Class of 1939

Class Secretary: Eleanor Smart Parker, PO Box 210, North Bridgton, ME 04057-0210

Class President: To Be Announced

Got news? Tap out a note to magazine@bates.edu! Dottie Adler Briggs attends UMaine hockey games, goes to exercise classes, raises violets, and “waits on her old cat.”… Bob Akers is working on his memoirs with help from daughter Diane Akers Libby ’68. A brother and brother-in-law also visit weekly so Margot can do errands now that Bob’s condition is stable. Memories of his years at National Heart Institute, as South American coordinator, stationed in Rio de Janeiro, should make good reading…. Bob and Barbara Buker Brown have downsized to a condo just a block from their daughter. They still spend July at their place on Lake Tacoma. They have become involved with the Congregational Church…. Ruthie Butler volunteers in an assisted living facility and gives a series on “creativity in aging years.”… Ev Copeland and Mack moved from Florida to Heritage Village in Southbury, Conn. Ev ruminates: “To count or not the dimples Chad/ As Ogden Nash might opine/ Can anything be horrider/ than counting votes in Florider?”… Alice and “Bing” Crosby say that 2000 was tough but “we will grind it out.”… Still living in her old 12-room house, Marita Dick Stratton and sister Norma went on a 12-day tour of Ireland. In counties Cork and Mayo they visited towns where their maternal grandmother and grandfather were born and lived prior to coming to America in the 1800s…. Bill Collins and Jean Dickson Kelley are active in Eastern Star, and daughter Anne is Worthy Matron of Crescent Chapter in Boothbay…. Eleanor “Happy” Hapgood McKenzie now lives at The Arbors, 687 Harbor Rd., Shelburne, VT 05482. Eleanor’s daughter, Margaret Maffin, reports that her mother appreciates Bates updates although she cannot respond…. Barbara Kendall Ireland has two new knees. She is back driving a van and volunteers at the hospital, church, art center and food shelf. Sadly we report the death of husband Bob ’40 on March 10 after 60 years of marriage. We remember our adopted classmate for his rare humor and enjoyment of life…. Bob Kinney says they visited campus this past year and it could not have looked better. He is really retired now as he left his last board of directors in March. Thirty-niners look with extra pride on the Kinney Wing of the new Pettengill Hall…. Helen Martikainen has led educational initiatives in North Carolina to raise awareness about health care needs of the elderly, in a state whose adult population growth trails only Florida and Arizona. A panel member of a 50th anniversary celebration in Boston sponsored by the Society for Public Health Education and the North American regional office of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education, she spoke on major global health and related disparities and projections “locally and globally.”… Ros MacNish and honorary class member, Lois Clark, drove 6,306 miles and 113 days away from home. Official photographer for the Wethersfield Festival, Lois turned over 220 prints to publicize the 2001 event. Ros, an alumna of Yale’s School of Public Health Nursing, attended a luncheon in conjunction with Yale’s tercentenary. She and Lois went to OpSail, to a photographic conference in Amherst, and in Connecticut visited the Mystic Marine Museum, a wildlife refuge on Long Island Sound, and the New England Carousel Museum in Bristol…. Marilyn Miller Radonsky enjoyed the time she was at Bates. She earned her B.A. from Rhode Island College and her master’s in educational administration and supervision from BU. In her 35-year career, she was a school principal for two decades until her husband’s illness necessitated her leaving her educational career…. John Nash remembers his Bates days when he roomed in the attic bedroom of John White’s grandmother’s home a few doors from the Bates campus. He mowed the lawn and stoked the furnace in return for the room. For nine years John was in charge of Red Cross swimming at the Babylon (N.Y.) Yacht Club so was particularly interested that “Jay” White continues to swim in the Bates pool…. Chet and Eleanor Smart Parker spent time during 2000 at the beach house in Bay View, had an overnight at the Samoset in Rockland and saw the Wyeth exhibit at the Farnsworth with Andrew Wyeth’s granddaughter Victoria ’01 as the docent. They watched OpSail, saw the Red Sox beat Baltimore and rejoiced when Bates beat Bowdoin…. Ruth and Ray Renaud’s four daughters live in their area and six of the 10 grandkids are out of college and in the work force. The Renauds play bridge and poker and dance. Ruth is involved with Women’s Club, raised money for the Springfield Hospital and wrapped presents for the patients…. Bob Rimmer says that five of his novels are now in print in attractive trade paperback editions that can be sampled on iuniverse.com or ordered on his site from amazon.com or Barnes & Noble or borders.com. “Despite the fact that they are not reviewed, after all [the fact that] an 83-year-old man is still writing very controversial sex-oriented novels is news.”… Esther Rowe Tallamy’s travels have had a slight setback since her RV motor died right after Labor Day after 165,000 miles. Esther had driven alone to all 49 mainland states and in all Canadian provinces. She is toying with the idea of a smaller but mobile RV…. Dana Wallace’s big experiment is his attempt to establish oysters along the coast. He received the Longuard Award from the Gulf of Maine Foundation and received a framed underwater landscape of the Gulf presented by Governor King. As an honorary director of the Friends of Casco Bay, he also received the Casco Bay Award. Before the Bates-Bowdoin game, the Wallaces hosted a lunch of oysters, seafood crepes, salad, fruit and cookies for the Parkers, classmates Harry and Bea Wilson Shepherd ’40, granddaughter Jessica Caron ’02 and her Bates friends…. Norma Watkins Maynard was recovering from a fall last December…. Last April, Lee and Dorothy Weeks Whiston moved to a retirement community in St. Louis, Mo. Lee has led several of the weekly Bible studies and a few film discussions.”