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Jon Hubbard '77 and Doug Maffucci '78 opened a bicycle
rental shop in Bar Harbor, Maine, in 1980. It was, Hubbard said recently, "like
entering a marriage." A happy one. Their 15-year partnership has resulted in an
entrepreneurial portfolio that today includes a restaurant and brew pub,
commercial property and real estate development.
Likewise, John Miller '86 says that when he and Katie Colbert Allen '86 and
three other classmates began the legwork in the fall of 1986 to open Pizza
Oasis in Portland, Ore., "People replaced money. There was a level of immediate
trust that we could all work together. That's how we made it," he said, "the
whole family working."
Other Colby small-business partnerships also have endured for years. Husband
and wife Joth Davis '76 and Karen Brown Davis '76 grow oysters and clams at
Baywater, their aquaculture farm on the Washington coast. Keith Donnellan '85,
Tom Heyman '85, Ted Pappadopoulous '87 and Ted Warren '88, aka the rock band Go
To Blazes, not only have performed and recorded together but lived together for
years in the same house in Philadelphia--until late last summer when
Pappadopoulous got married (to Jessica Morris '90) and moved out.
Trying to pin down why some Colby partnerships thrive is like trying to
explain love. Qualities of learning, working and growing together are fostered
or discovered at Colby, but the precise origins of the relationships that led
to successful partnerships and artistic collaborations--only a sampling of
which are featured here--are less important than the environment that nurtured
them. The happy mixture of stimulated students, opportunities for adventure and
the confidence to risk failure that produces entrepreneurial teammates may be
the best evidence yet that Colby educates for life.
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Pizza
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Clams
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Beer and
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a Band
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Photo Illustrations by Marc Glass
Mule Train
Play Mates | Table of Contents | The Sowing Road
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