SPRING/SUMMER
2015
MVP:
UNH sports law expert Michael McCann is at the top of his game
TEN SHOCKING* Reasons Alumni Give to the Annual Fund At UNH I had opportunities that were life-changing. I want today’s students to have those same opportunities. I found a mentor at UNH who had a big and positive impact on my life. New Hampshire is important to me and UNH is important to New Hampshire. Because of UNH, I got to travel and learn that the world is a really small place. I was able to attend UNH because of a generous financial aid package. Someone helped me; now I would like to help others. State funding isn’t enough. It’s time for me to repay the school that prepared me so well for my life and career. I use my UNH education every day. UNH is doing good things in the world. I know that my donation will be put to good use. Because every day is a great day to be a Wildcat!
UNH believed in me. *There’s actually nothing shocking about it. Be part of the pride. Make your gift today.
unh.edu/giving UNH alumni told us why they gave to UNH. Tell us why you believe. #IBelieveInUNH
LOOK BEYOND THE FINISH LINE
Fuel Your Career with our MBA Program mba.unh.edu
DEPARTMENTS
4 | Letters 5 | View from T-Hall 6 | Campus Currents
Learning to be a locavore, 50 years after Selma, a rebound season for basketball — and more.
13 | Crossword Puzzle 14 | Inquiring Minds
Rocky climate clues, obesogens, a decade of research blasts off.
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41 | Book Reviews
The Great Fire, by Lou Ureneck ’72 and Cheating for the Chicken Man, by Priscilla Cummings ’73
42 | Alumni News
Profiles of Margaret “Peg” Whittemore ’46,Christine Cornell Ieronimo ’91 and Jared Cassedy ’04
44 | Class Notes 60 | In Memoriam 64 | On Ben’s Farm
BUT FIRST, LET ME TAKE A SELFIE: UNH minted some 3,167 new graduates at commencement ceremonies in Durham, Manchester and Concord in mid-May. At Durham’s May 16 celebration, gray skies and a little rain couldn’t dampen the spirits of the 2,429 undergraduates and 485 grad students who received their degrees — and captured the moment on their smart phones and social media accounts. Photo by Mark Bolton
FEATURES
18 | A ll Star
Professor by day, sports law media expert by night — UNH Law’s Michael McCann is always where the action is.
25 | M eeting the Clients Where They Are
Seventy years ago, they mastered papier mâché and woodwork. Today, UNH’s occupational therapy grads take a huge array of skills and tools out into the world.
32 | Who Said Grownups Had to be Practical?
It’s often the impractical decisions that wake us up and create entirely new possibilities in our lives.
36 | R eaching the Unreachable
It’s a simple surgery, and it changes lives. Himalayan Cataract Project CEO Job Heintz ’90 is committed to making sure those who need it, get it.
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Letters to the Editor Winter Issue Kudos
Winter 2015 was a powerful issue of UNH Magazine. It hits so well on how UNH has been such a special place to so many alumni over the years. I am proud to have been one in its ranks. I left having a strong foundation that provided for my life’s journey. It has been a good ride. Come this June I’ll be returning for the 55th reunion of Class of 1960 — a time to reflect on how important this experience proved to be for me. Paul Donnelly ’60 Cooperstown, N.Y.
Remembering Stacey Cole
I thoroughly appreciated and enjoyed reading Karen Tongue Hammond’s tribute to Stacey Cole in the winter issue of UNH Magazine. Like Stephen Taylor, former New Hampshire state commissioner of agriculture, I fondly remember listening to Stacey’s program broadcast on Keene radio station WKNE when I was both a student at St. Mary’s Elementary School and later at Stevens High School in the late 1940s through the 1950s in Claremont. I was able to come home for lunch, and my mother always listened to his “Down On The Farm” program. A year prior to Mr. Cole’s death, a friend alerted me to the fact that he was still around and had published a book titled Stacey Cole’s New Hampshire. I was able to purchase a copy and relished each story inside. I wrote to Mr. Cole after I got his address from the book’s publisher. Mr. Cole then wrote back to me and thanked me for contacting him. I feel so fortunate to have gotten to learn more about Mr. Cole after all those years and shall always treasure his book and letter to me. Gerald Lunderville ’63 Long Beach, Calif.
A Hidden Gem of Ham Smith
I enjoyed learning a little more about George Lloyd in the winter UNH Magazine story about the WPA murals in Hamilton Smith Hall. I first met Mr. Lloyd at Keene State College in the early 1960s. He was a member of the art department there and among other duties taught a two-semester course called History of Art, which I took to satisfy a distribution requirement.
Volume 17, #3, Spring/Summer 2015
A few years later as a history grad student at UNH I was headed upstairs in Hamilton Smith to Professor Philip Marston’s seminar, Sources in Colonial American History. I was a little early that day and noticing the murals went over to take a look and was surprised when I saw the name. I had known that Lloyd had done some work for the WPA but until then had never seen any of his work. Walter Ryan ’70G Newport, N.H.
Collector’s Items
We just received the winter copy of UNH Magazine and were delighted to see that the Scheier exhibit at the Discover Portsmouth Center was featured in the 1966 news. We plan to loan our few pieces of Scheier pottery to the center for their display. Two of the pieces were purchased from the Scheiers when Jane Stearns, the UNH financial aid officer in the 1960s, advised Michael to buy them for Ann’s birthdays. Never did we dream that they’d be treasures today. Michael and Ann McAndrew ’69 New Castle, N.H. Corrections: In the winter issue of UNH Magazine, Cooperative Extension Associate Dean Emeritus Jim Grady was erroneously referred to as Jim Grace. In the article “Guiding the Climb,” alumna Isabel Padial’s class year was incorrectly listed as 1994. Padial is a member of the Class of 1999.
Editor-in-Chief kristin waterfield duisberg
Associate Editor michelle morrissey ’97
Contributing Feature Writers larry clow ’12 g lori ferguson john marshall ’87 virginia stuart ’75, ’80 g ◆
editorial office 15 strafford ave., durham , nh 03824 advertising: (603) 862-6000 email: alumni.editor@unh.edu website:
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publication board of directors mark w. huddleston President, University of New Hampshire debbie dutton
Vice President, Advancement joel seligman
Chief Communications Officer susan entz ’08 g
Associate Vice President, Alumni Association shelagh newton michaud ’95
President, UNH Alumni Association bridget finnegan
Creative Director kim billings ’81
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ANSWERS TO LAST ISSUE’S CROSSWORD W A I T E D
U N L O A D
S W A M
T A R A
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H E S S I E N S S U A M L T E T L T E A E K
F U N K S I M I C T E A M A N B R H O L S C A R E S H I I N G P R A L I A M O N O B I T O S J M O H O O P R A W N A B L E
O S I L O O T A R U A I G N G R O O U T D O
V O I D N E S S
U M R E N G I N M E
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University of New Hampshire Magazine is published in the fall, winter, and spring by the University of New Hampshire Office of University Communications and Public Affairs and the Office of the President. © 2015, University of New Hampshire. Readers may send address changes, letters, news items, and email address changes to University of New Hampshire Magazine, 15 Strafford Ave., Durham, NH 03824 or email alumni.editor@unh.edu.
BY PRESIDENT MARK W. HUDDLESTON
The View from T-Hall
B R U C E C R A M E R / S N AV E LY A S S O C I AT E S
The Importance of Public Service Nearly two months before this year’s commencement, it was my privilege to welcome retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal to the UNH School of Law, where he spoke before a packed lecture hall about giving more young people opportunities to engage in public service. In his remarks, the general offered a convincing call-toaction to make a year of full-time, voluntary national service — a service year — available as a shared cultural expectation and civic rite of passage for every young American. “Over the next generation, we will need to come together to solve some big problems,” McChrystal said. “We’ll only do that if we have citizens who are well versed in working together across all the lines that divide us.” The four-star general added that programs such as the Peace Corps, City Year and Teach For America could be greatly expanded to give more young people the chance to work together in service. One of our goals in opening the Rudman Center for Justice, Leadership and Public Policy was to invite national thought leaders to New Hampshire to share their ideas. And with our first-in-the-nation presidential primary looming, UNH will be an increasingly popular venue for those seeking to spur a national conversation on key issues. But McChrystal’s appearance also found me reflecting on the ways in which we encourage UNH students to volunteer their time, talents and skills for the common good. Among our most notable examples is former U.S. Army Sgt. Ryan Pitts, who was awarded the Medal of Honor in 2014. We were honored to have Pitts, a 2013 graduate of UNH Manchester, as our commencement speaker in Durham this year. But before his name was ever in the headlines, Pitts was not unlike many veterans who return to college with a commitment to public service. At UNH Manchester, Pitts stood out as a student leader, as president of a student-run business club that assists local nonprofits and as a representative on the dean’s advisory board. When he graduated, he was presented the New Hampshire Award of Excellence for leadership, scholarship and citizenship. And this was more than a year before the Medal of Honor was announced. While Pitts’ contributions are exceptional, his willingness to volunteer defines a key characteristic of the UNH community: Wildcats take pride in giving back. In fact, the opportunities we
offer in public service — well beyond any academic requirements — help us attract students to UNH. A study done several years ago indicated that more than 3,500 UNH students are active in volunteer work each year, logging nearly 90,000 hours with 20-plus organizations. The studentorganized Relay for Life fundraiser is a shining example. This year, some 900 students from 40 student organizations were joined by staff, faculty, cancer survivors and caregivers at the Whittemore Center for the 24-hour walk-a-thon to benefit the American Cancer Society. Together, they raised more than $75,000. Relay for Life is just one of many volunteer opportunities our Office of Student Involvement and Learning helps facilitate. Here in New Hampshire, you can find UNH students tutoring at-risk elementary school students, working at homeless shelters and food pantries, assisting at animal shelters and with land conservation and organizing to welcome home combat troops landing at the Pease Air National Guard Base in Newington. Worldwide, UNH is also a leading contributor of Peace Corps volunteers, ranking ninth among mediumsized schools in the U.S., with 24 alumni currently volunteering across the globe. For some students, UNH plants the seed for what becomes a life of service, and this issue of UNH Magazine highlights three alums for whom that has been the case. John Marshall ’87 turned a year of volunteer work into a mission to serve orphans in India; Job Heintz ’90 parlayed a legal service year in Nepal into a health care outreach project; Christine Ieronimo ’92 adopted a daughter from Ethiopia and dedicated herself to supporting the village where she was born. Their stories are moving and inspiring — and just a sampling of the many ways our students and graduates are taking on major challenges facing our nation and the world and changing their own lives for the better in the process. As we celebrate the academic achievements of our new graduates, let us also reflect on the lifelong passion they developed here for public service — and consider the ways we can each become part of a national conversation to create more opportunities for young people to serve.~
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Campus Currents CREATING YOUR OWN GARDEN Expert tips from Cooperative Extension agricultural expert Becky Sideman
Size doesn’t matter, actually. A kitchen garden can be adjusted to fit the space that you can devote to gardening. Even if you only have a porch or a patio, it is certainly possible to grow a productive container garden: think lettuces, herbs and cherry tomatoes, even cucumbers are good container plants. Plants like winter squash or corn take a lot of space, so you may want to avoid growing them if you have only a small space. But if you’ve decided to devote a chunk of a large yard to growing your own crops, go for it! Plant what you eat — easy as that. If grilled chicken is a summer staple in your
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household, for example, focus on a variety of herbs (dill, cilantro and basil are usually the easiest to grow) so you can experiment with some different poultry seasoning combos. Big salad eaters at your house? You can grow everything you need for a tasty, dinner-sized plate of greens pretty easily. Lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard and kale are good growers, as are broccoli, green beans, snap peas, cherry tomatoes and cucumbers. Know your limits — container gardening might be your best bet. If you’re not much of a green thumb, (i.e., if you’ve been known to kill off plants from
MICHELLE MORRISSEY
Ever dreamed of growing your own food? Maybe this is the summer that you finally plant a kitchen garden to supply a summer’s worth of veggies and herbs for your home-cooked meals. “A kitchen garden provides fresh, colorful and nutritious vegetables and herbs, and gives you a good excuse to get outside and experience fresh air. I think that edible crops can also be an attractive focal point in your home landscape,” says Becky Sideman, an agriculture expert at UNH Cooperative Extension. “For me, the biggest benefit is the rewarding feeling that comes from preparing food that you grew yourself.” Here are a few tips:
neglect in the past) go for a container garden — the only tools you need are plants, soil, pots and a watering can. Start small, so that it is fun and not a chore, and expand once you experience some success. Grander gardens are doable, with the right tools. The biggest challenge when you create a new garden in an area covered by grass is killing the grass thoroughly before planting. This can be done with equipment like a rototiller, but can also be done more slowly without tools, with heavy layers of mulch or by building raised beds. Once the ground is ready, a trowel for planting and a hoe for weeding are the basic tools you’ll need. Other tools like a wheelbarrow or garden cart, rakes and shovels can be helpful, but I would suggest starting simple and acquiring additional tools only as you find you need them. Seeds or transplants (a.k.a the little six-packs of tiny plants from your local greenhouse) — both have
their merits. It depends. Transplants give you a head start, which is important for crops like tomatoes, eggplants and peppers, so they have enough time to grow and produce fruit before fall frosts come. But for crops like cucumbers, salad greens and herbs, you can plant seeds instead, since they grow relatively quickly. Potatoes are easy to grow from seed tubers, which you can find in garden stores throughout spring and early summer. Know when to ask for help. Take advantage of our local expertise. Did you know you can get garden know-how in real time? The UNH Extension Home and Garden Education Center and Information Line has great fact sheets and a toll-free number with gardening experts and trained volunteers who can field questions as you go along: http:// extension.unh.edu/Gardens-Landscapes/ Education-Center-Information-Line, or (877) EXT-GROW (398-4769) 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday through Friday. —Michelle Morrissey ’97
“ We are facing a backlash, but we are beating the beejeebers out of the backlash. I’m really confident that we are winning.” MARA KEISLING, founding executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, who was on campus in April as the keynote speaker for the 23rd Annual LGBTQ+ and Ally Pancake Breakfast. Keisling spoke about the fight for transgender rights, and advised those present, especially students, “In this life it really doesn’t matter what you think, it matters what you’re willing to do about it. Think about who you should reach out to and who you should stand in solidarity with.”
In May, Stan Waddell became the university’s new chief information officer. Wadell has been at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 2010, most recently as UNC’s chief technology officer and assistant vice chancellor for the infrastructure/ operations and communications technology divisions of the information technology services department. He graduated from Old Dominion University with a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering and earned a master’s in management and administration sciences from the University of Texas at Dallas and a doctorate in information systems from Nova Southeastern University. Longtime university employee Kerry L. Scala has been named the new associate vice president for finance. Scala started her career as an auditor at USNH and moved over to UNH to serve as a senior accountant in the office of the vice president for finance and administration. She later served as the director of finance and planning at the Whittemore School of Business and Economics (now the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics). In 2005, she returned to the office of the vice president for finance and administration, serving most recently as the university’s finance director. Tara Lynn Fulton, former librarian at Eastern Michigan University, is UNH’s new library dean. Prior to joining Eastern Michigan, Fulton was university dean of library and information services and associate vice president for academic affairs at Lock Haven University in Lock Haven, Penn. Fulton received a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in library and information science from Indiana University, followed by a master’s in education from the University of Texas at Austin, and a doctorate in philosophy in higher education from Pennsylvania State University.
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NE W S BR IEF S
NE W A P P OINTM E NTS
Q&A
PETER WILKINSON Lancaster, N.H.
ONE TO WATCH
Never underestimate the power of a good cheer
Peter Wilkinson ’15 is a rabble-rouser, but in a good way. The epitome of Wildcat pride, Wilkinson came to UNH to make a difference, increase student support at athletic events and cheer on UNH students in their many endeavors. Peter is one of four “ones to watch” from the Class of 2015. Learn about the rest at www.unh.edu/unhtoday
You were the leader of the Cat Pack Captains — what’s that? I did a lot of stuff to boost school spirit in high school, and when I got here, I thought I could do the same thing. I really like to create change and build community. I definitely did not see it becoming this big. I used to talk about it, like
imagine if there was this group of students known on campus that would come together and go support as many of our athletic teams as possible and really get the crowd going. I wanted to be able to bring students together for these big events, to help instill a better sense of pride in students at UNH. What else did you do here at UNH? I joined the Residence Hall Association my freshman year, ran some ideas by them. I was president of RHA for two years, that’s where I really learned the skills to be a leader. That, and, UNH Leadership Camp, where we developed something called a leader action plan — it’s a physical document that says, “Here’s what I’m going to do to
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make change happen.” I was also a June orientation leader. Majored in: Environmental conservation and sustainability. I was undeclared engineering my freshman year, but I started to feel like I wasn’t getting enough people interaction. I realized I love working with people, and I’m passionate about the environment. What’s next? I’ll go to grad school for student leadership. At this point in my life, I really want to work on a college campus — if it could be UNH, that would be amazing — in a position either in a student union or somewhere in student affairs, where I’d be able to help students find and develop their leadership abilities.
I also like being a motivational speaker, and speaking about community building. What advice would you give your freshman self if you could? Spend time early on to make sure you have the academic side of things down in college. Start your freshman year off right. As you progress, you can move a little bit away from that and start exploring. Also, develop your own social support system or network. Find the classmates in your major, your professors, in general other faculty and staff... people you can rely on, who will point you in the right direction for opportunities. The sooner you can do that the sooner you will be successful. — Michelle Morrissey ’97
MICHELLE MORRISSEY ’97
Why did you decide to come to UNH? Originally I wanted to go to school for engineering, so I was looking at MIT. Math and science were the name of the game for me. But when I visited here, the UNH community resembled my home community so much, even though my hometown was about 3,000 people and UNH is so much bigger. It’s such a close-knit community, I just instantly felt comfortable here.
EATING LOCALLY ONE CL A SS AT A TIME
Kelly Cullen, associate professor of natural resources and the environment, starts her class with terrifying statistics and ends it with hope. In the course Being a Locavore, Cullen shows students how they can eat local — and why it’s a healthier option. Eating local is a movement that has been getting a lot of ink in recent years as people strive to buy food grown or produced close to where they live. Alongside the scary statistics, such as those showing the nutritional value in many common crops has declined as much as 40 percent and that the incidence of diabetes has nearly doubled in the last 10 years, are the benefits of being a locavore. Cullen ticks off the pluses: food security, supporting local economies and cultural heritage, fair conditions for workers and livestock, reduced reliance on petroleum — and the big one: knowing the source of the food you eat. Cullen asks students to keep a food journal for one week, recording what they eat and where the food comes from. They then look at the food groups to see what is in season in New Hamsphire (or their home state) throughout the year so they can plan a 12-month menu. “At the grocery store it’s forever summer,” Cullen says. “We’ve lost the ability to eat in season. I’m trying to show students that it’s possible.” And she challenges the notion that it takes money to eat locally by teaching students the basics of canning and cheese making. Sophomores Griffin Sinclair-Wingate and Katie Levine and senior Sarah Young said it hadn’t occurred to them that they could extend the seasons of what they eat through preserving. And all said money has influenced their food habits. In addition to canning, Cullen introduces students to community-supported agriculture, a local model of food distribution that may, for a fee, have people sharing the crops
DAVID VOGT
Course teaches students that being a locavore isn’t too tough to try
NEWS FROM THE WEST It’s been a busy spring for UNH west of Durham — at the university’s Concord and Manchester campuses. The UNH School of Law in Concord made headlines in March when U.S. News and World Report ranked it as a top-10 school for the study of intellectural property law. UNH Law interim dean Jordan Budd credits the rise to the school’s exceptional curriculum, its graduates’ employment outcomes, and the ever-stronger quality of its entering student body. It was a big move and a big celebration for UNH Manchester, which officially relocated to the Pandora Building in Manchester’s Millyard section, dubbed the ‘silicon millyard’ because of the number of hightech companies headquartered there. The new location is 110,000 square feet of space, about 40 percent larger than the former site of the school. Classrooms and study spaces were designed not only with input from architects, but also from the faculty and students who are now using them. Among the speakers at the April 14 campus opening were UNH President Mark Huddleston, interim dean J. Michael Hickey ’73, Governor Maggie Hassan, Mayor Ted Gatsas ’73 and UNH Manchester student Kristin Boelzner ’16. They all echoed the same message: The expanded campus represents progress for the college, the community and the future workforce. “UNH Manchester is replacing the hard, physical work of the mill with the work of the mind,” Huddleston says. “And where loud, heavy machinery once made textiles, our state-of-the-art classrooms and research labs are shaping tomorrow’s graduates.”
from a particular farm. All of which has — literally — given students food for thought. “I used to think I knew a lot about what I should eat,” says Sinclair-Wingate, an environmental and resources economic major. “I gave up meat a year ago but since taking this class, I’ve given up certain other foods, too. And if I don’t buy local, I try to buy organic. I’m definitely thinking more about what I eat.” — Jody Record ’95
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ON THE REBOUND
Men’s basketball crafts a record-making season
It may have ended with a loss, but the 2014-15 season was one big win for the men’s basketball program. The team finished the year with a 19–13 overall record, matching a program-best set 20 years earlier — and then went the 1994– 95 squad one better with a first-ever postseason national tournament appearance. After going 18-11 in regular season play, the Wildcats made it to the America East semifinals, taking a 67–63
quarterfinal victory from the University of Hartford at home before losing a 58-60 nail-biter at University of Albany. The record-making season — the team also set a new program record for number of home wins (12) and won its first America East playoff game at home in 20 years — earned the ’Cats an invitation to participate in the CollegeInsiders.com Postseason Tourney (CIT). On March 16, the team traveled to New Jersey to face off against New Jersey Institute of Technology. Led by Jaleen Smith ’17, Matt Miller ’15 and Danel Dion ’17, the Wildcats kept it close
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for much of the game but ultimately fell to the Highlanders, 77–84. Head coach Bill Herrion says the loss was anything but discouraging. “Getting to postseason play was really big for this team,” he says. “This is a great step in the right direction. Now we want to take the next step, which is winning a championship and getting to the NCAA tournament. ” Following a difficult 2013–14 season in which the team earned just six wins, this year’s successes are particularly sweet. And while the bar has been raised, Herrion is confident his team, which lost only two players to graduation, is up to the challenge. “We’ve laid a pretty good foundation,” he says. “What we can’t do is now get comfortable because we won 19 games.” It wasn’t just a good season for Herrion’s players. Now at the end of his 11th season at UNH, the coach found himself nominated for two different awards — the Hugh Durham National Coach of the Year, which honors a coach that has brought his or her team to success in a short amount of time, and the Skip Prosser Man of the Year Award, which recognizes a coach who has demonstrated strong moral conduct in addition to a winning record. Herrion knew Prosser personally. “To be involved with something connected with his name is a great honor,” he says. —Kristin Waterfield Duisberg
JEREMY GASOWSKI
DRIVE: Jaleen Smith ’17 set the pace for the Wildcats’ America East Semifinal win over the University of Hartford.
RUNNING RN Jennifer Anstead ’97 was one of many Wildcats who ran the Boston Marathon for a good cause
JEREMY GASOWSKI
SPORT AND SUPPORT Watkins Center for Student-Athlete Excellence now open With teams that perennially perform at or near the top of numerous national measures of academic success, UNH has long emphasized the student in student-athlete. And now, there’s a dedicated space on campus where student-athletes can work out their minds between games and practices, trips to the weight room and treatments in the athletic training rom: the Watkins Center for StudentAthlete Excellence. Located on the second floor of the Field House in space once occupied by five decommissioned squash courts, the new center is open to athletes on the university’s 20 Division I athletic teams as well as students who compete with the UNH-based Northeast Passage adaptive sports program. The wi-fi-enabled space includes a main reading room, modeled after Dimond Library, that provides study space for 72 students, a breakout room for small group study and four offices. A key piece of the university’s overall emphasis on “the whole student,” the facility boasts academic support staff and life skills staff as well as advisers and tutors.
Student-athletes, UNH staff and many of the donors whose generosity made the privately funded space possible were on hand for the official opening of the center on April 14. UNH President Mark Huddleston and athletic director Marty Scarano both acknowledged the Watkins Family Foundation, which provided the lead gift for the $1.9 million facility, and G. Chris Watkins spoke about his vision for the space. “The center will enhance an already great track record of students performing well academically and athletically,” he said. Men’s ice hockey player Harry Quast ’16 was one of several student-athletes who spoke about the importance of the new center—as well as the gifts that brought it into being. “Just saying thank you for such an unbelievable space hardly seems like enough,” he said. “Your incredibly selfless donations not only affect the athletes here now, but the future athletes who will be lucky enough to wear the UNH logo on their jerseys.” —Kristin Waterfield Duisberg
Running the Boston Marathon is a mental and physical challenge — but for Jennifer Anstead ’97, who ran it for the fifth time this year, there are others facing bigger challenges. She ran for the Massachusetts General Hospital Pediatric Oncology team, which pairs its runners with a patient partner — Anstead’s was a 7-year-old girl whose brain cancer has been in remission for about a year. While running for the pediatric oncology clinic is a worthy cause, she says, “Someday I hope to never have to run for them. Someday I hope there are not enough kids in the clinic to go around.” Anstead, who is a nurse at Mass General, keeps that in READ MORE mind each marathon. “When I Wildcat get tired I just think about why Marathon I’m running, think about the Stories in patients who are so young and Class Notes. don’t know a life without being sick. I tell myself, whatever I’m experiencing right now will go away when I stop, but their pain will be with them for much longer.” At UNH, Anstead played rugby. She started running when the demands of her career made team sports a challenge to schedule. The best part of the 26.2 miles? Right before mile 20, the infamous stretch called Heartbreak Hill. “It’s really emotional. By the time you get there, the aches and pains, they’ve really set in. Then you get there and it’s almost like anything that’s been bothering you, it just washes away. Everyone is cheering and so supportive. It just fills you up. When you leave mile 20, your tank is full.”
“ Then you get
there and it’s almost like anything that’s been bothering you, it just washes away.”
