Colby Magazine Volume 102 Issue 3 Fall 2013 Article 9 October 2013 Alumni at Large Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/colbymagazine Recommended Citation (2013) "Alumni at Large," Colby Magazine: Vol. 102 : Iss. 3 , Article 9. Available at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/colbymagazine/vol102/iss3/9 This Contents is brought to you for free and open access by the Colby College Archives at Digital Commons @ Colby. It has been accepted for inclusion in Colby Magazine by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Colby. ALUMNICATCHING AT UP LARGE | ALUMNI PROFILES Life during Wartime | Theodora Wright Weston ’42 During her time at Colby, Theodora “It was stored on the top floor of one of Wright Weston ’42 came to know legend- those buildings,” Weston said. “We went ary Dean Ninetta Runnals, chatted with to see it. It was as long as this whole house visiting First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and full of purple lights.” traipsed around the pastures of Mayflower By June 1945 Weston was home at her Hill (a favorite destination for Colby ro- family’s farm in Vermont. Her husband mance; she got poison ivy), and, in January had been in the Philippines preparing for of her senior year, got married. the invasion of Japan when the atomic It was a long engagement (three years), bomb was dropped. (Later he would say and a very brief middle-of-the-night that he wouldn’t have survived the inva- ceremony in Connecticut, attended by sion, as he would have been on the beach “the guy who drove us and the wife of the early to set up artillery.) minister.” Three days later her husband, Theodora Weston has vivid memo- University of Maine graduate and U.S. at her longtime home in Winterport, ries of his return that November. “I just Army 2nd Lt. Don Weston, went to war. Maine. “There was no phone connec- couldn’t believe it,” she said, smiling at the This was a few weeks after Pearl Harbor tion. You didn’t have any TV. None of the thought. “I saw him get off that train and I was attacked, a day that lives in infamy— things they have now to work with. I don’t thought, ‘My God. He’s here.’” and in Weston’s vivid memory of the news begrudge them, but it was different. All we The couple would soon move to Cari- reaching Colby. “It was a shocker,” she said. had was what we could write to each other. bou, Maine, where Don Weston worked “We knew it had changed our world. It just We numbered our letters because they as an engineer, first at a pea-packing plant had to. All this ‘peace at any price.’ You didn’t arrive in just the order you wrote and later at Loring Air Force Base. They never heard any more about that.” them. We got up to nine-hundred ninety had four children and then moved to Win- Instead it was a mass exodus, from something or other.” terport so he could take a job at Dow Air Colby and the country, as men (and some The letters are gone now, she said. Force Base. They bought an antique Cape women) joined the war effort. “The men They were mostly love letters, nothing she Cod house, where Weston still lives, not were leaving,” Weston said. “They weren’t wanted to share, and besides, her husband far from the Penobscot River. She taught finishing. Many in my class didn’t graduate wasn’t allowed to say anything about where mathematics at Hampden Academy, up the in forty-two. They left. They were called he was or what he was doing. “I didn’t river. They both retired in 1979, and Don up before June.” know where he was at all,” Weston said. Weston died four years ago. Lieutenant Weston, who ran artillery “Just South Pacific. It was hot.” “It was tough, sitting home and units and was eventually promoted to ma- A mathematics major, she spent the worrying,” Weston said, recalling that jor, didn’t return for nearly four years, and war years in Schenectady, N.Y., working time seven decades ago. “It really was. But their relationship was conducted through at General Electric’s Jet Propulsion Lab. how fortunate we were. How fortunate letters during that long separation. Weston did thousands of calculations by we were.” “He never had any leave,” Weston said hand, though there was an early calculator. —Gerry Boyle ’78 1920s-30s Gerry Boyle ’78 Johnson & Johnson Retirees Club. Y As I lobster bake at reunion last June for the Colby College [email protected] write in late August, I am very sad. I have second year in a row. Paul asks, “Where Office of Alumni Relations just lost my 68-year-old daughter—my are the rest of you guys and gals? We had