University of Maine - Class of 1956

Welcome to the Class of 1956 official webpage on the University of Maine Alumni Association web site. Here you will find any special announcements or reminders the Class of 1956 needs to know.

Below is the long version of the Class of 1956 Class Column. The shorter version appeared iin the Winter 2010 issue of Maine Alumni Magazine.

1956 

Faith Wixson Varney
69 Falmouth Road
Falmouth, ME 04105
781-3038
fvarney@maine.rr.com

Hi ’56ers.
I’m trying something a bit different for the website. I’ll include all the information that folks have sent me (except personal stuff).
From Carl Seaward, Jr.:
A Maine Hello to you and all my classmates! I am well, retired, and active. My garden, here in Wilton, Maine, is headed for another disaster, two WET years in a row. I'm also involved in Shrine activities: Oriental Band and Quetzalcoatl, which gives me the opportunity to travel to Mexico, Canada, and throughout the United States. I'm fortunate to have my son, Joe, his wife, Becky, and three grandchildren(ages 8, 12, and 16) living with me on the farm. My daughter, Marjie, and her husband live in Canton with their youngest, Holt. Her oldest, Katie, lives in Rumford. Becky and her husband, Jeremy McLeod, live in Hartford, Maine. Sonny and B.J are in California.
Quetzalcoatl is an organization made up of Shriners who have been WORKERS for Shrine (I’m Director Emeritus of the Kora Oriental Band). We raise funds for the transportation fund for our Shrine Hospital Children. Our motto is “Transportation is our aim and fun is our game.” I have been to Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Albuquerque, Minneapolis, Laughlin (NV), Nashville, Monteal, St. Johns (Newfoundland), Sainte-Adele (Quebec), and Mexico City (to get consecrated at Teotihuacan). I'm headed to St. Louis in October and Reno in 2010. We also have ceremonies in Southbury, CT, and Bangor. I am past Comaxtli (leader) of El Corazon De Kora and a High Pontiff of OKET (Order of Knights, Eagles, and Tigers), our highest degree.
As we Masons say, yours in "Faith," Carl
By the way, Quetzalcoatl is not part of Shrine but made up of Shriners.
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From Jerry Pangakis
My wife, Martha, and I are floating along with the ebb and flow of life! She retired last year and we made several trips to check in on my mother who is still managing her life and her home in Florida. Not yet "ready" to move near me or my sister. (Waiting until she gets “old”!) I'm still involved with a senior housing project for low-income seniors and our Phase Two building of 43 units will be officially opening in six weeks or so. It’s a wonderful HUD-backed project that provides safe, secure, and supervised services to low-income Seniors.
Both Martha and I are involved with a Hartford Hospital Prostate Cancer Steering Committee that provides programs for survivors and support services for newly diagnosed men.
Meanwhile, it’s kind of scary to see early teen-aged grandchildren towering over us ! (We shrink while they GROW, I guess!)
We hear from Betsy Harvey Ruff from time to time and are always warmed by the memories invoked by that contact with a dear friend from U of M days—and thereafter! Best wishes to all!
Mother is something of a unique person! She lives alone in her house and drives to the stores and doctors as well as twice a week to church! A bunch of my first cousins stay in touch with her also—since she is the last link to their parents who have all passed on now. We are truly blessed to have her strength and gumption as an example!
2nd note:
The American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA) is the fraternal order that has undertaken the Senior Housing effort throughout the U.S. Our Nathan Hale Chapter’s facilities are in Wethersfield, CT. Forty-one units in our first project (built in 1984) and an additional 43 units right next door will be opening up to tenants in the next few weeks. A management company operates the place day-to-day and the local board of directors oversees the facility. We sponsor a Thanksgiving dinner for all the tenants every year and will be serving them a picnic dinner in late August. It is such a pleasure to have been a part of this project from its inception: the tenants are singles (and a few couples) who have limited incomes, so these units provide a secure, well-maintained place where they can live with dignity. Uncle Sam sets the rules and the rates and the rental fees allow for regular updating of the furnishings in the community rooms—computers, large screen TV's and all! It's been a very successful partnership all around the country.
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From President Bill Johnson:
Suggestion—maybe this next issue tell them some of the action taken at our May 20th executive committee meeting i.e. have Todd Saucier ’93, ’97G explain campus alumni affairs, Dan Willett ’69 (Foundation) scholarship giving needed during these tight economic times and action the Class of ’56 took for financial support for next three years of our alumni association. The discussion of our 55th class Reunion plans for 2011 Homecoming—special dinner on campus for our class, etc. More will be mailed nearer time. Needs—continued class financial support for the Senior Alumni scholarship fund. Let them know our class is not riding off into the sunset and that we continue to get letters of thanks from our class scholarship recipients.
I continue to hear from classmates—Dick Clark, Bob Foster who now lives in Portland area etc.
The Class of ’56 continues to press ahead and with every class member’s help and interest we will!
Bill
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From Bill Hammann