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Remembering
SELMA
Myles Parker ’15 was among a group of UNH students and staff who traveled south this spring to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama. It was there in 1965 that some 600 peaceful civil rights marchers were violently attacked by state troopers. The event marked a turning point in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. UNH Magazine asked Parker to share what it was like to be part of history: As we gathered at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, amid the thousands of other people from all over, many of them original marchers, I noticed something: the silence. I had never been around such a large crowd of people who were so collectively quiet. We were just taking in the momentous importance of this event. The silence floated above us, except for the voice of Martin Luther King Jr. His speech from the original march to Selma blared out from large screens overhead. We had awakened before sunrise, and anticipated there would be heavy traffic that morning, so we made our way to the bridge. We were some of the first people there, so we
talked to some of the law enforcement there about what their roles would be that day. We walked around town and took some pictures of the murals and paintings in Selma. We were making our way back to the bridge when we noticed postings by the Ku Klux Klan — they were vulgar and disgusting. Later, at a church, when we gathered to hear from a pastor about what the day would be like, we were advised to stay close to each other: the KKK knew about the march, and they might try to disrupt our movement. We heard speeches from President Obama and civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who was at the 1965 march. But for me, the person I met who meant the most was a
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“ Tackling the things that
seem hard or nearly impossible to accomplish is where I see myself in the long run, surrounding myself with those who are willing to stick it out even when it gets so tough you almost want to quit.” woman in her 80s who was there 50 years ago. It was a very short conversation, but I wanted to show my thanks for her marching. I gave her a big hug. When I told her we were from New Hampshire, she said, “What?!” like she couldn’t believe we had come from so far away. I hadn’t known very much about Selma and the events of 1965, to be honest. I did some reading before we left for the trip, but being there was very different. I knew it would be emotional for me and other people taking part — and it was. To know that our president would not have been allowed in certain places in this community completely shocked me. Even after the march 50 years ago, Selma still had segregated schools and a white-only country club. The fact that the bridge was and is still named for a white supremacist is ludicrous. And while not to the extremes that it was 50 years ago, black Americans still face brutality from police. I feel as though every time I turn on the phone, watch the news or read the paper I see another death within the black community. I hope there will be more involvement with social justice issues on the part of younger students — especially those who may not be directly affected by it. This type of work has always been hard but it has helped shape me into the man I am today. Tackling the things that seem hard or nearly impossible to accomplish is where I see myself in the long run, surrounding myself with those who are willing to stick it out even when it gets so tough you almost want to quit. At the march, I was able to talk to some of the teens from the area and hear about why they got involved. As we walked by the crowds, I could see members of the younger generation trying to reach out and grab my hand, to say thank you.
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STAR TURN— Professional puzzlemaker Brendan Emmett Quigley ’96 creates custom puzzles for UNH Magazine that include clues from one or more of the issue’s feature stories. Need a hint on some of these? Check out ALL STAR, the feature story about UNH law professor Michael McCann that begins on page 18.
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44 Tight end in a ’15 murder trial 63-Across covered for Sports Illustrated
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17 NBA commentator whose comments about the perils of drafting younger players 63-Across proved to be false 18 Former NBA owner whose case 63-Across wrote nearly 50 stories for Sports Illustrated 19 Height prefix 20 Now in Nogales 21 Running back 63-Across defended in ’04 24 College football coach whose ’14 scandal was broken open by 63-Across 29 Niche 31 Seek, as damages ILLUSTRATION BY NATHANIEL GOLD
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Inquiring Minds
Highlights from UNH research
THE BIG BURP THEORY Geologists drill for climate clues
found this pretty large, very short burp before the main PETM,” says Clyde, describing escalating atmospheric carbon levels associated with a smaller period of warming that preceded the PETM. The findings indicate that the PETM looks more like modern human-caused global warming than previously thought; less likely the result of a unique event like a meteor strike than a natural part of the Earth’s carbon cycle. As analysis of the Bighorn Basin samples continues, scientists are gaining more insight into what triggered the PETM — a mystery that unnerves Clyde and his colleagues. “This carbon release is a big part of the carbon cycle that affected the climate system, and we still don’t understand what caused it,” says Clyde. “What we do understand better and better are the effects. It is very similar to what we see happening today because of modern CO2 release from the burning of fossil fuels.” —Beth Potier
About 55 million years ago, the Earth burped up a massive release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — an amount equivalent to burning all the petroleum and other fossil fuels that exist today — and got hotter by 9 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit. For decades, UNH geology professor Will Clyde and other scientists have peered into that unique moment in our Earth’s history — the so-called PaleoceneEocene thermal maximum (PETM) — and probed the implications it could have for current climate change by studying a 100-mile-wide semiarid corner of Wyoming called the Bighorn Basin, where sediment records and animal and plant fossils from the PETM are preserved in stratified rock outcroppings. For the past five years, Clyde has led a team of scientists from 18 institutions in a pioneering National Science Foundation-funded study that researchers hope will provide more clues to that huge release of carbon and the associated Could your couch be making you fat? warming event. To get an even closer look at the geological record, earlier this year, When it comes to maintaining a healthy the $1.4 million Bighorn Basin Coring weight, conventional wisdom suggests Project drilled six 2½ -inch diameter cores that hours on the couch with a bowl of about 150 meters into the sediment. ice cream will, for most of us, pack on “These rocks at the surface are always the pounds. For the last decade, however, affected by weathering,” says Clyde, “so Gale Carey has been wondering whether we decided we should have pristine rock it’s chemicals in the couch that might from coring.” contribute to weight gain. The drilling was a success, producing A professor of nutrition, Carey six samples that were shipped to an explores the connection between international core depository at the obesity and environmental chemicals. University of Bremen in Germany. Even Her latest research has linked chemical more successful, however, is what those flame retardants — ubiquitous in carpets, samples have revealed. upholstered furniture and electronics “Because we can study the core in — to insulin insensitivity and metabolic such better detail than the outcrop, we problems, both hallmarks of obesity.
CHEMICAL CONUNDRUM
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“We aren’t trying to say flame retardants are the cause of obesity, but they could be a contributor,” says Carey. “Diet and exercise are the two biggies, but there’s this third component that we haven’t, until recently, considered that could be contributing.” Carey initially approached research into the class of chemical flame retardants called polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, with a scientist’s skepticism. But when she and her colleagues exposed rats to PBDEs during growth to see how the chemicals affected fat storage and production, they found something surprising: the fat cells from the rats that were given the flame retardants behaved
PAYLOAD PAYOFF
Just before 11 p.m. on March 12, as dozens of UNH faculty, students and administrators watched, a decade of UNH research blasted into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. UNH scientists, led by professor of physics Roy Torbert of the Space Science Center at UNH’s Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, coordinated and built nearly half the instruments on board the four identical satellites of the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, or MMS. MMS will fly into the region surrounding the Earth’s magnetic fields to learn more about the little-understood phenomenon called magnetic reconnection. It’s behind what Torbert calls “big energetic events in astrophysics,” including those that can wreak havoc on telecommunications networks, GPS navigation and electrical power grids.
RON BLACK/SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Want to know more about the mission? Check out NASA’s web page on the project at www.nasa. gov/mission_pages/mms
metabolically like they were taken from rats that were overweight. More recently, Carey has looked at the effect of PBDEs on an enzyme called phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase, or PEPCK, which manages fat and sugar metabolism in the liver. “The liver gets the first pass of all the good, the bad and the ugly of what we’ve consumed,” she says, making it a great study site for roots of obesity. Working with master’s student Kylie Cowens and funding from UNH’s N.H. Agricultural Experiment Station, Carey found that in rats exposed to PBDEs, both PEPCK activity and the liver’s ability to bind fatty acids were
suppressed by nearly 50 percent — biochemical changes that could lead to insulin resistance. While Carey’s focus remains fixed on the science of chemical flame retardants, she goes beyond the lab to explore the public health and policy implications of environmental chemicals like PBDEs, now dubbed “obesogens” for their link to human obesity. Along with UNH seniors Mason Adams and Kasey Cushing, Carey is currently working on a study that’s measuring flame retardants in dorm rooms at UNH. Spearheaded by Silent Spring Institute, a nonprofit research group from Massachusetts, the study aims
to bring environmental chemicals under the umbrella of the campus sustainability movement, raising awareness among environmentally active college students that could, she says, “potentially change campus purchasing policies and have a domino effect across the country. “There are 100,000 synthetic chemicals in our environment. Hundreds of these get into our bodies and can affect our health. By refusing to buy products containing these chemicals, and voicing their opinion to Congress, people can affect change. Is this the environment — and the health — we want for our children, and future generations?” —Beth Potier
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Big Picture HONORIS CAUSA: Ryan Pitts ’13, a summa cum laude graduate of UNH Manchester, is hooded by senior vice provost for research Jan Nisbet and outgoing provost and vice president for academic affairs Lisa MacFarlane at Durham’s 145th commencement ceremony on May 16. A U.S. Army staff sergeant who served in Iraq and Afghanistan before college, Pitts received a 2014 Presidential Medal of Honor for his heroism in the July 13, 2008, Battle of Wanat in Afghanistan’s Kumar Province. Selected as Durham’s commencement speaker, Pitts riveted the crowd of 20,000 with his account of the battle, in which nine men were killed and 27 others, including him, were seriously wounded. He encouraged graduates to “be courageous and appreciate courage in others who take action in the face of fear.”
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PHOTO BY JEREM Y GA S OW SK I
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by Larry Clow ’12G
When it comes to sports law, UNH’s
Michael McCann is a perennial MVP
SPORTS AUTHORITY: Professor Michael McCann in a classroom at the UNH School of Law in Concord, N.H. PHOTOS BY BILL TRUSLOW
It was a Friday evening in early November 2013, and Michael McCann was at a swanky steakhouse in Concord, N.H. The University of New Hampshire’s School of Law had just hosted the first day of its annual Intellectual Property Scholars Roundtable, and McCann, a law professor and director of the Sports and Entertainment Law Institute, had joined his colleagues for a meal after the event. Conversations were in full swing, dinner had just been served, and McCann was just about to take his first bite of steak. And then his phone started buzzing.
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I have to go,” McCann told Alexandra Roberts, an assistant professor of intellectual property at the law school. “The O’Bannon decision just came down.”
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McCann excused himself and dashed off, steak uneaten, a quiet night with coworkers replaced with a pressing deadline for his other job — as a legal writer and analyst for Sports Illustrated magazine. For months now, he had been following the case of former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon, who had slapped the NCAA with a class-action lawsuit for using the images of former and current student athletes for commercial purposes, and it was go time. He had just a couple hours to read up on the details, write a story and turn it in. It was, Roberts recalls, a “Superman/Clark Kent moment,” of which McCann seems to have many. “Mike is kind of a superhero,” she says. “He’s got two full-time jobs, and he makes them both happen successfully and with aplomb.” McCann does have something of the air of a superhero about him. He’s the definition of mild-mannered — casual suits, tousled hair and a relaxed smile. But under the 39-year-old’s boyish looks is a palpable, humming energy; even when sitting still, he seems as if he’s in motion. When the conversation turns to sports or law, a subtle change comes over McCann, a little like the moment before Clark Kent disappears into a phone booth and reappears as Superman. He still looks relaxed, but his mind is working swiftly — forming a complex legal analysis, teasing out implications and creating and explaining an argument that could satisfy a demanding judge and a stubborn sports fan in a few moments. He himself sees his career in a more modest light, even though, on a given day, he may deliver a lecture to students on athletic contract negotiations, write a story for Sports Illustrated on complex league regulations and offer analysis of a sports star’s murder trial for CNN or ESPN. He says it’s less Superman and more Tony Phillips, the versatile major league ballplayer who played seven different positions during his four years with the Detroit Tigers. “Phillips is the kind of player you want to be if you’re a sports lawyer,” McCann says. “Someone who’s able to play everywhere and be conversant in anti-trust law, in criminal law, in contracts, intellectual property and tort law.” That’s precisely the sort of lawyer and journalist McCann is — and plenty of people have noticed. While a full-time professor at the Missisippi College School of Law from 2005 to 2008, McCann racked up a full slate of awards, including three different “professor of the year” awards in 2008. On social media, he is a sports law celebrity — close to 37,000 sports fan follow his Twitter account, @mccannsportslaw. In 2011, the Society for Social Psychology and Personality awarded him its Media Prize. In 2012, he made The Huffington Post’s list of the “40 Must-Follow Twitter Accounts for NBA Fanatics” and The Sporting Chart’s list of the country’s “Top 50 NBA Minds”; the following year,
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“Mike thinks on his feet. He’s resourceful. He doesn’t take no for an answer. He finds a way to get it done.” Sports Illustrated website editor B.J. Schechter
Boston Magazine added him to their list of the “best Boston sports personalities on Twitter.” When sports fans and media outlets want a fresh take on the story of the day — from national stories like the Boston Marathon bombing to coverage of a NHL labor dispute — they turn to McCann. But it wasn’t so long ago that McCann was on the other side of the desk. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Ahead of the Story
Somewhat improbably, it was NBA commentator Dick Vitale who set the Massachusetts native on the path to becoming one of the country’s top sports lawyers. A diehard Boston Celtics fan who had suffered through the 1990s as the team struggled in the wake of superstar Larry
Bird’s retirement, in 2001, McCann was keeping a close eye on the team’s NBA draft picks when Vitale said something that caught his attention. “I remember watching the draft, and hearing Dick Vitale say it was a big mistake that these kids were jumping from high school to the NBA,” McCann recalls. Vitale went on — players drafted out of high school couldn’t make it in the league. They performed poorly on the court and, off the court, faced a litany of legal and financial troubles. But for McCann, it didn’t add up. “I thought: he’s wrong. Empirically, it’s incorrect,” he says. So he set out to prove it. He was in his last year of law school at the University of Virginia and taking a class with Donald Dell, a sports attorney and former agent who had represented
tennis stars Arthur Ashe and Jimmy Connors, among other athletes. He dug into the data and did a study of all the NBA players who’d been arrested in the last 15 years. The average age turned out to be 26 or 27 — proof, McCann says, that an early NBA career had little to do with off-court troubles. Dell gave McCann an A, and he published his findings in the school’s sports law journal, and that was it, at least for a few years (“It was in a law review,” he says; “people don’t read them”). He finished law school and took a job in Boston, practicing anti-trust litigation and some intellectual property law. And then Maurice Clarett sued the National Football League. It was 2004, and Clarett, a star running back for Ohio State University, had retained New Jersey
attorney Alan Milstein to fight a ruling that said he was too young to be drafted into the NFL. McCann sent his law review article to Milstein, figuring it might be of some interest. Milsten invited McCann to join the case, and though Clarett ultimately lost — the decision against him was written by future Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor — it was a turning point in McCann’s career. “I don’t think she got that one right,” McCann says, laughing, of Sotomayor. “But that experience was really important. I tell my students: I wasn’t athletic, I’m not a schmoozer. I wrote a paper, and that got me into (sports) law. This is a path for them to get ahead of a story, to really embrace a topic and analyze it in a way that’s interesting.” When it comes to sports law, McCann has been ahead of the story for years.
After the Clarett case, he enrolled at Harvard, where he earned a master’s degree in law and started on the track to becoming a law professor. His first teaching job was at the University of Mississippi Law School, a place he still returns every summer to teach a sports law class. But with family still in Massachusetts, he jumped at the chance to move to the Vermont Law School, where he was named director of the school’s sports law institute in 2010. Three years after that, he crossed the border to New Hampshire to establish the Sports and Entertainment Law Institute at UNH Law. Despite the media spotlight, McCann thrives on working with students. “He has a huge following among students … and there are students around the building who’ve identified him as their mentor,” says Roberts, with whom he co-directs the Institute. Because he’s has one foot in the academic world and another in the larger sports media world, “he’s got his finger on the pulse” of sports law in a way few others do, Roberts explains. Indeed, McCann’s two worlds overlap frequently. McCann talks in class about the stories he’s working on, and though he doesn’t tell them to, students read his work and follow him on Twitter, watching in real time as McCann applies the legal principles he talks about in class to major cases. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
In the Spotlight
McCann’s students — and sports fans around the world — have come to see that there are few places where sports and the law don’t intersect. It’s not just contract negotiations for big-name stars and collective bargaining agreements for players
unions. The last few years have seen highprofile lawsuits over how the NFL handles concussions among its players and whether college athletes should be paid. And, increasingly, the legal troubles of athletes, team owners and sponsors are played out in public. In 2014, the NFL came under fire for its handling of domestic violence allegations against Ray Rice, and Adrian Peterson’s child abuse charges ignited a national debate on corporal punishment. Perhaps 2014’s biggest sports law story was the strange saga of former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling. In April of that year, a recording surfaced of Sterling making racist remarks to a female friend. By the end of the summer, Sterling had been banned for life from the NBA and his wife, Shelly, had forced the team’s $2 billion sale. The morning the Sterling story broke, McCann woke up to a text message from CBS Sports Radio host Maggie Gray, asking him to come on that day’s show and talk about Sterling. The whole thing was “odd and offensive and had a lot of things going on,” McCann says. He went on Gray’s show, wrote an analysis for Sports Illustrated about how the NBA could respond to the video, and, quite suddenly, found himself covering the story for the rest of the summer. “It just exploded. You had the president talking about it while he was in China, Lebron James talking about boycotting the NBA, sponsors talking about cutting ties, [NBA commissioner] Adam Silver issuing a lifetime ban,” McCann says. He filed some 50 stories for Sports Illustrated during the next three months. It was sports law’s moment in the international spotlight: the Sterling case encompassed internal league regulations, tax law and
estate law across multiple jurisdictions. It was a different basketball scandal that got McCann the SI gig, back in 2007: radio personality Don Imus had made disparaging comments on-air about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team, and an editor asked McCann to offer his analysis of the situation for the magazine. Already several years into his own sports law blog at that point, McCann agreed, and his analysis caught the eye of SI website editor B.J. Schechter, who brought McCann on as an occasional contributor. Recently, he wrote coverage and analysis of the Aaron Hernandez murder trial in Boston. “He understands how the average person thinks. He’s got the mind of a lawyer and the sentimentality of a fan, and I think that serves him very well,” Schechter says. “These are very complex issues and people don’t want legal jargon. They want it explained in a way that’s not patronizing and is understandable.” Schechter recalls working with McCann in 2012 on a series of stories about Bobby Petrino, the former University of Arkansas football coach whose motorcycle accident uncovered a scandal: his affair with — and illegal hiring of — a 25-year-old former Arkansas volleyball player named Jessica Dorrell. When Arkansas blocked the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request McCann filed for documents related to Dorrell’s hiring, saying that it only had to fulfill FOIA requests from Arkansas residents, he had a former student practicing law in the state file the FOIA request on his behalf. The documents came through “and we had a blockbuster story, because we were able to get a treasure-trove of information
OF TORTS + TOUCHDOWNS: McCann has been a media go-to for Deflategate — the NFL investigation into whether the New England Patriots deliberately deflated footballs used during their AFC victory over the Indianapolis Colts — and now, he’s parlaying that expertise into a first-of-its-kind undergraduate course at UNH. Called Deflategate: the Intersection of Sports, Law and Journalism, the course will be offered in Durham this fall, and will cover the many legal and journalistic issues the controversy has raised. Introduced shortly after the NFL announced disciplinary actions against Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, the course itself has garnered a good deal of media attention — and debate about whether a single sports controversy, no matter how significant, is fodder for a college-level course. But McCann explains that the course is not about deflated footballs; “instead,” he says, “it is about the interplay between those footballs — along with numerous other sports ‘things’ — and the legal, regulatory and journalistic systems governing sports.” Margaret McCabe, an associate dean at UNH School of Law, came up with the idea, as a way to strengthen the law school’s connection to undergraduates on the Durham campus. As McCabe told the Chronicle of Higher Education, grabbing the attention of undergrads means working a little harder to make dry-sounding topics like antitrust law, labor law, and tort law seem more exciting.
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very quickly, in an innovative way,” Schechter says. “Mike thinks on his feet. He’s resourceful. He doesn’t take no for an answer. … He finds a way to get it done.” While Schechter’s assessment might carry a whiff of scouting report about it, McCann is the first to say he’s not an athlete. Growing up, he played basketball (“I’m not tall,” he says) and baseball (“I’m not fast”), but “I was never anything special,” he says. Today, his activity of choice is running. And though his prolific posts for Sports Illustrated and active Twitter feed might lead one to believe that he is constantly watching and thinking about sports, that’s not the case. “I am definitely on the lookout for issues I can write about,” he says. “Some people think I’m at home, watching sports constantly. But I’m much more likely to be watching a movie with my wife.” He’s also likely to be up late, filing a story or answering emails from students. “He’ll take a student’s resume and reach out in every direction until he finds them a job,” says Roberts. “And he’s been an incredible mentor to me. Our offices are a few feet apart, and he always makes time for me. He’s a good cheerleader and an amazing person to have on my team.” For sports fans following the latest legal tribulations of their home team or favorite athlete, and for students around UNH Law, McCann seems ubiquitous, in the classroom with students or talking to colleagues in the hall one minute; on a cable news program or a radio show the next. Roberts says he’s the reason many students have been attracted to the sports and entertainment law program. “There are a lot of people who enjoy Mike’s work, who feel like they know him even if they don’t,” Roberts says. “There are students who are here because of Mike. They say, ‘I want to be where Mike McCann is.’” They could be referring to the classroom or the web. But what they likely mean is that they want to be one step ahead, on the cusp of the next frontier of sports, anticipating the next big story, ready to play.~ Larry Clow ’12G is a freelance writer and editor based in Dover, N.H. He is the founding editor of The Sound, an independent news weekly covering Seacoast N.H.
MICHAEL MCCANN’S GREATEST HITS As a lawyer and a journalist, Michael McCann sets the pace when it comes to covering sports law. Since joining Sports Illustrated as a staff writer in 2007, McCann has covered dozens of cases, scandals and controversies and written hundreds of stories. Here are five of his favorites:
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THE AARON HERNANDEZ MURDER TRIAL McCann watched the former Patriots star’s 10-week trial for the murder of Odin Lloyd both in person and on video and wrote more than 40 stories about the case. “It was a very consuming and serious story to report on and analyze,” McCann says. Hernandez’s legal troubles aren’t over — he’s also been accused of murdering Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado outside a Boston night club in 2012. McCann will be covering that trial later this year.
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DONALD STERLING AND THE LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS A tape of former L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling making racist comments surfaced in April 2014 and the resulting fallout became the sports law story of the summer. McCann wrote 30 articles for Sports Illustrated on the Sterling case and broke news that Sterling had threatened to sue the NBA. “It was a fascinating story because it implicated so many different areas of law — contract law, freedom of speech, the rights of private associations to punish its members, and later, trust and estate law and mental competency law when Shelly Sterling became involved,” McCann says.
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ED O'BANNON V. NCAA Should student athletes receive compensation when the NCAA uses their names, images, and likenesses on licensed products? That was the question at the heart of former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon’s lawsuit against the College Athletics Association. The case began in 2009 and
McCann followed it for five years, interviewing O’Bannon and NCAA officials and attending the trial in Oakland, Calif. in 2014. A judge found in O’Bannon’s favor, a decision McCann says had a profound impact on the NCAA.
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LANCE ARMSTRONG The superstar cyclist fell from grace in 2013 when he admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs throughout his career. After admitting to doping, Armstrong gave his first exclusive interview to Oprah Winfrey — and his second to McCann, who interviewed Armstrong at his Austin, Texas, home. The interview happened after McCann and Armstrong exchanged messages on Twitter, and the three-hour conversation yielded one of McCann’s most memorable and popular stories, “My Dance with Lance.”
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JAMEIS WINSTON Since 2012, sexual assault accusations have dogged Winston, the star quarterback for Florida State who led the team to a Heisman Trophy victory during his freshman year. College officials cleared Winston of the charges in 2014, but there’s been criticism that officials mishandled the investigation because of Winston’s star status. McCann covered the story closely, and in a 2014 article, he proposed that Winston should have dropped out of Florida State, an analysis that “attracted a good deal of attention, including a lot of hate mail,” McCann says. The allegations haven’t hurt Winston’s career prospects — he was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ firstround pick in the 2015 NFL draft.
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70 YEARS
Meeting
Clients
Where
They Are BY LORI FERGUSO N
T
HE FAMILY came to Outside the Lines, the pediatric occupational therapy practice started by Taylor Prendergast Moore ’07, ‘08G, seeking assistance. Their young son struggled with multiple disabilities, including anxiety and a profound lack of ability to understand where his body was in space. Moore and her team had been working the problem in the office and were making progress, but one day the boy’s worried mother announced that an impending doctor’s visit in Boston would require riding an elevator, an experience the child couldn’t handle, physically or emotionally. “We were treating these issues in the office, but UNH taught us to be better than that, to treat not only the child’s disabilities, but also to address the whole family and environmental struggles in real time,” Moore says. “So off to the elevators we went!” GOING UP: A young client shows Taylor Prendergast Moore ’07, ’08G he’s ready to take on a one-time challenge — an elevator ride — outside her pediatric occupational therapy practice in Dover, N.H.
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“ One week later they returned with a son who couldn’t wait to tell me all about his ride in ‘the big doctor elevators.’”
PHOTO BY VALERIE LE STER
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By the end of one session, Moore had the boy happily riding up and down elevators. A subsequent field trip to a new set of elevators confirmed that the problem had been resolved, and the family headed off to Boston with confidence. “One week later they returned with a son who couldn’t wait to tell me all about his ride in ‘the big doctor elevators,’” Moore recalls with delight. It’s situations like this, she says, that continually remind her not to become stagnant in her therapeutic approach, but to instead place herself in the world her patients struggle with every day. “As occupational therapists, we use many research-based strategies and clinical theories to guide our interventions. We take these research-proven interventions and apply them in a child’s school, home or community, creating opportunities for a child's occupations of life to expand and grow across all environments—not just within the four walls of our clinic.” A LONG WAY FROM PAPIER-MÂCHÉ Occupational therapy has changed a great deal since the discipline was first formalized in 1917 under the auspices of the National Society for the Promotion of Occupational Therapy. In the early years, practitioners focused on “curative occupations” for “invalids and convalescents,” working in partnership with other rehabilitation agencies. In 1921, the group became the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA), and by 1923 the first accreditation efforts for OT educational programs were under way. Nearly a century
later, the profession is enjoying greater popularity and a more diverse client base than was likely ever envisioned by early practitioners. According to the AOTA, occupational therapy consistently ranks among the best jobs in health care and also among the most recession-proof. And with the new emphasis placed on primary care by the Affordable Care Act, occupational therapists are increasingly sought after as members of multidisciplinary community-based teams focusing on health promotion, illness prevention and management of chronic physical and mental health disorders. And while traditional medical and school settings remain a popular place of employment for occupational therapists, non-traditional settings — public spaces, private homes, facilities dedicated to treating brain injuries or homeless shelters where residents are trying to learn what constitutes healthy living — are becoming equally prevalent. “Occupational therapists land everywhere,” observes associate professor of occupational therapy Barbara Prudhomme White, who also serves as executive director of undergraduate programs at UNH. “We’re interested in helping people from anywhere and at any stage in their lives do the things that mean something to them. If you’re interested in functional performance and why people do what they do, OT is a great profession.” UNH’s occupational therapy program turns 70 this year, and much has changed since students like Priscilla Garran Bergethon ’45 developed their skills by creating ceramic pots and papier-mâché puppets under the tutelage of famed New Hampshire artists Ed and Mary Scheier as members of the inaugural class. Established to meet the care demands created by World War II, UNH’s program (like many others) emphasized “diversional activities” aimed at distracting patients’ “mind(s) from thoughts of illness and
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PRACTICAL SKILLS: Above, the UNH occupational therapy program’s first official graduate, Beverly Hewey ’45, received her certificate of completion from UNH President Harold Stoke (at left) while her father looked on. The original OT curriculum included handiwork, the likes of which went into the circular patch at above right, worn by all OT students.
