t age 19, before completing her degree at UNH, Doris Grady was already teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in Biddeford, Maine. Her annual salary was $1,440. The experience influenced her throughout her teaching career and subsequent 20 years on the Dover (New Hampshire) school board.

“As a teacher she always set high standards for what could be accomplished in the classroom,” says her daughter Patty Dewhirst. “Later, during her tenure as a school board member, she saw all sides of the issue of balancing the tax base with the needs of the students and reasonable salaries for teachers.” Over the years, while acknowledging that times had changed, Doris always maintained that the classroom dynamic between teacher and students remained more important than an abundance of technological bells and whistles.

When Doris passed away on Oct. 14, 2019, at age 96, she had spent 73 years in education, including more than 50 in Dover public schools. She received Retired Teacher of the Year recognition at the New Hampshire Excellence in Education Awards Ceremony in 2009 and again in 2018.

Over the decades, she taught elementary, middle and high school and was fondly remembered by her students — many of whom would recognize and greet her long after they left her classroom.

Her mother made a lasting impression, says Patty, because students knew she had their best interests at heart. That included free tutoring. “There was always somebody sitting at our kitchen table getting extra help,” her daughter says.

Doris rarely sat still, and even on playground duty she played catch or jumped Double Dutch — once, so vigorously that she fractured several vertebrae.

Her family, which also included her late husband Edmond and daughter Maureen, were awed by Doris’s boundless enthusiasm. In addition to classroom teaching, tutoring and teaching Sunday school, for years she was the bookkeeper for her father’s store and worked there during school vacations.

Summers found her planning trips to the beach. In winter it was ice skating. “She was always doing something and always made sure our car was packed with cousins and any neighborhood kids who wanted to come along,” says Patty. Doris was a Girl Scout leader and assistant cheerleading coach and sewed all of her daughters’ clothes and cheerleading uniforms.

A talented horsewoman, Doris kept a sleigh when her daughters were growing up and gave sleigh rides to everyone in the neighborhood. In addition, “She had an open-door policy for dinner,” says Patty. “Anyone who showed up around mealtimes got fed.” That included hired hands who sometimes slept in the tack room of the family’s barn until they found permanent housing.

For years Doris and a friend raced into the frigid Atlantic in April and October and made a game of running in a day earlier each year, reflecting a tolerance to cold that dated back at least as far as 1942. That was when Doris participated in a winter program to prepare female students for possible service in the women’s armed forces auxiliaries, which entailed exercising on the snow-covered UNH campus in T-shirts and shorts. The program piqued the interest of the editors of “Life” magazine, who sent famed photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt to Durham. The seven-page story and accompanying photographs of 650 coeds doing calisthenics in sub-zero temperatures intrigued a Hollywood producer, and in January 1943 the women repeated their workouts in front of movie cameras. In an article about the program published in a 2010 issue of UNH Magazine, Doris observed that as a former phys-ed major she “really thrived on it.”

Whatever was happening, Doris always wanted to be an active participant and not just stand around. “When I had children of my own,” says Patty, “I often wondered where she had found all that energy.”

hen a scholarship made Art Grant’s dream of a college education come true, he took full advantage of the opportunity. Joining the staff of The New Hampshire, he gained his first experience in journalism, a career he would pursue for many years.

At UNH, Art met Lovertia Anne (Dee) Chase ’68, who left school to marry him in December 1951. He served in the Air Force during the Korean War, and later in the Air Force Reserve and the Air National Guard. He returned to UNH in 1963, working first in public relations and then as special assistant to two presidents and as director of administrative services before becoming secretary of the University System of New Hampshire (USNH). At the same time, Dee resumed her studies, earning her degree while raising the couple’s four children. “Art was often the silent guiding hand which kept things working for UNH and USNH, without notice or fanfare,” says friend Bradford Cook ’70, a Manchester attorney.

In remarks delivered at Art’s funeral, former USNH chancellor Ed MacKay recalled that he also served three terms on the Durham town council, always pitching in on town events and seeing them through to completion.

Colleagues on the town council and at UNH appreciated Art’s sense of humor as well as his work ethic. When the council named his favorite dog-walking route the W. Arthur Grant Circle, “Several of us congratulated him on the recognition,” Ed recalls. Art’s response was, “It’s no big deal, a circle is a road to nowhere!”

