Enveloped by Cuba
Alumni gather to help Cubans on their own turf.

Medal Round in Sydney
Hilary Gehman '93 rows in the Olympics.

Alumni Club Circuit
Club News, upcoming events, etc.

ALUMNI PROFILES
Robert C. Gerrard '60
Tackling the case
of a lifetime

Kevin Leddy '77

Helena Bonnell
Gilman '78
Microsoft in the Middle East

Todd Coffin '83

Carolyn Treat '82
Turning art into a balm

Christopher Thayer '93

Michael Eash '94
Chopping champion

CLASS CORRESPONDENT
Jane Holden Huerta
2955 Whitehead Street
Miami, FL 33133
305-446-5082
classnews1960@alum.colby.edu

This will be my last column–the "new document" icon will pass to Jane Holden Huerta. My thanks to all of you for your letters, e-mails and questionnaires. Jane will be most grateful for your continued support. . . . Our 40th reunion in June was wonderful–and the weather cooperated in fine Maine fashion. About 35 of us met in Portland on Friday morning for a cruise of Casco Bay and the islands. The skies were a bit gray, but that certainly didn't cloud the enthusiasm and lively conversation. As an added bonus, Ann Kimball Chase and Dave Tierney, who both have homes on those islands, were able to give those of us within earshot a guided tour. As with previous reunions, we have found that the Friday pre-reunion function is a great introduction to the weekend. It provides a good opportunity for people to get re-acquainted and for friends to pick up right where they left off–and in a few cases, that was 40 years before! Keep that in mind for our 45th (never too early to start thinking and planning). . . . The Awards Banquet was held on Friday evening, preceded by a reception and followed by our own class gathering back at The Heights. Saturday was an absolutely beautiful Maine day. Most of us spent the greater part of the time outside, and there were activities to appeal to everyone. After the gathering of all the reunion classes, there was a short presentation by a reunion chorus under the direction of Peter Ré. He has not lost his touch! This was all followed by the lobster bake, run at the Alfond Athletic Center, which provided more great conversation opportunities. . . . A few hours later, we all met back at The Heights for our class reception and banquet. John Joseph, Dorothy Reuman, Mr. and Mrs. Carl Nelson and Colin MacKay were guests of the class. Professor MacKay was our speaker, and Bill and Linda Cotter came by to say "farewell." More conversation followed, and dancing to music of your choice in several locations on campus. . . . Some observations on the weekend: 1) Almost everyone said it was the best reunion (and for some it was the first) they had attended and that there was a greater feeling of closeness and cohesion than in previous years. This was the final reunion for the Cotters, and there were many tributes to them throughout the weekend. They have accomplished so much for Colby, and Ted and I have commented many times how effective President Cotter has been at bringing issues before us in a very personal way. We wish them well in their new venture. 2) The College does an incredible job of handling all of the details for special events, especially reunions. 3) Next time we will remember to bring our foam "egg crates" for the dorm mattresses. (We did remember the washcloths and pillows!) We also wonder if there is a correlation between reunion year number and the number of reservations at local motels! And finally, we hope everyone will plan to come to our 45th!

–Carolyn Webster Lockhart

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Mary Sawyer Durgin writes from Dallas, Texas, that she will soon be relocating back to Maine, where she will continue working for the IRS, as she has for the past 30 years. She will be a territory manager of the small business/self-employed business division with an office in Augusta. Mary recently spent six months in Washington, D.C., working on the major IRS restructuring you have probably heard about. While there, she visited Carla Possinger Short, who lives in Dover, Del. . . . Hank Sheldon broke in the new fast-forward, on-line, alumni news service that Colby has initiated. If you send an e-mail message containing news to classnews1961@alum.colby.edu, it will be forwarded directly to me for inclusion in the next issue of Colby. Hank used that method to let us know he retired last October after 33 years as a pilot for United Airlines. His daughter is a freshman at Indiana University this fall, and his son is a junior in high school, so full-time retirement isn't an option yet. However, he is hoping to get back to Waterville for our 40th reunion next year. . . . For the past two years, I have taught an interactive TV course from the University of Maine called Writers of Maine. I have used one of the Jack McMorrow mysteries by Colby's managing editor, Gerry Boyle '78, as a text, and Gerry has very graciously called into the classroom/studio to talk about his writing. The Jack McMorrow books give insights into a side of Maine life that most of us were unfamiliar with while living on Mayflower Hill, and I recommend them highly. . . . Ah, yes, reunion. It will be 40 years next June that we listened to Supreme Court Chief Justice William O. Douglas tell us about the importance of wilderness when he spoke at our commencement ceremony. It's none too soon to mark June 8-10, 2001, as a very important date since that's when our reunion will be. You will receive mailings from the Alumni Office as the time draws nearer, but if you have any ideas for activities, special guests, etc., pass them along to me. And start practicing "Hail, Colby, Hail."