UNH’s occupational therapy program turns 70 this year, and much has changed since students…developed their skills by creating ceramic pots and papier-mâché puppets under the tutelage of famed New Hampshire artists Ed and Mary Scheier.
invalidism”; the program’s first graduating class of eight — all women, selected for their “judgment, dependability, tact, tolerance, patience, kindness and high degree of physical and mental health” — supplemented their scientific coursework with classes in hygiene and sanitation, home management, handcrafts, carving, ceramics, puppetry, floriculture, woodwork and clothing construction. It wasn’t until the mid-to-late 1960s that a real level of clinical and medical rigor took precedence over “practical” skills; the shift from traditional to more community-based settings is even more recent. These days, UNH students can be found anywhere from the slopes of Loon Mountain, assisting participants in the New England Disabled Sports program, to a halfway house, helping former jail inmates negotiate the practicalities of their post-release life. “Occupational therapy is often described as ‘curing by doing,’” says Prudhomme White. While you might find one OT working with a patient with a brain injury to regain basic motor skills in a clinical environment, you might as easily find another working with the same patient in a real-life setting, helping him relearn how to take a bus, create a budget or negotiate a job interview. OUT OF THE BOX UNH academic fieldwork coordinator Susan Merrill says the move away from traditional practice settings has been particularly pronounced during the past three to five years. To meet student and
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industry needs, the program is constantly seeking new avenues for training graduates. Clinical assistant professor John Wilcox, for example, oversees ‘Level 1’ OT fieldwork initiatives in seven different community settings that prepare students to lead everything from a postconcussion syndrome support group and fall prevention programs to a creative expression group at an independent living center. Fieldwork opportunities, Wilcox says, bridge the gap between classroom theory and lectures and real services in a community setting. “Experiential, hands-on learning is critical to success as an occupational therapist,” he explains. “It’s essential that our students learn how to build rapport with clients.” Prudhomme White says it’s this ability to meet clients where they are that makes occupational therapists so marketable. “When you look at this profession from a 10,000-foot view, you realize that OTs can work in virtually any setting.” Chris Dunstan ’00 takes the concept of working in any setting quite literally. After graduation, Dunstan worked in a variety of traditional OT environments, but after several years of working with children, he knew he wanted to focus on students with developmental and functional needs outside the typical school setting. In 2011, he founded Dunstan Pediatric Services and began delivering customized care out of a 34’, Class-A motor home that has been transformed into
a unique mobile gym and clinic to travel to schools and private homes in central New Hampshire. “Few of the schools we served had the luxury of dedicated space for occupational therapy,” he explains. “We often found ourselves delivering treatment in inappropriate rooms — libraries with no privacy or offices with no ‘kid-sized’ furnishings — so we decided to bring our treatment facilities with us.” Now, Dunstan says, his fully equipped, selfcontained mobile space and team of 10 therapists provides services to more than 25 programs across the state. In 2007, new certification requirements stipulated that occupational therapists have either a master’s or professional doctoral degree to go into practice, and UNH expanded its OT program to allow qualified students to earn both degrees in 5½ years of uninterrupted study. Academic fieldwork coordinator Merrill is responsible for helping UNH’s OT graduate students find the two 12-week ‘Level 2’ internships their master’s degree requires, with placements that range from New Hampshire’s White Mountains to Central America. Since 2010, five students have completed maternal and child health and geriatric public health internships through the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology OT Field School in Guatemala, and another student has gone to Nicaragua to work with impoverished elderly through the OT fieldwork branch of the Jesse F. Richardson Foundation. Earlier this year, five grad students made up the inaugural class of interns at New England Disabled Sports at Lincoln, New Hampshire’s Loon Mountain, working with both children and adults with a range of physical and cognitive disabilities, the first fieldwork placement of its type anywhere, Merrill says. “It was out of the box, not quite as clinical as I would get in a hospital or a school,” says Loon intern Kailee
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Collins ’14, ’15G. “But we were still evaluating, treating, using so many different pieces of adaptive equipment. It drew all my clinical experience and all my school experience into one.” Another new frontier for the profession: post-graduate residencies like the one Amy Ma ’12, ’13G is completing at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Chicago is currently the only accredited acute care residency program in the country, and Ma is one of the first three OTs to participate in it (one of the other two, Chelsea Steinberg ’11, ’12G, is also a UNH OT grad.) “My education at UNH gave me a strong occupation-based foundation for the residency,” Ma says. “I came into this program with a very good understanding of the unique ways in which occupational therapists can help patients.” NO COOKIE CUTTERS ALLOWED Back in Seacoast New Hampshire, Taylor Prendergast Moore is putting her own spin on the unique ways occupational therapists can help patients. Following graduation, Moore began her career working in a pediatric facility attached to a hospital, but soon stepped out on her own. “All through school, I dreamed of owning a private practice working with pediatric patients,” Moore says, “and after a few years of working in a conventional setting and constantly wrestling with the feeling that I could be doing more for my patients, I decided to take the plunge and open my own practice.” With a vision of helping children struggling with disabilities or processing deficits realize their full potential, Moore founded Outside the Lines in 2012. She credits the university’s OT department for developing her ability not only to see the pathway to a better way of helping these children and their families, but also to establish a viable practice model for achieving her goals.
It wasn’t until the mid-to-late 1960s that a real level of clinical and medical rigor took precedence over “practical” skills; the shift from traditional to more community-based settings is even more recent.
“UNH trained me to perform a clear-eyed assessment of a population’s needs and to avoid becoming stagnant in my treatment approach,” Moore says. “We’re taught to do solid, evidence-based research and develop methodologies tailored to the specific population we’re treating. I was trained not to be a cookiecutter therapist, and I take that dictate very seriously.” Moore’s approach is clearly resonating with both referrers and clients. Her Dover practice today employs a team of seven, including two of Moore’s fellow UNH grads. Outside the Lines has moved to increasingly larger spaces twice since opening its doors, and is preparing to move again in the coming months. Moore also has started bringing high school students and current UNH undergrads with an interest in OT into the practice for internships. “I feel like I have an obligation to give back to my community, and I had great fieldwork experiences when I was in college, so I’m happy to give others the opportunity to explore the field,” she says. “I love what I do,” she adds. “I think the OT department would be proud to see us remembering and applying the valuable lessons we learned at UNH.”~ Lori L. Ferguson is a freelance writer based in southern New Hampshire. She enjoys writing on lifestyle, health & wellness topics as well as all things artistic. www.writerloriferguson.com
HANDIWORK: From ceramics to woodwork to beading, the craft projects UNH's first OT’s would guide their patients through served a therapeutic purpose, improving fine motor skills — and providing “diversion” from thoughts of illness and disability.
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UNCLE! John Marshall ’87 and young friends at the Good Shepherd Agricultural Mission in northern India celebrate Holi, the Hindu spring festival of colors.
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WE WANT YOUR STORIES! This is the fourth installment of The Road I’ve Traveled, a feature highlighting essays by alumni contributors about milestone moments in their lives. What road have you traveled? Send us a first-person account—or an idea for one. If you don’t think of yourself as a writer, we’ll connect you with an experienced writing coach who can help you bring out the best in your story. Contact us with your idea, a proposal, or even a completed first draft of no more than 1,200 words at alumni.editor@unh.edu. Spread the word to your alumni friends: We want to hear from you!
TH E ROA D I’V E TRAV ELED
Who Said Grownups Have to be Practical? MY BE ST E X PE RIE NC E S H AVE COM E F ROM FOLLOW ING MY H E ART B Y
J O H N
M A R S H A L L
’ 8 7
I am surrounded by children, all wanting to be seen. “Pick me up, Uncle,” they clamor, but my arms are full. My heart is full, too. I know these kids by name, the once foreign sounds now familiar and beautiful to me: Jimika, Santoshi, Sawbitri. And I know their heartbreaking stories, the tales of abandonment and loss that all orphans carry with them.
So why do these children pulse with a joy that is so infectious, pouring their love into me day after day as if I am the one who is empty? And how did I get here, in the middle of their remarkable lives in an unremarkable corner of a jungle in India? Looking back on the road I’ve traveled since college, I can see how my life has been shaped by a series of impractical choices, times I’ve chosen heart over head, passion over profit. My college-age son describes it more simply: “You held on to your dreams,” he says proudly. And for me, as Frost once wrote, that has made all the difference. I studied business administration at UNH, hoping it would help me make some money — but I felt no passion for the work. To me, statistics were cruel and unusual punishment and lectures on monetary policy were dry as dust. By senior year, I was daydreaming of something different, something fun: I wanted to write movies. Never mind that I had no contacts in the film business or that I had never read an actual screenplay. The idea of Hollywood filled me with excitement, and I decided to follow that feeling and see where it would lead. After graduation, I moved to Los Angeles and embraced the writer’s life. It was not a series of premiere parties and awards ceremonies. Though I wrote with youthful optimism and had some minor successes, no one offered to produce the growing pile of screenplays I created. Still, I loved the process: the pen-to-paper discipline, the creative exploration. I just needed to find a way to pay the bills. Five years later, newly married and a bit worn from rejection, my wife, Traca, and I decided to move back to New England and start a family. By the time our first child was about to arrive, with the financial pressures of parenthood closing in on me, I sat in our small Portland, Maine, apartment having a panic attack. I was working a lame job at a local restaurant, waiting tables so I could keep writing during the day, keep dreaming. But as Traca’s belly grew bigger, the voices of conventional wisdom grew louder. It’s time to get serious. Grow up! How can you afford a baby if you can’t afford your own life? With these thoughts swirling, I decided to apply for an insurance job I saw advertised in the paper.
VOLUNTOURISM HOW-TO
Companies exist that will set up a volunteering trip for a fee. The Marshalls’ strategy for their around-the-world trip was simply to do an Internet search for the name of a country they wanted to visit, plus the word “volunteer” — “volunteer Costa Rica,” for example. From the results, they chose what looked interesting and contacted the organizations directly. Smaller projects tended to be more responsive, they found. Most organizations do charge volunteers for room and board. In 2010, when the Marshalls had a budget of $1,000 a month (not including airfare) for the four of them, they found some groups were willing to negotiate down from their usual fee. They set up a few stops from home and arranged the rest as they went along. More details are in the epilogue to John Marshall’s book, Wide-Open World. Here’s what John, Traca, Logan and Jackson Marshall wound up doing during their six-month trip: • Worked with animals at the Osa Wildlife Sanctuary in Costa Rica, where monkeys roam free and humans essentially live in cages. • Through WWOOF— Willing Workers on Organic Farms — worked three to five hours a day, in exchange for free room and board, at three farms in New Zealand. • Taught English in rural central Thailand through the organization Volunthai. • Volunteered at Good Shepherd Agricultural Mission, a Christian orphanage in India to which John has since returned several times. • Helped out at the Siddhartha School in Ladakh, in the Himalayan region of India near Tibet.
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It promised health coverage and a big potential salary. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, I told myself. Maybe I could put my business degree to use after all. So I went to a cattle-call interview at a local hotel and gave them the answers I knew they wanted to hear. “What do you value more, money or family?” the stiff rep asked. I said money, which was a lie — but I got the job. “You start Monday!” the rep announced with an enthusiasm I did not share. We shook hands, and I walked out smiling. But inside I felt dead. I was giving up, selling out, trading my dreams and my heart for a little fear-based security. That night at a Chinese restaurant, I talked about it with Traca, a fellow dreamer who totally understood. “You don’t have to take the job. We’ll figure it out,” she said, eight months pregnant. Then she handed me a fortune cookie and smiled. “I’m going to let this cookie decide it,” I joked as I pulled out the thin slip of paper. I’ll never forget the words written inside:There is as much love in a small house as there is in a big one. It wasn’t a burning bush, but this message was all the courage I needed. I read the words aloud, then stood up from the table. “I’m not taking the job!” I shouted, and I’m not kidding: We danced out of that restaurant as if we’d won some kind of life lottery. From that moment on, I committed to a creative life, and I’ve never looked back. After lots of hard work and many lean years, I became creative director at several Maine TV stations. I got to design logos, draw cartoons, write scripts, direct and produce TV shows, host on-air segments, even write theme songs and jingles when necessary. It was a dream job, and I loved every minute of it. But one day, after nine Emmy awards, at the peak of my career, my pesky heart began to call me away again. I could not resist the lure of another impractical adventure. In 2010, needing a break and wanting at last to fulfill a lifelong dream, Traca and I pulled our two teenage children out of school, quit our jobs and took a six-month trip around the world. We couldn’t afford the typical restauranthotel-museum kind of trip, so we volunteered our way from country to country. We worked with service
“
If you want to travel, the trick is to commit. Don’t just dream of doing it or desire doing it. D E C I D E to do it. Once you decide, the rest is just details.”
organizations in remote areas on all kinds of interesting and challenging projects. We spent time at an animal sanctuary in the rainforest of Costa Rica, labored on organic farms in New Zealand, taught English in rural Thailand, fell in love with orphans in India and worked alongside a Buddhist monk high in the Himalayas. It was a chance to unplug, to reconnect with each other and the world, to be an intact family for a while longer before college started and we all drifted apart. A few friends thought we were being more than impractical this time. We were being reckless, even foolish, they said. They saw the world as full of potential dangers, diseases, terrorists. Why would we trade the security we’d worked so hard to establish for some fleeting family adventure? Because — well, here’s what I’ve come to believe: It’s often the impractical decisions, even the reckless desires we act upon, that wake us up, snap us out of routine, and create entirely new possibilities in our lives. When the trip was over, I wrote our story as a memoir called Wide-Open World and sold it to Random House. Thrilled with the prospect of finally being a published author, I returned to work in television, only to find the office no longer fit me. At my desk, the world and all its need, all its freedom, whispered to me as I tried to concentrate.
Re-entry can be difficult. Some people report that their lives are forever altered by a single week of overseas service. After six months of volunteer travel, I was hungry to do more meaningful work. In 2014, still waiting for my book to be released (it hit stores this past February), I left my job once more and went back to India, thinking I would volunteer my way around the country for a while and write about it. But shortly after landing, while working at an elephant sanctuary in Jaipur, I became extremely sick. The fungal infection inside my skull was so rancid, I gagged at the odor coming out of my own nose. Blinded by fever and desperate for a familiar face, I returned to the Good Shepherd Agricultural Mission, the orphanage my family and I had visited on our Wide-Open World tour. I was hoping to stay a few weeks and find a little comfort. I ended up staying for eight months and finding an entirely new direction for my life. The children I met were a revelation, opening my eyes to the reality that orphans face all over the world. With 22 million orphans in India and an estimated 153 million orphans worldwide, my time at the Mission has made it impossible for me to live as if these children do not exist. I now get to write full-time and dedicate most of my creative energy
to helping orphaned and abandoned children. Through videos, songs and stories, I love to highlight the beauty of these forgotten kids, raise money for them, and do my part to lift them up. When I do this, when I make some small difference for even a single child, I feel as if all my training and all my seemingly impractical choices have been preparing me for this very purpose. And so I stand in a dusty courtyard, watching the setting Indian sun, surrounded by smiling children, their voices blending into a single happy note. “Pick me up, Uncle,” they all shout. Kushboo, Malika, Jyotika. While they pull me and call me in a dozen insistent directions, my soul sings, my heart applauds and I know I’m right where I should be. John Marshall ’87, is a nine-time Emmy Award-winning television writer and producer and the founder of New Orphanage, a nonprofit that seeks to find and support the best orphan projects worldwide. His memoir, Wide-Open World: How Volunteering Around the Globe Changed One Family’s Lives Forever, is available from Ballantine Books / Random House. To contact John, visit www.johnmarshall.com
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MEET THE ORPHANS
In blog posts and videos, John Marshall loves to tell the stories of the orphaned and abandoned children at Good Shepherd Agricultural Mission in India, and how donors from around the world are changing their lives. For a glimpse of a few of the kids, go to http://johnmarshall.com, click BLOG and then look for posts from the dates listed below. As a baby, Cynthia was dropped into a running storm drain by a mother who couldn’t care for her. Her grandmother caught her downstream and brought her to the orphanage. Last fall at age 6, Cynthia starred in a video singing a song Marshall wrote to thank two people who had donated $4,000 for new school desks. Watch the music video in the 10/4/14 blog post “A Star is Born.” Ram Pal’s father was a leper, and he and his mother were street beggars with little to eat. Ram Pal thrived after being brought to the orphanage, but last fall he reminded Marshall that he was one of the few children there who did not have a sponsor. Marshall set up cameras to record what happened later, after he’d posted Ram Pal’s sponsorship request online. See the video in the 11/26/14 post “The Power of Being Wanted.” After their parents died, Malika and Jyotika, then 9 and 7, spent seven months living alone in the family’s tiny apartment, eating little and afraid to leave to go to school. A 3/28/14 post titled “Malika and Jyotika” tells their story, and a 12/9/14 post titled “My Last Moment Alive” shows their lives after eight months at the orphanage.
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[Q +A] “When monkeys are biting you, you’re wide awake’
A former television producer, John Marshall ’87 is a father, video storyteller, writer, cartoonist, carpenter, guitarist and songwriter — all skills that have proved useful in his new global venture. Marshall has started a nonprofit, New Orphanage (working toward “a new orphan age”) that seeks to identify and spotlight projects that directly benefit the world’s orphans, so that potential donors can know their money will be well-used. (Paperwork is being filed to incorporate the group as a 501(c)3; donations go directly to the projects featured on neworphanage.org.) He has focused so far on the Good Shepherd Agricultural Mission in Banbasa, India, which cares for 75 children, runs a 60-acre farm and two years ago started a school that now serves nearly 450 students from the area. A campaign to expand the school raised $114,000 in 60 days on the crowd-funding site Indiegogo. Previous campaigns had allowed the orphanage to build desks, install a new water system, power its generator and begin developing an independent solar energy system. On a self-designed tour promoting his first book, Wide-Open World. Marshall spoke with Jane Harrigan during an April stop in Tucson, Ariz.:
You spent much of last year living at the Good Shepherd Agricultural Mission in India. How is the person who counted 217 hugs from orphans in a single day different from the person who graduated from UNH in 1987? Back then I was very concerned with myself, with making money, getting famous. But age softens you; it humbles you and opens you up. I’ll be 50 in December. Now, first and foremost, I want to do something meaningful and useful. In television I won a bunch of awards, and I used to be so proud of them. When I won my first one, I couldn’t stop looking at it. But now I find working with orphaned kids so much more rewarding. In fact, I’m bringing one of the Emmy statues to the orphanage next time I go, and leaving it there for the kids. They’ll like that it’s so shiny.
When you finished your first screenplay, did you really drive into the Hollywood Hills at 2 a.m. to bang on the door of a guy who had said two months earlier that he’d read it? (Laughing) Yeah, in my early twenties I truly believed that anything was possible. That’s youth; it’s hubris. It’s easy to say I acted like a jerk. But that time of my life was wonderful because I would do a crazy, stupid thing like bang on someone’s door in the middle of the night to try to get my career started. Now I’m glad no one opened the door — or called the police. Of course I should’ve waited till morning. But the person I was then — he couldn’t wait because he felt so driven, like “This is my moment.” I can’t muster that kind of feeling today, but I love it that I once felt that way. When I look back on that person that I was, I’m inspired by the braveness.
Setting out with your family to volunteer around the world, without many plans in place, sounds pretty brave. My wife and I wanted to take a trip around the world when our son was born, and then suddenly he was 17 and our daughter was 14 and we still hadn’t done it. That’s the thing about a trip around the world: It’s never the right time. You never have enough money. And no one ever encourages you to go. If you want to travel, the trick is to commit. Don’t just dream of doing it or desire doing it. DECIDE to do it. Once you decide, the rest is just details. At least that’s how it worked for us. Details like ... ? Initially I’d been given a leave of absence from my job, but then I was told by my company I’d have to quit. So I said OK, I quit. The plane tickets are not refundable, and we’re going. As the saying goes, we jumped off the cliff and figured we’d learn to fly on the way down. Then there was the way we rented our house. We had no realtor to screen applicants, just said, “Here’s our key” and left every single thing we owned in the house. That’s how motivated we were to go: We turned our house over to a total stranger — which is not something I recommend. The whole trip was a wake-up call. In regular life before then, I could get ready, get out the door and drive to work without remembering any of it. I was sleepwalking. But on the trip, everything was new; we were all wide awake and so alive. Even simple things were exciting. You don’t have to travel around the world to feel that, but it helps. When monkeys are biting you, you’re wide awake. Those scenes in the book of the monkeys biting in Costa Rica are so scary! We’d been warned by the wildlife sanctuary that spider monkeys tend not to like large white males, which is not a bad description of me. Every time the monkeys bite, they bite three times, and I got bitten on three different
days. So nine bites — on my leg and my foot, my elbow and my head, even my spine. I was freaked out, especially the first time, running back to our room and bleeding into the sink. After the third set of bites, I was done. On our last day there, my wife and kids were outside playing with the monkeys and hugging them goodbye, and I was just huddled inside, a basket case. Even so, it was an amazing experience to live so close to the monkeys. It wasn’t all biting. It was definitely more fun than it was terrifying. Most things are scarier before you actually do them. Once you do something bold, it emboldens you to do another thing that’s bold. Trying to help the world’s orphans is your new definition of boldness? Helping to make change in the life of an orphaned child is the best work I’ve ever done, and I’ve done some pretty fun things. UNICEF says that of the 153 million orphan children in the world today, 22 million, the single largest number, are in India. It would be awesome to help them all. But it’s paralyzing to think about that; it just shuts my mind off. I’m starting with this one orphanage because I know and trust them. Then I’d like to find other trustworthy people and programs that are working and help tell their stories, help grow the work they’re doing. If it grows to be thousands of children, that would be amazing, but if it stays small, that’s amazing too. Just so long as real lives are touched and money is not wasted. It’s a great honor for me to be a part of these children’s lives. I just love them, I do. If you asked the kids, “Who gives more in this exchange, you or Uncle John?” they’d say, “Oh, Uncle John gives us much more; we don’t really do anything.” But if you ask me, I’ll say the total opposite: Whatever I give is nothing compared to what they give me. So it’s the perfect exchange — everyone feels like they’re giving nothing, and everyone feels like they’re getting everything. ~
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BY V IRGINIA STUAR T ’75, ’8 0G
The loss of a childhood dream can sometimes lead to bigger and better things
“ Reaching Unreachable” T H E
When Job Heintz ’90 looks back on his time at UNH, one lesson in particular stands out. He had walked onto the varsity hockey team after a successful high school career, with high hopes that gradually gave way to realism. “By the end of my first year, I realized I wasn’t going to be a star goaltender, not for UNH and not for the NHL,” he says. Thanks to assistant coach Sean Coady ’81, however, this dose of reality went down surprisingly well. “He had the ability to help you understand that just because you’re not going to achieve your original dream, that doesn’t mean you can’t excel and do a lot of great things,” recalls Heintz. “Things happen that you can’t control, but you just have to work hard and keep moving forward.” Coady went on to become a professional scout and director of player personnel with two teams in the National Hockey League. Heintz has gone on to make major contributions in a totally different arena: helping citizens in one of the world’s poorest countries protect their environment and leading an international nonprofit that has cured blindness for hundreds of thousands of people in developing nations worldwide.
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PHOTO COURTESY OF JOB HEINTZ ’90
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As
Heintz let go of the hockey dream, his first step on a new path was finding a completely different athletic challenge — exploring the rock walls of New Hampshire and Maine. He took a rock-climbing course at UNH and developed what would become lifelong friendships with his classmates while “cragging” at Cathedral Ledge, Crawford Notch and nearby Pawtuckaway State Park. After graduating with a degree in English, he spent two years climbing, writing and training outdoor enthusiasts as a National Outdoor Leadership School instructor, ultimately leading expeditions in Alaska, British Columbia and the Indian Himalayas. In 1995, Heintz earned both a J.D. and master’s degree in environmental law at Vermont Law School, where he had been required to do a legal internship. Instead of following the beaten path to an internship at, say, the EPA, he connected with a lawyer working on democratic reforms in Nepal and traveled to Kathmandu. “I wanted to see the Himalayas, and I did get into the mountains,” he says, “but 90 percent of my time was spent on the backstreets of Kathmandu, seeking out like-minded Nepalese public interest lawyers.” While he was there, he co-founded the country’s first public interest environmental law firm, Pro Public. For the better part of the next decade, Heintz hopscotched between the East Coast and Kathmandu, working as an environmental advocate in Vermont and lending his expertise as a volunteer to Pro Public, which has won an impressive number of environmental cases before the Nepalese supreme court. After 9/11 foiled a planned move back to Asia, Heintz and his wife, Cristina Pellechio ’89, moved to the Mid-Atlantic region. Within a year they were expecting their first child, and in 2003 they moved back to Vermont. “We knew we wanted our kids to grow up with wilderness, as well as family, nearby, but it was taking a big economic risk,” says Heintz. He was hired — part time at first — by world-renowned mountain climber and ophthalmologist Geoff Tabin at the Himalayan Cataract Project, which was headquartered in Vermont. Tabin and Sanduk Ruit, a Nepalese ophthalmologist, had started the nonprofit eight years earlier to bring state-of-the-art eye care and surgery to destitute populations in remote areas in Nepal. Now they needed someone with a
strong business sense to help scale up their organization so they could carry out their mission of “reaching the unreachable” in other countries as well. “I wouldn’t say we were exactly ‘cowboy ophthalmologists,’” recalls Tabin, who had been more or less handling the office work out of a box in the back of his car, “but we needed someone to harness our energy and focus.” Heintz filled the bill on multiple levels, ramping up public relations, garnering large grants from the U.S. government, structuring the organization, and keeping an eye on legal requirements as well. Tabin and Heintz soon found that some of their best work together got done in the wilds of Vermont. “About once a week we’d meet at a quarry,” Tabin recalls, “and discuss how to expand eye care into Bhutan while we were belaying each other on frozen waterfalls, or rock climbing.” Tabin has since relocated to Utah, but wherever the duo’s work takes them, they continue to strategize in a sort of extreme form of the office “offsite”—running a half marathon in Ethiopia (a fundraiser for the nonprofit), scaling cliffs in Burma or rock climbing in Utah. Within a few years, Heintz became the CEO of the Himalayan Cataract Project. With an annual budget of more than $5 million today, the organization has increased in size tenfold under his leadership. The office is no longer entirely virtual, but it remains very modest — located in a former church parsonage that also houses a food pantry in Waterbury, Vt. — and the organization prides itself on the unusually low proportion of its budget, just 10 percent, that goes to administrative costs. It’s all part of HCP’s commitment to providing the most help to the most people at the lowest cost.
