, and then take their place in it anyway.

I asked Moriguchi how she’d ended up at Bowdoin, why she’d left a city where her family was so deeply rooted. As it happens, she and I went to the same high school, the kind of West Coast prep school that models itself after ivy-covered East Coast boarding schools. It was, we agreed, a place that made it seem like the East Coast was the goal. “I don’t think I even looked at schools in Washington or California,” she told me. “The East Coast had so much history—all these old, beautiful campuses.

It felt like this revered place for education.”

When she left Seattle for Maine, the city felt like it was just over the edge of the map. “The only thing people knew about it was [the band] Nirvana,” she said. “First year, I met a guy who was so disappointed that I didn’t wear flannels.”

Watching Seattle find its place on the map could be part of why Moriguchi feels the push to modernize Uwajimaya so acutely. I asked if she found herself worrying about the changes she’s seen—Seattle is full of hand-wringing with various levels of justifiability. Not exactly, she told me, although she sees why others might.

“The fact that Amazon is here, and Microsoft,

means we have a different set of customers.

That has brought an opportunity for us. Seattle has changed, we have to acknowledge that.”

I bring this up because that’s not the dynamic to which we’ve returned. The surprising thing about moving back to Seattle, Moriguchi told me, was finding that the city had become a destination. “I have so many friends who’ve moved here.” She came back because the Northwest always felt like home. “Part of going to the East Coast was being able to find my own identity.

Here, someone always knows your father, your aunt, your cousin. But your roots are real, and especially when I had my daughter, I wanted her to be around her cousins. Growing up in Seattle is a big part of your identity, even if you don’t realize it.”

Philip Kiefer ’18 is a freelance writer based in Seattle.

His work has appeared in National Geographic and Down East Magazine.

Brooke Fitts’s photography has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bon Appétit, Wine Spectator, Food & Wine, Glamour, GQ, and many other publications.

She lives in Seattle.

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“Climb Katahdin” shows up on many a student to-do list, and many knew of the connection between the mountain and American writer Henry David Thoreau before even coming to Bowdoin. Perhaps lesser known is that Baxter State Park, and the condition that it be kept “forever wild,” is thanks to a member of the Bowdoin Class of 1898 and what became known as his “magnificent obsession.”

A MAGNIFICENT

OBSESSION

A

BY MATTHEW KLINGLE AT 5,267 FEET, Katahdin is Maine’s tallest peak.

Shaped like a giant bent horseshoe, the granite massif straddles the East and West Branches of the Penobscot River and rises above Maine’s North Woods. By the standards of Utah, my home state, Katahdin seems small. But ask anyone who has climbed it, and they will attest to its steep, punishing trails.

What Katahdin lacks in absolute elevation it claims in cultural prominence. Named for a Wabanaki term for “largest or most eminent mountain,” it stands on indigenous Penobscot land. The peak’s importance also comes from its association with Percival Proctor Baxter, Class of 1898, who bequeathed the peak and surrounding lands to the state of Maine. In his initial 1931 gift, he directed that his donation “forever be left in the natural wild state.” Baxter’s injunction became a mantra for his eponymous park: forever wild. Yet, like any wilderness, Katahdin was not so much protected and preserved as created and managed. As my former student Luke McKay ’07 argued in his honors thesis, the history of “the wilderness idea in Maine” raises important questions about Maine’s greatest mountain and other wild regions as well.

The path toward “forever wild” began with Henry David Thoreau, who visited Katahdin in the autumn of 1846. When he left for Maine, Thoreau, just shy of thirty, was still an obscure

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Harvard graduate working part-time in his family’s pencil factory. He was also midway through his two-year stay at Walden Pond, just outside of Concord, Massachusetts, where his experiment of simple living would fix his star in the firmament of environmental thought. Yet Thoreau was no hardened outdoorsman—as he admitted in Walden, he routinely took trips into town, where his mother did the laundry.

Maine was a different affair. Writing in The Maine Woods, Thoreau imagined himself going into “a primitive wood,” but his own words belied the hyperbole. He traveled from Concord to Bangor by rail and steamer, then hired Penobscots and lumbermen as guides. Along the way, he documented a peopled landscape: native children spearing salmon, sawmills belching smoke and dust, and hardscrabble farms of log huts and rock-strewn fields. His conflicting observations ramified as he neared Katahdin.

He noted both the “free and happy evergreen trees,” as well as the “dark side of Ktaadn” with its “permanent shadow” looming over the forest.

When he began his final ascent, stormy weather made the hike across “a vast aggregation of loose rocks” difficult and thwarted his two summit attempts. Back in Concord, he reimagined his sojourn as an earnest errand into the wild. “Nature here was something savage and awful, though beautiful,” he wrote. “Here was no

man’s garden, but the unhandshelled globe.…

It was the fresh and natural surface of the planet Earth, as it was made forever and ever.”

Thoreau’s idea of wilderness was romantic and religious. That idea later evolved to address anxieties over vanishing scenery and resources.

In 1840, almost 87 percent of Maine was covered by forest. By 1872, only a little more than half remained. That same year, America’s first national park, Yellowstone, was created to salvage the West’s once mighty bison herds. Twenty years later, New York established Adirondack State Park to spare forests imperiled by logging.

The following year, in 1893, at Chicago’s Columbian Exposition, a young history professor named Frederick Jackson Turner declaimed the end of the frontier and with it the driving force behind American greatness. Wilderness had morphed from a place of fear or redemption into what historian William Cronon identified as a “quintessential location” for national identity.

The wild now needed safeguarding. The conservation movement had arrived.

Percival Proctor Baxter came of age with that movement. Like many early conservationists, Baxter, born in 1876, came from privilege.

His father, James Phinney Baxter, cofounded the Portland Packing Company, one of New England’s largest canners of produce and seafood. A six-term Republican mayor of Port-

land, the elder Baxter later became a Bowdoin overseer and generous philanthropist. An avid outdoorsman, he also took his children on fishing and camping trips across Maine.

The younger Baxter inherited both his family’s fortune and the obligations that great wealth entailed. He excelled at Bowdoin, working as an editor of The Orient, cofounding The Bowdoin Quill, the College’s literary magazine, and graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

After completing his law degree at Harvard, he returned to Maine, managed his family’s enterprises, and directed his father’s mayoral campaign in 1904, which launched his own political career. Baxter served multiple terms in the Maine House of Representatives and Senate.

In 1920, after reelection to the Senate, he was also elected its president with the help of his brother Rupert Henry Baxter, Class of 1894, a state senator from Bath. Early the following year, when Governor Frederic H. Parkhurst died after only twenty-six days in office, Baxter became the youngest governor in state history. Reelected in 1922, he declined to seek a third term, choosing instead to pursue what scholar Howard Whitcomb called his “magnificent obsession”: creating a state park with Katahdin as its centerpiece.

Baxter’s Katahdin fixation began while he was a politician. During his second stint in the House, he recalled trying to persuade his

fellow legislators to “purchase the mountainous regions around Mt. Katahdin.” His colleagues instead backed a substitute bill in 1919 that allowed for a future state park using donated land. The following summer, Baxter, then in the Senate, joined an expedition to Katahdin organized by lumberman Burton W. Howe to promote a state park for Maine’s centennial.

After the trip, Baxter introduced legislation in January 1921 to create “Mt. Katahdin State Park.” Addressing the Maine Sportsmen’s Fish and Game Association that month, he asked Mainers to think of the future. “This park will prove a blessing to those who follow us,” he implored, urging them to reject corporations as the sole owners of “millions of acres of Maine forests.” But, with Parkhurst’s sudden death and Baxter’s subsequent promotion as governor, support for the proposed legislation eroded and the proposal was never passed.

As governor, Baxter continued to agitate for a Katahdin park, but he also had a broader conservation agenda. When first elected to the legislature as a progressive Republican, he believed in public oversight of natural resources and utilities. He introduced the Fernald Law in 1909 that forbade exporting hydroelectric power. He also endorsed restoring cutover timber lands in the North Woods. Yet, a committed conservationist in the mold of such contemporaries as Theodore

PHOTOS: (RIGHT) GEORGE J. MITCHELL DEPARTMENT OF SPECIAL COLLECTIONS & ARCHIVES (OPENING SPREAD) ARTHUR G. ROGERS, COURTESY OF BAXTER’S GREAT-NEPHEW HOUGHTON WHITE ’58 AND FAMILY

Student portrait of Percival Proctor Baxter, Class of 1898, by G.B. Webber.

View northwest toward Katahdin’s Hamlin Peak from Pamola Peak in Baxter State Park.

Opening spread: Governor Baxter inspects the plaque commemorating his gift of Katahdin and Baxter State Park to the State of Maine.

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There were four main areas of contention: automobiles, forestry, hunting, and snowmobiling.

Hunt Trail on Katahdin, looking toward Kidney Pond, ca. 1931 Opposite page: On Daicy Pond, 1931 A campsite in the Katahdin region, 1935

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Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, first head of the US Forest Service, Baxter also believed in the proper management of resources.

But Baxter’s fealty to conservation failed to sway Maine’s timber barons. Beyond board feet of lumber, they also saw tourism dollars in the North Woods. As McKay found in his thesis, timber and railway companies had been promoting outdoor recreation in the region since the late nineteenth century. Sporting camps dotted the area, and large landowners nurtured support for their monopoly by allowing public access to private property. “Mainers more or less had common access to the land,” McKay argued, “but not common stewardship.” Given this arrangement, persuading legislators or their rural constituents on the need for a park proved daunting.

By the time Baxter left the Blaine House, he had become a committed preservationist as well. Foiled in Augusta, Baxter turned to his family’s pocketbook. By the late 1920s, he began purchasing, piece by piece, parcels that included Katahdin and its environs. Baxter presented his first gift in 1931 and, two years later, in January 1933—thanks to the 1919 bill that allowed for the establishment of state parks from donated land—the legislature accepted the offering and created Baxter State Park.

For the next thirty-plus years, Baxter added to his original gift of 5,960 acres while trying to balance his conservationist and preservationist impulses. The first test was keeping the new state park out of federal hands. A 1935 report by the National Park Service on Katahdin’s recreational potential opened the discussion. Two years later, US Representative Ralph Owen Brewster, Bowdoin Class of 1909, a fellow Republican and longtime rival of Baxter’s, introduced legislation to create a Katahdin National Park.

Brewster recruited powerful backers for his bill, including Myron Avery, Class of 1920, a Lubec native and head of the Appalachian Trail Conference who supported federal control to ensure the peak would be the trail’s northern terminus.

Baxter had good reason to reject overtures for a national park. Looking west, he could cite numerous instances where Uncle Sam had promoted private concessions in national parks, from swanky hotels to auto camps. In a 1937 editorial for The Portland Press Herald, Baxter

claimed that the Park Service would “commercialize this magnificent area.” Automobiles aroused Baxter’s ire in particular because so many national parks were planned around the idea of “windshield wilderness,” as historian David Louter termed the concept. Baxter found supporters in the venerable Appalachian Mountain Club and the newly created Wilderness Society. He and his allies prevailed, and the legislation died in Congress.

