In Memoriam

Memorials to those FPs who have passed on.

4 thoughts on “In Memoriam

  1. This is the full tribute to Marjorie Kaufman, written by Susan Auty.

    For the entire 50 years that I knew her, Marjorie lit up the room, wherever she was—addressing an auditorium full of school children and gently guiding them to understand a Wallace Stevens poem, attending college functions, entertaining at her home and, of course, leading classes to the heart of literature. I can still remember the feeling of enlightenment in College I got from her teaching. I was mystified by Under the Volcano and went into class having dutifully read the opening chapters and wondering what to make of it. By the time I came out, 50 minutes later, I felt as if I had had a revelation, and reading the rest of the book was a moving and fulfilling experience that I never forgot. There were many other such books and many other such times.
    Young and old responded to her magnetism and her remarkable powers of storytelling. My sons were hers forever from the moment she acted out in a public park her experience of riding on a sick camel, complete with sick camel noises. They looked forward to their annual visits to Marjorie and Jean, never knowing what surprises would be planned. Marjorie teased the boys for years afterwards about taking them to the Comic Book Museum, because her initial suggestion to go there fell on uncharacteristically deaf ears. We never did go there, but excursions to Quabbin, Mass MoCA, a boat ride up the Connecticut were always enlivened by Marjorie’s ability to match her sense of humor to theirs. One of my favourite pictures of her is in the garden, where she is holding up a Siamese-twin eggplant joined at the stalk to look like donkey’s ears behind my younger son’s head. I was so pleased when, without any prompting from me, my older son took up Boston Public Radio’s Mother’s Day fund-raising invitation in 2005 to send an azalea bush to Marjorie, which she nurtured in her garden with the same care that she nurtured us all.
    She was as happy conversing with scholars and writers as playing the clown and pottering in the kitchen. These activities were not mutually exclusive. Her forty years together with Jean Sudrann were full of vigorous conversation, scholarly exchanges, jokes—and dividing pints of blueberries into exactly equal numbers for each. Above all, she loved to read and she loved to read with others. The reading groups she organized after she retired were tremendously important to her, and no visitors were allowed in case the atmosphere of trust and warmth was disturbed. She took on vast works such as Don Quixote and The Iliad with the same careful attention she brought to single poems. At the same time she gobbled up mysteries just as fast as I could provide them, being especially fond of the Europeans such as Ian Rankin and Henning Mankell.
    Her love of all the arts was immense. I first encountered this breadth of interest in College when I decided to run the Film Society as a way of getting into films for free. Marjorie was the faculty representative, but, as in everything she did, not as a watcher from the sidelines. She scrutinized catalogues and negotiated with Miss Thornton, the College Purchasing Agent, so that we brought great classics of film to campus. She organized an experimental Film Weekend and used student contacts to get Jonas Mekas to the college to talk about The Brig, which he had just finished.
    Being “up to date in Kansas City” was important to her, and she was rightly proud of her computer skills, especially the time she had to “jump the motherboard” with the aid of the telephone Help Desk. Email was a great joy to her—“It really is so magical” she and Jean exclaimed in a note way back in 1994. In later years she loved it especially because she was able to get her daily dose of Doonesbury, and carry on long distance conversations in between playing games of Freecell.
    Setting aside her love of computer Solitaire, oysters and the novels of DeLillo and Pynchon, we had many tastes in common. I loved to go to craft fairs with her, eat mussels and lobster, shop in Whole Foods and Scandinovia. Over time and many of my visits to “The Inn at Spruce Run,” we shared breakfast rituals, and Marjorie jokingly accused me of changing her habit of a lifetime by serving the morning melon already cut up, making it possible to eat while reading the New York Times with undivided attention, a practice she continued on her own, while mockingly horrified at indulging in such an inelegant way to serve melon.
    Elegance and decorum were important to her, and her attention to detail was evident every time she dressed for an occasion or dressed the table for entertaining. She agonized over the best typeface for her Poets’ book of collected works, and considered all options before framing a new painting by Nancy Campbell. She took meticulous care in building models of cathedrals and one of an osprey with a 5 foot wing span, which she loved constructing—the more complex, the better. Other people’s feelings and well-being were probably most important to her, and her minute attention to their needs was always in evidence, not least through her many charitable donations. Luckily for those around her, her eyesight and reflexes remained sharp to the end, and she was proud of being able to drive others (at night!) to events in the Valley. She was also pleased to encourage [her great god daughter] Emily’s musical talent by driving her on Sunday afternoons to her rehearsals with the Springfield Youth Orchestra. She loved driving, and even on her 90th birthday I felt safer with her at the wheel than driving myself.
    I loved going on expeditions with Marjorie. We went together to art exhibits—ranging from medieval tapestries at the Met to contemporary exhibits at the Clark and Mass MoCA; to concerts—the Yellow Barn chamber music and Tanglewood concerts; and latterly to the opera, which I had resisted for years. Marjorie was especially devoted to opera, and went on many trips to far flung places to attend famous opera houses, long after most people doubted the wisdom of her traveling. I have to admit to being one of those doubters based on her too-close knowledge of hospitals in Morocco and Finland. Thank goodness she proved me wrong when my reaction to her booking an opera trip to Berlin a couple of years ago was, ‘Why? So you can experience yet another health system in the world!’ On her last trip in June to Glyndebourne and the Royal Opera House, Kay [Althoff] and I joined her to celebrate her 90th birthday, together with Daisy [Shenholm] (her opera buddy and dear friend). After seeing these performances, I was won over to the joys of opera, and thrilled that she had achieved victory over her failing health once again. “What should I do?” she asked, “sit around waiting to die?” That was her greatest horror and thankfully one that she didn’t have to experience. One of her last outings was to see the first of this season’s live Met broadcasts. “It was the best ever!” she reported. It pleases me to think that it might have been worthy of her special accolade, “hotsie tootsie.”
    In an article on What Maisie Knew, Marjorie said that James reserved for his best characters the fate “to live life as it is, meeting one’s self-defined moral responsibilities.” This is as close as I can get to capturing the seriousness with which Marjorie approached the world as she found it, but of course it does not begin to capture that sense of fun and delight that were equally important to her, and certainly to us. How I miss her!