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For those individuals, the results can only be described as priceless. Because of poor nutrition and other factors such as a genetic predisposition and increased exposure to ultraviolet light from time spent outdoors and at high altitudes, the prevalence of cataracts is especially high in a country like Nepal. Worldwide, millions of people who don’t have access to care needlessly lose their vision to cataracts every year, and the consequences of blindness are much more dire in lessdeveloped countries. On average, a blind person’s life expectancy in these regions will be less than one-third that of a healthy person of the same age. In some poverty-stricken areas, the HCP doctors often note, a blind member of a family may be regarded as “a mouth with no hands.” One Ethiopian grandmother describes how that feels: “Sometimes I hear my daughter praying that I will die so she can take care of her own children instead of me. I don’t blame her. Sometimes I think death would be better than this.” The grandmother was interviewed for a documentary about one HCP high-volume cataract-surgery campaign, in which a multinational team of five surgeons spent a week in a small rural hospital, removing more than 1,300 cataracts. Although Heintz spends most of his time managing a staff of 10 and more than two dozen partnerships on three continents, he helps out at high-volume campaigns like the one in Ethiopia several times a year. Thanks to a sutureless form of cataract surgery developed by Ruit, HCP’s Nepalese cofounder, and an innovative and inexpensively produced artificial lens he developed, the surgeries can take place in rapid assemblyline fashion, in makeshift operating rooms. In places like Nepal or Bhutan, the doctors and their staff and porters may spend many days on foot climbing high into the mountains, pressing on at night by the light of headlamps and carrying in equipment like microscopes and slit lamps. When Heintz arrives with the ophthalmologists, hundreds of patients have already been waiting at the site, sometimes for days. He relishes the opportunity to get involved, speaking to patients in their own language with the help of local nurses who provide a list of key phrases. The patients
STILL CLIMBING: Heintz bouldering — climbing without a rope on short but intense routes close to the ground — outside Souris, Prince Edward Island, in 2014.
TATIANA HEINTZ
come out of the 10-minute operation with patches on their eyes and wait only till the next day for the moment of uncovering — and revelation. “In all these different places in world, it’s always the same experience,” says Heintz. “The patient’s eyes are reacting to light all of a sudden, after maybe eight or 10 years. So first there’s a moment of ‘what?!’” The next reaction often varies by culture. There may be laughter, tears or shouts of joy. In Ethiopia, ululations. In Burma, Heintz recalls, “people just blinked. They didn’t know quite how to react. In North Korea, patients turned toward the portrait of the Great Leader on the wall, praising him instead of the doctor who had removed their cataracts.” Back home in her village, the Ethiopian grandmother in the documentary is thrilled to be able to cook, clean and help with her grandchildren. Now “no one is praying for me to die,” she says. “Especially me.” It’s all possible because of a $25 version of an operation that costs roughly $4,000 in the United States. Over the past decade, HCP and its partners across Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa have performed some 365,000 sight-restoring cataract surgeries in hospitals and outreach field settings in more than a dozen countries. But the project doesn’t stop there. Many other eye injuries and diseases are treated, both in the field and at the Tilganga Eye Center in Kathmandu. Heintz secured funding for and directed a multimilion-dollar expansion of the center, which is an HPC partner institution. Together, HCP and Tilganga have funded new facilities in remote, poverty-stricken areas and trained more than 500 ophthalmologists and thousands of nurses and technicians from more than 40 countries in the high-volume cataract-surgery methods perfected by Ruit and his team. There seems to be a natural metaphor in the path Heintz’s career has followed, from rock climbing to supporting an organization that strives to surmount any obstacle in its mission to bring the light of sight — and life — to the poorest of the poor. But he rejects the easy “climb every mountain” analogy and speaks instead of parallels between his work today and the work he did planning and leading alpine expeditions for
the National Outdoor Leadership School. “There is a process of risk evaluation that’s going on all the time,” he says. “You’re constantly looking at the weather, at how much food you have, at how fast moving that river is, and at the team’s level of skill. And if we’re not prepared for the objective hazards, we’re turning around no matter what. We plan our sight-restoring surgical outreach events with the same attention to detail.” Perhaps a better metaphor for his role in HCP is the climbing expression “sharing the rope” — literally being there for someone else who may suddenly be dangling from a rope that you’re holding, whose very life depends on your strength, skill and good judgment. He did that with his peers in the UNH rock-climbing course and still does it whenever he and Geoff Tabin scale frozen waterfalls together. The Himalayan Cataract Project has received a lot of attention in recent years, as the subject of documentaries on National Geographic TV, ABC’s “World News Tonight” and “Nightline,” as well as
numerous magazine articles and a 2013 book called Second Suns: Two Doctors and Their Amazing Quest to Restore Sight and Save Lives. Virtually all of the press has focused on the accomplishments and dedication of the doctors, who often do 12-hour shifts in their makeshift operating rooms. (Ruit alone has performed over 100,000 sight-restoring surgeries.) That’s exactly as Heintz would have it. These doctors are, clearly, heroes. But they wouldn’t be able to accomplish all they do without a behind-the-scenes leader who can provide the financial, strategic and legal support they need. In other words, someone like Job Heintz, whom they can trust to share the rope.~ Virginia Stuart ’75, ’80G is a freelance writer who spent more than a decade as an associate editor of UNH Magazine. Her feature stories have won national silver and gold medals from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.
EARTHQUAKE RELIEF: In the wake of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that
devastated Nepal on April 25, the Himalayan Cataract Project began providing help with eye and head trauma cases in Kathmandu and started sending aid out to the villages through its partner, Tilganga Eye Institute. HCP has subsequently raised more than $375,000 in funds devoted 100 percent to providing food, water, water treatment, shelter and medical care in Kathmandu and four of the most devastated outlying districts. To make a donation to HCP, either for sight-restoring surgeries in developing nations or to help with earthquake relief, visit https://donate.cureblindness.org/
S p ring/S ummer 2015 • Uni vers ity o f New Hamp s h ire Maga z ine • 39
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4 0 • U n i ve rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p shire Ma g a z ine • Spr ing /Summe r 2015
OF NOTE
CREDIT
The Nats and the Grays: How Baseball in the Nation’s Capital Survived World War II and Changed the Game Forever by David Hubler ’65G and Joshua Drazen, Rowman &Littlefield. A compelling examination of the impact of the war on Washington, DC’s two baseball teams as well as on major league baseball as a whole. Explore the Cosmos like Neil DeGrasse Tyson by CAP (Carol) Saucier ’76, Prometheus Books. From the Big Bang to the formation of planets, Saucier’s book weaves together the story of modern astronomy with the account of how a young African-American inner-city kid grew up to be one of the most recognized and influential personalities in all of science. If You Love Me, Take Me Now by Steve Cox ’75, ’78G, CreateSpace Independent Publishing. The true story of a family’s struggle with an extremely rare form of brain cancer originating in the nervous system.
Web Extra For more books by alumni and faculty members, see unhmagazine. unh.edu.
Book Reviews
By Janice Harayda ’70
The Great Fire
Saving thousands from an inferno Thirty-five years ago, Lou Ureneck ’72 heard about a forgotten American hero of the historic 1922 fire that destroyed Smyrna, Turkey. Asa Jennings was a Methodist pastor working for the YMCA in Smyrna (now Izmir) when the inferno threatened vast numbers of frantic Greek and Armenian refugees who had surged into the port city in an attempt to avoid slaughter by Mustapha Kemal’s advancing army as it pursued its leader’s aim of a Turkey for the Turks. Thousands of victims of that military onslaught, trapped between a wall of flames and the sea, owed their survival to a dramatic nautical evacuation that Jennings helped to organize. The memory of that story ultimately became The Great Fire (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2015), which sets the devastation of Smyrna in the context of issues that remain flash points in the 21st century. It also tells a story of unusual cooperation among the clergy, relief
workers and the military, especially U.S. Naval officers on nearby ships who risked their careers to help with the civilian rescue effort after President Harding declined to send troops to Smyrna. In one such case of teamwork, after Jennings bribed the captain of a passing Italian steamer to take on 2,000 people stranded by the fire, Lt. Cmdr. Halsey Powell of the USS Edsall provided boats to ferry them to it. So many people perished needlessly in Smyrna that it would have been easy for Ureneck to condemn the governments and individuals who did nothing to save them. But for all of its tragedy, this is an uplifting book, written with great narrative flair. With its large cast and historical sweep, The Great Fire remains at heart the story of a man faithful to the Methodist pledge that in his case became a titanic understatement: “I am but one, but I am one. / I cannot do much, but I can do something.”
Cheating for the Chicken Man A loving sister tries to help her bullied brother
Bullying is a sad business on playgrounds but a thriving one in the publishing industry. An avalanche of books on the subject has expanded in recent years to include thousands of titles for all ages, from picture books for preschoolers to manuals for adults on how to prevent workplace bullying . But the award-winning author Priscilla Cummings ’73 makes the issue her own by investing it with unusual moral complexity in Cheating for the Chicken Man (Dutton, 2015), a novel for ages 10 and up. Children’s books on bullying typically show the mistreatment from the viewpoint of a young victim. Cummings focuses instead on a target’s 13-year-old sister, who faces a painful dilemma as she tries to help an older brother who is cruelly teased when he returns to their family’s Maryland chicken farm after spending months in a juvenile detention center for a prank that went tragically awry.
Kate Tyler has just started high school when the suspected bully offers her a Faustian bargain: The tormenting of her brother will end if she will write school papers for the apparent perpetrator. Is it OK to cheat to protect a beloved sibling? Kate’s moral questions deepen when she takes on more duties on the farm, which raises chicks for a chicken company. When ruthless company agents threaten to put her family out of business for trivial reasons, she realizes that corporations can be bullies, too. Cheating for the Chicken Man is the third novel in Cummings’ series that began with Red Kayak, an American Library Association Best Book of the Year, but it works equally well as a stand-alone book. And it’s especially likely to interest adolescents who are ready to explore a more sophisticated theme than more basic books on its subject develop — that bullying, far from being limited to the schoolyard, can exist in any sphere of life. S p ring/S ummer 2015 • Uni vers ity o f New Hamp s h ire Maga z ine • 41
Alumni News
KEEPING THE TRAINS ON TIME — AND THEN SOME In the fall of 2013, UNH President Mark Huddleston asked former football standout and business executive Arnold Garron ’84 to serve as the interim dean of the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics, following the departure of Dan Innis. Garron started on Nov. 1, 2013, and finished his tenure on March 15 with the arrival of new dean Deborah Merrill-Sands.
But your availability was hardly your only credential for the position, correct? I’d like to think not! My UNH degree was in hotel and business administration, and I earned a graduate degree in business management and administration from Harvard Extension School. Before I started my own company I held an executive position at John Hancock for more than a decade and also worked for Liberty Mutual and Xerox,
so I know a good bit about the practical side of the business world. I’ve also stayed pretty plugged in to UNH, serving as a mentor for staff and students and sitting on the Foundation board of directors. And I love UNH. I think that counts for a lot. Knowing your position was temporary, but not knowing for sure how long “temporary” was going to be, must have been its own challenge. Was it possible to set any goals beyond just keeping the proverbial trains running on time? I really saw my role as getting the college ready for the new dean — but we also managed to get a lot of things done. We created a new minor in entrepreneurship and a new career and development program; we increased enrollments for two straight years; we introduced new tracks in finance and decision science and a new topic course in venture capital. Maybe most importantly, we really got the hospitality program back on track. When I started, there
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were maybe 20 to 25 students in the program. Today, we are back up around 75, which is great. So what’s the secret? Communication, for one thing. We are really good at not telling people what’s going on here. We worked on increasing our social media presence and revitalizing our newsletter; we created a research report and started a cool new speaker series — thanks in large part to a generous donation from my Foundation board colleague Lynne Dougherty ’76. We put in a structure so we can get ranked against our competitors, which is a little nerve-wracking, but it’s also really important. What’s next for you?A little time off! Because of my role with the Foundation board, I thought I had a pretty good sense of what was going on at UNH when I took the job, but there really was a lot for me to learn in a short amount of time. I loved it — I’ve been
in a lot of leadership roles, but this job was the best learning experience I’ve ever had — but it was exhausting, and I’m going to take my time before I jump into something else. This will be a hard one to top. I couldn’t be more grateful to President Huddleston, the faculty and the alums for my time here, or more humbled by the opportunity to serve my university. You were quite a fixture at football games, even before you took the position. Will we still see you there now that your tenure has ended? Absolutely! These past two seasons were incredible, and I got to go to a lot of sporting events, not just football. The daily interaction with students I was able to have is one of the things I will miss the most about this job, and you can be sure I’ll be back to cheer on our teams every chance I get. —Kristin Waterfield Duisberg
CREDIT
Was running your own company a consideration in agreeing to step into a role like this, knowing it was only temporary? It really was a case of perfect timing. I had been working with the NFL and a major hospital on an osteoarthritis study and had just found out that the study was going to be benched in favor of increased research around concussions. It was downright serendipitous. I had about a month to wrap everything up with APG [Organizational Consulting, Garron’s company] and get everything lined up at Paul.
PL AN TO AT TEND ...
CELEBRATING UNH’S BLACK PIONEERS
➥ Yoga on the Beach, Aug. 30, North Hampton, N.H.
Weekend pulls together alumni from 1960s and 1970s, inducts nine into the Diversity Hall of Fame
➥ Seacoast Alumni Network welcome reception, Sept. 10, Portsmouth, N.H.
WHY I BELIEVE
➥ Boston Alumni Network welcome reception, Sept. 16, Boston
Emily Day ’97 Owner, Flour & Co., a modern American bakery in San Francisco
➥ New York City Alumni Network welcome reception, Sept. 17, New York ➥ UNH Family Weekend, Sept. 25–27, Durham
CREDIT
➥ Homecoming and Fall Reunion Weekend, Oct. 2–4, Durham ➥ Lakes Region Alumni Network fall cocktail, Oct. 22, Meredith, N.H. ➥ DC Alumni Network tailgate and football game @ Delaware, Oct. 24, Newark, Del. ➥ Florida Southwest Coast Alumni Network community service at Wildlife Rescue, Nov. 11, Venice, Fla.
In April, alumni from the 1960s, 70s and 80s returned to campus to celebrate UNH’s first Pioneer Black Weekend, recognizing some of the first students of color to enroll at UNH. The weekend also featured the induction of nine new members of the UNH Alumni Diversity Hall of Fame: Yusuf Ali El ’72, Alfred McClain Jr. ’84, Edward Bruce Bynum ’70, Lawrence Woods ’72, Joseph Hill ’73, Gregory Banks ’74, Warren Hardy Scott, Yvette Olivia George ’71 and Deborah Bynum-Morgan ’73. The event was organized by John Laymon ’73, who wanted to bring together the era’s living legends at UNH. He told the attendees that while the group gathered that weekend was an impressive collection of groundbreakers, it was by no means the entire roster of alumni
who had paved the way. “We weren’t the first blacks here, but we were the first large group,” Laymon says. Sean McGhee, director of the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs, emceed the awards ceremony, during which students from the Black Student Union, MOS:DEF and the UNH chapter of the National Society for Black Engineers presented each inductee with their UNH pin and a framed certificate. For the alumni, it was also a chance to catch up with classmates they hadn’t seen in decades, reminisce about their early days at UNH, and the relationships they forged during those years of unrest on America’s college campuses, from the Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination to the Vietnam War, the Kent State shootings and more.
UNH prepared me well for the workplace. The curriculum at UNH, the business-related extracurricular organizations in which I was involved, as well as the summer internships gave me a solid base from which to grow professionally. I make decisions based on gut — and I was sold on UNH the moment I saw the campus. It’s gorgeous, full of character and energized. The faculty, students, facilities, size, curriculum, activities and spirit were the icing on the cake! My gut was right on. Share why you believe in UNH at www.unh.edu/unhtales/ alumni-tales/
“It’s nice to be connected. A big part of your life was those four years at UNH,” says attendee Gregory Banks ’74. “I haven’t seen some of these people in 20 years. It’s good to bring people back.”
➥ UNH Serves Alumni Regional Networks community service projects: various locations, week of Nov. 9. ➥ Paul College Business on the Move, Nov. 19: New York Write alumni@unh. edu to receive email notice of events.
C ON N E C T @ AN E VE N T: This spring, Wildcats connected in Washington, D.C., Boston, and Portsmouth, N.H., among other venues. Don’t miss out — join us at one of our upcoming events! S p ring/S ummer 2015 • Uni vers ity o f New Hamp s h ire Maga z ine • 43
SPRING/SUMMER 2015
CL A S S NOTE S A CENTURY AND CHANGE: The happiest of birthday wishes to Doris Paradis Hayden ’30, who celebrated her 106th birthday on March 7. It was just four years ago that she sold her house in Somersworth, N.H., and moved to Concord, Mass. At UNH, she earned her bachelor’s degree in German and a master’s degree in French. Her daughter Janice says that while her mother is physically weakened and her memory isn’t what it used to be, she still enjoys her alumni magazine, and that she still takes pride and pleasure in her connection to UNH — all the more since her eldest great-grandchild is a member of the Class of 2017.
1938
Jean Elizabeth McKone, a native of Dover, N.H., died at the age of 96. After graduating from the University of New Hampshire, she went to Columbia University to get her master’s degree in teaching. She loved gardening; her neighbors always commented on her beautiful gardens. She also loved sewing, and made all her own beautiful clothing and upholstery. She was very active in church work and political activities. Her greatest pride was that her daughter graduated from RPI with a bachelor’s of science degree in chemistry and her son with a doctoral degree in metallurgy. She was always kind and nonjudgmental, and is dearly missed by family and friends. She often reminisced about the wonderful time she spent at UNH. — Please send your news to Class Notes Editor, UNH Magazine, New England Center, 15 Strafford Ave., Durham, NH 03824. Or email: classnotes. editor@unh.edu.
1940
I was happy to hear that the Theta Chi fraternity is back on campus. The chapter was very active during my four years at UNH. I have a fond memory of Harl Pease ’39 living across from the room I shared with my twin brother, Harold. Later, Harl, as a
captain in the U.S. Air Force, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic flying in the South Pacific. Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth is named in his honor. I am looking forward to the class of 1940’s 75th anniversary this spring. I hope you’ll join me at the luncheon this coming June; last year I was the only one representing the class. I am sorry to report the death of Edward Stafford, my roommate freshman year. We lived in Fairchild Hall in the front center room and I have fond memories of Ed (from Berlin, N.H.) first meeting me, from Westfield, N.J. A “Joisey boy” vs. a N.H. “farmer” but we got along real well. I see from the memorial list that June Cordeau Tanner passed away in Zephyrillis, Fla., on July 3. —Dan Sweet, 275 Piscassic Road, Newfields, NH 03856; dan.sweet@alumni.unh.edu
1941
As I write this newsletter, today would have been my mom’s (Eleanor “Lonnie” Gould Bryant’s) 96th birthday. I can’t help but reflect on how much she loved being a student at UNH and how much she enjoyed serving the university in all the years after. Whether it was cheering on Wildcat sports (men and women alike), supporting scholarship programs, contributing her leadership, participating in life-long learning, traveling on alumni trips, serving on committees, or writing this column, my mom had a passion for all things UNH! She and all the ’41ers have certainly lived up to their title of the “greatest generation!” I’m sorry to report on the loss of these classmates. Ruth McQuesten Poirier passed away on Dec. 9, 2014, in Nashua, N.H. She worked as an executive administrator for Ingersoll Rand, and enjoyed bike riding, walking and bridge. Ruth was predeceased by her husband, N. Roger, and her daughter Christine; she’s survived by two daughters, two granddaughters and three greatgrandchildren. Lt. Col. Dr. William John Jahoda died on Jan. 25, 2015, in Lebanon, Conn. Bill served in World War II in the Army Air Corps and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and two Air medals. During the Korean War, he was recalled to active duty as a professor of air sciences with the University of Connecticut Air ROTC Training Program. Bill received a master’s degree in zoology from UNH and a PhD in biology from Ohio State University. He was a college professor of biological sciences and a photographer
SEND US YOUR NEWS! Share your adventures, accomplishments, updates, and more! Here’s how to reach us: Email your class secretary (listed at the end of each column) or classnotes.editor@unh.edu. Post a class note on UNH Connect (unhconnect.unh.edu), our new online alumni community. Or send a note through the mail: UNH Magazine, 15 Strafford Ave., Durham, NH 03824. The deadline for the fall issue is August 15.
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and lecturer for the National Audubon Society. His conservation work earned him many awards and world-wide travel. Bill was predeceased by his wife, Margery Ellen (Johnson), and is survived by four children, seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. As my mom would say, “please send me your news” and “live it up!” —Nancy Bryant on behalf of Lonnie (Eleanor) Gould Bryant, 56A Blossomcrest Road, Lexington, MA 02421; phone: (781) 863-5537
1942
In September 1983, when asked for a statement on why I should be elected to the Board of Trustees, I said “The state of New Hampshire is not contributing sufficient support to the University System. It is my belief that administrative officials, alumni and trustees should assume a much more active role in securing public understanding and legislative funding to assure academic excellence. Without this public support a college education will be unattainable to people of all ages in New Hampshire.” Unfortunately, this remains the case as of 2015. The current budget proposed by the Legislature is inadequate to meet the needs of the university. I encourage my fellow alumni to be active in choosing legislators who will support our alma mater. In other news, I am sorry to report that we lost Majorie (Midge) Moore on Nov. 25, 2014. During World War II she worked at the General Electric Plant in Pittsfield, Mass., then she married a Navy pilot, so they lived in many places throughout the country. When the war was over, they settled in Midge’s beloved hometown of Pigeon Cove (Rockport), Mass., where she was active in community affairs, gardening, playing golf and bringing up her two sons who survive her. We have also lost Jonathan Dixon, who died Feb. 21, 2015. After graduation he earned his master’s degree from Haverford College. During World War II, he worked on the Manhattan Project, focusing on the purification of plutonium. After the war ended he returned to his studies and earned a doctoral degree in chemistry from Washington University. At the University of California at Berkeley he worked as a research scientist and at University of California at San Francisco he worked in the lab of Dr. C.H. Chan. In 1978 he took a position at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory studying ozone toxicity. After his retirement in 1980, he stayed active in scientific research. He is survived by his wife of 60 years and three children. Happy summer days to you. Be of good cheer. — Mary Louise Hancock, 33 Washington St., Concord, MA 03301; mlhdeerisland@gmail.com
1943
Please send your news. —Dorothy Kimball Kraft,
2 Lilac Lane, Wolfeboro, NH 03894; d.m.kraft@alumni.unh.edu
CL A SS NOTES
STRONG BONDS
JEREMY GASOWSKI
A chemistry degree was just the start for Peg Whittemore ’46
MARGARET “PEG” WHITTEMORE found chemistry at Portsmouth High School. It was 1941, her senior year, and she had just moved to New Hampshire from Newton, Mass. Two things helped her adjust to the move: making the cheerleading squad, which she tried out for because her mother thought it would help her meet people, and landing in a class with a teacher who wanted to share his passion for chemistry. “He was wonderful. He inspired us to look at things in different ways,” Whittemore says. “It’s where I got my love of chemistry.” That love became her career. It was her major at the University of New Hampshire, where she taught freshman chemistry for two years after graduating in 1946. And it is the field she worked in for more than 20 years as a bench chemist at Instrumentation Laboratory in Bedford, Mass., designing reagents for various instruments used in hospitals and laboratories. Whittemore, now of Sudbury, Mass., was one of 14 women in the 1960s to receive a National Science Foundation scholarship to further her education. She earned a master’s degree from Wellesley College in 1968. “I was married with three kids when I was at Wellesley,” Whittemore says. “That’s where I learned about pantyhose. I was complaining about wearing a girdle and one of the young students said, ‘Why don’t you wear pantyhose?’ and I joined the modern world.” The world at UNH when Whittemore arrived in 1942 was a mirror of what was happening at other universities around the country. World War II was in full swing and men aged 18 to 64 were required to register for the draft. “There were very few men on campus and that was kind of weird. You go to college, you want to meet these nice young men and they’re off fighting,” Whittemore says. “It was a tragic time; very tense.” When graduation neared, the chairman of the chemistry department called her into his office and asked if she would consider teaching freshman chemistry the following year. At that point, Whittemore hadn’t decided
how she would use her degree and was flabbergasted that she’d been asked. “I thought, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ and went to find my father. He was out playing golf. I said, ‘I’m sorry to bother you but I need your opinion on something,’” Whittemore says. “When I told him he said, ‘Well, you certainly ought to consider it.’” Whittemore’s class was on the third floor of James Hall. Most vivid in her memory is explaining to the class that numbers in chemistry are expressed in decimals, not fractions. “One boy put his hand up and said ‘how do you do that?’ I was amazed that he had no idea and thought ‘this is going to be quite a year.’ And it was,” Whittemore says. After 22 years at Instrumentation Laboratory, Whittemore left her job in 1990 and shifted her energy to civic involvement. She joined Sudbury’s Earth Decade committee (an offshoot of Earth Day) and, in 2006, wrote a history of the group. She also volunteered with a prison fellowship program. “I went to Walpole once a week and brought the outside to the inside. It was fascinating,” she says. Whittemore says her best memories of UNH aren’t so much around academics as they are about her time as a sister in the Chi Omega sorority, an organization with which she remains connected even today. In March, she returned to Durham to attend the group’s centennial celebration, visiting with many of her younger “sisters” from other decades. Organizer Betsy Murphy ’89 was among the Chi Omegas who took the opportunity to catch up with Whittemore at the event. “Peg’s spunky personality, mixed with her New England charm, was a highlight from the luncheon,” Murphy says. —Jody Record ’95
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CL A SS NOTES
1944
Nancy Hench wrote in to share that her uncle, Curt Chase, passed away on June 7, 2014. “He has since been inducted into the National Skiers Hall of Fame (the ceremony was April 11). He was an innovator and motivating force in the field of ski instruction for more than 40 years. He served as a survival training instructor of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division and later held the same position for the Strategic Air Command. He contributed to what is now known as the American Ski Technique and was one of the eight founders of the Professional Ski Instructors of America. You can read more about him at http://skihall.com.”