As Baxter acquired more acreage for the park, he had to accept more compromises.

There were four main areas of contention: automobiles, forestry, hunting, and snowmobiling.

The first concession Baxter made was on roads.

Although he was adamant in his original 1931 gift that “no roads or ways for motor vehicles” were permissible, by the postwar era his stance became outdated, as Americans began hitting the road looking for outdoor leisure. By 1957, he admitted that some roads were necessary but cautioned that “with too many improvements the Wilderness idea will no longer be maintained.” A restricted network of graded dirt roads, mostly on the park perimeter and unplowed in winter, were the eventual result.

Hunting was a more painful concession.

Baxter was an ardent animal lover. As Rupert Baxter White ’55 remembered, his “Uncle Percy” enjoyed coming to weekly Sunday dinners with his great-nephew’s family because of their many dogs. He was never without one of his beloved Irish setters. He was also deeply opposed to hunting. The original deeds of trust stated that the park was to “forever be kept as a sanctuary for wild beasts and birds.” In a 1945 letter accompanying an addition to the park’s northern section, he opined that “hunting with cameras” should replace “hunting with guns.”

Residents in rural Aroostook and Piscataquis Counties pushed back. George Barnes, a state representative from Houlton, reminded Baxter in 1949 that restricting hunting had economic “implications to sportsmen” and “sporting camp owners” in the North Woods. He threatened to block Baxter’s next land grant. Baxter bowed to sportsmen’s demands and consented to hunting and trapping (except for moose) on about one-quarter of the park’s total acreage along the northern and southern reaches.

Forestry proved to be less controversial. He had often supported the timber industry and had championed scientific forestry as a legislator and governor. In the 1955 round of park additions, Baxter requested that new acreage in the park’s northwest quadrant be set aside as a Scientific Forest Management Area. Commenting on his travels to Germany, Canada, and other nations, he described “beautiful great forests that for centuries have been producing a crop of wood without depletion.” Today, almost 30,000 acres of what Baxter called “the chief natural resource of our State” are administered as working forest.

In contrast, Baxter refused to budge on permitting motor skis, known today as snowmobiles.

It was the last battle he fought. The dispute began when Park Supervisor Helon Taylor purchased a snowmobile in 1965 for winter travel.

The sport was becoming popular in Maine, but the two men had very different opinions.

Taylor saw no harm in allowing people to enjoy the park by “motor toboggans,” while Baxter believed that snowmobiles would “frighten away the wild animals.” Local snowmobile enthusiasts were incensed, prompting Edwin Carr of Millinocket to ask if the park was for “the use and recreation of the people” or only a chosen few who desired “a private park for their own selfishness.” Because Baxter did not stipulate any specific restrictions in his deeds of trust, the Baxter State Park Commission eventually yielded in the late 1990s and allowed limited snowmobiling on the Park Tote Road.

Baxter never saw the eventual bargain over snowmobiles. He died in 1969 at the age of ninety-two, and, having never married, left behind a hefty endowment to support the park. Together with entrance fees, donations, and timber revenue, the park is independently financed and directed by the Baxter State Park Authority—which includes the attorney general, the director of the Maine Forest Service, and the commissioner of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife—in consultation with advisory committees.

Thanks to additional gifts and purchases, the park now stands at 209,644 acres.

Since its founding, Baxter State Park has never been fully wild, and today the park faces the same pressures as other wild areas. Since Baxter’s death, outdoor recreation has become big

PHOTOS: COLLECTION OF MAINE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

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24 23 26 Baxter State Park

27

20

A Patchwork Park

22 21

9

2

7

8

3

5

6

18

MAINE 19

17 1

Brunswick

13

31

15 Katahdin

14

32

11

16

4

12

In the late 1920s, Percival Baxter began acquiring, piece by piece, parcels adjoining Katahdin from lumber companies and individual owners. He announced his initial gift to the state, a 5,960-acre parcel that included Katahdin, in 1931 and two years later, in January 1933, the legislature accepted the offering and created Baxter State Park. Baxter’s final gift came in 1963. Since then, additional purchases and gifts have increased the total park acreage to 209,644. In a letter to Governor Edmund Muskie in 1955, Baxter wrote, “A map showing the different acquisitions both small and large over the years would remind you of your grandmother’s patchwork quilt, which finally in some mysterious way came out of the confusion into one large piece.”

25

10

30

28 29

■ Gifts from Percival Baxter ■ Acquired after Baxter’s death

1. 1931: 5,960 acres; 2. 1939; 3. 1939: 11,508 acres (aggregate for 2 and 3); 4. 1940: 4,174 acres; 5. 1941: 12,000 acres; 6. 1942: 12,000 acres; 7. 1943; 8. 1944: 12,000 acres (aggregate for 7 and 8); 9. 1944: 24,682 acres; 10. 1945: 1,920 acres; 11. 1945; 12. 1945: 7,360 acres (aggregate for 11 and 12); 13. 1945: 6,355 acres; 14. 1945, 1949; 15. 1945, 1949; 16. 1945, 1949: 14,316 acres (aggregate for 14, 15, and 16); 17. 1945: 5,512 acres; 18. 1945: 6,108 acres; 19. 1947: 10,740 acres; 20. 1949: 6,247 acres; 21. 1949: 536 acres; 22. 1949: 1,486 acres; 23. 1955: 76.8 acres; 24. 1955: 14,005 acres; 25. 1955: 8,000 acres; 26. 1955: 3,569 acres; 27. 1955: 25,025 acres; 28. 1963: 7,764 acres; 29. 1992: 1,046 acres; 30. 1997: 2,669 acres; 31. 2006: 4,768 acres; 32. 2012: 143 acres

business. The park now sees upward of 75,000 visitors annually—a small number compared to Yellowstone, but far more than Baxter ever imagined. And, unlike Thoreau, many visitors climb Katahdin successfully. The vertiginous Knife’s Edge, the arête connecting Pamola Peak and Baxter Peak, the mountain’s highest prominence, can seem like a summertime walk along Portland’s Eastern Promenade. The new Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument—created with donations from Burt’s Bees magnate Roxanne Quimby and her foundation, Elliotsville Plantation, Inc., and managed by the National Park Service—will likely attract still more people.

Almost fifty years after Baxter’s death, we are in an era of peak wilderness: Our passion for wild spaces is at an apogee; the threats facing them are at their zenith. Hikers, climbers, and boaters are scarring trails and fouling waterways. Sprawling exurbs and vacation homes are pushing into the backcountry, fragmenting habitat and producing a horror show of consequences: attacks by coyotes and pumas,

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tick-borne diseases, and infernos that reduce whole towns to embers. Climate change is only accelerating the rate and intensity of the chaos. Thoreau’s vision of a terrifying wild Katahdin has now become the painful reality of the Anthropocene. As historian Stephen Pyne recently wrote, “If all we want is the wild, we will get it. If we expect a usable mix of ecological goods and services, we will have to add our hand to nature’s.”

The uncomfortable lesson of Baxter’s great obsession is that to have usable wilderness, as McKay concluded, we need to treat it more as a tended garden than a pristine plot of sacred space. Baxter himself may have agreed. According to his great-nephew White, who served for more than twenty years on the park’s Advisory Committee, “I don’t think Uncle Percy was concerned with the environment in the sense that we are today.” The idea of “forever wild” may have been a “time capsule” for the peak itself, he concluded, yet the entire park emerged from a series of decisions that grew from Baxter’s experiences as a practical-minded Mainer.

For all of its rugged majesty, Katahdin is intensively regulated. This is as it should be.

Politics alone require active management and vocal debate. The demands on our public lands and waters are many, and no user stands in a circle of virtuous purity. The historical debates over Baxter State Park, along with the more recent controversies behind the Katahdin national monument, are evidence enough.

Baxter’s gift was more than the park that bears his name. He also left behind a magnificent place where Mainers can deliberate what wilderness entails in a world where we are endlessly entangled with one another and the nature that enfolds us. We need wilderness, but we also need an expanded ethos of what wilderness is and what it can provide. The answers to that quest may lie on the slopes of Katahdin.

Matthew Klingle is associate professor of history and environmental studies and director of Bowdoin’s environmental studies program. He is the author of Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle.

ILLUSTRATION: ADAPTATION OF THE MAP THAT APPEARS IN HOWARD R. WHITCOMB’S “GOVERNOR BAXTER’S MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF BAXTER STATE PARK 1931–2006”(FRIENDS OF BAXTER STATE PARK, 2008)

Ben Ross ’22 and Raima Chakrabarti ’22 paddle South Branch Pond in Baxter State Park on their Orientation trip in August 2018.

PHOTO: TRISTAN SPINSKI

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In For the Common Good: A New History of Higher Education in America, Professor of Education Charles Dorn argues that we can’t understand what’s going on with colleges and universities today until we examine where they have come from, why they were founded, and how society has viewed their function at different points in time.

Interview by Professor of Government Paul Franco

Higher Ed in Flux Why was a new history needed?

I teach a history of higher education course and use an older volume as the text, but it never really works that well. As you know, most higher-ed histories tend to be quite narrow— examining specific colleges or universities.

Or they focus on a time period or particular topic—higher education during the Cold War, for instance. Even the door-stopper, comprehensive histories—as expansive as they are— almost always focus on elite institutions. None of them serve, I think, as a good framework for an undergraduate or graduate course of study in the history of higher education. Think about the many kinds of institutions that exist today: small liberal arts colleges, research universities, community colleges, women’s colleges, historically black colleges and universities, public institutions, private institutions—the list goes on. I was interested in writing a study that captured the variety of institutional types without focusing on just one segment.

What does your book contribute to our understanding of the so-called crisis of higher education, if it is a crisis to begin with?

And if it is a crisis, is it an unprecedented one?

Because that’s usually the adjective that’s used to describe it. I wanted to shed some light through a historical lens—rather than add more heat—to what’s happening in the US today. Through four chronological periods, I show four different ethos that have been with

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us for well over 200 years and continue to this day. We’ve had moments of transformation in American society in the past that have made for transformative moments for American higher education. This is not new.

Perhaps, at the time, people define such moments as comprising a crisis, but as we look back over history, what we see is that these were moments of transformation that led to important changes. Yet, it was not as if these transformations led to a complete collapse of higher education. Similarly, what we often hear today is that the current “crisis” is going to lead to a collapse because in the future all post-secondary education will happen, let’s say, online. The problem with this claim is that if you take the long view, there’s absolutely no reason to believe it’s going to happen. On the other hand, what is definitely going to happen, and we already see it happening, is that change is afoot.

As with society more broadly, this is a transformative moment for higher education. We’re already seeing an increase in the number of higher-ed institutions struggling financially; the current financial model simply seems unsustainable. We’re already aware of an increase in the number of mergers between institutions seeking to leverage resources.