Lighthearted jokes were Art’s way of helping build a sense of community at UNH. Many mornings he sat in the Dunlap Center, the former USNH office out on Route 4, chatting with friends. Other friends “would enter that sacred space at the risk of being subject to some good-natured comments,” says Ed, adding that Art’s gentle teasing reinforced the sense of them all being part of an organizational family.

Art’s courtly manners toward women sometimes seemed at odds with the programs he established to encourage women to pursue nontraditional careers, says daughter Rebecca McCutcheon. She remembers him advising her, “Never let anyone tell you that you can’t do something just because you’re a woman!” even as he was helping her with her coat. “We may never have entirely broken him of calling women ‘gals,’” she says, “but he turned out to be pretty feminist when it mattered.”

Together with Dee, who died in 2015, Art raised three daughters, Rebecca, Jennifer ’82 and Jeannie Crocker ’78, as well as a son, the late William A. Grant Jr.’81. He enjoyed caring for their circa 1860s New England home, but painting one side of the structure per painting season was “like painting the Eiffel Tower,” jokes his son-in-law Dave McCutcheon — especially since he didn’t accept help beyond stabilizing a ladder. “It was almost as if your helping him would get the job done sooner than he wanted.”

The mischievous side that Art’s colleagues so enjoyed stayed with him after he and Dee moved to Havenwood Heritage Heights, a Concord retirement community. Among his pranks was gifting a neighbor with a Christmas decoration that Jeannie says could most charitably be called “unusual.” After making sure his friend was away, Art went to his porch, unfurled the lighted spiral tube that vaguely resembled a Christmas tree, and gleefully plugged it in.

Art died on Aug. 2, 2019. In a memoir left for his family, he wrote about the “tree” and other hijinks, adding that “Jeannie was extremely concerned that Mom and I would get booted out of the retirement community.” Reverend Michelle DeCoste, Havenwood’s director of spiritual care and education and one of the ministers at Art’s funeral, assured the gathering that he was beloved by the staff and that would never have happened. “He noticed those who worked hard and engaged those who are usually in the background,” she said. “He paid attention to those who did not get their due and showered them with his love and attention.”

That was quintessential Art, building a sense of community to the end.

hen Jaime Gault’s lupus worsened in her 30s, one of her priorities was to explain the disease to her two sons, Jack and Sam. Realizing that other children with an ill mother might have similar questions, she joined with friends Molly McCabe and Nicole Lawry to co-author and self-publish a children’s book, “The Fairy and the Wolf.” The wolf in the story is lupus, while the fairy is a mom staying positive and happy despite the challenges of the disease, explains Jaime’s mother, Lynn Carpenter Smith ’02.

Jaime was a positive person since childhood. She was “a bright and shining star,” says Lynn, a kind and gentle person who loved her family and many friends, and especially enjoyed family vacations at Lake Sunapee with her brother, Jesse, and her many cousins.

Jesse says that his sister may have been the best athlete in the family — which says a lot given that their late father, Guy Smith ’74, was a professional hockey player and UNH Athletics Hall of Fame inductee, and he is a professional golfer. “She was a great athlete and competitor, but she was an even better person,” says Jesse. “She was one of the kindest, most caring and fun people I have ever been around, and I was lucky enough to have her as a sister and best friend.”

At Durham’s Oyster River High School, Jaime captained the soccer and tennis teams and achieved All-State honors in both sports. She graduated from UNH with honors and married Christian Gault ’94 in 2004. The couple lived in Portland, Oregon, where she enjoyed the beauty of the state and the opportunities it presented for outdoor life — even when those took her “way beyond her comfort level” says Christian. Hunting and fishing with him often required her wearing camouflage and waders but “she was a trooper about my outdoor activities,” he says. As a family the Gaults enjoyed traveling together, most recently to national parks, including Zion and Yellowstone.

Her proudest accomplishments in life were her two sons. “Her eyes would light up whenever she saw those boys, and she would do anything for them,” says Christian. “She was a wonderful mother and wife.” She was very active in Jack and Sam’s sports and school activities, often volunteering for both. Her fierce competitive side could be seen and heard from the sidelines of her sons’ games.