1945
Please send your news to Class Notes Editor, UNH Magazine, New England Center, 15 Strafford Ave., Durham, NH 03824. Or email: classnotes. editor@unh.edu.
1946
Please send your news. —Jeane Steacie Harriman, P.O. Box 670, Wolfeboro, NH 03894
1947
Please send your news to Class Notes Editor, UNH Magazine, New England Center, 15 Strafford Ave., Durham, NH 03824. Or email: classnotes. editor@unh.edu.
1948
Mini-reunion lunch with Jacqueline McNeilly Freese was bittersweet. Her devastating news: the sudden death of Jackson, her husband of 66 years, on December 27—just two weeks short of his 93rd birthday. Thank God for the blessed family Christmas with six children and spouses, 17 grandchildren and 10 greats. Jackie plans to continue swimming and boating at their Lake Winnipesaukee summer cottage and to winter at lovely Arbor Trace in Naples, Fla. Classmates are urged to drop by when in either neighborhood! Remember our overwhelming class pride in giving $1 million to UNH at our 50th Reunion in 1998? UNH Foundation president Deborah Dutton wrote in her annual note of appreciation, “Endowment gifts provide a critical source of funding for UNH. At the close of the fiscal year on June 30, 2014, the market value of the university’s endowment reached $185 million, demonstrating great financial growth. Bolstered by a 16.5 percent total return, our endowment, combined with assets held by the University System office, provided $9.9 million to university programs in fiscal year 2014.” The endowed fund report for fiscal year 2014 for the Class of 1948 Trust Fund reveals that our student recipient is undeclared liberal arts major Tyler Young ’17, from Epping, N.H. The Class of 1948 Endowed Scholarship fund is statistics major Tyler Grosse ’17, from Bow, N.H. Congratulations and best of luck to both of these young scholars. —Betty MacAskill Shea, P.O. Box 1975, Exeter, NH 03833; eshea@alumni.unh.edu
1949
Stan Parker was known in the Taunton-Raynham, Mass.,
REUNITED: Class secretary Joan Boodey Lamson ’49, Stuart “Stu” Eynon ’49, Harold “Hal” Jordan ’49 and Elizabeth “Betty” MacAskill Shea ’48, class secretary, pose for a photo at least year’s reunion.
community as “everybody’s pediatrician,” and living in Raynham for 25 years, I can vouch for that. He kept our six children healthy from babies to their check-ups for college. He took such close care of all his young patients that one time his childhood immunity ran out, and he, too, got the mumps. Another time I called Stan was when I fell, feet first, off a rickety ladder onto a board with a nail sticking straight up, after viewing my youngsters’ primitive tree house. He said, “Come in for a tetanus shot.” When I arrived, he asked, “Well where is the kid?” I replied, “I’m the kid, and this shot better be in the arm!” I am sorry to report that Stan has passed away. None who knew him will forget their cheerful doctor and dear friend, who leaves behind his wife, Phyllis, at their home in Raynham. They have two married sons, a married daughter and five grandchildren. Julie Stewart Gargiulo ’74 wrote me about the death of her father, Robert Alexander Stewart ll, in January. “He was an extremely proud UNH grad,” Julie says. Pauline “Polly” Kropp Feuerstein also died in January. She grew up in Franklin, N.H., and lived there all her married life. Her husband, Martin Feuerstein ’48, who died in 2002, was mayor of Franklin and a long-time state representative. Polly was a leader in many Franklin and state organizations. Her many friends in the Dazzling Divas Red Hat Society and the Serendipity Singers would all describe her as “the life of the party,” and I agree. Debra Lamson Perkins, who lives on Lamson Lane and is married to Chandler Perkins ’53, had Dick Dart for a social studies teacher in his first teaching job, which was in New London, N.H. Deb says “Dick was a very good teacher; and we all liked him, because he was full of fun.” Reunion No. 66 for us was on Saturday, June 6, at the luncheon for all 50+ classes. Our number returning is small, but we reminisce and laugh a lot. It is fun to return. Please note in the In Memoriam section in this magazine the 49ers, who sadly have passed on. —Joan Boodey Lamson, 51 Lamson Lane, New London, NH, 03257 (603) 526-6648; unhjblamson@gmail.com
1950
Good news for the class of 1950 endowed scholarship fund: the university reports that it funded four students
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for the current academic year. We are proud of what our class gifts have meant to many students over the years, as we continue to be generous in our contributions to this fund. I am sad to report that our beloved Frank Robie of Rutherford, N.J., passed away in November 2014, and will be missed by many. He was our one and only class clown, who continued through the years to reach out by telephone to many of us. A Purple Heart recipient, he served his country in World War II in the Marines and in Korea with the U.S. Army, retiring as a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. While a student in Durham, Frank ran for “mayor” of Durham as part of the annual farcical political tradition that had the winner presiding over Homecoming festivities. In 1948, he ran as Threadbare McNair — his most outstanding features being his Ping-Pong-ball eyes and a “soothing oratory [that] wound a majority into a horde of frenzied supporters,” according to a historical column that appeared in this magazine in 2002. He expanded the role of the mayor by officiating at gatherings throughout the year. In 1949, he ran again as Mary Margaret McNair and thus became the only “female” to win a campaign. An accomplished clown, Frank continued this guise for many years and brought lightness to our world. Our sympathy goes to his beloved wife of 68 years, Joan, and to their six children and 17 cherished grandchildren as well as nine great-grandchildren. A bit of history: as part of our 50th anniversary year, our class gave to the university “A Century of Progress,” a photography exhibit of the history of women, which was directed by Phyllis Killam-Abbell. At the time, our class treasurer, the late Pat Campbell, was essential in making this happen. This exhibit was permanently hung in the MUB until recently. It is now available for viewing from the women’s studies program. During reunion weekend in June, a group of our classmates together enjoyed attending the Golden Wildcat luncheon, which was open to all classes celebrating their reunions. Were you there? Let us know about your return to Durham that weekend. Limited travel for many of us kept us away but I would like to share with our class your thoughts about it. —Anne M. Long, 2601 Newcomb Ct., Sun City, FL 33573; anneemarie50@gmail.com
CL A SS NOTES
1951
This letter reminds me of my father filling two Heineken beer cans with cement so I could use them for book ends in my sophomore move to a sorority — the result was useless! This letter is not far behind — I need news from you all! The two letters I received sadly were about deaths. William Merrill died on Dec. 13, 2014; his brother kindly forwarded the news. Harold Beliveau’s wife sent a letter of his death on Feb. 24, 2015. He was brought up in Concord, N.H., joined the Army Air Corps after high school, returned in 1946 to enroll at UNH, and then entered Yale’s Divinity School where he graduated and was ordained in the Episcopal Church in 1955. He served parishes in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas and in 1966 moved back east to Baldwin, N.Y., retiring to Concord 22 years later. Harold was a strong supporter of UNH and its athletic programs, joined many musical programs and traveled both nationally and internationally. Please peruse the class of 1951 notices in the back of the magazine, and polish your memories of times past — and write! —Anne Schultz Cotter, PO Box 33, Intervale, NH 03854; anne.cotter.nh@gmail.com
1952
It is a beautiful spring day and our daffodils and Japanese cherry trees are in bloom. Just think — only about five months till Christmas shopping! Oh NO! There are many obits (which are so difficult for me). Ruth Berry Austin died on May 29, 2013, Carlton Frost died on July 30, 2013, Willard Jones died of a massive heart attack on
Feb. 3, 2014, Paul Normandin passed away Aug. 12, 2014, Samuel Stratton passed away on Aug. 13, 2014, Fred Zullo died Aug. 21, 2014, Arthur Stier died Sept. 28, 2014, Raymond Scruton died Nov. 9, 2014, Lt. Col. Vernon Letourneau died Nov. 19, 2014, Lionel “Junie” Carbonneau died Jan. 24, 2015 (see more about Junie in the In Memoriam section of this issue) and James Long passed away Jan. 31, 2015. My thoughts and prayers are with their loved ones. Dr. Amos “Moose” Townsend’s daughter Jenny wrote me that Moose has cancer in several parts of his body and it has metastasized from the liver. Moose has decided to fight the cancer! Let us all keep him in our thoughts and prayers. I called Jack “Jake” and Pat Jacobsmeyer re: Moose. Jake had a bad fall. He slipped down the cellar bulkhead and stove his foot into a tight place! His foot is all sorts of colors. I told him I could enter a photo of it into the class letter in living color! Henry “Hank” Forrest retired in 2004 as a financial consultant and lives in his family home, which is only 1½ hours from UNH. He visits his frat (Phi Mu Delta) and the campus quite often. Samuel Matson retired from the FBI in 1981 and lives in Wolfeboro, N.H. I often receive fun emails from Marilyn “Pinkie” Waris Pike and Joann Snow Duncanson. Marilyn and Ron moved to their condo in Utah “due to health problems which accompany aging!” They enjoy it there. She feels blessed to have their two children, seven grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren near them. Joann still writes for the MonadnockLedger Transcript and has two new CDs out, one on Emily Dickinson and the other on Celia
Thaxter. I have two of her books and they are hilarious! Dave Hemingway and wife and Sallie went south for five months this past winter. They stopped to visit with us both coming and going. We have so much fun and laughs together. Dr. John Kovalik, an oral surgeon who practiced in Berlin, N.H., for 28 years, was killed in a singlecar accident in Berlin in March. In an oral history done by Historic New England in 2009, Kovalik said he was born in Berlin to parents who came to the city from Ukraine. Kovalik earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemical engineering. In 1953, he enlisted in the Navy during the Korean War and served 39 months as a commissioned officer. When he got out, he applied and graduated from Tufts University Dental School and then did a three-year internship in oral surgery. In October 1964, he opened up his office on Main Street in Berlin. He had four children including a son, John Kovalik Jr., who is a dentist in North Conway, and a daughter Linda Kovalik in Randolph. Now, classmates, you and I have a big problem. Because we no longer have class dues to send to me, I received only about 15 newsy notes. I am almost out of news about you. I care about every one of YOU! Because I have been writing this for almost 60 years, I feel you are like family. Please write me or I’ll have to resort to making up stories! May God bless you and our troops! —Ruthie Maynard, 723 Bent Lane, Newark, DE 19711; DMayn32445@aol.com
1953
Sadly, we’ve lost another classmate. Elizabeth Turner
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CL A SS NOTES
Lott died Jan. 20, 2015. A math major, she broke barriers when she was hired after graduation as an engineering assistant designing power transformers at GE, where she also met her husband, Jack. They settled in Hinsdale, Mass., where she was active in town affairs. A substitute’s job at Wahconah Regional High School led to a 32-year career teaching math at North Junior High. Survivors include Jack, two daughters and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. On the last weekend in March, Chi Omega sorority celebrated its centennial on campus. Eight decades of sisters attended the Saturday luncheon, including Barbara Allwork Siegert, Sally Jobes Sutherland, Lois Dalton Chase ’54 and yours truly. Change is always afoot on campus: new student housing is being constructed and the former ATO house on Main Street has been razed. —Ann Merrow Burghardt, 411 Wentworth Hill Road, Center Sandwich, NH 03227; alces1@myfairpoint.net
1954
Prexy (aka Harriet Forkey) reminds us that we gather for our reunion luncheon on Saturday, June 6: “We can sit together as a class and we can meet together either before or after the luncheon.” Harriet was emailing from New Hampshire’s Ragged Mountain, where she and Jere Lundholm ’53 were skiing against 45 mph winds and temperatures so cold that they quit for lunch after four runs (actually, lunch after four runs is standard procedure for me). And just how awful was the winter of 2015? Here in Durham, my four-foot driveway stakes had mostly vanished
by the middle of February, and I ordered snow tires for my AWD Subaru (the UPS driver left them at the end of the driveway, for fear he’d get stuck if he ventured down the hill.) I sent a bulletin to amuse classmates in sunnier climes, asking how you entertained yourself in the winter months, which prompted Annabel Gove Grady to reply from California: “In Napa, we have a nice local chardonnay with some artisanal cheese and bread, and watch CNN and the Weather Channel with bemusement.” Similarly, William McLaughlin gloated (his word!) that February in Oregon was so mild that he was mowing his pasture. In March, Jean Gilmore Miller reported: “We in Arizona have had the warmest winter in many years. The citrus trees are in blossom and they smell wonderful, and my roses are in full bloom.” More to my heart was Dave Hogan of Binghamton, N.Y., who sent me a photo of his nifty orange Kubota with a front-end loader at the bow and a snowblower at the stern. That must keep his neck flexible! More recently, Dave posted a Facebook photo of his last patch of snow, the second week of April. But that’s nothing! In Durham we had a mini-blizzard on April 9, and I was able to burn my brush pile the following day. And Roger Saunders of Hollis, N.H., sent photos of his 1937 John Deere with a veeplow in front and a wing plow above that. If you need a definition of a wing plow, well, you have forgotten what Northeast winters used to be like. John Sherman and wife Judy spent much of the winter skiing at Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine, returning to Rockland in April to launch their sailboat, Snowflake, for summer cruising. Eddie
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Madden is now the conductor of the Fountain Hills, Ariz., band, with 50 or so musicians and concerts throughout the winter, playing his own compositions and original arrangements. Bob Sampson was re-elected as chairman of the Nashua (N.H.) Historic Commission and nominated to the board of the city’s historical society. Nancy Burns writes that she is still in her Snowville School house; her time in Florida was lengthened by bad weather for her drive home, but she missed her home, town and youngest grandchild. “My daughter Alice and husband and Guillermo live with me so my nest is still full. I have Cathy and her two children in Newton, Mass., Michael and wife and two children live in Wenham, Mass. Jack and Lindsey and three children live in Beaverton, Ore. Must note here that Jack and Lindsey’s son is No. 4 on the Wildcats basketball team. Have caught a few games. Fun to be on campus again. This little town of Eaton where I live is a busy place. Two great restaurants, the Inn at Crystal Lake and Snowville Inn and Eaton Village Store for breakfast and lunch! I’m in good shape with new hips and just (normal?) stiffness and I can still see and hear ‘pretty good!’ The best fun and health to all; be safe, be kind, be you!” And now the downside of being a class correspondent from 60-odd years ago: a belated shantih (peace) to William Norwood Depuy of Moultonborough and Dover, N.H., a U.S. Air Force pilot and in the first class to fly a jet trainer, in civilian life an airport manager and later safety inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration, and in retirement a taxidermist, school bus driver and dicer of onions “for
CL A SS NOTES the women of the Moultonborough Methodist Church,” died suddenly on Feb. 6, 2013. Shantih also to Robert Adamsky of Bridgewater, N.H., of whose life I sadly know nothing, but who died of a stroke on Jan. 7, 2015; and to Margaret Fuller Taranda of Newburyport, Mass., a teacher in Massachusetts and New Jersey, a textbook editor for D.C. Heath Company, and in retirement a golfer, quilter and community volunteer, who died Jan. 21; and to Donald Gould of Andover, N.H., a chemical engineer with Union Carbide who retired to Andover and served on the planning board, school board and historical society, and was the “driving force” behind the community’s adoption of an all-day kindergarten program, who died March 16. —Daniel Ford, 433 Bay Road, Durham, NH 03824; danford@alumni.unh.edu, cub06h@gmail.com
1955
Greetings classmates! So nice to see many of you at our 60th reunion in Durham on June 5–7. About 30 classmates across the country volunteered to make calls and e-mails encouraging classmates to come back to Durham in June. Sharing remembrances of the past 60 years and their time at UNH was a very positive experience for everyone. On Feb. 7, the Southwest Florida UNH Alumni Network met in Venice, Fla., with lots of snowbirds meeting for the annual luncheon of various classes. Class of ’55 was well represented by John Everson and his wife, Harry Beaudin and wife Carmen, Lorna Kimball, Lynne Grimshaw and husband Roger, Pat and Jack Weeks, Chan and Ann Sanborn, and Marge and Bill Johnston. Campus representatives always have interesting information on what’s new at UNH. On March 26, lots of UNH alumni assembled to tailgate and then journey to Fenway South in Fort Myers to see the Red Sox vs. Minnesota Twins. Lots of fun in the sun. The score was tied. After discussion with UNH representatives, your Reunion Committee decided to refurbish two existing granite benches in the vicinity of Dimond Library and T-Hall as our class gift. In addition to restoring the surface, we will inscribe each one. One from our class of 1955, and the other with inscription in memory of Evelyn (Evie) Sutari. Evie was our class secretary for many years and instrumental in putting together many of our class reunions. We appreciate all of you who have donated towards our class gift already. If you haven’t there is still time; just make your check payable to Class of 1955, and mail it to Dick Shepardson, P.O. Box 883, E. Sandwich, MA 02537. Class member obituaries received from UNH are as follows: Paul Ambrose McGinley (Jan. 17, 2015), Norman B. Nichols (Feb. 5, 2014), Ronald H. Ruffle (Nov. 15, 2014), Edward “Ed” A. Blewett (May 16, 2013) and Lena Paladina (Dec. 17, 2011). We look forward to any news you have for us. —Marge and Bill Johnston,40502 Lenox Park Drive, Novi, Michigan 48377, margej2@att.net, Billj7485@aol.com
1956
It’s mid-April as I write this — pleased to say that our endless, record-setting winter seems (finally) to be over.
At least one of our classmates responded to my request for news! Again, this winter, after knee replacement surgery, Roger Biess was able to ski and play hockey. He has enjoyed living on Governor’s Island (in the N.H. Lakes Region) since 1971, during and following a career as a pilot with Pan Am. After graduation he spent nine years as a Naval officer, before becoming a commercial pilot. Roger, you certainly picked an ideal place to call home! We were informed of the death of a former classmate who left us in 1955, Ruth Granston Higgins. While working in Boston, she met and married Herbert (Hub) Higgins, eventually welcoming two children. Hub was a geologist with Conoco Oil, which took them to Africa for 13 years. They traveled to every continent, but usually returned in the summer to her family home in Bayside, Maine. In November we lost classmate Olga Spanos Pappas of Somersworth, a native of Newport, N.H. She was a teacher for several years before relocating to Somersworth with her husband, Dr. Stephen Pappas. He, three daughters, and two brothers survive. Lastly, we report the death of Robert Azier from Lowell, Mass. He taught English in both Maynard and Sudbury, Mass., while earning a master’s degree from Lowell State College in 1969. He is survived by a son and three daughters. That’s our news for this addition, ’mates. Would be great to hear from more of you before the next alumni news goes to press. —Joan Holroyd, 5 Timber Lane Apt. 213, Exeter, NH 03833; jholroyd_zing@alumni.unh.edu
1957
Fritz Armstrong reports that the scholarship recipient from the Class of 1957 Fund in the Center for International Education fall 2014 competition was a junior classics major who sent a note of thanks from Rome, Italy, where we have helped him study for a semester. Fritz also wishes us well as we approach “The Big 80.” Robert Chadwick (actually finished in ’58 but still a loyal ’57 classmate) responded to our plea for news. He was a forestry major who worked with the U.S. Forestry service in the Pacific Northwest and retired in 1986, forming his own business, Consensus Associates. He’s written a new book, Finding New Ground, which describes the process of reaching consensus within organizations. Many of his associates are teaching this at the college level. He and his wife have a “blended family” of eight children, 24 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren and live in central Oregon with views of eight major Cascade Mountains. He hopes that someday one of his offspring will choose UNH and be as rewarded as he has been. A note from Karl Zeller’s wife, Della, sadly reports that he passed away Feb 13. He was very proud of his Naval service with aircraft carrier fighter squadrons and was also a U.S. Forest Service ranger in Wyoming and Colorado. He modestly considered himself and “amateurish” pianist and accordionist. Remember that June 2017 is the “Big 6-0” — call at least one of your classmate friends and bring them along to Durham. —Ann Garside Perkins, P.O.Box 105, Kennebunkport, ME 04046; musiklovers@roadrunner.com
1958
Please send your news.
—Peggy Ann Shea, 100 Tennyson Ave., Nashua, NH 03062-2535; peggy.shea@alumni. unh.edu or sssrc@msn.com
1959
Please send your news. — Class Notes Editor, UNH
Magazine, New England Center, 15 Strafford Ave., Durham, NH 03824. Or email: classnotes.editor@ unh.edu.
1960
As I am writing this, the blooming forsythia and cherry blossoms have made me forget the unusually cold winter we had here in southern New Jersey. It was great that many of you were able to attend our 55th reunion in early June — it was a wonderful weekend full of fun activities. The weekend schedule was wonderful,with activities including a golf outing, a Portsmouth harbor cruise, campus tours and welcome reception on Friday. Some of Saturday’s events were a memorial service followed by the traditional class march, a back-to-the-future faculty/ alumni panel, a Segway tour of campus, a tour of the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics and the class of 1960 reunion dinner. A farewell gathering took place at Sunday’s class of 1960 breakfast. On a sad note, we will sorely miss classmate Richard E. Kelley of Manchester, N.H., who died on Jan. 10, 2015, after a brief illness. Dick was an active member of our reunion committees over these many years. Many of us might remember the time he painted shamrocks on Durham’s Main Street on St. Patrick’s Day. Though charged with defacing public property, he explained in court that “I wasn’t defacing public property, I was beautifying it.” He was exonerated by the sympathetic judge. We also bid farewell to classmate Clyde Coolidge, former mayor of Somersworth, N.H., who died on April 7, 2015. He graduated magna cum laude with a major in political science, and was a member of the varsity debate team and president of his fraternity, Sigma Beta. He was also inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. In 1959, he was selected to serve a coveted internship in the Washington, D.C., office of the late U.S. Sen. Styles Bridges. He graduated from Boston College Law School in 1963, after which he spent three years serving in the U.S. Air Force, earning the rank of captain. Condolences are also being sent to the families of David S. Dodge of Stratham, N.H., who died on May 17, 2014; Ernesto V. Laguette of Fullerton, Calif., who died Feb. 13, 2011; and Leon A. Osborne of East Longmeadow, Mass., who died on Nov. 13, 2014. —Estelle “Stella” Belanger Landry, 315 Chickory Trail, Mullica Hill, NJ 08062; stella.landry@alumni. unh.edu
1961
Please send your news.
