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By Gerry Boyle '78 X-files in Colby's Special Collections? Archivist Bill Jefferson may have unearthed some. Jefferson's brush with the "forces" at work in Miller Library began last August when, as a newly hired part-time archivist, he embarked on the task of acquainting himself with the Colbiana archives. Rummaging through files and folders, he came across a newspaper story from 1969 about the arrival at Colby of a student named Paul Ilsley. The story said the enrollment of Ilsley '73 marked the sixth consecutive generation of the Ilsley family to attend Colby. "I thought, 'Huh. That's interesting," Jefferson said. "I figured that must be a record. I sort of put it in the back of my mind." And there it stayed until October when Elizabeth Broun, director of the National Museum of American Art at the Smith-sonian Institution, came to Colby. Jefferson and his wife, Assistant Professor of Art Bevin Engman, went to Broun's lecture at the dedication of the new Lunder Wing of the Colby Museum of Art. Broun cited six paintings from the museum's permanent collection, including an anonymous portrait of the Rev. Silas Ilsley. "I had seen that painting a number of times but never had the context to it," Jefferson said. "I said to Bevin, 'That's got to be the same family.'" It was. Jefferson checked the files and found that Silas Ilsley, Class of 1834, was the first Ilsley to attend Colby, the one who kicked things off. Jefferson also noted that Paul Ilsley had gone on to become a professor at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. "I almost thought of e-mailing him and saying, 'Can we expect a seventh?'" Jefferson said. But he didn't. Instead, Jeff-erson went about his archivist business and also his business at L.L. Bean. An experienced mountaineer and backpacker, he's worked for the company on and off for more than 20 years, selling outdoors equipment and establishing the first L.L. Bean training programs in map-and-compass orienteering and winter mountaineering and producing a training video for company phone-order employees. This past winter Jefferson did a stint at the L.L. Bean call center in Waterville, one of four the company operates, employing about 800 people to take telephone orders from all over the world. One Sunday even-ing before Christmas, just before he was scheduled to end his shift, Jefferson got a call from a woman who wanted to buy five bottles of maple syrup and have the bottles sent to five different people. She was very ebullient and outgoing, Jefferson recalled. When she gave her credit card number, the name on the card was Donna Jones-Il-sley. "I thought, 'Ilsley. Huh,'" Jefferson said. Jones-Ilsley's address was DeKalb, Ill. She was sending syrup to Claremont, Calif., among other places. "That's where Paul's father [John Ilsley '46] is," Jefferson said. "I'm thinking, it would be too bizarre to be true. That she would be funneled through to Waterville, much less get me. . . ." The woman spoke of Maine and her husband's family ties to Colby College. She started to recite the family's Colby lineage, and Jefferson could contain himself no longer. "I said, 'My god, I probably know more about your family than you do. And now I know their Christmas buying habits." Now, the L.L. Bean story did make the rounds of the Ilsley family, according to Paul Ilsley, who teaches ethnography and phenomenology. He said the phenomenon of all those generations at Colby might not end with six. "My son Christopher is just 13," he said. "He is an awfully good student." |
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