In addition to caring for her family, she was active in several lupus organizations and worked as a research assistant for the National Indian Child Welfare Association. The organization sets federal requirements in child custody proceedings involving a Native American child, with the goal of keeping the child with a Native American relative whenever possible. She felt a strong commitment to the organization and its goals, based in part on her own heritage. Her father was Mohawk from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, where that side of the family still resides.

Jaime passed away from complications of lupus on May 26, 2019. More than 400 mourners attended her celebration of life in Oregon, and an additional 700 plus attended a service at Oyster River. At last year’s annual Walk to End Lupus Now in Portland, several friends established a “Jaime’s Army” to raise money in her memory. It came as no surprise to the family and friends who dearly love and miss her that the group was the event’s top fundraiser.

Lewis E. Knight
professor emeritus of mathematics
Sept. 6, 2019

Ann E. Hahn Callanan ’49
May 20, 2019

Richard N. Cross ’49
Feb. 14, 2018

Walter A. Holden ’49, ’52G
May 13, 2019

Richard C. Mansfield ’49, ’50G
May 14, 2019

David N. Merrill ’49
June 2, 2019

Orville W. Cunningham ’49
Dec. 7, 2018

William H. Brown ’58
May 20, 2019

Elizabeth Leyon Dodge ’58, ’63G
April 17, 2019

C. Joseph Grandmaison ’58
July 31, 2019

Patrick J. Greene Jr. ’58, ’61G
May 22, 2019

Dean S. Louis ’58
June 16, 2019

Louise Frost Osborne ’58
June 2, 2019

Edwin R. Somero ’58
July 22, 2019

Milton J. Pappas ’58
July 26, 2019

Wallace E. Stickney ’58
June 27, 2019

John B. Burgess ’59
March 20, 2019

Marcia Wilkinson Friede ’59
Aug. 17, 2019

Estelle Leclerc Playdon ’59
Sept. 14, 2019

John F. Rand ’59
May 23, 2019

Barbara Boy Ridlon ’59
July 27, 2019

Marcia Birkenwald Stone ’59
July 27, 2019

Vaira Zervins Paegle ’67G
June 14, 2019

Don Bowlin ’69G
Feb. 13, 2018

Dorothy Walton Cook ’69G
June 2, 2018

Jack L. Greenbaum ’69
Aug. 30, 2018

David K. Joslin ’69
May 30, 2019

John F. Kelley ’69G
June 16, 2019

Evelyn Kem Knapp ’69G
Sept. 20, 2019

Allen S. Taylor ’69, ’80G
Aug. 29, 2019

Richard F. LaBranche ’76
June 16, 2019

Steven A. Chapin ’77
June 30, 2019

Scott C. Houle ’77
March 22, 2018

J. Peter Mulhern ’77
Aug. 25, 2019

Laine E. Sprague ’77
June 5, 2019

Brian G. Greenwood ’78
June 4, 2019

Edward J. Jerome ’78G
Sept. 18, 2018

Katherine A. Hudson Sikes ’78
June 20, 2019

Geraldine Stone Donahue ’79
Aug. 5, 2019

Norma J. Smith Moore ’79G
Sept. 17, 2019

Sidney H. Seamans ’79
May 20, 2019

Robert J. Veiga ’79JD
July 7, 2019

Philip T. O’Leary ’87
May 29, 2019

James A. McGaffigan III ’88
Feb. 14, 2019

Barbara Rindfleisch ’88
May 16, 2019

Laura M. Morse Forest ’89
May 24, 2019

Liliane I. Fauteux Gamache ’89
March 24, 2019

Patricia B. Schwartz ’89G, ’94G
Aug. 13, 2019

Ellen L. Karlsen-Kelsall ’93, ’96, ’98G
Aug. 10, 2019

Daniel C. Pinard ’97
May 20, 2019

Reta Lindsey Taubert ’97
Jan. 10, 2018

Matthew S. Ashner ’99
Feb. 6, 2018

Glenn D. Klink ’09G
July 30, 2019

Jacob L. Seilheimer ’09JD
Sept. 11, 2019