1962
Following a government course that involved going to
—Pat Gagne Coolidge, P.O. Box 736, Rollinsford, NH 03869; pat.coolidge@alumni. unh.edu
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CL A SS NOTES Manchester, N.H., twice a week to work in the Urban Renewal Office, James English became the first project director for the Amoskeag Millyard Redevelopment Project. Other alums on his team were Jay Taylor and Tom Mann, also Dick McInnich from Manchester. The Amoskeag Millyard Project became the first successful industrial redevelopment project in the country. They had an immediate redevelopment plan as well as a five-year, 10-year and 20-year longrange plan for the Millyard. In 1977, English went into real estate with Roche Realty in Laconia, N.H. In 2001, he and Anita found a winter home in New Bern, N.C. He became a broker at Keller Williams in New Bern. And 53 years after UNH, still working at what he loves, he closed 54 transactions in 2014 — the highest in the 72-agent office and he was the secondhighest solo agent in the local board of Realtors. Classmates can reach him at jimenglish39@ gmail.com. Linda Radulski Gould of Bedford, N.H., was elected to a two-year term as state representative for Bedford. Since 2011 she has traveled to Poland twice to visit relatives and experience her “roots.” Nancy McIntire reports that the market value of our Class of 1962 Student Enrichment Fund was $121,526.56 as of June 30, 2014. The fund has appreciated with new gifts as well as investment earnings. Many thanks to you classmates who designate the fund as the recipient of your giving to UNH. It supports undergraduate scholarships and undergraduate research opportunities. Virginia Theo-Steelman of Manchester, N.H., was nominated for a member of the UNH Alumni Association Board. Please send your news! —Judy Dawkins Kennedy, 34 Timber Ridge Rd., Alton Bay, NH 03810; (603) 875-5979; jak@alumni.unh.edu
1963
A 55th reunion is in the works for June 2018. You will be kept informed, and please talk it up among fellow classmates. Cheryl (“Chew”) Dickson, ckdickson@comcast.net, can answer questions and accept offers of assistance. You sent no news, so I did my phone “thing” again. My method is to choose a page from my alumni records printout, select names with phone numbers (many of them are lacking), peek in the 1963 Granite for graduation pictures/listings, and refer to UNH alumni directory books. My “harvest” from the P’s is small. When I called Sarah “Sally” (Kennett) Perrow (pcheflady@ roadrunner.com), she was holding a business meeting at her Madison, N.H., home. She has been with Pampered Chef, an internationally known kitchen products company, for 21 years. I was pleased to tell her I know and love the products. In the past, she ran a bed and breakfast at her home. Sally spends lots of time with her four grandchildren, of whom the oldest is about to graduate from Johns Hopkins University. Frederick (Fred) T. Pope, Jr. (fredtheopope@ sbcglobal.net) and his wife, Theo, live in Norman, Okla. After UNH, Fred studied Russian at Georgetown University, got his master’s degree, and worked until 1997 for the Voice of America. Now, in “retirement,” he helps the Catholic
Broadcasting Network. He was so interesting, I could have talked much longer. Thomas (Tom) Powers (tpowers@fairpoint.net) and his wife Mary (Capron ’62) live in Chautauqua, N.Y., on 60 acres where they raise Christmas trees. With a UNH major in chemical engineering, and a master’s in biochemistry, Tom worked for most of his life in the food industry with Quaker Oats, and still serves as a consultant on food preservation. Our sympathies go to the loved ones of the following deceased classmates: Sandra F. Daniels (Nov. 5, 2014), Stuart F. Daniels (Nov. 9, 2014), Patricia Reese Meader (Nov. 26, 2014) and Dr. Sibylle J. Carlson (Dec. 13, 2014). —Alice Miller Batchelor, 37 Rydal Mount Drive, Falmouth, MA 02540-2942; a.m.batchelor@alumni. unh.edu
1964
Now that I’m about to sit down to update you with news and send along the juicy tidbits I’ve gleaned during the last 10 months or so, I find my file drawer empty; I have NO words at all. (You may have noticed that I had no words to proffer up in the LAST column, either.) Alas, the Big Reunion “Catch-Up Fest” almost one year ago (is that possible?) must have exhausted our repertories of verbal communication. Kindly send along something! One year, also at a loss for words, I charged you to regale us with plans for your New Year’s Eve celebration — that little ploy really worked well. I was inundated with party plans and high hopes for the ensuing year. So, how about I ask you now to relive our Reunion last year and what/who meant the most to you during that festive weekend? Or, perhaps as many of you will be celebrating a 55th HIGH school reunions, you could tell us all about those plans. At any rate, there must be grandchildren or even great-grandchildren newly arrived on the scene, vacation plans galore, birthdays and big anniversaries to celebrate? Do help me out, I beg of you! I’ve never really had to actually BEG before! —Polly Ashton Daniels, 3190 N. State Route 89-A, Sedona, Arizona 86336; azatlast@npgcable.com
1965
Happy 50th Class Reunion! Marilyn Travis and her husband, Lee, traveled to France, Spain and Portugal in 2014, driving through the countryside. Marilyn is an artist and has sketches of many sights that she hopes to paint. Charity (Tonkin) and her husband, Dick Haines, are retired in Virginia. Charity devotes her time to yoga, pilates, reading and volunteer activities with the Friends of the Library, the Charlottesville Scholarship Program and Westminster Presbyterian Church. Jim Henry had a distinguished career serving others in social work of a wide variety of flavors, including marriage and family counseling, working in HMOs and serving as executive director of Big Brothers and Big Sisters. During the past 15 years, he established and served as CEO of a company that specializes in wound care for chronic non-healing wounds. The company now has 600 wound centers in 46 states, and its work has saved hundreds of lives. Jim retired in 2012. He and his wife, Jane, live in Jacksonville, Fla. Samuel Allen
5 0 • U n i v e rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p shir e Ma g a z in e • Spr ing /Summe r 2015
grew up in Durham and now resides in Mesa, Ariz. His career involved agricultural education and agricultural sales. Sam married classmate Geraldine Keyes, who passed away five years ago of cancer. Sam won’t be able to come to our 50th, however, he gets back to Durham once a year for his family reunion. Tony Gilmore and wife Elizabeth (Carr) Gilmore reside in Hopkinton, N.H. Tony has done rewarding work in Mongolia, Haiti and Honduras. He is heavily involved with Rotary International, and is responsible for 60 clubs. Janet WindWalker Jones retired from the military 20 years ago and is a freelance writer living on Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Janet plans to attend our 50th. John Wentzell and wife Linda Flint ’64 reside in Yarmouth, Maine, and spend May through October each year at their summer home in Wilton, Maine. They have the Florida bug and also spend two months in Rotondo West, Fla. John worked for an insurance company in Worcester, Mass., for 30 years and moved to Portland in 1995 where he worked for a bank specializing in retirement planning. He retired in 1998. Donald Wright of Bridgewater, Va., passed away on Nov. 8, 2014. He retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1970 as a navigator. He then worked at H&R Block and Century 21 Real Estate. He was a member of the Dayton American Legion Post No. 27 and the Elks. Our condolences to his surviving family. —Jacqueline Flynn Thompson, PO Box 302, 197 Cross Hill Road, Wilmot, NH 03287; thompson2004@tds.net
1966
Please send your news. — Class
Notes Editor, UNH Magazine, New England Center, 15 Strafford Ave., Durham, NH 03824. Or email: classnotes.editor@unh.edu.
1967
Hello classmates. I’m happy to report that plans are under way for our 50th reunion! A letter is in the works and you may have received it before this issue is delivered. Lynn Perkins Sweet and I will be cochairing the weekend celebration in June 2017. We welcome all who would like to volunteer to serve on the reunion planning committee or in any other capacity. We know it will mark a significant time in our lives ... so pencil it in on your calendars and more details will follow. The Southwest Florida UNH network hosts many events for alums. Eighty of us enjoyed the Red Sox spring training game at “Fenway South” in Fort Myers recently. Many thanks to our loyal committee that puts these events together; check out future events on the UNH connection website. Congratulations to classmate Mike McCarthy, who received a University of New England honorary degree at the Portland, Maine, commencement ceremony in May. Mike is the principal of the King Middle School and, because of his innovative approaches in his position, was named Maine Principal of the Year twice as well as one of four finalists for National Principal. In 2014, Mike was named one of 50 people making a difference in Maine — a very distinguished group that included author Stephen King, Sen. Olympia Snowe, artist Jamie
CL A SS NOTES Wyeth and humorist Tim Sample. In addition, the McCarthy family boasts UNH degrees for Mike’s wife Sue ‘73, daughter Elaine ‘04, and son Paul ‘07. We send our sympathies to the families of two departed classmates. We are sad to report the death of John Cameron in Gilford, N.H., from cancer last summer. John went on to receive an MBA from Northeastern and J.D. from Franklin Pierce Law Center. Throughout his years in the legal community, John was an advocate for children and families, both in individual cases and in legislation, and was a key member of the Task Force on Family Law and lobbied for the resulting Parental Rights and Responsibilities Act that radically changed New Hampshire’s parenting statutes in 2005. John served in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam era and through the years served numerous local, state and private organizations. Also, we report the death of Dennis James O’Malley in Harrisburg Penn. After receiving a master’s degree from Ohio State, Dennis spent his working years in the Diocese of Rockville administering educational and outreach programs. We celebrate John and Dennis for lives well spent. We look forward to more classmate news to share as we countdown to 2017. —Diane Derring, 921 Deerwander Rd., Hollis Center, ME 04042; dndeering@yahoo.com
1968
Please send your news.
1969
Please send your news. — Jim DesRochers, 1433 S. 19th
1970
Please send your news.
—Angela M. Piper, 1349 S. Prairie Cir., Deltona, FL 32725; angelapiper28@gmail.com or a.piper@alumni.unh.edu.
—Debbi Fuller, 276 River St. Langdon, NH 03602,
Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85009; jim.desrochers@icloud.com
—Jan Harayda, 10 North Section St., #105, Fairhope, AL 36532; haraydajan@alumni. unh.edu.
1971
Pan Am had the first flight out of Key West to Havana in 1927 and a long history of flights to Cuba until the mid-50s, we had a lot of history to reconstruct. The youngest son of Juan Terry Trippe, the founder of Pan Am, was along on the trip with us. I was privileged to translate for Ed Trippe and his wife, Bobbie, when they had dinner in Cienfuegos with their relatives in Cuba who only spoke Spanish. I’ve remained fluent after all these years thanks to UNH and all my wonderful professors and my years at Murkland Hall! Cuba is beautiful and we heard wonderful music, drank a fair amount of Cuban rum and saw some excellent modern dance and ballet companies. Alicia Alonso at age 90+ made an appearance at the ballet in Havana. We met with some very enterprising entrepreneurial types who are now in a small way allowed to own some small restaurants (paladars) and B&Bs but there are serious problems with infrastructure, an unwieldy, two-currency system and massive problems with housing. Six buildings per day just collapse in Havana alone. Housing is a huge issue as 2.2 million people live in a city where only a million lived in 1990. After seeing it first-hand, I can tell you that communism isn’t working very well. The people are educated but have no jobs, and no ability to improve their lives and the government is running out of money now that they don’t have the Soviets or the Venezuelans to prop them up. I hope that things will change for the better as the people are for the most part very lovely and excited about the future.
I got a nice note from William (Bill) Nicoll back in December, but it was too late to include in the winter edition. He writes that after graduation he worked in the school, family and mental health counseling fields. He got his doctoral degree at the University of Arizona, served on graduate faculties in counseling at several universities and has spent the last 23 years as professor and department chair at Florida Atlantic University. He and his wife, Monica, have decided to come back to New England and they are by now settled into new office space in North Conway Village, N.H. Bill will be focusing on a consulting practice working with schools, universities and mental health organizations across the country and around the world while Monica runs the practice. Bill is hoping to reconnect with old classmates and old friends now that he is back “home.” My husband, Don, and I went to Cuba in March as I mentioned in the last column. We went with the Pan Am Historical Foundation on a legal trip out of Miami. To go to Cuba on a legal trip out of the U.S. you must still go on an educational or cultural tour. Since
debbifuller3@gmail.com
1972
Please send your news.
—Paul R. Bergeron, 15 Stanstead Place, Nashua, NH 03063
1973
Barbara B. Chalmers, AIA, vice president of Lavallee/ Brensinger Architects, reports that she is part of the design team working on UNH’s Cowell Stadium. The group will oversee code compliance, specifications and drawing quality control. Barbara reports that in the fall of 1965, she was the only female civil engineering major and taking land surveying. She says it was a welcome change when the culture changed and she could wear jeans in place of a short skirt, as the CE students ran around campus running traverses with their transits. Sadly, our class has lost another member, Thomas H. Probert of Holden, N.H. Thomas was a computer scientist who first worked in Washington, D.C., with the FBI and National Reconnaissance Office while serving as a division director at the Institute for Defense Analysis. —Joyce Dube Stephens, 33 Spruce Lane, Dover, NH 03820, joycedube@comcast.net
1974
We’re sending sincere condolences to the families of the following classmates: Catherine Mitchell of Eliot, Maine, was a journalist for the Seacoast area. She is survived by her son and siblings. Ellen Barfield Stokes Darsle of Stephenson, Va.,
M A R AT HON RU NN ERS
PATIENT PARTNER: STEVE DAVIS ’69
Steve Davis ’69 ran the Boston Marathon for the fourth time this year. A member of the Massachusetts General Hospital Pediatric Oncology marathon team, for the past three years, he’s run “with” his MGH patient partner — a young boy undergoing treatment for leukemia. Happily, his partner finished those treatments last summer, and so Davis ran to celebrate his progress. Davis discovered the MGH team shortly after he lost his wife, Ginger ’69, to cancer in 2011. At Ginger’s request, he had set up an endowment to fund scholarships at the hospital’s Institute for Health Professionals for nurses studying to become nurse practitioners. It was during a casual conversation with an MGH development officer that he learned about the team. The winter proved to be a tough one for training; but Davis, who was a member of the Nordic ski team at UNH, used this winter’s copious snowfall to his advantage, logging many miles of aerobic training on his skate skis. Before Marathon Monday, Davis said he was looking forward to mile 20, where the families of MGH patients and runners will assemble and cheer them on. “It’s just before Heartbreak Hill,” Davis says. “Hundreds of kids are there, cheering. It gets us through the final six miles.” The first year Davis ran Boston, his daughter was at mile 20 with her two children. “I looked up into a sea of yellow T-shirts and heard this yelp. It was my daughter. She ran down to where I was and we ran up Heartbreak Hill together. I will never forget that moment.”
CL A SS NOTES
was a medical assistant for many years. She is survived by her husband, David, and son and daughter. Clark Dale Meek of Kuna, Ind., was an Army officer who received two Bronze Stars as well as many other military honors. He retired from state service with the state of Idaho as deputy state director of Disaster Services. He is survived by his wife, four children and six grandchildren. Allan MacGregor of Portsmouth, N.H., who owned the first surf shop in Rye, Macs’ Surf Shop, along with his brother. He is survived by his mother and brother. Cindy Warren Brodeur of Manchester, N.H., was a special education teacher in the Manchester school system for 37 years. She is survived by her husband, two children, and five grandchildren. Alice Jean Hilliard of Hillsborough, N.H., is survived by her six children and 13 grandchildren. Kenneth Brian MacLeod of Franconia, N.H., ran Colonial Medical Supply in Franconia. He is survived by his wife and three children. Robert L. Ouellette of Manchester, N.H., was a youth counselor and teacher. He is survived by his wife, four children and nine grandchildren. Kevin Leonard of Nashua, N.H., was a teacher for more than 30 years in Nashua. He is survived by his wife and two children. Philip H. Eaton of Brooklin, Maine, served 20 years in the U.S. Navy and upon returning home operated Brooklin Firewood Co. He is survived by his wife, four children and five grandchildren. Sister Miriam Patrice Hausman of Aston, Penn., taught school for more 20 years and served as director of services for nursing homes and
coordinator for an independent living facility. Robert Hubbard of Walpole, N.H., was a teacher in Wilbraham, Mass., and later a teacher and chair of the English departments at schools in Maine and Florida. Rohe V. Pennington of Amelia Island, Fla., was in finance and brokerage for 33 years for A.G. Edwards. He is survived by his wife and two children. Please send news. —Jean Martson-Dockstader, 51 Londonderry Road, Windham, NH 03807; UNH1974@alumni. unh.edu
1975
Please send your news.
—Kim Lampson Reiff, 7540 S.E. 71st St.,Mercer Island, WA 98040-5317; klampsonreiff@alumni.unh.edu
1976
Ken Sheldon has been performing across New England as Fred Marple, the unofficial spokesman for the town of Frost Heaves, “the most under-appreciated town in New Hampshire.” Islandport Press released Fred’s book, Welcome to Frost Heaves, available at bookstores, online retailers and at fredmarple.com. Ken would love to hear from classmates from 1975 and 1976. Sadly, word was received of several classmates’ deaths. Brian Michael Barrett died in January. Brian pursued his passions for education and dairy farming throughout his career. He served as teacher, principal, dairy farmer and agricultural inspector primarily in Maine and New Hampshire. Peter Michael Connors died in January. After 21 years of service to his
5 2 • U n i v e rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p shir e Ma g a z in e • Spr ing /Summe r 2015
country, Commander Connors retired from NOAA. His hobbies and interests included fishing, boating, skiing, golfing and baseball. Shirley Whiting Michael passed away last November. She was passionate about art, literature, literacy and music. Shirley became a docent at the UNH art gallery and loved giving tours to groups of school-aged children. Art Nickless died in December. Nickless was coowner of Norway Plains Associates. His areas of expertise were land developing, land-use planning, surveying and septic system design. A friend remarked, “Art went to great lengths to make his community better.” Art posted this on his Facebook page shortly before he died: “‘If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever.’ — Winnie the Pooh.” —Susan Ackles Alimi, 48 Fairview Drive, Fryeburg, ME 04037, alimi@alumni.unh.edu
1977
It is with deep sadness that I report the passing of Robert Sheldon Smalley on Jan. 13, 2015. Sheldon was a great sportsman and respected athlete in baseball, basketball and cross-country at Dover (N.H.) High School. Sheldon received his bachelor’s degree from WSBE (now Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics), and then worked for Liberty Mutual for 35 years. Sheldon was happily married to Karen Strout for 26 years and they had three children together. He maintained his passion for athletics; enjoyed hiking, camping, golfing and attending all UNH sporting
events and Boston-area professional sports teams; and supported many local sports organizations in Dover and Barrington. I fondly remember him as a fierce competitor while up against him in high school, but more so as a great individual and friend to everyone he met. He was kind, compassionate, energetic and a loyal friend and will truly be missed by all who knew him. We offer our deepest condolences to Karen and the children, Kristin, Marisa and Travis. —Gary Pheasant, 1099 Lanier Blvd., Atlanta, GA 30306; pheasant@alumni.unh.edu
1978
Please send your news.
1979
Please send your news.
—Carol Scagnelli Edmonds,
75 Wire Rd., Merrimack, NH 03054; c.edmonds@ alumni.unh.edu
who passed away at her home in Melrose, Mass., on Oct. 13, 2014. Brian writes that she fought a 12-year battle with brain cancer. The MITRE Corporation has appointed John Wilson vice president of programs and technology of the National Security Engineering Center, which is the federally funded research and development center MITRE operates for the Department of Defense. John was previously a technical director, leading a division of more than 300 staff in the application of advanced information technology. He has also served as an adjunct faculty member for Boston University, Daniel Webster College, New Hampshire College and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, teaching and designing undergraduate and graduate courses in computer science, information technology and software engineering. We extend our congratulations to John for his accomplishments!
—Chris Engel, 268 Washington Ave., Chatham, NJ 07928; c.engel@alumni.unh.edu
—Ilene H. Segal, DVM, 245 Warren Drive, Norfolk, MA
1980
1984
I think this is the first time since I’ve been doing this that there has been no news sent to me for this issue. It has been a while since I have received news from classmates. If you have not written recently, please send news! Your classmates want to hear from you. —Anne M. Getchell, P.O. Box 2211, Conway, NH 03818-2211; agetch@alumni.unh.edu
1981
John McCormack is the CEO of Websense, an Austin, Texas, based security technology firm. Kathryn Leech is vice president and relationship manager for Citizens Commercial Banking, the commercial banking division of Citizens Financial Group. Previously, she served as vice president for corporate banking at Merchants Bank in Bennington, Vt. Please write! I know you are doing interesting things with your family, your work and your volunteer activities. —Caroline McKee Anderson, 8626 Fauntlee Crest SW, Seattle, WA 98136; c.anderson@aliumni.unh.edu
1982
Please send your news. —Julie Lake Butterfield,
j.butterfield@alumni.unh.edu
1983
Hello all! Ann Reginald Huidekoper wrote me for the second time in 32 years. She works for the St. Paul (MN) Saints baseball club, where she is the vice president of community partnerships and customer service. The Saints have built a new ball park in downtown St. Paul that is considered the greenest sports venue in the country, and also features both an art gallery and a dog park. Former players on the Saints have included Kevin Millar, J.D. Drew and Darryl Strawberry. Ann works closely with key leaders in the community, fans and the team owners— one of whom is the legendary Bill Murray. Ann would love to host a UNH Minnesota alumni reunion at the ball park and can be reached by classmates at annieh@saintsbaseball.com. Our condolences are with Brian Wood Ocock, husband of our classmate Maribeth Wood Ocock,
M A R AT HON RU N N ERS
02056; ihsdvm@aol.com
Spring is here and it brings back great memories of the UNH campus when the weather turned warm — Devine Beach, throwing Frisbees and running outdoors! I got a slice of warmth in April when I traveled to San Francisco and had sushi with Tom Cameron, who lives in Tiburon with wife Natalie and kids Riley, Jake and Addie. Tom is currently the chief revenue officer at San Francisco-based Cloudwords, a company that focuses on translation management solutions for business users. Elaine (Messier) Walczak lives in Lee, N.H., with husband of 28 years, Peter. They have two daughters; Danielle, who is graduating from UMaine Orono with a journalism degree, and Brenna, who is a freshman at Colby Sawyer College. Elaine is working in fundraising for the Seacoast Science Center. She is in touch with Susie (Badalto) Seaver, who is a teacher and lives in Essex Junction, Vt. , with husband Andrew and children Nicole and Stephen. She also keeps up with Janice (Heckman) Adams, who lives in Chesapeake, Va., with husband George and their two daughters. I had a great email from Elaine Smith Scholtz — she and her husband, Jeff, live in Thornton, N.H. Elaine has been doing occupational therapy (homecare/ visiting nurse) for the past 15 years. She and her husband work ski patrol for Loon Mountain and she is an avid swimmer, competing in open swimming events (3–6 miles) throughout the year. Elaine went on a swim trip to Lake Powell Canyons in Arizona last year through Strel Swimming and got to swim alongside legendary marathon swimmer Martin Strel! Sandy (Clifford) O’Brien and I had a St. Patrick’s day lunch together — she is right up the road in Portsmouth, N.H. Sandy worked for the Marriott before spending more a decade in advertising and marketing in Boston and on the North Shore. In 2010, she and husband P. Kevin O’Brien ’85 moved from Newburyport to Portsmouth. They have two daughters; Rachel (sophomore, Emerson College) and Becca (senior, St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Dover, N.H.). The O’Brien family enjoys spending time skiing in Stowe, Vt., and they live in Cape Cod in the summers.
ON PACE: RANDY PIERCE ’88
Just months after graduating from UNH with a degree in engineering, Randy Pierce ’88 was diagnosed with a neurological disease that, during the course of two weeks, robbed him of his vision. Such an event might stop an average person in his tracks. But Pierce is anything but ordinary. Since losing his eyesight, he has earned a second-degree black belt in karate; climbed 48 of New Hampshire’s highest mountains — twice; completed a double-century bike ride, competed in a Tough Mudder competition and finished a couple marathons. He ran the 2015 Boston Marathon for Team With A Vision and his own foundation, 2020 Vision Quest, which funds two organizations that support the visually impaired. And he ran in honor of his late guide dog, Quinn, whom he credits with getting him back into the sport. “When I got Quinn, I was coming out of a wheelchair — balancing was a challenge,” he says. “The more I walked with him, the more speed I gained, the more my brain healed, and then magic began to happen. We picked up the pace, and the dog began jogging. So I did, too.” Quinn served as a canine guide to Pierce in many 5K and 10K races, including the 2013 B.A.A. 5K — the day before the Boston Marathon bombings. In the aftermath Pierce made up his mind to run the 2014 Boston Marathon, but then Quinn was diagnosed with cancer, passing away in January 2014. Devastated, Pierce kept running. “It’s important for me to run in his honor,” he explains. Pierce now runs with human guides; last December, he and guide Jose Acevedo finished first in their division at the California International Marathon. As for Boston? He ran this year’s marathon in 3:50:37, his new guide dog, Autumn, on the sidelines to wag him on.
CL A SS NOTES
A THIRST FOR KNOWLEDGE
CHRISTINE CORNELL IERONIMO ’90 never thought she’d write a children’s book, “Not in a million years,” she laughs. She also never imagined that one day she would adopt a child from Ethiopia or spend what little free time she has raising money for a small community of Africans. But today that is exactly what she is doing — in addition to working as a critical care nurse and raising four children with her husband in her home state of Connecticut. Ieronimo’s book for children, A Thirst for Home (Bloomsbury), was written after Ieronimo and her husband adopted their youngest child, Eva, from Ethiopia. In 2008, when they returned home with the newest member of their family, two-year-old Eva discovered a puddle in their driveway and proceeded to drink from it. In Eva’s birth village of Gimbichu water was so scarce that even at such a young age Eva knew that any water was not to be wasted: That was a pivotal moment for Ieronimo. “I always told people the hardest part about going to Ethiopia that first time was coming home,” says Ieronimo, “because when you see what life is like in places like Ethiopia and around the world, and then you come home to our country and you see all the things that we have and what we take for granted...it was hard for me to come back and see that.” Ieronimo was especially bothered to see how most children in the U.S. had no idea how much children in Africa had to struggle every day. “I started feeling a little resentful towards kids and people here,” she confesses. “And I thought, well, I could either continue to feel resentful, or I could share a story with children here to show them. What I found out when I started sharing the story is that kids here were shocked; the problem wasn’t that they were entitled. The problem was they just didn’t know anything different.” 54 • U n i v e rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p shire Ma g a z ine • Spr ing /Summe r 2015
Ieronimo has been overwhelmed by the response from the children she has read the book to in classrooms and libraries. Many children have initiated change drives to donate to a collective sponsorship that helps pay for tuition costs for children in Gimbichu. Ieronimo strongly believes in the power of education, here and in Africa, and offers free teaching materials and a lesson plan for grades K-5 on her website. A Thirst for Home was recently recognized by the Children’s Book Council as a 2015 Notable Social Studies Book. While her experience with Eva was the catalyst for the book, Ieronimo cites an even stronger inspiration for writing the A Thirst for Home: Eva’s birth mother. “Another reason I wanted to write this story was to honor Eva’s birth mother, whom I met when I adopted Eva. I was heartbroken the first time I met her because I realized that this was a woman who had absolutely nothing. I think about her every single day.” It’s Ieronimo’s drive to bring a voice to those less fortunate that fuels her daily efforts to improve life in Gimbichu for its inhabitants. In addition to sponsoring tuition for Gimbichu’s children, Ieronimo and her husband have raised money to buy a generator for its health clinic, and returned this spring to renovate and update the labor and delivery room. Even though her plate is overflowing, Ieronimo manages to keep in close contact with her five best friends from her days spent in Durham. And when the going gets tough? Ieronimo simply thinks about Eva’s birth mother. “You know, I think if she can walk miles and miles to collect water, if she can give up her daughter selflessly like she did, then I can do anything. What I’m doing is nothing. She’s really inspired me.” —Meganne Fabrega
COURTESY OF CHRISTINE IERONIMO
For Christine Ieronimo ’90, the quest to help others has no boundaries
Fred Brennan, a doctor of Osteopathic Medicine at Seacoast Orthopedics and Sports Medicine, has been named a 2015 Top Doc by New Hampshire Magazine in the sports medicine category. Fred played football at UNH and served 11 years on active duty as an Army physician. He is now a physician in the N.H. Air National Guard. He has earned 21 military awards and medals, including the Bronze Star for service as a trauma and family physician in Baghdad, Iraq. Jonathan King is now Stonewall Kitchen’s chief creative officer. The company is expanding into frozen foods and dried soups. Jonathan is now involved in the test kitchen with product development, package development and creative aspects of advertising.
Rockingham Park in Salem for $9.6 million. He is the owner of Tuscan Kitchen in Salem, N.H., and Burlington, Mass. William Judd is the new chief operating officer at Pediatric Specialists of Virginia, a joint venture between Children’s National Medical Center and Falls Church-based Inova. Judd was the regional vice president for the Maryland Operations of National Spine & Pain Centers, the nation’s largest interventional pain management practice. In his new role, Judd will focus on guiding PSV through its next stage of development and growth. Judd served as COO for Kimbrough Ambulatory Care Center & Regional Health System in Fort Meade, Md.; COO for DiLorenzo TRICARE Health Clinic-Pentagon in Arlington and senior health policy analyst in the Office of the Army Surgeon General in Falls Church, Va. After UNH, he earned a master’s degree in healthcare administration at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Stephanie Igoe will serve as a member of the LeadingAge RI’s board of directors. The professional organization represents not-for-profit nursing homes, assisted living facilities, senior housing providers and adult day health centers. She is administrator of the Mount St. Rita Health Centre in Cumberland, R.I., where she has been responsible for operations of the five-star skilled nursing center since 2011. After UNH, she received her master’s in health care administration from Salve Regina University. Igoe was recognized by the American College of Health Care Administrators with the organization’s leadership award in 2013, 2014 and 2015.
—Tina Napolitano Savoia, 5 Samuel Path, Natick,
—Christina Ayers Quinlan, 2316 Beauport Dr.