We know that online education is becoming ubiquitous. Still, remember how MOOCs [massive open online courses] were going to take over higher education and shut down colleges and universities? That doomsday

scenario simply never materialized. Instead, what has happened, which is precisely what has happened historically, is that many colleges and universities have absorbed this “disruptive” innovation and begun using it in ways beneficial to their institutions—often in ways that fit with those places’ historical missions. In some cases, this has been successful, and in others not.

Ultimately, most colleges and universities in America will incorporate online learning into the education they provide in some form or another. Perhaps someday even Bowdoin will offer a course or two online. But none of this suggests that college is “coming to an end,” as some critics have claimed. I seriously doubt that’s going to happen. It isn’t written in the history.

Chuck Dorn is professor of education, associate dean for academic affairs, and associate affirmative action officer at Bowdoin, where he has taught since 2003.

His research into the history of education investigates the civic functions adopted by and ascribed to centers of early childhood education, public elementary and secondary schools, and colleges and universities in the US. He also recently coauthored Patriotic Education in a Global Age, which asks whether schools should attempt to cultivate patriotism and, if so, with what conception of patriotism in mind, and examines what those conceptions mean for justice, education, and human flourishing.

For an extended version of this Q&A, visit bowdoin.edu/magazine.

PHOTO: JACK MONTGOMERY

Whispering Pines

A Man of Mystery He led a life as action-packed as the pulp fiction stories he edited.

JOSEPH T. SHAW of the Class of 1895 rattled my consciousness

like a burst from a Tommy gun. Tipped off by an alumnus to Shaw’s rap sheet as a main player in the development of hard-boiled detective fiction in the 1920s and ’30s, I dug into his alumni file in Special Collections. Born in Gorham, Maine, in 1874, he was on the athletic team (track, gymnastics, and fencing), on The Orient board, a guitarist in the banjo club, and the Ivy Day odist. He worked for the New York Globe newspaper briefly, then was secretary for the American Woolen Company in Boston, where he penned From Wool to Cloth (1904) and The Wool Trade of the United States (1909). He moved back to the New York area, where he competed at the highest levels in fencing, becoming a national champion in saber in 1910.

The trail went cold until 1918, when Shaw entered the Army’s Chemical Warfare Service and was stationed in France. At the end of the war, Captain Shaw was assigned to the American Relief Administration, where he led the children’s relief effort in war-torn Prague. He was honorably discharged in September 1919 and returned to New York, where he worked as a broker. He died in 1952 in New York City. That sums up Bowdoin’s file on Joseph T. Shaw.

Shaw, however, did not vanish into obscurity. In 1926 he was hired as editor of The Black Mask, a pulp (“rough paper”) magazine that promised adventure, western, and detective stories about fiercely independent men (invariably white) who fought crime and corruption with fists and guns. The Black Mask had been cofounded by H. L. Mencken in 1920

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as a way of underwriting the costs of his highbrow Smart Set magazine. Shaw changed the name to Black Mask (dropping “The”), shifted the emphasis to detective stories, and set out to hire prolific and talented writers, including Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner.

Captain Joseph T. Shaw had his own standards for writing detective stories. Stories needed to be about character (not what he called “puzzle-solving”) and about what people do and say, and how they look (not how they feel). Hammett introduced detective Sam Spade in “The Maltese Falcon,” a story serialized in Black Mask in 1929. Raymond Chandler’s short stories were filled with humor (“It could have been a beautiful friendship . . . except for the ice pick, of course.”) and brilliance (“He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway.”). When Erle Stanley Gardner was asked why his protagonists were always down to their last bullet, he replied, “At three cents a word, every time I say ‘Bang’ in the story I get three cents. If you think I’m going to finish a gun battle while my hero still has fifteen cents’ worth of unexploded ammunition in his gun, you’re nuts.” Shaw was keen to interest Hollywood in stories from Black Mask, and Hammett, Chandler, and Gardner all achieved success in transferring their words from “rough paper” to celluloid.

A dispute over pay caused Shaw to leave Black Mask in 1936. Shaw’s ten years at Black Mask covered a lot of ground— the aftermath of a world war; rising income inequality, financial collapse, and the Great Depression; and prejudices that denied fundamental rights and opportunities to many citizens on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, and sex.

Black Mask stories exist within those specific cultural and historical contexts.

Although he wrote several novels (among them, Danger Ahead and Blood on the Curb) and a book on golf (Out of the Rough), Shaw’s strength was as an editor. His 1946 collection, The Hard-Boiled Omnibus: Early Stories from Black Mask, is his best-known work. No one will claim that Joseph Shaw was a match for Hawthorne or Longfellow, but the detective fiction that he championed launched writing careers, captured the popular imagination, infused the English language with slang that colors our vocabularies, and inspired film noir. It is a cultural and literary legacy of one Bowdoin alumnus that endures for readers, scholars, and film buffs alike.

John R. Cross ’76 is secretary of development and college relations.

ILLUSTRATION: ERIC HANSON

Connect ALUMNI NEWS AND UPDATES

NUMBERS GUY I ran track and cross-country at Bowdoin.

My father, Class of 1932, ran track under Jack Magee, who was still the coach my freshman year. I was one of the top masters (over forty) runners in the US from 1976 to 1983 and held ten US age records—including the over-fortyfive 1,500-meter run (4:07.9)—and a marathon personal record of 2:35:00. I was actually a better runner in absolute terms in my forties than I was at Bowdoin.

I didn’t do any climbing growing up in Maine.

I milked cows, slopped pigs, hoed potatoes, and worked my way through college. My first mountain was Katahdin in 1958. State high pointing [the sport of ascending to the point with the highest elevation within a given area] led to county high pointing. Colorado fourteeners [mountain peaks of at least 14,000 feet] led to thirteeners, then to other mountains in other states, and all over the world. I have hiked and climbed high points of five continents, forty-four countries, all fifty US states, 1,780 US counties, forty-nine US national parks, and 107 US national forests.

I’m very goal oriented, but I also appreciate the side benefits: beautiful scenery, keeping in shape, good friends, the challenge of striving, mental and spiritual satisfaction.

Getting into mathematics was a natural outcome of my education, though following the deductive path takes discipline and I had to work hard at it. I think that is why I was successful as a teacher. More people might be better at mathematics if we had more math teachers who really understood what it is— a way of thinking as opposed to arithmetic or calculating.

Robert Packard ’58, emeritus math professor at Northern Arizona University, is an accomplished international mountain climber and former record-setting masters runner.

A friend and fellow adventurer gave him his signature multiweather hiking cap from New Zealand. His first-year Bowdoin roommate (in 29 Hyde Hall) was Roger Howell, who became Bowdoin’s tenth president.

For more from our interview with Robert, visit bowdoin.edu/magazine.

PHOTO: CARLY ARTIST_CREDIT STRAUSS

BOWDOIN MAGAZINE WINTER 2019 | CLASSNEWS@BOWDOIN.EDU 47

Connect Peter Anastas ’59 in the archives of the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he recently donated twenty-six boxes of personal and literary papers to their collection devoted to local history and literature.

A group of classmates from 1960 gathered last spring in the Boston area for a post-55th/pre-60th minireunion: Bob LeMieux, Dick Morse, Bob Smith, Donald Bloch, Jim Gould, Bob Baldwin, Bob Spencer, Steve Loebs, Paul Johnson, Ed Dunn, Terry Sheehan, Mike Frieze, Ward O’Neill, and Pete Brown.

While on hand for the dedication of the Roux Center for the Environment, Kappa Sigma brothers Peter Webster ’62 and David Humphrey ’61 posed in front of a plaque commemorating the site as the former location of their fraternity and home of Donovan Lancaster ’27.

In June, Class of ’71 members Bill Harpin, Bob Armstrong, Fred Langerman, Dave Murray, Jack Craig, and Dave Bradeen gathered for a mini-reunion in—fittingly—Friendship, Maine.

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1957

Ed Langbein: “Familiar faces at Whittier Field last fall included Bill Cooke, Barbara and David Ham, Ed and Nancy Langbein, Tom Needham and Tom Needham Jr. ’87, Marcia Pendexter, Joanie Shepherd, and Janie Webster.

In October, Sherrie and Logan Hardie moved from Michigan to Sparks, Nebraska, where they are now eight miles from their son, his wife, two granddaughters with husbands, and three great-grands.

“Ted Parsons and Susan Morey enjoyed a week exploring the Moselle (by barge) and Rhine (by motor coach—low water precluded river travel) Valleys. They checked out a number of vineyards and particularly liked Strausbourg. They returned in time for Ted to rush up to Maine and participate with The Gentlemen Songsters in the northeastern a cappella competition.

“MaryLou and Clem Wilson had a too-short visit to Maine [last] summer to vacation and see relatives and friends. They send greetings to all. Ann and John Snow have moved south (from Port Clyde to Brunswick) for the winter, as have Vickie and Harry Carpenter (from Oxford to Kissimmee)—they will bask in the sun and add to his golf ball collection. And Dietmar Klein mentioned that he was looking forward to the October meeting of the Bowdoin Club of Germany. In February, Dietmar will give a talk on globalization at the Arcopaz of the Altikonig-Stift. He noted that, as an eager student of comparative government at Bowdoin, he feels quite well equipped to tackle the issue. At the same time, he realizes he has to recognize the length of time elapsed since the fifties of the last century.”

Erik Lund: “Sandy and I had a terrific trip in September,

a seventeen-day cruise on a Grand Circle small ship (one hundred passengers) with stops in Copenhagen, Visby, Gdansk, Riga, Tallinn, St. Petersburg (two days of exploring the Hermitage buildings and Peterhof), Helsinki, and Stockholm. Visby was the site where the Viking Harald Bluetooth buried a hoard of gold coins a thousand years ago, which was recently rediscovered by a youngster with a metal detector. ‘A trip of a lifetime,’ a phrase that has more meaning for us now than it used to.”

1959

Reunion

Peter Anastas: “I recently donated my personal and literary papers to the archives of the Cape Ann Museum of Gloucester, Massachusetts. My collection includes journals begun during my college years; copies of newspaper columns and articles written for the Gloucester Daily Times and other publications; essays, stories, and reviews published in American and European magazines; and book manuscripts along with copies of my published books. This collection joins those of my friends and mentors, historian Joseph Garland and Gloucester Poet Laureate Vincent Ferrini, in the museum’s archives devoted to local history and literature.”

1963

On October 20, 2018, Charles “Chuck” Shea was one of eight inductees into the Midcoast Sports Hall of Fame 2018 class. Shea is a 1959 graduate of Wiscasset High School, where he earned fifteen varsity letters in basketball, baseball, cross-country, and track and field.