Lois and I celebrated our 53rd anniversary this June. Our oldest grandson finished his third tour in Iraq, and home, discharged, and all in one piece. Here is my email, you can put in class notes. Probably not many classmates know we are living in Skowhegan. Would be glad to hear from them. In 2007 had a surprise when in the process of bone scans and CAT scans for prostate cancer, they found a tumor on my right kidney. They took it out, then proceeded with the radiation for the prostate problem. Two yearly checkups since and no reoccurance, so we're looking good for now. Enjoy fishing the local lakes, and the Kennebec River for smallmouth bass. Lois and I enjoyed the 50th Reunion, looking forward to doing the same for the 60th.
B.Hammann bhamm@beeline-online.net
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From Hank Brodersen
I just received the latest issue of the alumni magazine, and I thank you for that write-up about me. I love reading about myself!
Unfortunately, I have nothing to add for the next issue. I went out to Idaho again this month and again had a ball building more fence for a week. I didn't get a chance to see Elva this year, but I did get to see an old childhood friend/smokejumper/Utah State Sig Ep up in McCall, Idaho. Other than that, I played in the Kennedy Center Tuba Christmas and one other local one last December and continue my usual tuba playing. And Ian and I recently celebrated our 46th anniversary.
That’s it. I hope all is well up north with you two and anyone else you might see who knows me. Say hi to all.
Hank
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From Peggy Flynt Haskell:
This season has been “a loverly weather for ducks” as the song goes! But in spite of the weather it’s been a great family time for me. My 22-year-old granddaughter, a junior at Illinois State University, came east to visit me and other relatives on the coast, and to take a week’s writing course at UMass in Amherst. She is now recovering from two years of treatment for Leukemia, the end of which is hopefully in sight, and at this point she looks great with energy and enthusiasm for getting on with her life.
Next on the family docket is a visit from my son and his girlfriend who are coming east to spend time here and on the coast where I’m going to join them for an overnight on Monhegan Island. Following that will be a 50th birthday and retirement party for him that his cousins are cooking up. As his 25th anniversary of his employment as an air traffic controller with the FAA came around allowing him to retire, he opted out and took a part-time job with a civilian contractor in his old building where he devises test controller programs for training new people coming on board. This gives him greater time off, which jibes better with his other career of playing in a rock band. After his party I will head for Vermont for a week of keeping my daughter’s homestead running in her absence, which will include taking my 10-year-old grandson to football practice at 7:00 every night, and keeping watch over the new litter of eight lab puppies.
Then, I hope to have some time to continue getting into shape for climbing Mt. Katahdin the second week of September. My long-time friend and fellow adventurer is coming east from California to join me for a joint 75th birthday celebration hike. The last big mountain we climbed together was Mt. Whitney in the Sierras in 1996. We won’t face the same rarified air this time, as Mt. Whitney is over 9,000 feet higher than Mt. Katahdin, but the latter presents its own difficult challenges to overcome.
I’m still involved with Bridgton Senior College, serving on the board as registrar. I taught a course in oceanography a few years ago, and now am considering putting together a presentation for a winter program at some point with anecdotes and information gleaned from my years of plying the seas on survey vessels with the US Naval Oceanographic Office. Such as:
My first tour at sea was in the southern Caribbean in 1986 on an old ship with old technology and a serious rock-n-roll. Position was plotted by hand using a circular plotting instrument against the Loran C rings which was then adjusted by data from a transit satellite that came over every eight hours, and at times we had to hand-ink smooth sheets during 30-degree rolls. But fishing was great off the fantail, and in the late afternoon the trade winds stirred up enormous cumulous clouds, which caught fire from the setting sun in every pastel color imaginable.
At sea off Alexandria we were startled to see the pyramids of Giza rising right behind the city. (They should have been over 100 miles south of us near Cairo.) At the end of the day they disappeared, only to return again and then disappear every afternoon for about three weeks before they finally slid back home and stayed! We didn’t see them again until we actually visited them in situ near Cairo.
There were tense moments while we were surveying lines from our survey launch in a sudden dense fog among gargantuan oil tankers uploading oil from Alexandria’s sea terminals when we suddenly lost navigation—couldn’t see a thing and had no sense of direction. A small boat doesn’t want to be nearby when a tanker decides to weigh anchor. Our mother ship was on its way out to sea, and our line of sight communication with her was about to end as she slipped over the horizon. Fortunately we caught her in time and she came back to rescue us.
In trips through the Suez Canal we were always mandated by the Egyptian government to bring on board a quota of bazaar merchants to sail with us (and hopefully sell their wares) during our passage. They were very polite and considerate, but on a small ship like ours, they were always in the way, and we had to step over them every time we came into or out of survey control.
