Although you are reading this in summer, I am writing it after a week of early April winter storms in Maine with high wind, a foot or more of snow accumulation, and widespread power outages; a 4.8-magnitude earthquake in New Jersey whose epicenter was just 40 miles from my hometown; and a solar eclipse whose path of totality cut diagonally across Maine, roughly from the border where New Hampshire, Canada, and Maine meet, to Houlton.
My old friends Louis Stack ’64 and wife, Wilma Richardson Stack, who was my roommate freshman year, visited us here briefly in mid-March. They recently moved to Eustis, ME, close to the New Hampshire/Canada border and directly in the eclipse path. The eclipse brought a major influx of tourists into Maine; Wilma said all the camps around them were full, with rentals reportedly going for $900/night, and Bald Mountain camps were charging $100 per person to sit on a chair on a dock.
Coincidentally, Lou, a mechanical engineer, for a time worked for Wayne Johnson at the HUD office in Bangor. Wayne, who, many of you may remember, lost a leg to cancer at age 18, died of the disease in 2006. According to his obituary, following study at the London School of Economics and his graduation from George Washington University Law School, Wayne was selected by then-HUD Secretary George Romney to be the youngest director of a HUD/FHA field office in the country in his home state of Maine (the office in Bangor).
Wayne designed a state-of-the-art carbon fiber sprinting leg, which was considered a major breakthrough for above-the-knee amputees, and was himself an award-winning sprinter. He broke 11 world records and earned many medals: 17 gold, two silver, and one bronze.
According to some clippings sent to me by the Alumni Association, historian Roger Allen Moody recently lectured at the libraries in Camden and Rockland, ME, about “Historic Sporting Camps of Moosehead Lake, Maine,” based on his book by that name, which was published in 2023. Sporting camps at some 35 sites around Moosehead Lake have evolved from the 1880s and 1890s and continue to exist today.
Roger graduated from UMaine with a degree in history and government, earned a graduate degree in public administration from Syracuse University, and served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army. After local and state government work in Connecticut, Roger returned to Maine, where he was municipal manager in Ellsworth and Camden and finance and operations manager for the Bangor School Department. Following his retirement as Camden town manager in 2002, he joined Camden National Bank, where he was vice president for community development and government banking for several years. He then was elected to two terms as a Knox County commissioner.
Over the last eight years, Roger has written four books about aspects of Maine history, a dozen articles for Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors Magazine, and last year he had an article published in WoodenBoat.
The annual Senior Alumni Reunion is coming up September 12-14, and I’m hoping to see a lot of you there. For details about the Reunion and the Hotel Ursa, a new lodging option right on campus, visit shorturl.at/nHLMU.
Please also consider donating to our Senior Alumni scholarships for non-traditional students. It has been my pleasure and privilege to help evaluate applications for these grants, which sometimes make the difference between a student finishing a degree or dropping out. These are deserving students, often are a little older than the norm, supporting families, working full time, and/or dealing with obstacles in their personal lives. We may hear from some recent, grateful recipients during the Reunion.
Finally, the Rev. Sally Day Brown, who is “mostly retired” from clergy duties, included in her Christmas letter a quote from Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821-1881), a Swiss moral philosopher and poet, that she found appropriate for these times: “Life is short, and there is little time to gladden the hearts of those who journey with us … so be quick to love and make haste to be kind.”
Until next time.