Wiscasset won three straight league and state championships in cross-country from 1956–1958 and

Remember

The following is a list of deaths reported to us since the previous issue. Full obituaries appear online at: obituaries.bowdoin.edu

James H. Freeman ’53 August 7, 2018

Robert P. Smith ’62 January 7, 2019

Olin C. Robison October 22, 2018

Richard C. Goodman ’53 September 1, 2018

Edward L. Spalding Jr. ’63 November 11, 2018

HONORARY

Norman L. Barr Jr. ’45 December 13, 2018

Louis E. Roberts ’53 September 1, 2018

Roger E. Anderson ’64 January 10, 2019

F. Washington Jarvis H’98 October 7, 2018

A. J. Hammerle ’45 September 29, 2018

N. Dean Barrett ’54 October 5, 2018

William F. Hamel Sr. ’66 July 21, 2018

Wallace K. Evers ’46 October 19, 2018

Lawrence E. Dwight ’54 October 20, 2018

Thomas B. Wheeler ’71 September 11, 2018

Widgery Thomas Jr. ’47 November 22, 2018

Payson S. Perkins ’57 October 19, 2018

James A. Connolly III ’73 November 21, 2018

Harry Larchian ’48 September 22, 2018

A. Donald Clark Jr. ’58 December 26, 2018

Edmund B. Stanton Jr. ’73 September 26, 2018

Phineus Sprague ’50 February 7, 2019

John P. Field ’58 October 21, 2018

Steven J. Keable ’81 October 31, 2018

Robert F. Corliss ’51 June 13, 2018

John F. Anderson ’59 October 21, 2018

Alison L. Puth ’85 December 1, 2018

Joseph H. Flather Jr. ’51 August 20, 2018

Peter Barstow ’59 November 17, 2018

Jonathan R. Farmer ’03 January 16, 2019

David R. Getchell ’51 November 10, 2018

David E. Norbeck ’59 August 4, 2018

Betsy M. Llandwarne ’08 October 24, 2018

William J. Nightingale ’51 September 20, 2018

Frederick S. Smith ’59 December 6, 2018

Destiny D. Guerrero ’14 October 31, 2018

George T. Vose ’51 October 10, 2018

George R. Pomeroy ’60 December 5, 2018

Henry E. Zietlow ’22 January 14, 2019

John C. Weston ’51 November 8, 2018

Saulius J. Vydas ’60 October 9, 2018

FACULTY AND STAFF

Jay P. O’Connor ’52 October 8, 2018

Francis S. Mancini ’62 October 8, 2018

Louis D. MacNeill October 22, 2018

John A. Ritsher ’52 December 10, 2018

John P. Ossolinski ’62 September 30, 2018

Mary Brown Parlee June 27, 2018

PHOTO: ARTIST_CREDIT

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.

BOWDOIN MAGAZINE WINTER 2019 | CLASSNEWS@BOWDOIN.EDU 49

Connect

Bob Kullen ’71, Ed, Coach Sid Watson, and President Roger Howell ’58 celebrating Bowdoin’s ECAC Division II Championship, 1971.

“I wanted to do something significant for the College given the many opportunities it afforded me. A Charitable Gift Annuity provides me with income for life and eventually benefits Bowdoin.”

—Ed Good ’71 During one of Ed’s first hockey games at Bowdoin, his sister, Mary Ellen, yelled out, “Go U Bears!” The chant is now a signature cheer at the College. Ed was a leading scorer and captain of Bowdoin’s ECAC Champion team 1970–1971 and was inducted into the Athletic Hall of Honor in 2016.

Like Ed, you may find a fixed-rate charitable gift annuity to be a win-win. Here’s what a $10,000 CGA would look like: Age

Annuity rate

Annuity payment

Charitable deduction*

65 70 75 80

5.1% 5.6% 6.2% 7.3%

$510 $560 $620 $730

$3,447 $3,923 $4,505 $4,882

*Calculations are based on the March 2019 IRS Discount Rate of 3.2 percent and are for illustration purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice.

Actual benefits may vary based on the timing of your gift.

To explore life income gift opportunities, visit our charitable gift annuity illustrator tool at bowdoin.edu/ gift-calculator. Contact Nancy Milam, director of gift planning, to request a personal illustration or answer any questions at nmilam@bowdoin.edu or 207-725-3686.

bowdoin.edu/gift-planning

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captured the state track and field championship in 1958. Shea won the individual state cross-country championship in 1956. At Bowdoin, he earned seven varsity letters in cross-country, baseball, and basketball. After graduating, he returned to Wiscasset High School to coach cross-country from 1963 to 1995.

His teams won two state championships during his tenure. He coached basketball from 1963 to 1967 and again from 1980 to 1982, including coaching the 1980–1981 team to Wiscasset’s first undefeated season, 18-0. Shea also started the tennis program at Wiscasset in 1977 and served for several years as athletic director there. He has stayed active over the years by playing in Brunswick, Bath, and adult softball leagues, numerous basketball leagues into his fifties, and lots of tennis matches, and he has run a plethora of road races, including the Casco Bay Marathon. He is now an avid bowler and plays pickleball in his spare time. He still resides in Wiscasset with his wife, Faye. From a Brunswick, Maine, Times Record article, October 23, 2018.

1966

Wayne Burton: “My primary coach through the entire [Wayne’s War] writing process has been Claire Alemian, wife of Bruce Alemian.

Her blurb appears on the book jacket. Bruce was widely known then as the person scoring arguably the most famous touchdown in Bowdoin football history—he caught the winning pass to beat UMaine in the fall of 1963 that, against all odds, earned Bowdoin the Maine State Championship. His name was in the headlines along with the prediction that Maine would maul little Bowdoin. Turned out it was the Polar Bears doing the mauling. I played

defensive end that game. It is a small story in a story, about a guy who inspired me on the football field and connected me with his wife almost five decades later—a wonderful writer who encouraged me to write my book about Vietnam. (In fact, her book, In the Shadow of Light, revolves around the Vietnam War era also.) Bowdoin is mentioned several times in Wayne’s War, especially in the prologue describing my visit to the ‘Vietnam Wall’ and finding Bob Boyd’s name there.”

1971

Robert Armstrong: “A mini Bowdoin Class of ’71 reunion took place over the weekend of June 9 in Friendship, Maine, the site of many parties and gatherings while we were at Bowdoin.”

1972

Andy Levin: “In October 2018, I participated in a five-day, 280-mile bike ride from Jerusalem to Eilat to raise awareness and funds to support two environmental research institutions in Israel, the Arava Institute and Hazon.”

1973

David L. Morse was named a 2018 Elected Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for his sustained research leadership and innovations in the fields of glass, glass-ceramic, and ceramic materials. Morse has served as the executive vice president and chief technology officer of Corning Incorporated since May 2012 and is responsible for managing Corning’s innovation portfolio, creating new growth drivers for the company, and leading Corning’s global research and development organization. The 2018 Fellows will

be recognized at the 2019 AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. From an MIT Department of Chemistry announcement, December 14, 2018.

1974

Reunion

Dave Griswold: “Jed Lyons’s comment in Class Notes in the fall edition and Charlie Butt’s passing prompted me to write after many years of being AWOL. I mostly sat on the Bowdoin pine for Charlie’s early ’70s soccer teams—he was a great coach and supported my humble efforts. Charlie had a remarkable story and will be missed.

After Bowdoin, I went to work for International Paper, and then to UMaine to earn a forestry degree and a Maine forester license. I retired last year after a forty-threeyear career with IP and Verso Corporation, supporting the Jay, Maine, mill. I worked over the years as a field forester, wood buyer, and forest certification manager, with minors in safety and HR. I am in my twentieth year with the Sustainable Forestry Initiative’s Maine state implementation committee, as chair and treasurer emeritus. I am married, reside in Auburn, Maine, and have three grown sons. I have been active with the LewistonAuburn Community Forest board and the Auburn Community Concert Band for many years.

Getting to a class Reunion is on my bucket list.”

Alvin Hall: “I had a small dinner party at my apartment in New York in December. Yes, I did cook!

The lady next to me [in the photo on page 52] is Tawana Cook Purnell ’75. She attended Bowdoin from 1971–1972 before transferring to Spelman. I’ve stayed in touch with her over all these years. I gave the dinner party for her, inviting Saddie

ILLUSTRATION: ERIC HANSON

Smith ’75, Gwen Stretch-Holmes ’75, and William Holmes ’77. It was a delightful evening. I think everyone is officially about to be retired except me.”

1978

John McNabb: “Happy to report I got married on Sunday, November 18, 2018, to Ekaterina Bogdanova in Cohasset, Massachusetts!”

1981

Charlotte Agell: “I’m happy to report that I have two new books due out early in 2019: Maybe Tomorrow? (a picture book with illustrations by Ana Ramirez) and Mud, Sand, and Snow (a board book with my own illustrations). I’m in my eighteenth year of teaching in the Yarmouth, Maine, public schools and remain endlessly grateful that I have been able to stay in Maine, the true home I landed in when I was seventeen.”

1982

Kevin Conroy: “I was extremely honored and humbled to be inducted into my high school Hall of Fame—La Salle Academy in Providence, Rhode Island—on November 15, 2018. It was a very special night.”

“Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios has ordered 130 more episodes for the 2018–2019 TV season for each of its five court series, including Supreme Justice with Judge Karen, with Judge Karen Mills-Francis. Twice elected as a county court judge in Miami, MillsFrancis is known for her feisty, fullof-life personality and passionate advocacy for families and children.

The program premiered in fall 2013.”

From a Deadline|Hollywood article, September 26, 2018.

John Holt ’79 summited Cho Oyu, the sixth-highest mountain in the world, on September 29, 2018.

TIBETANS CALL CHO OYU, ONE OF FOURTEEN MOUNTAINS IN THE WORLD TALLER THAN 26,000 FEET, THE “TURQUOISE GODDESS.”

1983

Adam Hardej: “All is well for the Hardej family. One college tuition down (Adam, Princeton ’17) and one to go (Rachel, Williams ’21).

Commercial real estate consulting and appraisal biz is going strong (BAARvaluation.com), and I still find time to run around playing lacrosse in a local summer league and the occasional national tournaments.

The circuit is Florida Classic, Vail Lax Shootout, and Lake Placid, where I regularly come across fellow Polar Bear lax alums such as Malcolm Gauld ’76 (old); Alex Turner ’70 (really old); Bill Janes ’76 (not as old); Bob Stuart ’70 (old, but he doesn’t look that old); Dave Barnes ’81 (not older than those other guys, but he looks older—‘he’s bald, not that there’s anything wrong with that’—still-lefty stud who tells me the directions to games/tournaments); Gil Eaton ’82 (looks kind of old, but seems faster than when he played for Mort); Steve Dyson ’86 (balder, but weirdly muscular for an old guy); Brad Cushman ’87 (not that old looking, but still wears old-fashioned gear); Chris Schenck ’84 (older, but much richer looking

now); Danny Cisneros ’84 (looks exactly the same and plays exactly the same—once a stud in the goal, always a stud in the goal); Joe Kettelle ’82 (he looks the same and is still one of the fastest human beings I know); Steve Swindell ’84 (we actually don’t play old guy lax together, but we live in the same town and go to lacrosse games together); Blair Lyne (we don’t play lax together anymore, but I have loved following his children’s lax careers at Trinity and Hopkins); Tom ‘Dipper’ D’Amato (he doesn’t play anymore either, but from the selfies I’ve seen, he still has abs and should be playing); John Theberge (has lax kids and, since he was such a stud and popular Polar Bear, you can’t go wrong mentioning him in a post). As for all those other old Polar Bear laxers out there, think about strapping on the ole lax equipment and coming to Bowdoin sometime in the near future to celebrate the most awesome lax career of our beloved Mortimer Lapointe, who is being inducted into the intercollegiate National Lacrosse Hall of Fame this year! We are trying to pull together an alumni lax celebration for Mort,

BOWDOIN MAGAZINE WINTER 2019 | CLASSNEWS@BOWDOIN.EDU 51

Connect Paul Prucnal ’74 and Chape Whitman ’74 were surprised to learn that they were not only classmates but also winter neighbors in Sanibel, Florida! Chape said that while hanging out on December 29, the “pool temp was about eighty-eight degrees that day, as was the air.”

