Many, many thanks to Karen Wessell Hull for serving as correspondent for our class of ’67 since 2006. Seventeen years is a long time to keep up with over 1,000 classmates who headed in thousands of different directions after graduation.
I would be more than happy to help you connect with classmates you haven’t heard from in a while. Just email me at pcmckenney26@gmail.com (please put “Maine 1967” in the subject) or use the contact information above so I can ask the Alumni Association to help make the connection.
Like most of you, this column is usually the first article I turn to when I get my alumni magazine! I’m happy to say four members of our class, Gene Humphrey, Carleen Williams Cook, Marian Agazarian Peterson, and I have managed to get together nearly every single year since we graduated. We were all “resident advisors” in Hancock Hall, and that’s how it all started.
Gene majored in math, lives in Gray, taught math for 49 years, and takes great pleasure in being “a lifelong learner.” Carleen grew up in Houlton, majored in English, lives in Westbrook, and for many years served as the director of the Missions Office and Catholic Relief Services for the Diocese of Portland. Marian was a Tri Delt, majored in English, lives in South Portland, and enjoyed a long career as a library director. I majored in history, was an AOPi, and active in Maine Masque. I moved to Connecticut after graduation, where I started my newspaper career with the Hartford Courant. I moved back to Maine in 1978 to work as director of public relations at Mercy Hospital, took a few years off to cruise the waterway with my husband, Frank Gibbs, and eventually returned to my newspaper career in 1998.
With us at Hancock Hall were two other resident advisors who I remember — Nancy Bates Dimitri who, if our class records are correct, lives in Forestdale, MA, and Pat Cochran ’81 CAS, who lives in Bangor.
Several of us from the Falmouth High School class of 1963 who became members of the Maine Class of 1967 have also stayed in touch over the years. Many of those classmates made it to our 50th high school reunion, including Debbie Farwell Auclair, who married Dr. Paul Auclair. They live in Cumberland Center and enjoy spending time with their three children and grandchildren every summer at their camp on Panther Pond. Stan Wentzell lives in Kingston, NH, and returns often to Maine to visit his son in Portland and enjoy the family cottage with children and grandchildren in Georgetown. Carole Hoffses Waz was one of many from outside Maine who came to our 50th Falmouth High School reunion in 2013. She lives in Higganum, CT. Lorraine Edwards Drewry also made that 50th. celebration. “Rainey” lives in Westborough, MA.
For those of you who keep up on Maine politics, you will recognize the name Sawin Millett G, who has been in the state House of Representatives through eight different terms, earning another term when he was re-elected last fall. He is the ranking member on both the Appropriations and Government Oversight committees. He has also served in the administrations of five governors. He is a graduate of Bates and received his master’s degree in education from Maine.
David Hodgkins was the focus of a feature article that ran in the Portland Press Herald on February 12, 2023. In 1978 he opened David Wood Clothiers, with the intent, according to the Press Herald, “to cater to a crowd that liked classic styling at a fair price.” Starting first in Falmouth, he later moved the business to Portland at Market and Middle streets and has been on Commercial Street since 2011. He and his wife, Paula West Hodgkins, raised four children on Cousins Island and still live there. Now officially retired, he has turned the business over to his daughter, Sara Hutchinson Brown.
Jim Haldeman G emailed us from Ithaca, NY, writing that he retired from Cornell University 10 years ago. He writes, “I now have the opportunity to spend more time with my wonderful wife, Jan, originally from Eastport, ME and my two grandchildren.” He enjoys traveling, cooking, gardening, puzzling, and playing pickleball, while continuing to stay in touch with returned Peace Corps volunteers after serving in Sierra Leone, West Africa, from 1967 through 1969.