ALUMNI PROFILES
Susan Woodward '64
A Lifelong Learner

Doug Smith '70
A Different Cargo

Janice Bispham '76
A Place to Come To

Caleb Dolan '90
A Worthwhile Struggle

Patrick Burlingame '00

45

Last year's foreign travel for well-traveled Dee Sanford McCunn and Ian included a week in Paris and another in Venice. Being accompanied by Ian's Scottish cousin, Roma, made life easier since Roma speaks French and a little Italian. They also went by car to the Western Isles of Scotland. The McCunns had a very interesting experience in Maine last year when they attended the launching of the destroyer U.S.S. Mason by the Bath Iron Works. There were speeches by Sen. Olympia Snowe, by the president of the company and by admirals and other dignitaries. Writes Dee, "the bottle was broken over her bow exactly at high tide, the chops were hammered away, and she slid smoothly down just at the turning of the tide. The timing was perfect. How did they manage all those speeches timed to the second?" . . . I was delighted to hear recently from John Calahan '44. He and Fran live in Doylestown, Pa. John tells me that his daughter, Paula Calahan-Andre '69, and her M.D. husband have a son, Marc, 11, and that they live in Yuba City and Corte Madera, Calif. John's son, Jack (M.B.A., University of Pennsylvania), his wife and their three children live in Buckingham, Pa., and Ocean City, N.J.

Naomi Collett Paganelli

46

As I write this, the news is full of Maine's disastrous drought. Remembering the snows of our years there, it's hard to imagine. Perhaps we should encourage Charlene and Jill and other Maine friends to get out and do their rain dances. . . . Interesting e-mail from Jean O'Brien Perkins: "On Jan. 21 I picked up my new Subaru Forester. On the 23rd I totaled it! An off-duty Maine state trooper who was a few cars behind saw me pull off the road and said my quick thinking prevented a multi-car pile-up. I hit slush, caromed off a cyclone fence back toward the highway and ended up with both front wheels over the guardrail. Climbed out without a scratch, bruise or stiff neck and can't praise those cars highly enough." After her recent Peace Corps years in Bulgaria, Jean continues to have interesting adventures. . . . We had a nice surprise in Sanibel, Fla., when Carol Robin Epstein knocked on our door. She was visiting her daughter and family who live in Minneapolis but have a house down here. . . . Let me hear from you. If you want to see news of '46ers, you have to send it to me! Please.

Anne Lawrence Bondy

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Marilyn Hubert, who is almost always with us when we have reunions, hoped to be with us again. She compares herself to the old gray mare, but then we all "ain't what we used to be," are we? She had 42 years of federal service in Washington, D.C., preceded by two years in the geography department at the University of Maryland, where she started her job in 1948 on a Friday the 13th (which must have been her lucky day). In answer to the questionnaire about why she picked Colby, she said she had an uncle, "skilled in carpentry, painting and bricklaying, who worked on the new Colby College library, the fine traditions of scholarship" and "outreach to black students when it was very 'risky.'" She especially applauded the black students in the class, Bill Mason and Annette Hall Carpenter. . . . In January, Louise Kelley Rochester was host for a wonderful weekend at her home in Duxbury, Mass. Doris Meyer Hawkes, Carol Carpenter Bisbee '49 and I joined her for delicious food, lots of reminiscing and sightseeing. On the second afternoon I had to leave, but the others joined Charlie '48 and Libby Hall Cousins '48 for cocktails and dinner. What a splendid way to renew our old Colby friendships! I was sorry to learn that Louise's husband, "Nat" Rochester, died last June. He earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 1941 and worked on microwave circuits and radio frequency detectors for radar at the radiation laboratory. Later he made significant contributions to the world of computer engineering, including the architecture of IBM's first scientific computer, the 701, and first general-purpose computer, the 702. . . . Beverly Benner Cassara and her husband were to be in England for a month in May and expected to be at the reunion in June, as did Jane Rollins, who was to join us for the first time. . . . John and I also hoped to be in England in May, probably a week in London and another traveling around.