In December, William Holmes ’77, Gwen Stretch-Holmes ’75, Saddie Smith ’75, Alvin Hall ’74, and Tawana Cook Purnell ’75 enjoyed dinner together at Hall’s apartment in New York.

In November, Greg Johnson ’77, Lisa McElaney ’77, Abelardo Morell ’71, and Steve Starosta ’77 attended the Houk Gallery New York City opening of Morrell’s exhibition, Flowers for Lisa, based on work (and new book) for Lisa, his wife.

Sailing the coast of Croatia in the fall: Jenny Hughes ’16, Steve Hughes ’79, Halsey Hughes ’15, Kim Dennis ’79, Kate Treadway Hughes ’84, Kevin ’79 and Sue Malone and daughter Maddie, Eleanor Bright (widow of Nick Bright ’79), Tim Richards ’79, and Meg Clarke (with the boat crew in white shirts).

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so more information should follow from Coach Archbell.”

“Nonprofit arts presenter Portland Ovations has hired Linda Nelson to the role of deputy director for the organization. Nelson has been an active member of Maine’s artistic community for over two decades.

In 1999 she cofounded Opera House Arts at the Stonington Opera House in Stonington, Maine. After turning that abandoned opera house into the flourishing, vital part of the community that it is today and serving the organization for seventeen years, she retired and spent almost four years as the assistant director of Maine Arts Commission. Portland Ovations contributes to the cultural, social, and economic well-being of Maine’s community by presenting an array of high-quality performing artists from around the world and creating diverse educational experiences that bring the enjoyment, energy, and enrichment of the arts to all.” From a broadwayworld.com online news article, December 13, 2018.

1984

Reunion

“On April 15, 2019, the American Apparel and Footwear Association’s American Image Awards will shine a spotlight on the impact public policy has on fashion and design, celebrating creativity and innovation across all aspects of fashion. One of the six honorees is Ruthie Davis, who will be recognized for Fashion Collaboration of the Year. Davis recently partnered with Disney on the notable Disney X Ruthie Davis shoe collections for Snow White, Mulan, and Aladdin’s Jasmine, with more to come. She is involved with various organizations, including being an elected member of the University of Delaware Arts and Sciences’

Fashion Advisory Board, the Loomis Chaffee Head Council, and the New Britain Museum of American Art’s Education Committee. She is a guest lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management and taught a course on footwear design at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology.

She consistently dedicates time to mentoring emerging designers and entrepreneurs by speaking at colleges, business schools, and design schools, but her message is always the same: ‘Find your passion, work hard, live your dreams.’” From the American Apparel and Footwear Association American Image Award web page.

Jonathan Newman, Steve Laffey, and Berle Schiller ’65 got together at Hymie’s Deli just outside of Philadelphia in late November.

“Berle introduced me to Bowdoin when I was a senior in high school and recruited me,” Jonathan said.

“He has been a mentor for almost four decades. Steve was my college roommate. We were on the executive board together and founded the Bowdoin Patriot. We have been lifelong friends.”

“Several of us over the years have formed a ‘coalition’ of Bowdoin grads,” Steve explains. “‘Uncle Berle’ is an honorary member and one of the many who come and help organize great ideas for American growth and prosperity.

We also spend time at each meeting honoring some of the great Bowdoin leaders and graduates of the past. At this meeting, Jonathan and I went over the revealed friendship of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Franklin Pierce.”

1985

Laura Heer Carle: “I had the distinct pleasure of reminiscing with Sue Baldridge Perregaux over

lunch over Father’s Day weekend when she was visiting my town of New London, New Hampshire. At times it seemed as if we were still at Bowdoin chatting together in our Coleman dorm room and that we did not in fact graduate from Bowdoin over thirty years ago. In mid-September, I was very proud to come with my mother, Nancy Heer, to visit my niece Eva Dowd ’22, who is a first-year student. I am thrilled to report that Eva is thriving at Bowdoin (which is what I expected). All three of us viewed the impressive and comprehensive Winslow Homer and the Camera exhibition at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Many fine works of Homer’s art are included, which I have previously only seen in books.

I had a wonderful visit, and the campus was beautiful, as always.”

1989

Reunion

Chris Sylvester: “In 2018, I published a book of short stories called Night Clouds. In recent years, I have published the nonfiction books Mouse Time! A Disney Vacation and Activity Book and The DC Capital Kids Family Guide to Washington, DC.”

1990

Kathleen Bell, a professor of economics at the University of Maine–Orono, received the 2018 Faculty Mentoring Award from UMO’s Rising Tide Center for her outstanding commitment to supporting the professional development of her colleagues through mentoring, and for creating a positive and supportive environment at the university.

Recipients are chosen for offering sound counsel and valuable information to their faculty mentees to advance and develop their

PHOTO: TODD SPOTH

own path to professional success, generously sharing valuable time and expertise in providing feedback on the mentee’s work, helping to create a vital and engaged academic community in their unit and at the university, and serving as a role model for faculty colleagues by maintaining high standards for excellence within his or her own discipline and at the broader campus level, among other attributes. From a University of Maine–Orono Rising Tide Center announcement.

“Duane Morris LLP has promoted Katherine Brodie to the firm partnership in the trial practice group. Brodie founded and heads the Washington, DC, team of Duane Morris’s higher education law and policy practice. Her practice is devoted primarily to the needs of higher education institutions (nonprofit, public, and proprietary), associations, companies, and investors. Her experience includes US Department of Education Title IV student financial aid regulations and accrediting agency standards, Title IX compliance and response, campus safety, marketing, distance education, foreign school and overseas operations, and skills-focused programs.” From a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Duane Morris LLP press release, January 7, 2019.

1995

Chauncey Farrington was one of fourteen new faculty to join the roster at The Pennington School this fall. He will be teaching history. Farrington previously taught at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania, Saint Andrew’s School in Boca Raton, Florida, and Princeton Day School. He lives in Pennington. From a Pennington, New Jersey, Pennington School press release, October 2, 2018.

Carrie Niederman ’82

Catching Up

SAY NEIGH Mobile equine dentist Carrie Niederman ’82 keeps horses healthy around Houston, Texas, starting with their mouths.

I PERFORM ROUTINE ORAL EXAMS ON HORSES to identify problems with the eruption of permanent teeth in horses younger than five years old; to remove sharp enamel points that develop due to the side-to-side chewing motion of a horse, especially those horses not able to continually graze; to extract loose or diseased teeth; and to educate owners on the necessary diet changes needed for horses as they age and naturally lose the ability to grind effectively. Most people have no idea that a horse has twenty-four cheek teeth within its head!

MY FAVORITE PART OF WHAT I DO is simply being able to make a horse more comfortable so it can eat or ride better.

I GIVE EACH PATIENT A LIGHT SEDATIVE AND USE A PORTABLE STOCK,

in which the horse can stand comfortably and safely during the examination. I have never been bitten, but I have been hit in the head with a front leg of a horse that was scared of the needle used to deliver the sedative.

MY FAMILY OWNED HORSES GROWING UP. I have always been comfortable around them, which is why I enjoy working on them.

SECRETARIAT IS MY FAVORITE FAMOUS HORSE. His times in the various legs of the Triple Crown are so impressive—and at the age of three, he didn’t even have all of his permanent teeth!

For more from our interview with Carrie, visit bowdoin.edu/magazine.

BOWDOIN MAGAZINE WINTER 2019 | CLASSNEWS@BOWDOIN.EDU 53

Connect Steve Bischoff, Garnet Glover, Rip Kinkel, and Peter Latta, all Class of 1980, on Eagle Island in August 2018 during a trip to celebrate their sixtieth birthdays.

Don MacMillan, Harold Caswell, Seth Hart, and Joe Emerson, all Class of 1983, reunited to hike up Bald Rock Mountain in Lincolnville, Maine, where they were rewarded with a great view of Penobscot Bay. Adam Hardej ’83, Gil Eaton ’82, and David Barnes ’81 mugged after the championship game at the 2018 Lake Placid Lacrosse Summit Tournament (the fiftyplus super master’s division) in August.

Their team, Patriot Lacrosse, beat their opponent, Smokey Joe’s, eight to seven.

“Anand R. Marri, vice president and head of outreach and education at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and professor of social studies and education (research) at Teachers College, Columbia University, has been named dean of the Warner School of Graduate Education and Human Development.

The Warner School dean is a senior academic leader at the university who shapes the vision and objectives for the school, generates resources in support of those priorities, and effectively manages its operations.

Marri joined Teachers College in 2003 as assistant professor of social studies and education and became full professor in 2017. He founded the Economic Literacy Initiative as part of the college’s Institute on Education and the Economy, and worked closely with faculty on a variety of multidisciplinary projects. Since 2013, while holding a faculty position at Teachers College, he has also served as the highest-ranking officer for education in the Federal Reserve System. At the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, he has been responsible for the organization’s strategic vision for community and economic development initiatives and educational programs that reach more than 40,000 people annually. Marri’s academic research focuses on economic literacy, civic and multicultural education, teacher education, and urban education and has appeared in many leading education journals.”

From a University of Rochester press release, November 20, 2018.

1998 Berle Schiller ’65, Jonathan Newman ’84, and Stephen Laffey ’84 showed their Bowdoin pride at a get-together in Merion, Pennsylvania, in November.

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“Highlights magazine has honored author Josephine Cameron Johnson of Brunswick, Maine, for her story titled ‘The Sun Stands Still,’ which was published in the December 2018 issue and

named best of the issue by the editorial, art, and production staff.

The story is about Izzie, a young girl who struggles with celebrating the winter solstice, which usually is her favorite day. This year, the day falls just after the death of her beloved grandfather, who was such a big part of the family’s celebration. Asked why she submitted the story to Highlights, Cameron said, ‘As a kid, I loved reading Highlights. (I desperately wanted to be as good and kind as Gallant!) I would have been over the moon to know that someday I’d be honored with an author of the month award from Highlights.’ In recognition of the achievement, Josephine received an eight-inch pewter plate engraved with her name, the title of the winning story, and the issue in which it appeared.” From a Highlights magazine press release, January 9, 2019.

