Longterm college friendships just don’t get any better than this. Starting the year after they graduated, a “peer group” from Androscoggin Hall got together and have repeated their gathering every single year since then. When Stan Wentzell’s wife, Ellen “Toot” Willey Wentzell, passed away in 2017, the women invited Stan to join them. In the years that followed, all the husbands were invited to join.
Gathering in the summer of 2025, they met for lunch at Inn by the Sea in Cape Elizabeth, followed by a visit to John and Geraldine Kelly Sherry’s cottage at Higgins Beach.
Attending were Jane Wing Giglio, Bill Libby G, Cindy Fuller Libby, Jan Perley, George Clark, Joan Perkins Clark, Geraldine Kelley Sherry, John Sherry, and Stan Wentzell.
We heard from Tom Perry, who followed up his B.A with a master’s degree at Maine. He and his wife, Constance Merrifield ’69, ’72G, ’76 Ph.D., have both enjoyed careers in education in the Orono area. A native of Cohasset, MA, Tom returned to his home state briefly to teach in Hingham but returned to Maine where he worked for the Orono school system for 33 years. From teaching he moved on to serve as principal of Orono High School, then superintendent of schools for Orono and Veazie before retiring at age 60. Constance taught in the university’s College of Education for many years.
After retiring, Tom served on the Orono Town Council for 17 years. The biggest obstacle, he said, was “balancing unlimited needs with limited resources.” Tom continues to plant a huge vegetable garden every year, despite his yearly resolve to cut back on the size. Somehow, he says, it ends up staying the same size. Old habits.
As emails, addresses, and phone numbers change, it’s a constant challenge to stay in touch with everyone. If you’re reading this, I would love to get an email or a phone call about your favorite memories at Maine, or what you have been up to lately. How many of you were on campus on October 19, 1963, when President John Kennedy visited the campus? I happened to be away that weekend, and I would love to read some of your memories of that visit.
I recently found a video on that visit which opens with University of Maine President Lloyd Elliot saying, “Little did we guess that President Kennedy’s visit would within a few weeks of that beautiful October day take on the historical importance which events in Dallas created.”
The White House had called on October 11 to announce that Kennedy would be coming just over a week later. “Everyone who would be involved just stopped what they were doing to make preparations,” the narrator of the video says. Carpenters began building a platform and stairs to the exact size requested, while electricians strung cables for radio and TV coverage. Two “whirlybirds” weren’t due to land until 10:50, but crowds were at the gates by 9 a.m. When the gates were opened, people scurried around to the front of the grandstand and scrambled up over the bleachers to get a seat.
I noticed when Kennedy got off the helicopter, he wore his gown, but no mortarboard, as all the other dignitaries did — quite typical of him, I remember. He seldom wore a hat. No teleprompter, he looked down at his papers and back up at the audience frequently. He talked about the importance and impact of the university system in America, and his hope for world peace following the nuclear clash the country had experienced with Russia the year before.
It was reported that 16,000 people attended. I’m not sure about that. The seating capacity in the grandstand in 1963 is listed as 6,000. For those of you who would like to see it, the link to the video is at: https://tinyurl.com/5acfhzk6