Anne Dearstyne Ketchen
446 Brook Street
Carlisle, MA 01741
(978) 369-1661
anneketchen@comcast.net
facebook.com/groups/UMaineClass1972/
After a dramatic winter of cold and snow, spring has arrived. But before winter set in, I got an email from Patricia Clark Billingsley, which I quote here: “I graduated from UMaine in 1972 with a degree in geology. I first worked for Texas oil and gas companies, then got an MS in geology with environmental emphasis, and swapped to overseeing pollution cleanups. By 2014 I was overseeing oilfield pollution cleanups for and running the Brownfields program at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. Then, career change! In 2015 I joined one of my daughters in acquiring an embroidery shop. Just the two of us at first, with two machines, but we got ambitious. We now own (mortgaged!) six 12- needle, single-head, industrial embroidery machines; one four-head; a garment printer for printing T-shirts; and a laser etching machine. We have eight full-time (counting her) and a couple of part-time employees. We print shirts and embroider caps and shirts for companies and organizations (as Hard Edge). In the last year we have also sold over 7,000 printed or embroidered items — from stuffed animals to backpacks and T-shirts — on Amazon under our Tenacitee and Monogrammed Me brands. Quite a change, from scientist to small business! I can now step back a lot and watch her build what will be her business to run.”
Last fall, Stuart C. Taylor was inducted into the Ellsworth High School Athletic Hall of Fame. He had a 30-year career in education, with most of that time in the Ellsworth School Department, including stints as junior high school principal, assistant high school principal and athletic director, and as high school principal from 1983 until his retirement in 1987. The Ellsworth Middle/Elementary School gymnasium is named in his honor.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission has focused its attention on limiting the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD) through the state’s white-tailed deer and neutralizing its threat to wild elk. The Game Commission has created an executive-level position to direct the efforts. Wayne A. Laroche, who had served as the agency’s Bureau of Wildlife Management director for the past two years, was appointed as special assistant for CWD response. He will lead the Game Commission’s efforts to slow CWD and reduce its impact. (CWD is fatal to deer and elk.) Wayne directed the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife from 2003 to 2011 and has served on many state, regional, and international committees that manage wildlife collaboratively.
That’s all the news for now!