1999

Reunion

Doug Aaron: “I am founder and CEO of Care Cooperative, a nonprofit that fulfills the unmet needs of medical facilities and their patients. Our emphasis is on underserved communities and populations. Whereas the traditional process of giving, and its impact, may take months or years, Care Cooperative fulfills needs in days, improving care and communities immediately. We operate in close partnership—and at no cost—with the medical facilities that we serve.

Our work extends across twenty-four medical specialties, ranging from children’s mental health to geriatrics, and at hospital systems including Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Dartmouth-Hitchcock, Harvard, Judge Baker Children’s Center, Yale New Haven Health, and others.”

Denise Gitsham: “I recently got married in Fairfield, California,

to Josh Jones, a Georgia native and federal prosecutor in the US Attorney’s office in San Diego.”

“The Missoula Economic Partnership began the new year by hiring Julie Lacey to serve as its new director of economic development.

Lacey most recently served as director of client relations for MoFi, a community-based nonprofit lender, where she worked to connect capital to people and projects outside the mainstream financial system. She also currently serves as a violinist with the Missoula Symphony and holds an MBA from the University of Montana.” From a Missoula, Montana, Missoula Current news article, January 4, 2019.

“Jonah Warren, assistant professor of game design and development at Quinnipiac University, recently won a 2018 Best Game Award at the Miami @ Play festival. Warren’s game, Sloppy Forgeries, earned first prize at the festival, which features a curated collection of art and design work demonstrating a range of playful experiences. This exhibition champions the diversity and potential of play and the unique ways that games can build community, transcend language, and serve as artistic media. Warren has more than fifteen years of game design experience and is cofounder of Feedtank, a Brooklyn-based studio that uses new technologies to create playful interactive experiences. Feedtank has created interactive installations and systems for Adidas, NCAA, IAC, Kyocera, Crunch Fitness, and the Harlem Children’s Zone.” From a Quinnipiac University press release, December 13, 2018.

2002

“iBec Creative, the northeast’s leading digital agency specializing in data-driven website and

ILLUSTRATION: ERIC HANSON

e-commerce design, development, and marketing, announced the promotion of Emily Drappi to director of strategy. Drappi joined iBec in 2017 as a senior digital marketing strategist, bringing more than fifteen years of experience in search marketing and developing high-growth digital marketing strategies for e-commerce businesses. She previously served as director of marketing programs for Boston-based home furnishings e-commerce company Wayfair, where she pioneered the digital marketing team and led customer acquisition and retention for its international businesses.” From a Portland, Maine, iBec Creative press release, October 17, 2018.

2003

Chandler Nutik and Chelsea Hylton (College of Charleston ’11) were married on November 3, 2018, in New Orleans, Louisiana. They were joined at the ceremony by Bowdoin friends Lyndsey Sennott Wakeham ’02, Brendan Wakeham, Mike Sabolinski, Bartholomew McMann, Seth Harmon ’02, Craig Giammona ’02, Andrew Ross ’02, Pete Cohenno, Chris Fuller, Rick Binelli, Judd PrattHeaney, and Tim Sacks. Chandler writes: “I’m the founder and executive director of a nonprofit, Community Works, that builds a creative and healthy New Orleans by increasing equitable access to innovative programs that engage young people.”

“NBC Sports Washington (NBCSW) has hired Matt Volk as vice president of content strategy, overseeing programming planning, video and audio production, and digital and social media content and platforms. Volk joins NBCSW

“Winter solstice is Izzie’s favorite day of the year.”

—FROM “THE SUN STANDS STILL,” A SHORT STORY BY JOSEPHINE CAMERON JOHNSON ’98, WHO WAS HONORED IN DECEMBER BY HIGHLIGHTS AS AUTHOR OF THE MONTH

from ESPN, where he spent the last fifteen years in strategic content, acquisition, and planning roles. He most recently served as director of programming and acquisitions, overseeing content strategy across linear, digital, audio, print, and social platforms. Prior to ESPN, Volk spent three seasons as a coaching and football operations assistant for the New England Patriots.” From a sportsvideo.org online news article, October 12, 2018.

2004

Reunion

“Jackson Hole High School assistant principal Dan Abraham was recently selected as assistant principal of the year by the Wyoming Association of Secondary School Principals. The program annually recognizes outstanding middle-level and high school assistant principals who have succeeded in providing high-quality learning opportunities for students. From winners in every state, three finalists are named as contenders for an award at the national level. This is Abraham’s sixth year at the school, which has also been voted best high school in the state for several years. Before Jackson Hole High School, he previously taught physics, biology,

and geology classes at Teton High School in Driggs, Idaho, and worked as an instructor at Rendezvous River Sports & Jackson Hole Kayak School.” From a Jackson, Wyoming, Jackson Hole News & Guide article, December 19, 2018.

Ana Conboy: “I am currently assistant professor of French at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University. During the fall semester 2018, I was the director of the study abroad program in Cannes. On a beautiful Sunday, I went on a day trip to the Var, in Provence, to visit a traditional Provençal Christmas market and a few châteaux. On the car ride, I met Tony Dropp and his wife, Michele, two Americans who have retired in Cannes. As we talked, and I mentioned I had attended Bowdoin, he immediately said, ‘We know Bowdoin well—in fact, my great-great, many-times-removed grandfather was a president of Bowdoin in the eighteenth century, I think.’ He also said that his grandmother had written a book about the family. Later that evening, I read the pertinent pages of the book and discovered that he was referring to Joseph McKeen, Bowdoin’s first president!”

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Connect Joe Adu ’07

Catching Up

AMBITIOUS MISSION Former psychology major Joe Adu ’07 takes a human approach to technology. He is technology director at PathAI, a digital pathology company that uses machine learning to diagnose and treat diseases, and he recently joined the Bowdoin Alumni Council. He and his wife, Jenny ’07, and their two children live in Needham, Massachusetts.

THIS CAREER PATH WAS FOREIGN TO ME—MY SIGHTS WERE PREVIOUSLY SET ON BECOMING A NEUROSURGEON. That desire

was largely influenced by my childhood in Ghana, where we did not have enough doctors to treat illnesses and prevent deaths from basic afflictions. I’m the first person in my family to graduate from college, and I wanted to be part of the solution. As I acquired more knowledge in the technology field, I became determined to leverage those skills toward the same goal—helping people.

TECHNOLOGY CAN SIGNIFICANTLY ENHANCE OUR ABILITY TO TACKLE THE WORLD’S BIGGEST PROBLEMS, including treating and

eradicating previously incurable diseases. It gives me great pride to be part of an organization that is changing the face of medicine. As a high school senior, I received a Gates Scholarship to help pay for college, and now I work for a company that is partnering with the Gates Foundation toward a shared goal of improving global health—how cool is that?

For more from our interview with Joe, visit bowdoin.edu/magazine.

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2006

“Arizona’s National Hockey League team, the Arizona Coyotes, will move to the Central Division in the 2021–2022 season to make way for a Seattle expansion team taking their current place in the Pacific Division. Moving to the Central Division means the Coyotes will more regularly compete against the likes of the Colorado Avalanche, Dallas Stars, Minnesota Wild, and Chicago Blackhawks. ‘Our fans should take comfort in knowing they will continue to see us play our Pacific Division rivals multiple times a year—including squaring off with Vegas for desert bragging rights—while also getting to see new rivalries with some legacy franchises,’ said Ahron Cohen, Coyotes CEO, in a statement. ‘Regardless of what division we are in, our goals remain the same: win on the ice against whomever they put in front of us on the schedule, build Coyotes fandom throughout the state, and positively impact our Arizona community.’”

From a Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix Business Journal article, December 4, 2018.

“Keerthi Sugumaran has been elected president and named board member of the year by the South Asian Bar Association of Greater Boston (SABA GB). As president, Sugumaran will help further the organization’s mission by serving as a voice for the South Asian community in the Greater Boston area, supporting the advancement of attorneys and law students of South Asian heritage, and furthering the provision of legal services to the South Asian community. Sugumaran is an associate in the Boston office of Jackson Lewis PC. Her practice focuses on representing and defending employers in workplace legal issues, including preventive advice and counsel.” From a Jackson Lewis PC press release, November 27, 2018.

2007

Samantha Cohen: “In November, I married Jeremy Gaspar (University of Pennsylvania ’07, University of Pennsylvania Law School ’12) in Boston. We are living in New York City, where I do corporate communications for Teneo.”

James Gadon: “Since the magazine did a little feature on me back in 2012 when I released an album with my band The Hollowbodies, I’ve formed an electronic pop duo called Sunrise in the Desert, and we have been getting some real traction. I licensed two of our songs, ‘Bang Bang’ and ‘Dance All Night,’ for the feature film Vox Lux starring Natalie Portman and Jude Law, with original music by Sia; and our upcoming single ‘Better Days’ is going to be featured in season two of NBC’s Good Girls. In addition, our music video ‘Tonight’ premiered at the imagineNATIVE Film Festival in Toronto back in October. It’s kind of an interesting situation in the sense that we are breaking a lot of rules on how things get done in the music industry. We don’t live in the same city, we rarely record together, we have never performed live, we hardly ever record in studios, and we license everything through Route 84 Music Inc., the music publishing business and record label I created and run.”

Sam Hight: “Amanda and I welcomed Hadley June Hight into the world October 25. We, along with our Somerview Farm critters, our families, and our extended Hight Family of Dealerships family, could not be more happy. Cheers to the Hadster! Bowdoin 2040!?”

2008

“Democratic US Representative Jared Golden, who was sworn in January 3, 2019, as the newest member of Maine’s congressional

PHOTO: IAN MACLELLAN

delegation, announced the hiring of Aisha Woodward to serve as his chief of staff. Woodward is former policy analyst for Senator Angus King, and served as deputy campaign manager for his reelection campaign. She previously worked for a number of years as a policy advisor and a research director and legislative assistant for King.” From a Bangor, Maine, Bangor Daily News article, December 12, 2018.

2009

Reunion

Ian Yaffe: “Eliza Ruel (College of the Atlantic ’09) and I got married last year. The wedding was at Grace Restaurant in Portland, Maine, and Andrew Edwards officiated.”

2010

“Maine Governor Janet Mills has announced that Scott Ogden will be communications director for her administration. Ogden worked on Mills’s election campaign and was communications director for her transition team. He previously worked for the Maine Democratic Party, and for US Senators Olympia Snowe, a Republican, and Angus King, an Independent.” From a Brunswick, Maine, Times Record article, December 13, 2018.

2011

Maryellen Hearn: “This year, I moved to San Francisco, got a job working on the Port of San Francisco’s multihazard risk analysis—and got married. Let’s see if 2019 can top that!”