–Judy Hoffman Hakola

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I received a most interesting e-mail from Brenda Wrobleski Elwell. Brenda says, "I quit my job with Carlson Wagonlit Travel last fall, after 10 years of the Fortune 500 world, and cast my lot with a start-up global travel Internet company called Amisto.com. We just launched our e-commerce solution for tours and Monday will launch hotels. The site is designed for independent adventurous travelers who want to book a la carte. We launched with Central America and soon will expand around the globe. It is a dot com with a dot mom. My daughter is the CEO and my boss. I have been traveling all over Latin America on business the past few months." We enjoyed meeting Brenda's daughter at our 35th. She is definitely a "chip off the block." . . . Sam Cohen has been elected chairman of the board of directors of the Mid-Coast Bancorp and the Waldoboro (Maine) Bank. Sam is an attorney who has been practicing law in Waldoboro for more than 30 years. He lives with his wife, Harriet, in Waldoboro and has two grown sons, Philip, who practices law with his father, and Michael, who is a portfolio manager working in London. . . . Dennis Kinne, the girls' varsity basketball coach at Suffield Academy (Conn.), was recently named one of Connecticut's coaches of the century by the Hartford Courant. Dennis has been at the academy since graduating from Colby. At various times he has been a history teacher, director of athletics and coach of boys basketball, golf and girls basketball. . . . Hooper Cutler has retired after a 33-year career with the Marblehead (Mass.) Fire Department and as fire captain since 1983. A lifetime resident of Marblehead, Hooper attended Colby for two years before serving on a Navy submarine for two years. . . . A very interesting newspaper article, "At Home in the World," featured Philip Janes of Bloomfield, Conn. For the last 25 years Phil has served as the impassioned founding director of Arts Exclusive Gallery, a Simsbury gallery devoted to the work of late 20th-century American artists. His studio apartment on the second floor of a Simsbury Victorian is a biography of his life, from his boyhood in Bloomfield to the Peace Corps in India to the decade that followed as an administrator with CARE in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Vietnam and Nigeria. "This whole place is my life," said Philip, who hosts big parties in this room and serves up feasts of Chinese food. Sounds like a most interesting life. . . . Paul Hickey of New York, a set designer for the CBS soap opera As the World Turns, was nominated for an Emmy award for design excellence for the ninth time. Paul won Emmys in 1984, 1985 and 1990 for his work on the veteran soap opera, which has been aired on CBS for the past 44 years. I haven't heard whether Paul received his fourth award this year. Let us know! Congratulations on the previous three and for the nomination. . . . I recently had lunch with Sandra Keef Hunter. Sandra spends summers in the Bangor area with her mother while she rents out her East Hampton, N.Y., home for the summer months. Sandy retired in 1990 from AT&T. Hubby Steve is an advertising copywriter. Last fall they traveled to California and Arizona, where they took a balloon ride over Phoenix and a mule ride into the Grand Canyon. Sandy is creating a marine shell collection for the East Hampton Natural History Museum, and she also enjoys scuba diving, birding and gardening. Thanks to Sandy for catching me up on several classmates. (If what I'm about to say is in error, then maybe you will e-mail or write me with your corrected up-to-date happenings.). . . Brenda Lewison has a year-old granddaughter. Husband Bill is an architect, and Brenda edits Avenues magazine in Cleveland. Her daughter, Becky, was married in Jamaica in May '99. . . . Cynthia Barber has retired from inn keeping at Smugglers' Notch and recently bought a house on a mountaintop in Vermont. A Maine coon cat keeps her company. . . . Mary Al Deems Howland, who went on to earn a Ph.D., teaches at Annapolis. Now that her children are grown, a Jack Russell terrier is her companion. . . . Diane Hilton O'Connor has returned to her family's home and is now living in Bremen, Maine, near Damariscotta. . . . Sally Kent is an antiques dealer in Brunswick, Maine. . . . Ann Tracy continues teaching at SUNY in Plattsburgh. . . . On a sad note, I regret to inform you of the death of Patricia Millett Kent, who died June 7, 2000, after a brief illness. Since 1975 Patty had lived with her family in Thomaston, Maine, where she was very active in the community. She was an assistant librarian at the Thomaston Public Library for many years. Her love of learning and reading continued throughout her entire life. Other special interests included NASCAR, gardening, participation in Internet news groups, collecting postal stamps, travel and interacting with staff and patrons at the library. Survivors include her husband, Charles Kent, three sons and five grandchildren. Pat's parents and my parents were Colby classmates ('28 and '31), so my association with Patty began when we were young teens. We had not been in close contact for a while so picking up the morning paper and reading of the passing of an old friend makes me realize just how important and meaningful "golden" friendships are. Our sympathies are with Chuck, Donald, Charles and Steven.