Tunisia—Four large naval vessels hugged the horizon for several days in preparation for US-Tunisian war games as we continued our side-scan sonar survey along the beach. Then D-Day hit—helicopters came screaming in followed by fast-moving open LCACs carrying tanks and other elements of war heading for the beach on either side of us. We stopped, quickly pulled in our fish, and hovered quietly in our little pool of water as the vessels roared past us, climbed onto the beach, and unloaded their cargo, which raced off into the desert.
Tunisia—In a casual conversation with a ship’s engineer from Maine, we learned that each of our families had had nearby camps in Township 26 ED—his on Third Chain Lake and mine on First Chain Lake. What are the odds of that, discovering a Maine wilderness neighbor while thousands of miles away? Incidentally, our ships were manned by civilian crews, and I was told that recruiters often came to Maine looking for good seamen to hire, having found Maine people to be honest, diligent, and hard workers.
Indonesia—We enjoyed the sublime languid ambiance of the South Pacific where we gathered nightly on the top deck for the ritual of watching the sun slip into the western sea, most often saluting us with a green flash at the instant before sinking from sight. The natives were very friendly on islands we visited to put in tide gages, even once inviting the four of us “girls” to seek shelter from a rain storm on the upper floor of one of the homes up on stilts. We sat in the center of the living room with a circle of about a dozen men around us and the wives and children peeking out of the kitchen at us. No conversation for lack of a translator.
On an import in Singapore, at the end of each torrid muggy afternoon we’d race from wherever we at the time to Raffles Hotel and the Long Bar’s welcome refreshment of a cold Singapore Sling (maybe two) while sitting among the ambiance of Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling and their other bygone contemporaries.
While testing our new Differential GPS equipment near an island in the Bahamas, we suddenly had two Pac Men on different survey lines showing up on our navigation screen delineating our course of travel. Had we moved into a whole new dimension? They would pop in and out, and we weren’t sure which, if any, was real. Finally it was discovered that the coordinates entered into the Differential GPS receiver on shore were in error.
One early morning before work began I was standing with my coffee underneath the wing of the bridge and suddenly became aware of paper airplanes flying out over the sea. I looked up at the First Mate also watching the air show who told me they were testing the weather! She laughed and I laughed. I love being an American!
Dubai was a favorite of everyone. The architecture, the gold souk, the camel races, tours into the desert, modern malls, and especially luxuriating for the five days of our import in modern hotels with comfortable beds and room service.
Oman was enchanting, set in a unique dark mountain landscape. John McPhee says that “Muscat, in Oman, sits at the base of peridotite cliffs and is the only capital city in the world hewn into rock of the earth’s mantle.” We took a tour of the Al Bustan Hotel a few miles down the coast, which had been erected by the Sultan specifically for Oman’s hosting of an upcoming OPEC meeting. The selected site required moving an entire fishing village to another location and dismantling a mountain, but the result is magnificent. We were allowed to place one of our navigation devices on the roof of this elegant edifice.
At night while anchored off Muscat when our deck lights were on, we watched the little sinuous wavelets hurrying past the ship on their way toward the Strait of Hormuz. We’d pick a wave coming toward us from the stern and follow it while trying to determine if it held a snake within its form. Only when the wavelet came abreast of us under the lights could we know for sure. Often the snake won!
We were in Greece many times, but my favorite was the last time (and my last cruise) in 1998 when the stars aligned just right so that colleagues and I could hike down the nine-mile Samaria Gorge Trail in Crete, starting in the mountains behind Chania in the north of the island and ending at the southern shore. Gorgeous scenery, a breathtaking hike!
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From Clarence Barrett:
The picture I sent of my son, granddaughter, and myself that may appear in the next edition could use some additional notes either with the picture or in your write-up. The granddaughter passed her board exams and is working at Children’s Hospital in Boston. My son, (Dr.) Brent Barrett '77, is the science director at an in-vitro fertilization company in Boston. Chuck is still enjoying Florida, even in the summer months. Not having been on campus for many years, the changes I saw at this year’s graduation were just great. It took quite awhile to get oriented to where I was half the time, but Pat's was still there!
Chuck
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From Dick & Dena Ackerman:
Right now, we are enjoying some quiet time in this wet, cool summer. Last winter and early spring were stressful times—Dick started to experience symptoms from a long-time problem with cardiac valves and had surgery on March 3 at Dartmouth-Hitchcock where they replaced one valve and repaired the other. Pretty miraculous stuff since he had had coronary bypass surgery there five years before. He is doing fine now!
We celebrated our 50th anniversary in June with a trip to Pemaquid, Maine, then came home in time to celebrate with all the kids and grandkids. The following week we had all five of the grandkids (ages 16 years-9 months) here for four days. The older ones came to help us keep up with the little ones. Then it was off for two weeks at a camp on Lake Champlain with son John and his wife and son with the other kids popping in for a couple of day visits.
Dena and Dick