2012

Liz Warner: “I am currently organizing a one-and-a-half-year marathon charity campaign, Run to Reach (runtoreach.com), where my goal will be to run thirty marathons in thirty countries

before I turn thirty. However, the principal objective of my campaign will be to spotlight one charity in each of the last twenty countries/ marathons I run in (starting January 2019) and focus all of my efforts to fundraise for these causes. One of the upcoming races I am most looking forward to is the Sahara Marathon in February in Western Algeria. This race is an opportunity to demonstrate solidarity with the marginalized Saharawi population of the region. Marathon participants will be hosted by a Saharawi family in the refugee camp during the event, with all proceeds going toward increasing the visibility of their cause and improving the quality of life for the refugee children. As of now, I am planning to run marathons in Oman, Algeria, Guatemala, Palestine/Israel, South Africa, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Australia, Mongolia, Chile, Argentina, Kurdistan Iraq, Cuba, Antarctica, Egypt, the Seychelles, Iran, Slovenia, and China. It goes without saying that the values instilled in me by Bowdoin are a huge reason why I am embarking on this crazy adventure in the first place.”

2013

Ixtla ArceoWitzl: “Tom Morrison ’12 and I were married on July 28 in Bristol, Maine, surrounded by family, friends, and a few fellow Polar Bears. We now live together in Chicago.”

Vanessa Rendon-Vazquez: “I ran my first marathon this November in New York City and supported Team for Kids, a nonprofit organization that raises funds for inner-city youth fitness programs across the country.”

Four Polar Bears from the ’90s—Coren Moore ’97, Kathleen Devaney ’90, Jamie Oldershaw ’96, and Aileen Daversa ’94— found themselves in good company around a conference table at a Westminster School alumni event.

Polar Bears Daniel Miller ’03, Eddie Lawlor ’77, and Betsy Lawlor ’75 out on the town in St. Louis.

Elizabeth Droggitis ’06, Ellen Grenley ’06, Nitasha Kawatra ’06, Molly Dorkey ’06, Kristina Bush ’06, Kara Gerson ’04, Kendall Reed ’06, Sophie Wiss ’06, and Eileen Naples ’04 gathered for Molly’s baby shower on June 24, 2018. Baby Jane Lyddon Copley was born a month later on July 30!

Amanda and Sam Hight ’07 with Hadley June Hight, “born October 25 and already getting geared up for the Class of 2040.”

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Celebrate

1. Sarah Fiske ’13 and Ryan Larochelle ’13 were married on September 8, 2018, at St. John’s Church on Fishers Island, New York. Pictured: Jeff Goodrich ’12, Katie Doble ’13, Chelsea Gross ’13, Kaity Sansone ’13, Danny Schmoll ’13, Becca Centanni ’13, Alex Brown ’13, Anna Bradley-Webb ’16, Daniel Ertis ’13, Hannah Young ’13, Matt Gamache ’13, Leah Greenberg ’13, David Bean ’13, Emily Clark ’15, Jim Reidy ’13, Mike Lachance ’13, Michael Larochelle ’08, Gabby Lubin ’14, Kim Dempsey ’14, Casey Grindon ’13, Melissa Haskell ’13, Dan Polasky ’12, Sarah and Ryan, Christian Larochelle ’12, Andy Del Calvo ’12, Molly Porcher ’13, Maddie Rutan ’16, Jacques Larochelle ’15, Andy Gluesing ’13, Chantalle Lavertu Arsenault ’13, Ruiqi Li ’13, Matthieu Larochelle ’07, and Nick Larochelle ’08.

2. Abbi Suresh ’12 and Brian Devins (Clarkson ’11) were married on June 16, 2018, in Wells, Maine.

Pictured: Abbi and Brian, Carla Villacis ’12, Estefania Sanchez ’12, Preeti Kinha ’12, Samuel Steward ’12, Ji-Sup Yang, Hana Littleford ’12, Moriah Churchill-Calkins ’11, Chelsea Connon Steward ’12, Andrew Calkins ’11, and Daniel Yuan ’12.

3. Julie Endrizzi ’09 and Peter Eyermann (UCLA ’08) were married on June 2, 2018, in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Pictured: John Pennoyer ’86, Marguerite Pennoyer (exchange year at Bowdoin, ’78), Mark Endrizzi ’15, Julie, Katherine Armstrong ’08, and Hildy Pennoyer ’83.

4. Nicholas Lechich ’10 and Ella Saunders Crivello (New York University ’12) were married August 10, 2018, in Cutchogue, New York. Pictured: Will Bleakley ’10, Jamie Nadeau ’10, Tim Poulin ’10, Nicholas and Ella, Max Taylor ’10, Sammie Francis-Taylor ’09, Alex Colby ’10, and Alexi Thomakos ’10.

5. Annie McNamara ’12 and Daniel Evans ’12 were married on September 29, 2018, in Kennebunkport, Maine. Pictured: Dave Sweetser ’77, Wendy Crowley ’80, Boomer Repko ’10, Ella Curren ’12, Peter Troubh ’12, Lindsay McNamara ’09, McKenna Teague ’12, Pat Noone ’12, Caroline Tory ’12, Malia Wedge ’98, Maggie Williams ’12, Greg Pierce ’12, Emily Upton-Davis ’12, Morgan Estey ’10, Sam Martin ’12, Dave Westhaver ’12, Dan and Annie, Paul Steinberg ’12, Ian Vieira ’12, Jill Berkman ’12, Ben Tsujiura ’12, Taylor Escajeda ’12, Elisa Cecere ’12, Aaron O’Callahan ’12, Sarah Vallimarescu ’12, Becka Levin ’12, John McGinnis ’15, Sophie Feller ’12, Lon Nunley ’12, Georgia Nowers ’12, Molly Popolizio ’14, Barry Clarke ’12, Sydney Miller ’12, Oscar Pena ’12, Emily Tang ’14, Trent Blossom ’12, Eric D’Elia ’11, Chris Omachi ’12, Caroline Geoghegan ’12, Ellery Gould ’12, Hunter Clarke ’13, Julia King ’09, Emily French ’12, Macgill Eldredge ’12, and Joe Smith ’12. Not pictured: Brian Wedge ’97, who took the photo.

6. Randy King ’11 and Sarah Kaleko were married on May 27, 2018, in Portland, Maine. Pictured:

Sara Davenport Berdahl ’13, Charlie Berdahl ’11, Justin Foster ’11, Sarah and Randy, Melissa Anson ’11, Evan Graff ’11, and Will Cabana ’11.

7. Chandler Nutik ’03 and Chelsea Hylton (College of Charleston ’11) were married on November 3, 2018, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Pictured: Chelsea, Chandler, and their dog, Bridges.

8. Edward Gottfried ’11 and Kaye Verville ’11 were married on September 15, 2018, in Nashville, Tennessee. Pictured: Allie Foradas ’10, Sam Waterbury ’11, Zac Skipp ’11, David Shaeffer ’11, Mason Smith ’11, James Dickinson ’11, Greg Tabak ’11, Toph Tucker ’12, Louis Weeks ’11, Basyl Stuyvesant ’13, Kate Ransohoff ’11, Simon Fishweicher ’11, Matt Leopold ’11, David Gruber ’11, Adam Marquit ’11, Seth Walder ’11, Claire Collery ’11, Susannah Burrage ’11, Danny Chaffetz ’11, Emily Graham ’11, Becky Stevens ’11, Kaye and Edward, Daisy Mariscal ’11, Erin Walder ’11, and Nani Durnan ’13.

9. John McNabb ’78 and Ekaterina Bogdanova were married on November 18, 2018, at the South Shore Art Center in Cohasset, Massachusetts.

10. Jin-Sun Kim ’07 and Emerson Chin were married on July 14, 2018, at Hidden Villa in Los Altos Hills, California. Pictured: Michael Peraza ’07, Beatrice Shen ’09, Emerson and Jin-Sun, Nic Turner ’07, Jin-Kyung Kim ’10, Raashi Rosenberger ’07, and Kira Chappelle ’07.

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11. Benjamin Smith ’09 and Kate Whatley (North Carolina State ’09) were married on September 15, 2018, in Easton, Maryland. Pictured: Bryan Holden ’09, Matt Donoghue ’09, Pack Janes ’09, Jeremy Kraushar ’09, Kate and Benjamin, Maxine Janes ’10, John Moore ’09, Mary Tydings ’78, Boomer Repko ’10, Bill Janes ’76, Dewey Crowley ’09, Ben York ’09, Tyler Brewster ’09, and McKenna Teague ’12.

Tom Hazel ’05, Emma Leonard ’05, Greydon Foil ’05, Lynn Furick Foil ’04, Dan Hall ’05, Gia Upchurch ’05, Katie Walker Toohil ’05, Bob and Molly, Amelia Rutter ’05, Peter Slovenski (Bowdoin crosscountry and track coach), Rachel Tavel ’05, Callie Gates Slocum ’05, Jason Slocum ’05, Audra Caler Bell ’05, Sarah Walcott ’05, Sarah Begin Cameron ’05, and Sarah Mountcastle Mitchell ’05.

12. Maryellen Hearn ’11 and Jeffrey Gerard (University of Nebraska–Lincoln ’06) were married on September 28, 2018, in Minnesota. Pictured: Joanne Messerly ’80, Ben Messerly ’11, Maryellen and Jeffrey, Joe Babler ’10, Lindsey Thompson ’10, and Nora Krulwich ’11.

16. Ixtla Arceo-Witzl ’12 and Tom Morrison ’12 were married on July 12, 2018, in Bristol, Maine.

Pictured: Jamie Eisenman ’12, Nina Scheepers ’14, Alex Roberts-Pierel ’12, Andrew Morrison ’06, Taylor Tremble ’12, Christian Larochelle ’12, Steve Wagner ’12, Dan Peckham ’12, Woody Mawhinney ’12, Tim Welch ’12, Will Alexander ’12, Nick Riker ’12, Michelle Burns ’12, Audrey Bergeron ’12, Elizabeth Christiansen ’12, Tom and Ixtla, Johanna Morrison Sickney ’04, Liz Leon ’12, and Sam York ’12.

13. Charlotte Beach ’14 and Cameron Woodford ’15 were married on September 9, 2018, in Northport, Maine. Pictured: Jennifer Ha ’14, Thu-Trang Ho ’14, Cameron and Charlotte, Adriane Berry ’14, Kate Kearns ’14, Jake Giovanucci ’15, Alex N’Diaye ’15, Jared Littlejohn ’15, Cameron Chisholm ’16, Ellen Masalsky ’17, Graham Hotchkiss ’14, and John Sapienza ’14.

14. Denise Gitsham ’99 and Josh Jones were married on May 19, 2018, in Fairfield, California.

Bowdoin alumni in attendance, but not pictured, included Justin Kennedy ’99, James Kim ’98, Ali McGrath ’01, and Adam Stevens ’99.