–Patricia Farnham Russell

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More of you are using e-mail, and I hope more will, sharing some news. All it takes is classnews1963@ alum.colby.edu or KFF245@ aol.com, and I promise to answer everyone! Or use the form in this issue of Colby magazine. I've been enjoying catching up more with Colby this year as our oldest daughter is doing the grand tour of colleges, including Colby, before her senior year at Concord Academy. Also after years of not being able to attend a Colby Today weekend, I made it this year and had a great time, especially as Pat (Raymond '64) and Tom Thomas were also there. We enjoyed the good Colby vitality, food and fellowship and meeting with students, professors, administrators and the Cotters in their last year. Impressive was how much Colby has remained true to the spirit of our day. Major differences were the number and growth of trees and the absence of sulfur fumes from the paper mill downtown. I was glad to see the January Program still strong if not stronger and also the growth in the art program with the addition of the new wing to the College's museum and the proposed student studios to be built next year. . . . George Swasey's short e-mail is full of good humor and encouragement for us to enjoy life. He keeps in touch with Ed Winkler, who is vigorously trying to give up Big Macs and to lose some weight. Ed hears from Charlie Cary. . . . Beth (Mary) Brown Turner continues in her administrative and faculty position in the department of drama at New York University. Her daughter Shairi just completed her medical residency at Mass General, where she specialized in pediatrics and internal medicine, and also was married this summer to Jimmie Davis, who just received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from UMass at Lowell. Her son, Kaigani, landed a position in the London office of the Web development company Sapient. Beth continues to publish her 16-year old publication on the black performing arts, Black Masks. "Besides all of this," she writes, "in the deep recesses of my heart, I still consider myself a playwright (but unfortunately, I have no recent output to support that claim–smiles). . . . After 20 years of affiliation with the University of West Virginia's Center for Women's Studies, Lillian Waugh was honored on May 8, 2000, for her dedication to sharing her knowledge of WVU women's history and for all her hard work in private fund raising for the center. She served as interim director of the center in 1992-93 and since then as the associate director of the center, receiving the Women's Concerns' Mary Catherine Buswell Award in 1993 for her service to WVU women. She is looking forward to her "retirement/renaissance" and having time to play the cello, garden and learn to play golf with her husband, David. After finishing at Harvey Mudd in California last year, their daughter has done a teaching internship at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School in Cambridge, Mass. Lillian recently saw Shirley Parry, who teaches both English and women's studies at Anne Arundel Community College in Maryland. . . . Lucille Waugh is going back to public school teaching of English and language arts after a lengthy stint of freelance editing business writing. She has recertified and was looking forward to teaching in the Peabody, Mass., area this fall. Lucille continues to play and teach the violin/viola as a semi-pro musician in various orchestras on the North Shore. She would love to hear from Sandra Moulton Burridge and Shirley Parry. . . . From Barb Haines Chase we have news that Nan McCune Wagner married Wallace Steadman Watson, a professor of modern British literature and film studies at Duquesne University. Nan has completed two and a half years of the four-year evening Duquesne Law School program and was selected for the Law Review. Barb also keeps up with Mary Michelmore Hayes, who with her husband, Don, will be sharing photos and adventures of a trip to North Carolina with Barb and Bill, who are enjoying Bill's semi-retirement. This past winter the Chases participated in an Elderhostel trip to arctic Finland, where they cross-country skied between nine and 15 miles a day, and this summer they were going to white-water raft down the Yampa River in Dinosaur National Park in Utah/Colorado with Dian Emerson Sparling. Last year Dian organized a group, which included Barb and Bill on the Green River, and they had so much fun they decided to do another trip. . . . Bonnie Brown Potter was written up in her local Bolton, Mass., weekly newspaper for her involvement with Bolton's Conservation Trust as its president for three years and for all her wonderful work educating elementary school children in the town about their environment. She has worked with the Conservation Trust since 1989 to sponsor a school program called Environmental Learning for the Future, or ELF. Bonnie feels that growing up on a potato farm in Presque Isle and spending so much time with people who taught her to value the plants and wildlife of the region was instrumental in this interest and work. She and her husband, Barry, a director of marketing for Naypro, Inc., still have ties to Maine with a house at Sugarloaf, and Bonnie enjoys an annual canoe trip in Maine with friends. . . . Ceylon Barclay recounts further adventures. Besides his many stateside activities, including being the president of the Ormond Beach Historical Trust, Inc., involved with building a park centerpieced by the oldest rum distillery in America, he has become the president of the American Friends of the Upper Volga Institute Foundation, Inc., in Tver, Russia, and has met with fellow founder and former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev. He was working in Russia and Lebanon all winter and enjoyed a visit from fellow KDR Dr. Ralph Bradshaw '62, whose own accomplishments are beyond belief.