  2. In Memoriam

    Tribute to Janet Cheryl Regan McNamee Valentine, FP87

    (Obituary from the Washington Post, Oct. 3, 2010)

    Janet Valentine died Friday August, October, 1, 2010 at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, VA after a quarter-century courageous and uncomplaining struggle with rheumatoid arthritis. Born in 1938 Janet Valentine was the daughter of Edgar Paul Regan, Sr. and Sarah Addie Fine Regan. Her father was a builder and inspector of torpedoes at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, and Mrs. Valentine and the rest of the family lived in torpedo-factory –provided housing at Chinquapin Village for many years.

    She graduated from George Washington High School in Alexandria and worked early in her life at the WPIK radio station and the advertising departments at the Washington Star and the Washington Post. Mrs. Valentine was a “young Turk” volunteering for the then-weak Republican Party in Virginia for decades, eventually working in the offices of the White House during the Nixon years and Ford years, those of Congressman Joel T. Broyhill, and the Equal Opportunities Employment Commission. Read more.

  3. In Memoriam: Helen Wade Goolishian

    Posted on January 29, 2012 by stevieconverse

    Sad news from East Dennis – Helen W. Goolishian, FP71

    Professor Helen Wade Goolishian, Ed.D., 76, died January 8, 2012 at her home surrounded by her family. She was the beloved wife of Gregory A. Goolishian, Sr. and mother of Wade Goolishian, MD and Gregory A. Goolishian, Jr., Cmdr. USN (Ret).

    She was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts and moved with her husband to East Dennis, MA in 1960. In addition to her husband and sons, she leaves two sisters, Maryanne Smithers and Louanne Roach, two daughters-in law, Tracy Goolishian and Susan Goolishian, a stepdaughter, Pam Taylor, a stepson-in-law, Bill Taylor, an “adopted” daughter, Anne Gormley Dawes and her husband Nigel Dawes, five grandchildren, Andrew, Sarah, Riley, Kenneth, and Patricia, as well as many nephews and nieces.

    Dr. Goolishian attended the Cape Cod Community College, Mount Holyoke College, and received her Masters and Doctorate from the University Of Massachusetts. She was a professor of Psychology at the Cape Cod Community College for over 25 years, until her retirement in 2002 when she was awarded a Professor Emerita of the college. Read more.

  4. I graduated in 86 so I lived in Dickenson when Jan did and I had a few classes with her..super positive lady…..

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