15. Molly Juhlin ’05 and Bob Zager (Washington University– St. Louis ’03) were married on September 2, 2018, in Raymond, Maine. Pictured: Jocelyn Foulke ’05, Calvin Hall (son of Dan Hall and Jocelyn Foulke), Tara Morin ’05,

17. Emma Pyle ’12 and Craig Hardt ’12 were married on August 10, 2018, at The Foundry, Long Island City, New York. Pictured: Nathan Mecray ’12, Allen Garner ’12, Thomas Lilly ’14, Charlotte Ryan ’12, Alexandra Carmody ’12, Toby Sedgwick ’12, Samir Sheth ’12, Adam Matula ’12, Oscar Pena ’12, Sadie Nott ’12, Hannah Hoerner ’12, Josh Kim ’12, Emily Barr ’12, Tina Curtin ’12, Aileen Tschiderer ’12, Emma and Craig, Sam Packard ’12, Dan Peckham ’12, Ellen Rogoz ’12, Nathan Merritt ’11, Jack Hilzinger ’12, Tamara Perreault ’12, Katherine Stewart ’12, Mai Kristofferson ’13, Kaley Kokomoor ’13, Aggie Kelly ’13, Katherine Foley ’13, Maeve O’Leary ’14, Chase Taylor ’12, and Helen Newton ’14.

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18. Zulmarie Bosques ’11 and Marshall Hatch (Bates ’10) were married on August 25, 2018, in Chicago, Illinois. Pictured: Bob Kubacki ’75, Corey Yates ’13, Yaritza Pena ’11, Dhaujee Kelly ’11, Zulmarie and Marshall, Jonathan Dowdy, Caleb Dowdy, and Anthony Phillips.

19. Stephen Shennan ’12 and Victoria Hricko ’12 were married on August 4, 2018, at The Breakwater Inn in Kennebunkport, Maine. Pictured: Daniel Lowinger ’12, Octavian Neamtu ’12, Andrew Cushing ’12, Jasmine Mikami ’12, Alexa Barry ’12, Gina Lonati ’12, Freedom Holland ’12, James Nylund ’06, Ricky Cui ’12, Emily Hricko ’06, Alex Casbara ’12, Victoria and Stephen, John Shennan ’10, Kristen Stogsdill ’13, Stephen Bayer ’12, Carolyn Hricko ’08, Michael Igoe ’07, Michael Del Muro ’12, Colin Fong ’12, Zoe Eiber ’13, Derek Brooks ’12, Matthew Hillard ’12, Jacqueline Su ’12, and Matt Bernstein ’13.

20. Ian Yaffe ’09 and Eliza Ruel (College of the Atlantic ’13) were married on October 14, 2017, in Portland, Maine. Pictured: Peren Lopez, Arturo Contreras, Michelle Argueta ’09, Julie Kostina Ziemann, Marcus Ziemann ’09, Jenny Lam ’09, Kenji Nishiura, Jessica Lian ’09, Andrew Edwards ’09, Nga Tong ’10, Courtney True Edwards, Michael Bartha ’09, Natasha Kommel, Adam Kommel ’09, Ian and Eliza, Bobby Guerette ’07, Nandini Vijayakumar ’10, Jake Daly ’09, Katy Loutzenhiser ’09, Alex Reed ’10, Patricia Duggan ’09, Gretel Galo ’09, Jamie Neely ’10, Rachel Fowler ’09, and Matt Fowler.

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Marketplace

THE BRUNSWICK INN— NEW ENGLAND CHARM

THERE’S RETIREMENT, AND THEN THERE’S THE HIGHLANDS

MIDDLE BAY FARM B&B— ON THE OCEAN

Enjoy the sophisticated charm of this 16-room boutique inn, conveniently located on Park Row. Full bar, complimentary breakfast cooked to order using locally sourced ingredients, and a front porch where you can relax and enjoy the best view in town. Discover Brunswick’s best little secret.

The Highlands offers a wide range of retirement ­living options in Topsham, Maine, just across the picturesque steel bridge from Brunswick and Bowdoin College. Nestled in the backdrop of Maine’s historic Midcoast region, The Highlands retirement community provides a beautiful setting for experiencing all the benefits of a maintenancefree lifestyle.

Four miles from campus and open year-round, offering four sunny bedrooms, each with a water view, private bath, and TV. Room rates are $150$170 and include a full breakfast. Two suites in sail loft cottage are more rustic and roomy, with a living area, kitchenette, two small bedrooms, and private bath. Suite rates are $175-$190.

thebrunswickinn.com 207-729-4914 • 800-299-4914

highlandsrc.com 207-725-2650

Phyllis Truesdell, Innkeeper middlebayfarm.com

55+ ACTIVE ADULT LIFESTYLE COMMUNITY

ROB WILLIAMS REAL ESTATE— HARPSWELL WATERFRONT

MAINE’S BEST HOMECARE— KATE ADAMS ’89, OWNER

A vast 635-acre campus with nature preserve just three miles from Bowdoin. Unique, residentdriven, dynamic, community-oriented living—not a service-based environment. Lower-maintenance living in freestanding, high-end, custom-designed and -built homes unavailable in a traditional retirement community. A true national destination with active, young, and young-at-heart residents hailing from thirty-two different US states—so far.

This immaculate three-bedroom, two-bathroom waterfront home features an open-living firstfloor layout, hardwood floors, wood stove, and automatic back-up generator. Located on quiet Long Point Road, the site enjoys south-facing water vistas from the deck, lovely views of the Atlantic Ocean from the master bedroom, and beach access directly adjacent to the property. $649,000

For eighteen years, Aging Excellence’s mission has been to keep adults active, independent, and in their own home and community with one-hour to twenty-four-hour non-medical care. New England and Florida. Certified Aging Life Care Experts • Companion/Transportation • Personal Care • Handyman Services

highlandgreenlifestyle.com 207-725-4549

baileyisland.com 207-833-5078

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seniorsonthego.com 866-988-0991

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BEER, FOOD, GOOD TIMES ON BRUNSWICK LANDING

FIORE—COME IN AND TASTE FOR YOURSELF!

LUXURY LIFESTYLE HOTEL, BAR AND BISTRO, EVENT SPACE

Named “Best Tasting Room in Maine” by Down East magazine. Serving fresh beer and delicious food six days a week. Large groups and private events welcome.

Offering the freshest extra virgin olive oils from around the world and aged balsamic vinegars from Modena, Italy—all poured fresh for you each and every time. FIORE has a wide array of specialty foods, tasting accessories, and wonderful gifts for your foodie pleasure!

Our guests are always treated to a stylish, luxurious home-away-from-home. Private rooms for your event or meeting. The Coast Bar + Bistro provides great food, drink, and entertainment in a relaxed and engaging atmosphere. Come join us on your next trip to Midcoast Maine!

fioreoliveoils.com 207-406-4957

thedanielhotel.com 207-373-1824

TRUST MAINE’S PREMIER EXCEPTIONAL PROPERTIES FIRM

MAINESTAY VACATIONS— A HOMES & HARBORS COMPANY Coming to visit for Family Weekend, Homecoming, or Commencement? Discover beautiful waterfront homes at hotel prices. Call MaineStay Vacations to book your home today!

Block A: May 30–June 22, 2019 Block B: June 26–July 20, 2019

Finding the right buyer for an extraordinary home requires the skills and resources to build an effective marketing plan. Our agents bring a deep understanding of and connection to the local community and provide unparalleled presentation and marketing of luxury homes. Our industryleading website receives over a billion hits yearly, and we target buyers directly through our vast national and global network, social media, direct mail, and traditional and digital media.

coloradocollege.edu/summer

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EXPLORE YOUR PASSIONS. COMPLETE REQUIREMENTS. EXPLOREDEGREE YOUR PASSIONS—

COMPLETE DEGREE REQUIREMENTS

Block A: May 30 - June 22, 2019 Block B: June 26 - July 20, 2019

Spend your summer at Colorado College! Visiting undergraduates are welcome to enroll in one (or two!) summer courses ranging from Basic Filmmaking to Robotics to Food Agriculture in Colorado. Get ahead in your degree or explore Application and More Information something new andatexciting at CC! coloradocollege.edu/summer

Owner, Heather Potholm Davis ’95 mainestayvacations.com 207-833-5337

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Discuss

SARAH CONLY Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy When it comes to genetic engineering, the most exciting thing and the most frightening thing are the same. We need to think about values, about what we want humanity to be. We typically say we want to use genetic engineering to prevent disabilities, but what exactly counts as a disability, and what counts as a trait to be valued? This is something we’ll have to figure out, and reaching a consensus won’t be easy.

“ What’s most exciting—or most frightening—about what’s happening in genetic engineering?”

NINA HUNTER ’99 Deputy Director for Medical Programs, US Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) FDA products account for about twenty cents of every dollar spent by US consumers. These products include those that may be genetically modified by genome editing technologies across the medical, food, and environmental sectors, with potentially profound beneficial effects on human and animal health. I am most excited about the development of science-based regulatory policies that will provide an appropriate balance between benefit and risk, while maintaining the ability to encourage innovation in this rapidly developing space. That said, I am also frightened about fundamental ethical questions about human and animal life and other societal considerations.

This reflects the view of the individual and should not be construed to represent FDA views or policies.

JOSEPH GRZYMSKI ’94

CHRISTOPHER KAN ’13

Chief Scientific Officer, Renown Health Associate Research Professor of Microbiology and Computational Biology, Desert Research Institute

Geneticist

Genetic engineering—the field highlights the best and worst of science. The nasty intellectual property battle for CRISPR [a genetic engineering tool] patents between universities is a stark reminder that federally funded science should remain in the public domain—the Bayh-Dole Act corrupts a lot of science.

The recent use of CRISPR to edit human embryonic DNA was reckless; regulation is important. In general, genetic engineering is an awesome, routine technology that is allowing us to engineer our way out of problems—for example, food scarcity and crop resiliency. GMO is a good thing.

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The effects of human genomic engineering may not be fully understood for several generations— meaning treatments developed today will require up to one hundred years to fully understand their side effects on the offspring of those treated. It is imperative, as scientists, that we proceed with extreme caution and hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards when modifying human genomes by treating only diseases that have no other alternatives until we understand the long-term effects of genetic modification.

PHOTO: LEONARD ORTIZ/DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA/ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER VIA GETTY IMAGES

HED_MREAVESXLSAN_ HEAVY_ 12PT_ALLCAPS (P) TEXT_MrEavesMod_Book_10pt_ NoIndent

FRIGHTENINGLY EXCITING As philosophers, ethicists, and researchers debate the deep questions surrounding genetic engineering, scientists continue to make breakthroughs.

This January 12, 2019, infrared microscope image shows the red-glowing eyes of mosquito larvae. The red fluorescence is produced by a marker protein by researchers that confirms that the malaria-blocking antibodies injected into the embryos have reached the desired DNA site. University of California­– Irvine researcher Anthony James has changed the genes of one mosquito species, rendering it and nearly all of its offspring unable to infect people with malaria. Last year, malaria killed 438,000 people worldwide. James used a revolutionary gene-editing technology, known as CRISPR-Cas9, that has the potential to fix genetic errors in animals and humans, including those that cause blindness and muscular dystrophy.

PHOTO: ARTIST_CREDIT

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Bowdoin Magazine Bowdoin College Brunswick, Maine 04011

NON-PROFIT U.S.POSTAGE PAID BOWDOIN COLLEGE

Inside 24 Happy People Ski Faster 30 Destination Uwajimaya 36 A Magnificent Obsession 44 Q&A with Charles Dorn