–Karen Forslund Falb

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I'm pleased to receive e-mail messages from several classmates in response to an e-mail survey on cleaning out parents' homes. My own experience was that we seemed to be moving stuff constantly for several years, downsizing, downsizing and downsizing until it was just those items needed for everyday life. We lost all four parents between 1988 and 1996. . . . From Jack Lockwood: "My cleaning out experience really hasn't happened. My parents moved from their three-bedroom ranch house to a two-bedroom townhouse in a retirement community in '72. They were both active and vigorous at that time. My mother died at the age of 79 in '81; my father continues to live in the townhouse. We just celebrated his 95th last month in Wilmington, Del., and combined it with a family reunion." Jack goes on to say that every lineal descendant of his dad's was in attendance–two children, six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren–but only three came from east of the Mississippi, with six of the others coming from Hawaii, two from Washington, one from California, three from Colorado and three from Texas. . . . From Laurence Braun: "Fortunately, both my parents are still in good health in their late 80s. They are now living two blocks from me in a two-bedroom apartment in N.Y.C. while my brother lives in California. When one of the parents passes away, I don't expect the other to move out, but someone will be hired to help the surviving parent to cope. I expect my hands to be full in the next few years regarding my parents' care." . . . Bob Dyer reports that his parents have died and that his brother cared for them. Bob says, "If he passes away before I do, I will have to face the problem you had, as he lives at my old home in Pennsylvania. The answers you get and advice you gave will be a big help, and it's a very thoughtful topic." . . . From Joan McGhee Ames: "I agree with your comments re the necessities of life, which [in my case] included a couple of stuffed animals given by loved ones and some crafts made by my mother in her retirement years but a total of only two small cartons when I went to retrieve her belongings after she died in late April (following eight years with Alzheimer's). We were able to keep Mum at home till late '98 with help [before she moved to] an Alzheimer's unit and lastly to a nursing home. . . . Betsy Crockett Tyson-Smith reports that since she was diagnosed and treated for breast cancer in 1990 she has been specializing in leading groups and offering counseling (she is a licensed psychotherapist) for women with breast cancer. She has been speaking (including at Colby) and offering workshops on the psychological impact of breast cancer on a woman and her family and friends. Just recently she was offered the opportunity to become a founder and director of a center for healing for women with this illness. She says, "The husband of a group member who died this past summer wishes to memorialize his wife by founding and donating his beautiful 10-acre property in Harvard, Mass., as the Healing Garden: The Virginia Thurston Healing Center for Breast Cancer Educational Therapies. We are signing up our board, applying for nonprofit status, etc., and hope to open in early fall, offering counseling, groups, massage, Reiki, meditation, yoga, nutrition, physical fitness/stress reduction and other modalities. We also have an affiliation with Lesley College Graduate School, which will be offering expressive therapies at our center in June of 2001." Betsy says she was very excited, because her experience with the illness was terrifying and isolating and she likes to think she can make a difference for other women. . . . Jim Harris wrote that as of June 12, he would be working as northwest regional manager for Graphic Arts Center Publishing Center. "Since early 1997 I had been in business for myself as an independent book sales rep with as many as 30 companies as clients. Graphic Arts was one of those companies. It is based in Portland (the other one, in Oregon). They made me an offer that I couldn't refuse. Earlier this year, I had a chance to see Linda and Bill Cotter on their farewell tour (in Seattle). Dick York and his much better half, Kristie, were also in attendance as was my wife, Madie. I have been traveling extensively the last three months for business–Hawaii (I know, I know), New York and Chicago. Some of it was fun (N.Y.). After having several years of lots of family living in the Seattle area, it suddenly got very quiet. My son Bill moved to extreme south Texas in March (corporate decision, big salary increase). . . . It's a nice feeling to finally realize my dream–no longer being financially responsible for my offspring. Is this what is meant by financial independence?" He says that they have also regained their guestroom and that if any classmates head out his way to let him know–he's on the Colby e-mail listings. . . . Andrew Weiland's career continues to soar. The latest honor to come to my attention is his election to the office of treasurer of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. . . . And Morgan McGinley continues to reap praise for his editorials in The Day in New London Conn. They have led the way in many issues vital to the state.

–Sara Shaw Rhoades

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