It’s me again, ‘66ers! I’ll start off with a little travelogue on the most recent two Viking Cruises Marge and I have taken. On March 21 we flew to Prague, spent three days there, then bussed to the Elbe River and boarded our boat on the way to Berlin. Along the way we stopped at the Saxon Switzerland National Park, Dresden, Meissen, Wittenberg, and Potsdam, then bussed to Berlin. Lots of history and culture on that one. On August 19 we flew to Minneapolis and boarded our boat to St. Louis. Stops on this one included the Red Wing Boot Factory, Taliesin, the Frank Lloyd Wright House in which he spent his last 20 years; and Vesterheim, the National Norwegian-American Museum. But enough about us!
Thank you to Nancy Erikson Ladd, who wrote: “I wanted to pass along what a great time Sam and I had at the September 28th Senior Alumni Reunion. We enjoyed the All Alumni Dinner at the Wells Conference Center and many tours of the campus. The Senior Alumni Luncheon was fun and concluded with a group of students taking about how the Alumni Association Scholarships helped them complete their degrees. A very impressive group. We also enjoyed touring the Advanced Structures and Composites Center and visiting the house they have built. It was a great weekend and although I missed my ’66 classmates, I met up with a lot of alums that I knew who were in classes in the ’60s. It was fun seeing all the activity on campus this fall.
Joe Ferris reports that he was pleasantly surprised when his hometown of Brewer renamed their auditorium the Joe Ferris Community Center in his honor on August 26, 2019. Patricia Tofuri Bicknell says that the only new thing that she and Brian have is her new hip. They get together monthly with Nancy Erikson Ladd and Susan Reilly. They feel fortunate to live within two hours of all three of their daughters. Fraternity brother Karl Weber reports that he and wife, Joan, have taken two riverboat cruises, one on the Rhine and one on the Danube. Their son Chuck is assistant hockey coach at RPI along with Dave Smith, a former Bowling Green assistant. Charley Dumas and his wife, Angie, live in San Diego and regularly exercise with a “get off your rockers” group. They also travel to Colorado in the late summer and winter for activities endemic to that state. Susan Bryan Flood remembers fondly the UMaine football team that had an undefeated season and went to the Tangerine Bowl. She and her husband live in Annandale, VA, and enjoy visiting two grandkids in Pittsburgh and two in Florida. Ending on a sad note, Janet Viger Bryant ’67, let me know that her husband of 56 years and our classmate, Thomas Bryant, passed away in late May.
Class President Emil Swift sends best wishes from sunny Venice, FL, where he is ”finally” settled and where it was still hot in October (he misses the fall color change of New England). He encourages us to respond to UMaine donation requests by dropping some financial love in the Class of ’66 Scholarship bucket. He also reminds us that we are welcome to attend any reunions given our Senior Alumni standing, and that our 60th anniversary is around only a few corners in 2026.
That’s it for this go-round. Be good, be well, be kind.