{"id":122902,"date":"2019-03-14T15:47:35","date_gmt":"2019-03-14T19:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=122902"},"modified":"2022-12-21T10:55:18","modified_gmt":"2022-12-21T15:55:18","slug":"bates-in-the-news-march-15-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2019\/03\/14\/bates-in-the-news-march-15-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Bates in the News: March 15, 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frank Perham \u201956<\/span><\/h3>\n
Mainers are old, but still doing things \u2018most people half their age don\u2019t do\u2019 \u2014 Bangor Daily News<\/i><\/strong><\/h5>\n

The <\/span>Bangor Daily News <\/span><\/i>interviewed Jason Paris Smith, a photographer who took portraits of elderly Mainers to showcase the diversity and knowledge of people in the oldest U.S. state. <\/span><\/p>\n

Included in the series was Frank Perham \u201956, a third-generation miner and acclaimed mineral expert from West Paris, Maine.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Frank<\/a>

Frank Perham \u201956 was included in a photo series on elderly people in Maine, the state with the country’s highest average age. (Jason Paris Smith)<\/p><\/div>\n

Perham grew up mining with his grandfather, who discovered feldspar on the family farm and started a feldspar mill, and his father, Stanley I. Perham \u201931, who owned a mineral store. He studied geology at Bates before serving in the Korean War. (His daughter is Trish Perham ’83.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Frank Perham worked on road construction projects and mined on the weekends; some of his mineral discoveries are on display at The Smithsonian and the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum. <\/span><\/p>\n

He’s something of a Maine icon (or a gem, as it were), writes Smith on his website<\/a>. “People stop in to hear his many stories and learn about Maine\u2019s minerals from someone with an unbridled passion for minerals and lifetime of experiences.”<\/span><\/p>\n