MAGAZINE BowdoinFALL 2009 VOL.81 NO.1 JOE TECCE ’55 TALKS LOOKING BACK, BLINKS AND BEHAVIOR WBOR KEEPS COLLEGE GOING FORWARD RADIO ALIVE THE REMARKABLE WOMEN FACULTY-STUDENT COLLABORATION: OF BOWDOIN FIELD HOCKEY PROFESSOR DEAREST FALL 2009 CONTENTS 20 Field Hockey’s Big Picture BY EDGAR ALLEN BEEM MAGAZINE PHOTOGRAPHS BY BOB HANDELMAN Bowdoin In 2007, the Bowdoin field hockey team went a perfect 20-0 in winning the College’s first national champi- onship of any kind.A tough act to follow. In 2008, the team went 19-2 en route to a second national champi- onship.Yet there is a sense in which athletic success is about more than victory, bigger than any one season, and in which field hockey can be more than a game. 28 “The Ledge” After 50 Years BY ANTHONY DOERR ’95 & MARGOT LIVESEY PHOTOGRAPHS BY BOWDOIN COLLEGE ARCHIVES Fifty years ago, a short story by Bowdoin professor Lawrence Sargent Hall ’36 won a prestigious O. Henry Award. On the golden anniversary of the story’s publi- cation, author Anthony Doerr ’95 and novelist Margot Livesey comment on the staying power of “The Ledge.” 30 Not Your Average Joe BY DAVID TREADWELL ’64 PHOTOGRAPHS BY ERIC POGGENPOHL Why is the media constantly knocking on the door of Joe Tecce ’55,a 75-year-old assistant professor of psy- chology at Boston College? David Treadwell visits with Tecce, and in a blink of an eye, finds the answer. 34 On the Air BY LISA WESEL PHOTOGRAPHS BY DEAN ABRAMSON Early each semester the staff of WBOR conducts the college radio equivalent of an open casting call:They invite anyone who’s interested – students, faculty, staff and community members – to apply for a DJ time slot, creating new generations of DJs that are keeping col- DEPARTMENTS lege radio very much alive. Mailbox. 4 Bookshelf . 6 Bowdoinsider . 10 42 Professor Dearest? Alumnotes . 44 BY WILLIAM WATTERSON & KRISTINA DAHMANN ’10 ILLUSTRATION BY JENNIFER DUBORD Class News . 45 English professor William Watterson and Kristina Weddings. 81 Dahmann ’10 connect the dots between Parker Obituaries . 89 Cleaveland, noted mineralogist and eccentric early- nineteenth century Bowdoin professor, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s character Dr. Cacaphodel in Hawthorne’s Photo: Shavonne Lord ’10 being photographed for the cover by Bob Handelman. short story “The Great Carbuncle.” |letter| Bowdoin FROM THE EDITOR MAGAZINE Getting to Know You Volume 81, Number 1 Fall 2009 realized recently why living a kind of public life online – through MAGAZINE STAFF Facebook, other networking sites, even cookie-enabled browsers – doesn’t Editor I totally freak me out: it’s because I grew up in a town of 500 people that Alison M. Bennie was not just a suburb of somewhere else, but was 500 people pretty much in Associate Editor the middle of nowhere.After having endured adolescence in a place where Matthew J. O’Donnell my every activity, relationship, and opinion was not only common knowledge but part of the actual news of the day, I don’t get too exercised Design Charles Pollock over the idea that a couple of hundred people can pretty much guess how I Jim Lucas voted in today’s election. Or know where I live, the names of my children, Pennisi & Lamare and what kind of music I like. Portland, Maine Contributors It doesn’t bother me that my co-workers know that I love my husband, that I Douglas Boxer-Cook stress about deadlines, or that I get a lump in my throat when I walk into the James Caton Susan Danforth empty bedrooms of my college-age kids.And I don’t mind, either, that the Darren Fishell ’09 people I grew up with in that small town will note the many ways that I am Selby Frame not the person I was at eighteen. Or that they can see the photos that prove Scott W. Hood Alix Roy ’07 it.Would I bring any of this up in a conversation over the water cooler or Seth Walder ’11 drag out a whole photo album at the high school reunion? Probably not. Dean Abramson, Bob Handelman, Eric Poggenpohl, Michele Stapleton, But here is why I am not afraid of any of it: because while knowing everything and Bowdoin College Archives about each other can create a few scary scenarios (identity theft comes to mind), knowing enough is a requirement. It is what connects us. Empathy is a BOWDOIN (ISSN, 0895-2604) is published three times a year by powerful human emotion, but it doesn’t work well in the abstract. Bowdoin College, 4104 College Station, Brunswick, Maine 04011. Printed by We need to think of real people who need our help before we are motivated J.S. McCarthy, Augusta, Maine.Third-class postage paid at Augusta, Maine. Sent to do so.We need to know people who are different