Editor’s Desk

From the Editor’s Desk

s this issue of UNH Magazine goes live, UNH is closing in on a remarkable milestone: one full year of remote operations. If someone had told me on March 16, 2020, as I prepared to work from home for a few weeks — gathering up a few extra story files for the spring/summer magazine and a handful of books I wanted to consider for “Bookshelf” — that one year later I’d be fully moved into a home office with three complete online-only issues of the magazine under my belt, I would have told them their crystal ball must surely be broken. At the time, a month or two of remote work sounded like a welcome change of pace. But a whole year? Impossible.

Peter and Maria Hoey

By now, of course, much of life under COVID feels remarkably routine: ordering groceries for home delivery, visiting with family and friends over Zoom, grabbing a face mask and a bottle of hand sanitizer before walking out the door. But even as the rest of us have learned to stay safe and stay home, there are plenty of individuals who have remained on the frontlines, finding ways to help the rest of us navigate the pandemic: doctors and nurses, health care experts and policymakers, microbiologists and virologists and drug developers. As COVID-fatigued as we’ve all become, I, for one, remain awed and inspired by the Herculean efforts being made by those individuals to treat the ill, develop vaccines and treatments, and otherwise define a roadmap back to “normal” life. It probably won’t surprise you to know how many of your fellow Wildcats are included among the ranks of these everyday heroes, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading their stories in the feature “Dispatches from the Pandemic” as much as I’ve enjoyed hearing them over the past several months. (If you note the absence of alumni working on vaccine development, there’s a reason for that: while we have many alumni working on various COVID vaccines, for confidentiality reasons, none of them were able to speak on the record about their contributions.)

Perhaps at this point, our digital platform has likewise become the norm for you, even as we continue to explore the potential for returning to print. In addition to our pandemic alumni roundup, be sure to read “Triumph, Not Trauma” about the Scott family, who turned the trauma of a pair of life-altering accidents into a cause for good through their pet food company, RAWZ, and through UNH’s Northeast Passage adaptive sports and recreation program. This issue also includes a story about UNH art professor Benjamin Cariens, who likewise has taken personal trauma and turned it into something valuable. His story is called “Finding Beauty in What’s Broken.” And, in an embarrassment of riches, we also have a feature story about not one, not two, but three alumnae who, outstanding athletes in their own right, have raised children who have achieved extraordinary success in professional sports. You can read about them in “Mother Nature.”

As always, I welcome your thoughts about this issue, and suggestions for future stories. As several Wildcats on the COVID frontlines said to me when we met to discuss their work, stay safe and well out there!

Kristin Waterfield Duisberg
Editor-in-chief

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