MA 01760; savoia@comcast.net
Naperville, IL 60564; c.a.quinlan@alumni.unh.edu
1988
Please send your news.
1992
1989
Please send your news.
—Robin Schell, 5 Ashley Drive, Amesbury, MA 01913; rschell@jjwpr.com
1985
Please send your news.
—Julie Colligan Spak, 116 Longfields Way, Downingtown, PA 19335; juliespak@verizon.net
1986
Please send your news.
—Stephanie Creane King,92 Channing Road, Belmont, MA 02478; s.king@alumni. unh.edu
1987
—Beth D. Simpson-Robie, P.O.
Box 434, Kennebunk, ME 04043; bgsrobie@alumni. unh.edu
—David L. Gray, 131 Holmes Ave., Darien, CT 06820; david.gray@alumni.unh.edu
1990
Mark Lane, owner of Coed Sportswear, Inc., a full package apparel company out of Newfields, N.H., was recently featured in a Fox News program, Live Free or Die: Obamacare in New Hampshire, investigating how the new healthcare law might affect small businesses. —Amy French, 2709 44th Ave. SW, Seattle, WA 98116; amy.french@alumni.unh.edu
1991
East Carolina University theater professor Gregory Funaro’s first children’s novel, Alistair Grim’s Odditorium, was published by Disney-Hyperion in January. The sequel is due out in January 2016. Joe Faro completed the purchase of 50 acres of
Please send your news.
—Missy Langbein, 744 Johns Rd., Blue Bell, PA 19422; m.l.langbein@alumni.unh.edu
1993
Darren Benoit won the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Outstanding Civil Engineer Advocate of the Year Award recently. Benoit, a Bow, N.H. resident, earned the distinction for his efforts promoting the need for infrastructure investment to strengthen New Hampshire’s economy and enhance residents’ quality of life. Benoit has 25 years’ experience as a transportation engineer. He has worked on a broad range of projects, including managing highway, bridge and aviation design groups. He is currently the head of the highway group for McFarland Johnson, Inc. in Concord, N.H. Elisabeth Colleran CFA was named co-portfolio manager on the Emerging Markets Team at Loomis Sayles in 2014. “This promotion is a reflection of Elisabeth’s stellar contributions to the emerging markets team,” a team member said. Charles Russo was named president of Simpson, Gumpertz & Heger in 2014. SGH is
M A R AT HON RU NN ERS
LIZ CARDOSO
Sandy is an accomplished artist/painter and plans to further her painting career in the fall when she becomes an empty nester. Kevin is a certified financial planner and a managing director of investments at Wells Fargo Advisors in Portsmouth. He has nearly 30 years of experience in the financial services industry and was ranked by Barron’s Magazine as one of New Hampshire’s top advisors in 2011, 2014 and 2015. Thanks to everyone who has been sending news my way... please send more!
STEPPING IN FOR A FAMOUS DAD: BRYAN LYONS ’91
Over the years, a variety of world-class athletes have approached Dick Hoyt, the engine behind the famous father-son duo who completed 32 Boston Marathons together, offering to run with Rick, who has cerebral palsy, when Dick’s racing days were done. So it was a shock to Bryan Lyons ’91 when the elder Hoyt approached him last summer and asked him if he would push Rick’s custom wheelchair for this year’s Boston Marathon. “It was understood that neither would keep doing it without the other, but Rick wants to keep going,” Lyons told the his hometown paper, the Eagle-Tribune, last year. “Even though I had become good friends with them, I was speechless at first. It was an incredible honor.” Lyons, who has completed more than a dozen marathons and nearly 100 triathlons, joined the Team Hoyt charity team in 2009 and cemented his bond with the pair when he stuck with them through the final eight miles of the 2011 Boston Marathon. To prepare for this year’s race, he trained pushing a chair with sandbags to replicate Rick’s weight, and ran with Rick at a number of local 5Ks. Their first race together, in May 2014, marked the first time in 37 years that anyone other than Dick had pushed his son. Lyons and Hoyt completed their marathon in four and a half hours, and Lyons says he’s prepared to do it again, if that’s what Rick wants. But he is the first to say he isn’t “replacing” Dick Hoyt. “I’m merely a fresher set of legs,” he says. “Nobody can replace Dick.”
CL A SS NOTES an award-winning national engineering firm that designs and rehabilitates structures and building enclosures. Donna Noonan was named principal of Decas Elementary School in Wareham in 2014. Donna also serves on the board of directors of the MASCD. Matthew Wood was appointed interim president of White Mountains Community College in Berlin, N.H., in 2014. Matt is also a past recipient of the NHTI Positive Influence Award, and the Chancellor’s Grant for Innovation in 2013 to develop a flexible hybrid learning approach to developmental math courses. Ned Waltz, senior engineer of product evaluation at Weyerhaeuser’s Technology Center has received the L.J. Markwardt Award from ASTM International Committee D07 on Wood. He currently serves as the committee’s producer vice chairman and leads the section on mechanical test methods and properties and also works on the ASTM committees on adhesives, plastics and performance of buildings. Len DiSesa retired as deputy police chief for the Portsmouth, N.H. Police Department in 2009 after a 25-year career. After taking some time off to decompress, he has traveled to Europe, has begun writing a book about the progressive changes in police work that he was a part of during his career and has even audited a couple of courses at UNH. Last year, he ran for the office of state representative in the N.H. House of Representatives. He won and is the new state rep for Strafford District 16, Ward 4, in Dover. He says the education and training he received in the MPA program at UNH has been invaluable to him and was well worth the time, expense and effort. Bob Sullivan ebulliently reports celebrating 20 years since founding Kestrel Aviation, his first air charter firm, and recently completing aircraft upgrades to full compliance with the FAA’s NextGen Air Traffic Control program. He continues his hobby of having children vicariously by welcoming his new nephew Patrick Sullivan, making him an uncle four times over. Bob still sees classmates Brian Johnson and Nate Woolsey as part of their championship trivia team, and recently caught up with Breton Graham, who is working as an intellectual property attorney in California. Ashlee Platt Shaw and Sue Stohrer Sullivan took a long weekend in Ft. Lauderdale recently. “It was a lot like spring break except we went to bed waaaayy earlier.” From Caryn: “I was lucky enough to meet up with Kara Kaiser Cole in Richmond, England, last month on one of her business trips across the pond. She is living in the Portsmouth area with her daughter and husband, and working for Intel. Doubly lucky to cross paths with Cindy Knights Aswad in Florida for a few days. It is always great to reconnect with old friends!” Erin Kathleen Gravel died in November 2014 from complications due to lupus. She treasured the friendships she made in college and during her working years, many of them continuing throughout her life. In spite of the physical problems and limitations she endured, she never failed to share her perpetual smile and warm heart with everyone around her. Memorial donations may be made to the American Heart Association, the Norris Cotton Cancer Center, or
the Animal Rescue League of NH. John (Burr) Burleigh Chase died peacefully on Oct. 7, 2014, after an eight-month battle with lung cancer. Burr was an accomplished and skilled potter for 30 years. He and his wife co-founded Mud City Studios at their home in Sebago, Maine. A president of the board for Gallery 302 in Bridgton, he was able to bring together his art and his joy of helping people. Burr had worked at Decorum and Nostalgia Lighting since moving to Maine in 1995. He called himself a lightsmith and worked with many people in the Portland community and beyond. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Burr Chase Fund for Education in the Arts, Bridgton Art Guild, P.O. Box 451, Bridgton, Maine 04009. —Caryn Crotty Eldridge, caryn.eldridge@alumni. unh.edu; slickcke7@gmail.com
1994
Please send your news.
—Mike Opal, 26 Rockwood Heights Rd., Manchester, MA 01944; m.opal@alumni.unh.edu
1995
Greetings! Shannon Hallenbeck MacMillan has begun a new job at Shire Pharma in Lexington, Mass., supporting the manufacture of commercial products to treat rare diseases. Previously, she spent 18 years as a recombinant protein drug development scientist for Wyeth, a subsidiary of Pfizer, in Andover, Mass. Shannon and her family — she is married with two children and two cats — live in southern New Hampshire. When she’s not working or shuttling the kids to and fro, she “loves playing tennis for USTA and organizing ladies doubles and mixed league matches.” Holly Jewkes is now acting deputy forest supervisor for the Umpqua National Forest in Oregon. Before that, Holly served as Crescent District Ranger of Deschutes National Forest, also in Oregon, and has worked as a Forest Service firefighter in Colorado and as an assistant ranger at White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire and Maine. Maureen L. Pomeroy recently opened a law firm, Pomeroy Law, in Amesbury, Mass. She focuses on providing legal counsel to small business, public sector and non-profit clients. Maureen is also an adjunct professor at Southern New Hampshire University, where she teaches courses in business law and employment law. Congratulations to all three women! I also have some sad news to report: Frank E. Davidson, of Wilton, Conn., died Nov. 6, 2014, at age 40. He was an independent cabinetmaker who attended UNH’s business school for two years before joining his family’s interior design and cabinetmaking business. He eventually opened his own woodworking shop. We also lost Donald L. Temple, 41, of Canterbury, N.H., on Oct. 19, 2014. A talented inventor and engineer, Donald registered several patents. As an entrepreneur, he formed and was president of Quick Draw Corp. in Canterbury, where he provided patent drawing and engineering services to budding inventors. Donald was also an avid skier, snowboarder and mountain biker. We send our deepest sympathies to the Davidsons, the Temples and their extended families. —Tammy Ross, 22 St. Ann’s Ave., Peabody, MA
5 6 • U n i ve rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p shire Ma g a z ine • Spr ing /Summe r 2015
01960; tross8573@yahoo.com
1996
It’s with sadness that I report that one of our classmates passed away. Henry Ackermann died on Nov. 14, 2014, at his home in Merrimack, N.H. My condolences go out to his friends and family. Please send me your news. —Michael Walsh, 607 Atwood Drive, Downingtown, PA, 19335; michaelwalsh@alumni.unh.edu
1997
Geoff Grant is a consulting engineer living in Cincinnati. He works with utilities across the United States to solve issues with aging and failing infrastructure. He and his lovely wife, Kathryn, have two daughters — the oldest started kindergarten this past year. His daughters have taught him the words to every Frozen song and he is an expert in Disney princesses. Julie Rosenbach beat out a field of 135 applicants from 28 states and five countries to land the job of full-time sustainability coordinator for the city of South Portland, Maine. She is in charge of city efforts to reduce energy consumption and implement green technologies. She previously worked as manager of sustainability initiatives at Bates College, and as an environmental protection specialist at the EPA. Please send your news.
— Class Notes Editor, UNH Magazine, New England Center, 15 Strafford Ave., Durham, NH 03824. Or email: classnotes.editor@unh.edu.
1998
Please send your news.
1999
Please send your news.
—Emily Rines, 23 Tarratine Dr.,
Brunswick, ME 04011
—Jaime Russo Zahoruiko,
PO Box 287, Haverhill, MA 01831; j.a.russo@alumni.unh.edu
2000
Mike Souza was profiled in a “Catching Up With” article by the Boston Globe on March 16. Mike was a four-year member of the Wildcats’ hockey team and part of two NCAA Frozen Four teams. After UNH, he played professionally for more than 10 years with the AHL and internationally, most recently in Italy. In 2011, Mike joined Brown University as an assistant hockey coach. Since June 2013 he has been an assistant coach with the UConn Huskies. —Becky Roman Hardie, 3715 N. 4th St., Harrisburg, PA 17110; becky.roman@alumni.unh.edu
2001
Congratulations on the nuptials of Scott Morra and Nicole Pasquale, who were married in Wolfeboro, N.H., on October 11, 2014. Scott works as an information technology specialist and Nicole is a restaurant general manager. We mourn the passing of several of our classmates: John Vinsel (Nov. 26, 2014), Tom Flynn, Jr. (Dec. 4, 2014) and Matthew Allard (Jan. 3, 2015). I send our deepest condolences to their respective families and friends. Don’t forget to become a member our UNH Class of 2001 Alumni Facebook page! —Elizabeth Merrill Tewksbury, PO Box 7185, Cape Porpoise, ME 04014; etewksbury@alumni.unh.edu
2002
Fairer weather is finally here, and we deserve it! With great weather comes great news, especially for Periklis Karoutas, who was recently named one of New Hampshire’s “40 under 40” by the New Hampshire Union Leader. Karoutas is a political consultant at Strategic Alchemy, with a flair for incorporating technology to best serve his clients. Congratulations on the accolades! Megan Reynolds will marry Erik Burke on June 28 in Laguna Beach, Calif. Reynolds teaches fifth grade at Strong Foundations Charter School in Pembroke, N.H. The couple lives in Londonderry. Congratulations, Megan and Erik, on your nuptials! —Abby Severance Gillis, 19 Chase Street, Woburn, MA 01801; agillis716@alumni.unh.edu
2003
Please send your news.
—Shannon Goff Welsh, 77 Hooksett Road, Auburn, NH 03032; s.goff@alumni. unh.edu
2004
Timothy “Colin” Dinsmore, a civil engineer, has joined the firm Ambit Engineering in Portsmouth, N.H., as a project manager. Please send your news! —Victoria Magowan Reed, 5 Twilight Dr., Scarborough, ME 04074; victoria.macgowan@alumni.unh.edu
2005
Congratulations to my dear friends Caitlyn Galletta Kirk and Jon Kirk on the arrival of their son, Thomas Bernard Kirk, on April 14, 2014. Tommy joins
big brother Drew, 2. Both Caitlyn and Jon are employed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Boston. Caitlyn works in finance and Jon works in medical affairs. The Kirks reside in Hingham, Mass. Erin Marchal married Andrew Brown ’07 on Oct. 4, 2014, at Andrew’s family home in Salem, N.H. Erin is a Montessori preschool/kindergarten teacher in Stratham, N.H. Andrew is a web application developer at Genuine Interactive in Boston. Erin and Andrew reside in Goffstown, N.H. One of my oldest and closest friends, Sarah Connor Huntington, ran her first marathon as part of the MGH 2015 Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Team on April 20 in Boston!
M A R AT HON RU N N ERS
—Megan Stevener, mstevener@gmail.com
2006
Please send your news.
— Class Notes Editor, UNH Magazine, New England Center, 15 Strafford Ave., Durham, NH 03824. Or email: classnotes.editor @unh.edu.
2007
Natalie Latham is a music teacher at Hooksett Memorial School, in Hooksett, N.H. Talia Mercadante is a chorus/music teacher at Ashland High School, in Ashland, Mass. Samantha Borowski (Dupuis) and Bryan Borowski welcomed a baby boy, Banks Ramsay Borowski, on Dec. 7, 2014. Banks’ grandfather, Edward Phelps ’69, was beyond excited as well! Samuel Wolak married Jennah Fedele in January 2015, in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. Samuel is the general manager of Dunkin’ Donuts stores in Laconia, N.H., and Jennah is the branch manager at Service Credit Union in Tilton, N.H. Joanna Hudson Leathers and
WEDDING BELLS: from left to right (all class of 2009 graduates): Derek Russel, Tara Lundie, Jessica Keough, Sara and Josh Stuhr, and Amie and Jay Hydren ’08.
A PERFECT FIT: AMANDA RICH MCMENIMAN ’99
Amanda Rich McMeniman ’99 thinks everything happens for a reason. At UNH, she was on the indoor/outdoor track team, and she’s remained an avid runner, even qualifying for and running the Boston Marathon four times. But last year, she was injured when she went to qualify and didn’t make the cut. It turns out that not qualifying was a stroke of good fortune for McMeniman, who set out to find a charity to run for and discovered the Ace Bailey Children’s Foundation, an organization named for former Boston Bruin Garnet “Ace” Bailey, who was killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The foundation funds Ace’s Place, a large play space for kids who are undergoing tough treatments at the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. McMeniman ran for the foundation’s marathon team in April, and she says it’s the perfect fit. “I’m from a huge hockey family,” says McMeniman, a third-grade teacher whose husband played hockey in college and now works for the hockey industry. “We’re also huge Bruins fans.” When she learned that the foundation funded renovations to the neonatal intensive care unit at the hospital to make it more comfortable for parents of newborns in distress, she could relate even more, as she spent “countless hours” in a NICU when her youngest daughter was born prematurely. All this is why the Hampstead, N.H., resident jumped at the chance to join the team even though she only had 10 weeks to train and fundraise. “I see this connection lasting,” McMeniman says.
CL A SS NOTES
MUSIC MAN
JARED CASSEDY ’04 IS A MUSIC TEACHER in Windham, N.H., but he doesn’t see the 87 high-schoolers in his band as students. He sees them as fellow musicians. “With the right guidance and support, these students take ownership in a way that really drives the program forward.” he says. “We are in this ensemble together. We work together to make music.” Those collaborative practices in Cassedy’s teaching are part of the reason that he was chosen as the 2015 recipient of the Grammy Music Educator Award, which recognizes a teacher’s contribution in the classroom. Cassedy is the director of the Windham High School Band and the director of the Windham schools’ K–12 fine arts program. He started off in the school system teaching music at Windham Middle School in 2005, shortly after his graduation from UNH. Nominated by a former Windham student, Cassedy was chosen from a pool of 7,000 nominees nationwide. To accept his award, he was invited to the Grammy celebration in Los Angeles in February. Cassedy grew up in Salem, N.H., amid a musical family that included three siblings and parents who wanted all of their children to have a wellrounded education. “We played sports, we played instruments, we were in book clubs, everything,” he says. He joined his high school band and when he came to UNH in the fall of 2000, he knew he had found a place where his passion for music would be supported. He was a member of the UNH Wind Symphony, a member of several campus quintets and was the drum major in the Wildcat Marching Band for three years. It was here at UNH, Cassedy says, that his passion for music evolved into something more. “What I loved about the faculty and program at UNH was that it really opened my eyes. It was a paradigm shift from my own personal love of performing, and learning that there was more I could do. I could have a significant impact on students and people around me,” he says, adding that he loved his music education classes, especially those that focused 58 • U n i v e rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p shire Ma g a z ine • Spr ing /Summe r 2015
on elementary methods and school culture as well as educational structure and change. What he learned here, he says, is that “music can be a vehicle for having an impact that so far surpasses the actual production of notes with an instrument.” It’s an idea he’s brought with him into the classroom and performance spaces in Windham. Music education, he says, truly matters so much more than just the music. “It’s not just about performance ... we’re teaching them life skills — how to be creative, how to be collaborative,” he says. “If you look at this world we live in, whether or not you have a career in the humanities or in science, or really in anything, you have to be creative. Arts and music teach young people how to be collaborative, tolerant, open-minded ... those are the things that are needed to drive our society today.” Collaboration is a common theme in the Windham music classrooms — it’s how the school music program started. The school opened in 2009 (Windham high-schoolers previously attended Salem High), and Cassedy was drafted from Windham Middle School to lead the new music program faculty. “When we started, we only opened for freshmen and sophomore classes, and I sat down with the kids and developed the core values of the program and talked about where we wanted to go together,” Cassedy says. “My philosophy is, if you give students responsibility, give them respect, set expectations appropriately high, they will reach those expectations. The results you are going to get are going to be incredible.” As he said in a recent CBS This Morning segment about his award: “It’s a wonderful recognition. I see it more as a recognition of the students... Without the students coming back every single day, giving it 110 percent ... Their lips are falling off, and they’re exhausted and they’re studying for midterm exams and they have a lot of pressure on them, but they’re the ones. I could be up there waving my arms around, but they’re the ones making the music.” —Michelle Morrissey ’97
MICHELLE MORRISSEY
Jared Cassedy ’04 garners national recognition for the job he loves
Dylan John McDuffee were married in February in New York City. McDuffee is a natural gas broker at MOAB Oil in South Norwalk, Conn. —Michael Antosh, michael.antosh@gmail.com
2008
Hey class of 2008! I hope you are all doing well and moving forward down whatever path is calling you. I didn’t hear from many of you this past few months, so let’s fix that! I’d love to know what you are up to. As such, we only have one update to report. Congratulations to Sarah Jarvis and Nathan Powelson, who were married on July 5, 2014, at Atkinson Resort and Country Club in Atkinson, N.H. Wishing you the best on your journey together! Keep sending your news and letting me know how you’re doing! —Alexandra Covucci; apo2@alumni.unh.edu
2009
Happy spring, Class of 2009! I hope everyone survived our record-breaking winter safe and sound. Happy news this time around: Rachel (Torman) Gallo married Julian Gallo in September 2014. They met at UNH and had UNH chaplain Larry BricknerWood perform their ceremony. Jarred Rego of Colorado Springs, Colo., is serving as the district director for Congressman Doug Lamborn. Douglas Collins earned a PhD in chemistry from the University of California, San Diego. In August 2014, he successfully defended his dissertation titled, “Connecting Chemistry and Climate through Aerosol Particles: Laboratory and Field Studies of Cloud Condensation Nuclei.” Andrew Hardy of Farmington, Maine, will be joining Troop C of the Maine State Troopers, which covers Somerset, Kennebec and Franklin Counties. Hardy previously worked at the Wilton Police Department.Amie Long married Jay Hydren ’08 on March 14, 2015, and had several UNH alums attendance! —Jenelle DeVits,187 Woodpoint Rd., Apt. 4, Brooklyn, NY 11211; jenelledevits@gmail.com
2010
I am sad to report that our classmate, Sgt. Stephen Paquin, passed away unexpectedly on Dec. 16, 2014, after a brief illness. After graduating from UNH, Stephen enlisted in the U.S. Army and was stationed in Germany. He served two tours in Afghanistan and was a member of the Army Reserves. Stephen will surely be missed by the UNH community. Please don’t forget to send in any news that you have. We would love to hear what you have been up to! —Caitlin LeMay, 18-22 Essex St., Apt 17, Haverhill, MA 01832; caitlin.lemay@alumni.unh.edu
2011
Marc Smick and Allison Dinsmore will be getting married this June. They met while living across the hall from one another at the Woodside Apartment’s (N1/N2)! They loved UNH so much they decided to stay in the area and recently bought a home in Barrington, N.H. Many UNH alumni will be attending the wedding. —Kristina Looney, 117 Central St., Apt. 2, Auburn, MA 01524; kLooney@alumni.unh.edu
2012
Please send your news. —Bria Oneglia, 436 Winchester
M A R AT HON RU NN ERS
Road, Winsted, CT 06098; bria.a.oneglia@me.com
2013
David Gordon MSA’14 recently received the 2014 Elijah Watt Sells Award from the American Institute of CPAs. This award is presented to candidates who have earned a cumulative average of 95.5 across all four sections of the Uniform CPA Examination. Less than 1 percent of the approximately 95,000 annual candidates qualify for this prestigious award. Gordon is currently working as a risk assurance associate at Pricewaterhouse Coopers. “After spending a lot of time exploring different areas of study I chose accounting because I found it interesting and because I knew that accountants are in high demand in the workplace. I chose the accounting programs at UNH because they were convenient, affordable, highly respected in the accounting community, and have an excellent job placement record. Many of the top firms in the region target UNH graduates for recruitment and attend events such as the Accounting Career Fair.” —Nicholas Mignanelli, 15 King Road, Campton, NH 03223; nqf3@unhlaw.unh.edu
2014
Since graduating, Hillary Flanagan has worked with the UNH social media team, and is now the digital communications specialist at Unitil, based in Hampton. She’s looking forward to enjoying the summer in Portsmouth, after moving into her new apartment there this spring. Please send your news! — Class Notes Editor, UNH Magazine, New England Center, 15 Strafford Ave., Durham, NH 03824. Or email: classnotes.editor@unh.edu.
FROM HAMMOCK TO HEARTBREAK HILL: THERESA CONN ’14, ’15G
So dedicated to the art of relaxation is Theresa Conn ’14 ’15G that as a UNH undergrad she cofounded a club dedicated it. Still going strong, it’s not uncommon to come across members of the Hammock Club literally hanging out across campus. “If that’s my legacy, that’s pretty good,” jokes Conn — which perhaps makes it surprising that someone so passionate about lounging has also taken on one of the most taxing physical feats known to humankind, completing the 2015 Boston Marathon in April. The Billerica, Mass., native has had her sights set on Boston since 2011, when she was on Cape Cod for a summer internship; her roommate was a runner in training for the Olympic trials. “Seeing her passion, I decided to run a 5K,” Conn says. She trained for a half marathon the next year and ran it just two weeks after the bombs went off at the Boston Marathon finish line in 2013. “Being from the Boston area, and being in full training for the half, it affected me deeply,” Conn says. “It was in the back of my head then to do Boston.” Last November, Conn began training in earnest, pounding the pavement four times a week between classes in UNH’s one-year accelerated MBA program, her part-time job at the Memorial Union Building and a spring break trip to China with her MBA class. She also began fundraising, bringing in more than $5,000 for the Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts, an organization near and dear to her heart. All of Conn’s hard work paid off — on the streets of Boston, and back in Durham, too. Less than a month after crossing the finish line on Boylston Street, she crossed Memorial Field to claim her MBA.
In Memoriam
BY K A REN TO NG UE H A MMO ND ’ 6 4
CARLETON WENTWORTH ’37
Self-sufficient and community minded, he played an active role in the town of Madbury
Carleton Wentworth loved being outdoors, tending his expansive vegetable and flower gardens and picture-perfect lawn. His love of nature began in his childhood during summer visits to the family camp on Great East Lake, N.H. He especially enjoyed fishing, a pastime he pursued throughout his life. He was married to Dorothy Laton, a descendent of the owners of the Kingman Farm in Madbury, N.H., for 61 years until her death in 1999. In 1941 the Wentworths took over management of the farm from Thomas Laton, Dorothy’s father and a professor of engineering at UNH, and ran it as a successful dairy operation for the next 11 years. In addition to mastering all the skills needed to keep the farm running smoothly, Wentworth put his woodworking talents to good use restoring antique furniture that had been in the Kingman family for generations. It was a happy life, but in the early 1950s farm help became increasingly difficult to find and the couple reluctantly sold off their 55 head of cattle. Wentworth went on to a new career as a parole officer for the state of New Hampshire, a position he held until his retirement in 1976. They never had children, but the Wentworths were always community-minded, seeking ways to improve Madbury for all its citizens. Wentworth was one of four founding members of the Madbury Fire Department. He was also past president of the Strafford County Forest Fire Warden’s Association, rarely missing one its monthly meetings, and served as Madbury’s deputy state forest fire warden for more than 50 years. In his role as Ballot Clerk for the Town of Madbury Planning Board he never missed an election. He was elected a trustee of the Madbury Cemetery, which he had been instrumental in helping to establish, and was active in the Madbury Historical Society. His interest in history extended to studying his own genealogy, says nephew Bruce Cedar, who often talked with him about their family history. Wentworth also shared his knowledge of his wife’s family tree and the development of the Kingman Farm, which had been worked since 1750. “He had an incredible memory,” Cedar says.
