Class of 1966 Summer 2021 Class Note

Lee A. Meserve
756 South Wintergarden Road
Bowling Green, OH 43402
lmeserv@bgsu.edu
facebook.com/groups/UMaineClass1966/

Hello again, ‘66ers! After the first of the year our class leadership team of officers — Emil Swift, president; Bruce Staples, vice president; Barb Bristol Paiton, secretary/treasurer; Nancy Erikson Ladd, class agent; and myself, class correspondent — had a productive Zoom meeting with Alumni office staff to initiate plans for our 55th Class Reunion. I suspect that each of you has received, either by USPS, electronically, or both, the ‘save the dates’ postcard with September 16 and 17 as our on-campus meeting dates if safety protocols allow. As I type this in late March the final determination has not been made, but I think that a recent message from Karol (aka Flower) Wasylyshyn matches the hopes of us all. She is “hoping we’ll be celebrating our 55th ‘live’ in Orono this September and that it will include some dancing and those pizzas at Pat’s!” Keep your eyes peeled for future developments.

On with further news. Karol also reported that businesses have started to open up in Philadelphia so that she feels less like a zombie, limited to doing her consulting psychology practice mostly by Zoom. Small world desk: I mentioned to her that the sheriff in the county where I live (Wood County, OH) has the same last name as Karol. Steve Gorden, who completed the pulp and paper fifth year at Maine, worked in that industry for a few years, then moved on to environmental protection, first with the Portland Water District, and then with Detroit Water and Sewage in Michigan. He moved back to Maine and is serving as Cumberland County Commissioner and president of the Maine County Commissioners Association.

Arnold Morris retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in the late ‘80s from the Army Medical Service Corps, where he worked for 23 years primarily in military hospital administration. He and his wife met while stationed at an evac hospital in Vietnam, got engaged in Moscow, and took a leave from Germany to get married in Minnesota! They now live in Camden, DE, and have seven children and eight grandchildren spread across the country. Got a brief note from Mark Kinney, in which he asked if my email address meant that I had worked at BGSU (yes, Mark, for 44 years, retired 6/1/17) because he had taught at the University of Toledo (UT), 27 miles up I-75 from me, for 25 years. He and wife, Nancy Pearson Kinney ’65, ’70G, now live in Presque Isle, but the one in Michigan, not Maine. They enjoy the activities afforded by Lake Huron. My wife and I love Traverse City, MI, Mark, and get up there at least once a year.

That appears to be it for this go-round. I’ll be back at the keyboard sometime in September composing for the winter ’22 issue, so feel free to send news between now and then. Stay well and keep all crossable body parts crossed for an on-site Reunion in September!