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From Joanne Owen Bingham:
I think the most important thing in my life right now is that I am still healthy and able to keep doing the things I love. I see my children and grandchildren several times a year and am able to visit family quite regularly. I volunteer in my church as a part of the accounting team; I keep track of the members’ pledges and all incoming moneys by use of spreadsheets, which are then turned over to our part-time accountant.
I still keep up with my quilt work. I have donated a quilt to the Alumni Association, which will be raffled off at Homecoming this year. I try to learn new techniques and hone the old ones. I took a class this past spring with several of the members of my Quilt Club and the project turned out so pretty that I displayed it at this year’s Maine Quilt Show. I love doing it.
We have not done any international traveling this year, but I did attend the Continental Congress of the DAR in Washington this past July. A busload of 25 of us from Maine traveled together and it was very rewarding. I volunteer for the DAR by going online and indexing old (1930’s era) applications and supplemental applications from the members. I have managed to earn the 300-hour pin for this project and am working on the next one. There are several hundred of us volunteers in the country who are working on this project. It is very rewarding.
I hope all of you are well. Regards.
Jody
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From Faith:
There, now you know what I took the magazine column from. I’ve been very busy with all the bands and their summer concert schedules—organizing, practicing, playing, and directing. We’ll have a few weeks off and then the new season begins. There will be brass quintet Monday morning, band rehearsals Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, Community Chorus Thursday evening, and OLLI courses Friday. So far 17 have signed up for my beginning recorder course. The OLLI Singers will rehearse Friday afternoons. Life is not boring and that is good.
Stay well and please keep in touch. Please, do let me know if your email address changes or about any classmate addresses that you have. I can easily cross-check.
HELLO, Maine.

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Class of 1956 Class Project To make a gift to our Class Reunion Fund, contact the Reunion giving department at 1-800-934-2586 or give using the online giving form.