6 0 • U n i ve rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p shire Ma g a z ine • Spr ing /Summe r 2015
Wentworth died on August 24, 2014, at age 98. His ashes were scattered on the Kingman Farm where he and Dorothy had held their wedding and begun their married life.Today, 350 acres of the farm are owned by UNH and used extensively for educational research and recreational purposes.
WILLIAM P. PIZZANO ’49
He was a dedicated fan of UNH football for more than 50 years and a friend to all he met
His license plate number was UNH 1. “I’ve never met anyone more proud to be a UNH graduate than Bill Pizzano,” says Amy Sheehan, athletic department administrative assistant, who worked with him toward the end of his university career. Pizzano’s long relationship with the university got its start thanks to Bill’s mother, says his nephew Bob Pizzano. In 1944, an under-age Bill wanted to follow his siblings into the U.S. Navy. Concerned that he would never attend college, his mother refused to sign the necessary papers. Pizzano became the star quarterback on the Wildcat football team and was named to the All-New England Small College Team. Called to active duty in 1945, he was honorably discharged a year later and completed his UNH degree. He served as an officer in the Naval reserves for 37 years. Together with his late wife, Hazel, Pizzano attended all but a handful of UNH football games, both home and away, for more than 50 years. “They never had children,” says Sheehan, “and they loved planning trips to wherever the football team was playing.” After retiring from the Massachusetts Department of Public Works, Pizzano began a second career as UNH director of alumni activities. In his new role, he was dedicated to UNH athletes and nonathletes alike, say his friends and colleagues. He quietly helped those in need, sometimes long after they had left the university. Kerry Sheehan ’91, was among those who benefitted from his kindness. Struggling freshman year with calculus, she was ready to drop out when a phone call changed her life. “Hi, I’m Bill Pizzano in the alumni office and I hear you’re having a bad time
with calculus,” said a voice on the other end of the line. “Why don’t you come over and talk to me?” In tears about being summoned to a campus office, Sheehan was soon put at ease. It turned out that her father and Pizzano had a mutual friend, and when Pizzano heard about her struggle, he decided to act. “You are not going to flunk calculus,” he told her. “We will do whatever it takes, including getting you a tutor.” Eyes twinkling, he added, “I’ll make you a bet that you’ll pass, and when you do you can buy me an ice cream at the Dairy Bar.” A friendship began that ultimately included many rounds of golf together before Pizzano’s death on February 14 in Topsfield, Mass. UNH honored Pizzano with the Robert “Bo” Dickson Football Spirit Award and the Meritorious Service Award from the alumni association. He was inducted into the ROTC Hall of Fame, the UNH Hall of Fame and in 2007, he received the Profile of Service Award for his dedication to the university. Toward the end of his life, when he could no longer attend football games, Pizzano counted on Amy Sheehan to call him after every quarter and let him know how the team was doing. His dedication to UNH football never wavered, she says, and when she visited him for the last time, he beckoned her close and whispered, “The stadium?” He was referring to UNH’s planned $25 million upgrade to Cowell Stadium, the progress of which he had been closely following. Says Sheehan, “It was almost as if he had to know that the plans were coming along before he could move on.”
LIONEL J. “JUNIE” CARBONNEAU, JR. ’51
“The Silver Fox” demonstrated that professionalism and a sense of humor can go hand-in-hand One of his former students at Tilton School dedicated a book to Lionel “Junie” Carbonneau ’51, calling him “a maker of men.” In the classroom and on the playing field, Carbonneau led by example, teaching the core values of hard work and sportsmanship by which he led his own life, says his wife, Jane. He knew just how to mentor students, she says, including a little tough love if it would bring out the best in someone. An all-star athlete in high school, Carbonneau played basketball and lacrosse at UNH, and joined Kappa Sigma fraternity. After graduation and two years in the Army Air Corps, he taught and coached at Tilton and later at Laconia
High School. In 1965, he joined the UNH coaching staffs in basketball, football and lacrosse. He did whatever it took to keep his teams playing, recalls Jane. “At one point, in 1986, there was a heavy snowstorm the day before a big game. The maintenance crew was busy clearing the roads, so Junie came home, got his snow blower, and cleared the entire football field.” Another time, noticing that the basketball court was looking scruffy, he spent hours cleaning and polishing it. Grady Vigneau ’77 played football at UNH and later became a member of the coaching staff. Life lessons learned from Carbonneau as both a player and a colleague have always stayed with him, he says, and in a eulogy he delivered at Carbonneau’s funeral following his death on January 24, Vigneau recalled the coach’s sense of humor. Every fall, as the UNH football team practiced to play archrival Maine, a two-footed “black bear” (the University of Maine mascot) would suddenly emerge from the nearby woods. Proclaiming himself the defender of Wildcat pride, Carbonneau dramatically chased off the “bear” and celebrated afterward with a rousing dance his players called the “Black Bear Jig.” “This theater-in-the-wild would be accompanied by the appreciative roar of 100 suddenly very energized football players,” says Vigneau. Carbonneau — whose thick white hair earned him the nickname “The Silver Fox” — helped the football team win Yankee Conference titles in 1976 and 1978 and held the posts of UNH assistant athletic director and interim athletic director before retiring in 1990. In honor of his roles as a player, teacher and coach, in 2003 he was elected to the UNH Hall of Fame. Despite a busy career, Carbonneau always found time for his family, says Jane, his wife of 61 years. Parents of four children, Gail Linehan ’76, Susan Detrick, Nancy Kennedy ’79 and the late Michael Carbonneau ’85, they enjoyed attending their children’s sports events. Carbonneau’s fatherly advice centered on sportsmanship and effort rather than technique. “His goal was to make sure we gained a sense of self-worth and became the best we could be, whatever path we chose in life,” says his daughter Gail.
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MEMORIAM LIST
Faculty, Staff & Friends Robert B. Dishman professor emeritus of political science Dec. 24, 2014, Durham, N.H. John E. Mulhern Jr. professor emeritus of physics Feb. 24, 2015, Durham, N.H. Clark Terry ’78H jazz performer and visiting artist Feb. 21, 2015, Pine Bluff, Ark. Robert E. Wear professor emeritus of physical education Feb. 17, 2015, Newmarket, N.H.
1930s Olive Richards Tardiff ’37 Jan. 15, 2015, Brentwood, N.H. Leslie J. Ward ’39 March 24, 2015, Monroe, N.H. Norman R. Nathanson ’39 Jan. 6, 2014, North Falmouth, Mass.
1940s Edward R. Stafford ’40 Jan. 31, 2015, Richfield, Minn. Frederick G. Cushing Jr. ’40 Nov. 16, 2014, Lebanon, N.H. Eleanor Gay Otis ’41 Dec. 19, 2014, Redding, Conn. William J. Jahoda ’41, ’47G Jan. 25, 2015, Lebanon, Conn. Ruth McQuesten Poirier ’41 Dec. 9, 2014, Nashua, N.H. Parker B. Mitton ’43 March 16, 2014, Englewood, Colo. Frances Golod Larkin ’43 Dec. 12, 2014, Miami, Fla. Annie Clark Bierweiler ’43 Jan. 11, 2015, Wolfeboro, N.H. Natalie Sutherland Mitton ’43 Feb. 14, 2015, Littleton, Colo. Eugene A. Wright ’43 Dec. 11, 2014, Rotterdam, N.Y. Jack H. Lepoff ’43 Aug. 21, 2014, Alexandria, Va. Marion Clark Ballard ’44 Jan. 4, 2015, North Springfield, Vt. Herman T. Skofield ’44 March 14, 2015, Walpole, N.H. Earle C. Quimby Jr. ’44 Dec. 28, 2014, Keene, N.H. D. Jackson Freese ’44 Dec. 27, 2014, Naples, Fla.
Grace Korb Cohane ’44 March 10, 2015, Flushing, N.Y.
Luciette Roy Beaulieu ’49 Jan. 3, 2015, Gardner, Mass.
Harold E. Beliveau ’51 Feb. 24, 2015, Concord, N.H.
Donald T. Buck ’55, ’61G Nov. 29, 2014, Hadlyme, Conn.
Elizabeth D. Koorkanian ’44 March 2, 2015, Lake Forest, Ill.
Lawrence F. Kilburn ’49 Jan. 2, 2015, Keene, N.H.
Patricia Pepin Perry ’51 March 1, 2015, Marblehead, Mass.
Norman B. Nichols ’55 Dec. 9, 2014, Greenland, N.H.
Elizabeth Hoyt Jones ’45 March 12, 2015, Epping, N.H.
Tabor P. Gray ’49 Feb. 7, 2015, Pittsburg, N.H.
Glenna Yeaton Nutter ’51 Nov. 21, 2014, Epsom, N.H.
Laurence D. Burnell ’55 April 4, 2011, Palm Bay, Fla.
William H. Bamber ’45 Jan. 3, 2015, Newville, Pa.
William Trask ’49 March 26, 2015, Danvers, Mass.
Thomas M. Doon ’51 Feb. 4, 2015, Rutland, Vt.
Helen Carbonneau Frank ’56 Jan. 4, 2015, Fort Myers, Fla.
Dorothy Emery Hazzard ’45 Feb. 3, 2015, Honolulu, Hawaii
Donald N. Rice ’49 Feb. 11, 2015, Concord, N.H.
Rudolph D. Jacewicz ’52 Feb. 1, 2015, Leesburg, Va.
James R. Azier ’56 Jan. 18, 2015, Lowell, Maine
Betty Entwistle Von Arx ’45 Dec. 12, 2014, Naples, Fla.
Pauline Harris Gilman ’49 Jan. 16, 2015, Farmington, N.H.
Richard J. Bolduc ’52 Feb. 11, 2015, Mashpee, Mass.
Carol Rawson Lillis ’56 March 8, 2015, Enfield, Conn.
Sherman A. Clevenson ’45 March 22, 2015, Newport News, Va.
Patricia Walsh Collins ’49 Jan. 13, 2015, Port St. Lucie, Fla.
Arno E. Hurd ’52 March 17, 2015, Troy, N.H.
Karl F. Zeller ’57 Feb. 13, 2015, Ignatio, Colo.
Jane Marvin Jones ’46 March 17, 2015, Deep River, Conn.
Pauline Kropp Feuerstein ’49 Jan. 14, 2015, Franklin, N.H.
Lionel J. Carbonneau Jr. ’52 Jan. 24, 2015, Exeter, N.H.
Houghton Carr Jr. ’57 March 17, 2015, Manchester, N.H.
Frances Wakefield Hutchins ’46 Dec. 17, 2014, Fremont, N.H.
William C. Pizzano ’49 Feb. 14, 2015, Topsfield, Mass.
James Long ’52 Jan. 23, 2015, Ormond Beach, Fla.
Nancy Root Nielsen ’57 Nov. 8, 2014, Ventura County, Calif.
Evelyn O’Brien Kiernan ’46 Jan. 31, 2015, Fort Myers, Fla.
Roger C. Snow Jr. ’49 March 1, 2015, Scarborough, Maine
Beverly Borr Richman ’52 Jan. 25, 2015, Swampscott, Mass.
Robert A. Lockwood ’58 Feb. 15, 2015, Canterbury, N.H.
John Kovalik ’52, ’54G March 24, 2015, Berlin, N.H.
William A. Stylos ’58G Dec. 2, 2014, Fairhaven, Mass.
Louise Belcher Bake ’47 Jan. 30, 2015, Springvale, Maine
1950s
Nancy Chesley Johnson ’47 Dec. 19, 2014, West Springfield, Mass.
Raymond W. LeBouthillier ’50, ’66G March 22, 2015, Claremont, N.H.
Marion Teeling Ekstedt ’53 Feb. 8, 2015, Wells, Maine
Eugene A. Aikins ’58 Feb. 10, 2015, Palm Harbor, Fla.
Bennett R. Black ’47 March 22, 2015, Groton, Mass.
Robert E. Collins ’50 Dec. 28, 2014, Bedford, N.H.
Robert F. Scott ’53 Oct. 10, 2014, Winthrop, Maine
Paul J. Twombley ’58 Nov. 28, 2014, Sanbornville, N.H.
Leonard W. Aurand ’47G Dec. 1, 2014, Raleigh, N.C.
John R. DePalma ’50 Feb. 25, 2015, Lebanon, N.H.
Robert L. Chase ’53 Dec. 31, 2014, Manchester, N.H.
Jean A. Simoneau ’58 Oct. 24, 2014, Manchester, N.H.
Sigrid Towers Tillson ’47 Dec. 22, 2014, Groveland, Mass.
Michael L. O’Connell ’50 Feb. 10, 2015, Northampton, Mass.
Gordon E. Smart ’53 Jan. 20, 2015, Northwood, N.H.
Carmen M. Celenza ’58G March 6, 2015, Saco, Maine
Muriel Sanborn Hoyt ’47 Jan. 10, 2015, Exeter, N.H.
Elinor Currier Gooch ’50 Dec. 7, 2014, Colebrook, N.H.
Lewis T. Batt Jr. ’53 Jan. 11, 2015, Swanzey, N.H.
Madeleine Fournier James ’48 Dec. 4, 2014, Bloomfield, Conn.
David A. Sayward ’50 Jan. 18, 2015, Salem, N.H.
Norma Russell Marston ’53 Dec. 21, 2014, New London, N.H.
Elizabeth L. Linegar ’58 March 18, 2015, Monroe Township, N.J.
Madelyn McGrath Wood ’48 Feb. 26, 2015, West Hartford, Conn.
Phyllis Blais Bansavich ’50 Dec. 28, 2014, Newington, Conn.
Elizabeth Turner Lott ’53 Jan. 20, 2015, Hinsdale, Mass.
Leo A. Corrigan ’48 July 18, 2014, Hilton Head, S.C.
Martin E. King ’50 Dec. 2, 2014, North Dartmouth, Mass.
Chester Gadzinski ’53 Jan. 30, 2015, Belmont, Mich.
Paul H. MacEwen ’48 Feb. 27, 2015, Bedford, N.H.
Julian E. Wakefield Jr. ’50 March 9, 2015, Leesburg, Fla.
Margaret Fuller Taranda ’54, ’70G Jan. 18, 2015, Newburyport, Mass.
Adam C. Gureckis ’48 Dec. 26, 2014, Nashua, N.H.
Donald H. Sawyer ’51 Dec. 25, 2014, Brantingham, N.Y.
Robert F. Adamsky ’54G Jan. 7, 2015, Bridgewater, N.H.
Carol Grupe Coyle ’48 Jan. 30, 2015, New Caanan, Conn.
F. Clayton Skelly ’51 Jan. 30, 2015, Punta Gorda, Fla.
William H. Milne ’54G March 10, 2015, Contoocook, N.H.
Rhoda Cohen Rudnick ’48 March 24, 2015, Kittery, Maine
Robert A. Shaines ’51 Dec. 2, 2014, Rye, N.H.
Donald E. Gould ’54 March 16, 2015, East Andover, N.H.
Carroll P. Huntress ’49 Feb. 1, 2015, Dallas, Texas
Paul E. Harvey ’51 Nov. 23, 2014, Portsmouth, N.H.
Paul A. McGinley ’55 Jan. 14, 2015, Meridian, Conn.
John G. Snow ’49 May 14, 2014, Center Tuftonboro, N.H.
Alice Hauslein Harper ’51 March 9, 2015, Chicago, Ill.
Richard H. Gagne ’55G March 7, 2015, Arlington, Va.
John T. Haley ’49 Jan. 2, 2015, Ocala, Fla.
Grace Austin Schmidt ’51 Sept. 25, 2014, Hilton Head, S.C.
Robert M. Morency ’55 March 2, 2015, Oklahoma City, Okla.
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Fred W. Klose ’58 March 8, 2015, Bluffton, S.C. Muriel MacIver Klock ’58 Dec. 9, 2014, Broomfield, Colo. J. Edward Perreault ’58 March 16, 2015, Lancaster, N.H. Lawrence J. Clement ’58, ’70G Jan. 14, 2015, Dover, N.H. James S. Pritchard ’58 Jan. 5, 2015, West Chester, Pa. Leonard L. Dobens ’59 Dec. 19, 2014, Nashua, N.H. Marilyn Hamlin Brandenburg ’59 Jan. 10, 2015, Hixson, Tenn.
1960s
1970s
Richard E. Kelley ’60 Jan. 10, 2015, Manchester, N.H.
Grace Pearson Lilly ’70 Dec. 4, 2013, Swanzey, N.H.
Thomas C. LaValley ’62 March 3, 2015, Penacook, N.H.
Albert E. Ouellette ’70 March 1, 2015, Penacook, N.H.
Irene J. Vlahakos ’62 Feb. 1, 2015, Saco, Maine
Patricia Deconinck Power ’70G March 4, 2015, Wenham, Mass.
Sibylle Kinney Carlson ’63, ’82G Dec. 13, 2014, Durham, N.H.
Martha Ohman Porter ’70 Feb. 14, 2015, Boscawen, N.H.
David F. O’Clair ’63 Dec. 12, 2014, Richmond, Mass.
Keith B. Osgood ’70 Jan. 1, 2015, Reno, Nev.
Calvin R. Fleser ’64G Dec. 4, 2014, Zeeland, Mich.
Marjorie Pierson Nims ’71G Dec. 10, 2014, Keene, N.H.
Robert P. Hopley Jr. ’64 Feb. 26, 2015, Greenland, N.H.
Barbara Cassily Curtis Vaughan ’71G Jan. 27, 2015, Rye, N.H.
Harold W. Jewett ’66 Feb. 20, 2015, Hilton Head, S.C.
James L. Guerin ’72 Dec. 22, 2014, Bedford, N.H.
Barney J. Conrath ’66G April 23, 2014, Charlottesville, Va.
Russell S. Goodwin ’72G Jan. 6, 2015, Beverly, Mass.
John F. Stohrer ’66G Jan. 31, 2015, Hillsborough, N.H.
Thomas H. Probert ’73 Nov. 1, 2014, Holden, Mass.
Dennis J. O’Malley ’67 Jan. 10, 2015, Harrisburg, Pa.
Jo-Ann Weilbrenner Smith ’73G March 1, 2015, Cumberland Center, Maine
David E. Deshon ’67G Jan. 2, 2015, Hampton, N.H. Gloria M. Porter ’67 Jan. 1, 2015, Whiteland, Ind. Jacob C. Armstrong ’67G March 26, 2015, Mesa, Ariz. Clarence R. Deitsch ’67G, ’74G March 15, 2015, Yorktown, Ind. Robert J. Scalzi ’68G March 20, 2015, Hanover, Mass. Walter F. Shivik ’68G Dec. 21, 201,4 South Hampton, N.H. Sally Fulger McDonnell ’68 Nov. 23, 2014 Keene, N.H. John A. Conde ’68 Feb. 26, 2015, Northfield, N.H. Donald L. Wheeler ’69 Sept. 16, 2014, North Hampton, N.H.
E. Kevin Thorsell ’73G March 24, 2015, Laconia, N.H. Robert A. Norcross Jr. ’73 Dec. 8, 2014, Boston, Mass. Hans J. Wentrup ’73G Dec. 6, 2014, Hooksett, N.H. Joseph D. Considine ’73 Feb. 21, 2015, Greenland, N.H. Thomas A. Maynes ’74 Feb. 11, 2015, Boothbay Harbor, Maine
Robert S. Smalley ’77 Jan. 13, 2015, Barrington, N.H. Sally Butcher Ansley ’78 Nov. 29, 2014, Ankeny, Iowa Lawrence M. Abear ’79 Feb. 22, 2015, Stamford, Conn. Paula Ward Cuomo ’79 March 13, 2015, Fitzwilliam, N.H.
1980s William J. Gallot ’80G Feb. 11, 2015, Auburn, N.H. Laurel A. Baas ’81 Feb. 25, 2015, Stowe, Vt. Christine Bonne Marra ’81 Feb. 15, 2015, Glens Falls, N.Y. Mark S. Carrier ’82 Feb. 16, 2015, Manchester, N.H. Martha Richard Cox ’82, ’94G Dec. 15, 2014, Dover, N.H. John C. Robb ’82G Jan. 8, 2015, Newburyport, Mass. Mark W. McGuire ’83 March 23, 2015, Manchester, N.H. Wendy Daley Smith ’86 Feb. 9, 2015, Georgetown, Mass. Robert D. Tischler ’87 March 3, 2015, Ann Arbor, Mich. Dorothy D. Anderson ’87G Jan. 23, 2015, Asheville, N.C.
2000s Thomas J. Flynn ’01 Dec. 4, 2014, West Yarmouth, Mass. Matthew L. Allard ’01 Jan. 3, 2015, Manchester, N.H. Caitlyn Cedarstrom Morris ’05 Nov. 24, 2014, Portsmouth, N.H. Gregory C. Boggs ’07 March 17, 2015, Manchester, N.H. Amanda H. Fournier ’07 March 30, 2015. Dartmouth, Mass. Ralph H. Baer ’07 Dec. 6, 2014, Manchester, N.H.
2010s Stephen R. Paquin ’10 Dec. 16, 2014, Nashua, N.H. Joanna E. Joly ’11 March 26, 2015, Mt. Pleasant, S.C. Carlton F. Messinger II ’12 Oct. 23, 2014, Holderness, N.H. Douglas R. Kimball ’14 March 14, 2015, Sandown, N.H. Stephen C. Morgenstern ’14 Feb. 8, 2015, Gilford, N.H. Brian E. Colbert ’15 Dec. 28, 2014, Hampstead, N.H. Riley M. Leavitt ’15 Dec. 26, 2014, Dover, N.H.
Jane Seymour Potter ’88 Dec. 29, 2014, Hooksett, N.H. Larry M. Deater ’89, ’92G Feb. 19, 2015, Kittery Point, Maine
Miriam P. Hausman ’74G Feb. 6, 2015, Aston, Pa.
1990s
Kenneth E. Reader ’74 Feb. 14, 2015, Nashua, N.H.
Melissa Rector Bourque ’90 Dec. 25, 2014, Portland, Maine
Cindy Kimball Henryson ’74 Feb. 27, 2015, Bella Vista, Ark.
Noel C. Carlson ’90, ’97G Jan. 15, 2015, Nottingham, N.H.
Catherine A. Mitchell ’74 July 11, 2014, Eliot, Maine
Patricia Irish Horan ’92 March 9, 2015, North Port, Fla.
Ellen Hills Howes ’75 Dec. 4, 2014, Kennebunkport, Maine
Scott D. Atwell ’92G Dec. 19, 2014, White Cloud, Mich.
Peter M. Connors ’76 Jan. 13, 2015, Bath, Maine
Diana L. DiPietro ’94 March 5, 2015, Palm Beach, Fla.
Arthur H. Nickless ’76 Dec. 17, 2014, Rochester, N.H.
Lisa A. Simons ’98 Nov. 12, 2014, Exeter, N.H.
Brian M. Barrett ’76, ’85G Jan. 22, 2015, Manchester, N.H.
Jeffrey W. Rohr ’98 Dec. 22, 2014, Newfields, N.H.
Nancy C. Campbell ’76 March 27, 2015, Shirley, Mass.
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On Ben’s Farm
FEATS OF CLAY Famed potters Edwin and Mary Scheier honed their craft at UNH
64 • U n i ve rs it y o f Ne w Ha m p shir e Ma g a z in e • Spr ing /Summe r 2015
from digging clay to loading the kiln. Working alongside the Scheiers, students also picked up lessons about life: how to work hard, live well and not to take oneself too seriously. Beverly Fay ’60 recalls asking Ed Scheier how he and Mary, who had no children, could be so happy. “His answer to me was, as he smiled and pointed to his pots, ‘these are my children.’…No amount of potting elsewhere can compare to four years in the Scheier pottery classes. There was just something very special about that wonderful couple and their ‘children.’” And as for those tattoos? During World War II, Ed was one of many professors who took a leave from teaching to join the war effort. Asked in an interview for The New Hampshire how he would serve, he reported that his hope was to become an Army tattoo artist, using skills he had acquired during summer vacations as a seaman. “Tattooing,” he was quoted as saying, “is a decorative art fitted to individual personalities as much as a special design is appropriate for a certain piece of pottery; not merely a series of pictures created to enhance a sailor’s arm.” Had the reporter been one of Scheier’s students, she would have suspected that Ed was spinning one of the wild yarns for which he was known. As it was, the story ran in the April 7, 1943, issue of the paper and for the rest of Scheier’s long life, the tattoo story would periodically surface as part of his biography. —Mylinda Woodward ’97 An exhibit of Edwin and Mary Scheier’s work is on display through Oct. 2 at at Discover Portsmouth, 10 Middle Street, Portsmouth, N.H. Visit portsmouthhistory.org to learn more.
UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
They may have made their name as potters, but famed New Hampshire artists Edwin and Mary Scheier dabbled in everything from puppetry to tattoo work on their road to success. The Scheiers were both working for the federal Works Progress Administration in Virginia when they met in 1937. After a whirlwind courtship, they married, quit their jobs, and launched a new career as traveling puppeteers. They ended up in Tennessee, where the director of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Ceramic Laboratory suggested they try working with clay and offered them free use of the lab’s facilities in exchange for tending the kilns at night. They experimented with clay, glazes and techniques and sought out some of the local folk potters to learn more. By 1939, they were back in Virginia with their own pottery business, and in 1940, they met David R. Campbell ’29, director of the League of New Hampshire Arts and Crafts at a ceramics conference in North Carolina. Impressed by their work and tasked with elevating the newly organized Department of Arts at UNH, he offered both Scheiers jobs: Ed as instructor and Mary as artist-in-residence. The Scheiers lived and worked in Durham from 1940 to 1968. They matured as professional artists and continued to collaborate on producing functional pottery while also creating pieces with their own distinctive decorating styles. Mary became an expert in throwing thin-walled vessels. Ed became noted for his imaginative glazing and surface decorations. On the bottom of all of their pieces, however, they would scratch only one name, “Scheier.” The Scheiers shared their love of the craft with their students, involving them in all aspects of the process
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MANCHESTER, MOVED: UNH officially opened its new space the historic Pandora Building in Manchester’s Millyard section on April 14. See page 9.