Waterville, ME 04901 golden girl—to cancer ... as I turned 90. a great time visiting with each other and 1944 are in relatively good health for a couple Josephine Pitts McAlary 1945 of ‘oldies’!” [email protected] Frank Strup 1940-43 Gerry Boyle ’78 replied to the questionnaire I sent out. He [email protected] Gerry Boyle ’78 and his wife live in Lawrenceville, N.J., in 1947 [email protected] the house they have owned for 55 years. Gerry Boyle ’78 Their son and his wife live in Sanibel, Fla., 1946 [email protected] Gerry Boyle ’78 Gerry Boyle ’78 [email protected] and their daughter and husband live in Fair- David Weber and his wife relish the cool- field, Conn. They have three grandchildren: [email protected] ing breezes from the Pacific at their home Gerry Boyle ’78 one in New York City, one in Chicago, and Audrey Dyer Houghton and Paul Adams in Newport Beach, Calif. To be near their [email protected] one in Indianapolis. Frank belongs to the were the only ones who showed up for the children, they moved there in 2011 after 40 COLBY / FALL 2013 Trailing Truffles | Alana McGee ’05 “I’ve always been fascinated by the natural world, particularly animals and their cognitive ability,” said McGee, who was born and raised in Edmonds, Wash. Her path toward dogs and the fruit of underground fungi began at Colby after she followed her two older brothers to Mayflower Hill and majored in classical civilization– anthropology. “Colby lets you pursue your passions. It was Peter Ditmanson, a professor of East Asian studies, who told me, ‘Do what you like to do and things will fall into place.’” In her junior year McGee studied in Italy and happened upon the strong earthy flavor of her first truffles. She was fascinated and set out to learn more about the prized fruit of subterranean fungi, a single specimen of which can sell for thousands of dollars. Their scent never faded for McGee, even after she graduated and went on to a variety of jobs, including writing flight-magazine articles in Seattle, reading Disney film scripts in Los Angeles, crushing grapes in California, and—returning to Seattle, managing a shoe boutique. The The cold morning air carried the scent of pine and damp storytelling, wine science, and business basics all led her to her earth as Alana McGee ’05 and her dog, Lolo, headed into the true calling, she says. forest in the foothills of Washington’s Cascade Mountains. For the past few years, McGee has been collecting data about Lolo—a brown and white Lagotto Romagnolo, an Italian truffles—from finding more and more of them up and down breed—caught the scent and bolted through the ferns. When the West Coast and from others’ discoveries elsewhere in the Lolo stopped at a Douglas fir and barked, gently pawing at the country. “We’re expanding the knowledge base in an industry ground, that was McGee’s cue. She caught up, dug briefly with that’s only growing,” she said. her garden trowel, and lifted out a ripe black truffle. McGee is working to spread that knowledge around. She teaches “I love the adrenaline rush I get when the dogs find seminars for people (and their dogs) who want to become recreational something and watching them use their natural instincts to truffle hunters (Recreational Truffle Dog Training 101) and also do what we’ve professionally trained them to do,” said McGee, trains dogs for professional hunting on truffle plantations. owner of Toil & Truffle in Seattle. One of just a few such While McGee keeps learning about truffles, the dogs who companies in the country, its eight dogs hunt down truffles track them down are teaching her a few things, too. “Patience throughout the United States and Europe. McGee and the dogs and the ability to adapt,” she said. “They’ve made me more specialize in the native Oregon black truffles and also white aware of my surroundings and how I move in the world. They’ve varieties for the region’s home cooks and restaurants. McGee made me a better person.” also offers canine truffle-scent training. —Claire Sykes David retired from Stanford University. business and economics for 35 years and “No one got sick or hurt—so for a week we retirement community in Memphis, and will It’s a life of reading, writing, volunteering, retired in 1983. He is associate professor just had fun.” Bob doesn’t see many Colby return to Naples, Fla., in December. Y Dave hiking, leading nature walks, computers, emeritus from the University of Southern grads except for Marjorie McDougal Davis Choate celebrated his 90th birthday in a photography, and occasional travels.