Mary "Liz" Hall Fitch

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48

It is a bit of a struggle trying to fill this column. Thanks to Kay Weisman Jaffe, our class agent, who sent correspondence she received from Tim Osborne and an e-mail from Dave Choate, we are not totally devoid of news. Tim wrote the following to Kay on December 7, 2001. "Sixty years ago today the Glee Club and College Choir were performing Handel's 'Messiah' in Portland, with the Portland Symphony Orchestra. We were not told of the events at Pearl Harbor until we got off the bus back in Waterville." He concluded, "So it took a few extra years to graduate." Tim lives in Sugar Land, Texas. . . . Dave Choate e-mailed us in January. He said that he and his wife had visited their daughter and granddaughter in West Village, visited the WTC ruins and took in the Alvin Ailey dance show. In May and June they toured through Devon and the hill towns of Italy and Malta. In October they climbed the Inca trail at Machu Picchu and swam with the sea lions in the Galapagos. In November, for relaxation, they rented a car and toured Provence. Then they relaxed on a small barge on the Burgundy Canal at the "warp" speed of two miles per hour. They traveled 20 miles in six days, drank more wine than was good for them and made it back home in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Early this year they spent three weeks touring Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia and were planning to spend some time with their daughter in Singapore. They expected to arrive back in the States in February in time for golf and tennis. . . . We completed our third winter in Jupiter, Fla. The boat went in the water on April first and we devoted a good part of that month to getting her ready to sail. We planned to come back to Jupiter to play a little golf and close the house for the summer, then planned to attend Colby commencement. . . . Please take some time to write to us with news of your activities. You can be certain that we will report all the news that we receive.

David and Dorothy Marson

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49

Shortly after sending off the December news, I had a post card from Edward A. Waller, who got an unbelievable amount of news on one card! Ed is bouncing back from hospital surgery and diabetes. Although his own golf is limited, he has helped his brother build three courses in Middlefield, Conn. He teaches golf and sailing and enjoys listening to classical jazz piano and symphony. Still single, he has four kids and many friends both male and female. He commented on his Colby joys: founder of the Colby Eight, the golf team, his friend and business associate George Wiswell '50 and his participation on the admissions board for 55 years. . . . In response to the e-mail sent to class members from the Alumni Office, Carol Carpenter Bisbee reported that she was on her way to a month of "fun in the sun" in Arizona visiting her sister, Edith Carpenter Sweeney '52, and other friends. I was interested in her big news of a planned trip to Antarctica in January 2003. This will make her seventh continent! I looked up her trip on the Internet, and, lo and behold, she will be on the same ship, the MV Polar Star I just spent three weeks on, also in Antarctica! Mine was an Elder Hostel trip. We flew into Buenos Aires and then on to Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego. After a morning visiting the Tierra del Fuego National Park, we boarded the Polar Star for our crossing of the Drake Passage. After dire warnings of the rough seas ahead and "Drake-proofing" our cabins, we awoke to relatively calm seas with only a slight rolling motion. In fact, we were told that our weather throughout the trip was unbelievably good. We made 22 Zodiac landings, which was five or six more than usual. I didn't know there were so many kinds of penguins--we saw seven different species, some only a few, others in the thousands. Seals were in abundance, particularly fur seal pups that were still on the beaches in great numbers and tended to be a bit aggressive. Since we were the last expedition of the season, we were able to go farther south than any other ship before running into pack ice. Icebergs of all shapes and sizes were usually in sight, including the spectacular blue icebergs. We sailed alongside a massive tabular berg, six miles long, two miles wide and 60 feet high, which was a piece of a much bigger berg that had broken off an ice shelf a year and a half ago. My trip was titled "Tracing Shackleton," so the high point was a visit to Elephant Island, where Shackleton left 22 of his crew while he sailed on with a few to South Georgia. Again we were blessed with calm seas and were able to make a Zodiac cruise into the beach, which was a mere shingle with sea on both sides. Granted the beach has eroded some, but even so it was hard to imagine how those men survived four months on such a tiny beach with constant heavy surf. It gives you a new realization of the stuff men were made of back in that "heroic age." We ended the trip with visits to South Georgia and The Falklands. A great trip and quite out of the ordinary. . . . Nellie Macdougall Parks sent me the obituary of John S. Choate, who died March 1, 2002, in Spring Hill, Fla., "following a courageous battle of several years against lung disease." Our sympathies to his wife, Margaret, and his family.

Anne Hagar Eustis

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