from us before we see free of charge to all Bowdoin alumni, that they matter just as much and deserve what we deserve.The everyday parents of current and recent under- details we share – what we are making for dinner, what chores we have graduates, faculty and staff, seniors, and selected members of the Association of planned for Saturday morning, or how much we loved the sunset – are part Bowdoin Friends. of what makes us human beings just working it out, and that is OK. Connections that change opinions, even lives, have been forged on much less. Opinions expressed in this magazine are those of the authors. Bowdoin just completed a $250 million campaign that exceeded its goal and Send class news to [email protected] raised $293 million. I believe that its success is in large part due to the or mail to the address above. Advertising inquiries? Please e-mail genuine connectedness that Bowdoin graduates feel to this college and [email protected] or fax 207- consequently to each other and to its future students.When we ask these 725-3003. Please send address changes people about their favorite Bowdoin memories, they very often involve to the mailing address above. Send letters to the editor to that address or by things like meals, music, Saturday morning routines, and a sunset or two. e-mail to [email protected]. They always involve people. Front cover: Shavonne Lord ’10. Photograph by Bob Handelman. Back I have friends who say if they read one more status update about mundane cover: Numbers photos featuring stuff, they will scream. I say, it just makes us all neighbors.You don’t always Bowdoin students by Bob Handelman. have to chat over the fence, but when you need something, those are the people who are more likely than anybody to help. So, go ahead, connect. AMB [email protected] 1 seenBOWDOIN 2 BOWDOIN FALL 2009 A Sustainable Hockey Rink The Sidney J.Watson Arena, dedicated January 18, 2009, has become the first newly constructed ice arena in the United States to earn coveted LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification from the United States Green Building Council (USGBC).The USGBC certified Watson Arena’s LEED status July 16, 2009. [email protected] 3 mailboxBOWDOIN A Bigger Picture “forehead” to rhyme with “horrid,” the correct way. Mother had us learn Dear editor: the rhyme so we would know the Dr. Jonathan Martin ’92, in the winter correct pronunciation.” issue, wrote a heartfelt and courageous piece. I was particularly touched by Sincerely, his self-analysis around the outcome Joan Woodcock Nestler (widow of of one soldier whose quality of life John A.Woodcock ’44) was less than Dr. Martin had hoped. I want to share my experiences with Rhyming “forehead” and “horrid” is my father’s neurosurgeries.When I considered a slant rhyme, sometimes called was a junior in college, my father had off-rhyme, a common poetic device. a hemorrhagic stroke in his right Whether or not “forehead” should be midbrain. It took a highly energetic, pronounced to rhyme exactly with domineering man (ask the Dean of “horrid,” we feel it’s usually best to listen Women back then) in the prime of to mother! —ed. his life and left him paralyzed on his left side, dependent on his wife, and Never Stop Believing demolished his income, a major Dear editor: source of his self-esteem.Yet,he did I enjoyed reading the item about have the joy of his grandkids and was Virginia/Santa Claus—especially since able to participate in family events. there’s yet another Bowdoin Ten years later, a second stroke, this Dr. Jonathan Martin ’92 connection. I didn’t know about time in the posterior left brain, left suddenly. In many ways, he owed us Edward Mitchell [Class of 1871]. In him speechless, bedridden, and unable that time and, in my belief system, it any case,Virginia O’Hanlon, in the last to swallow. By then, I was a family was his chance for atonement. Here in few years before she passed away, was physician, aware of the alternatives, the west, we have moved away from our next-door neighbor during the and I turned on his doctor,“Why the concept that things happen for a late ’50s, in the West 9th Street didn’t you just let him die? Why did reason, but I have come to accept that apartment building, Greenwich Village. you do surgery?” His reply was similar this is sometimes the case. Dr. Martin She had never stopped believing! to Dr. Martin’s thoughts:“We thought might consider that perhaps it wasn’t we were soon enough that we could Sincerely, only his decision, and that he was part return him to the quality of life that Constantine Karvonides ’50 of a bigger picture at that moment.