He was a member of the Pawtucket Congregational Church and attended the First United Methodist Church of Sevierville. Simpson lived a busy life in Sevierville, Tenn., hiking and swimming regularly each week, visiting shut-ins, and attending the special 1925 reunions up until recently, accompanied by his daughter, Eva. He became traffic manager at Pantex Pressing Machines Inc., in Central Falls and in the 1950s was manager of the company’s heating division. He worked, initially, in Rhode Island at James Simpson & Sons Inc., manufacturers of worsted yarns in Pawtucket. Sons Peter and Jonathan predeceased him.Ī hardy member of the remarkable Class of 1925, Harold Simpson remained active throughout his life. Survivors include his wife, Eleanor daughters Jewell, Jean, Josephine, and Pamela sons Michael and David 14 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. He was known to ride his bicycle wherever he lived, and he had a lifelong interest in cars, especially his old Land Rover. It is said that James Mitchell enjoyed working with people, and valued education in public schools, local libraries, museums, the theater, and hymn sings. A member of the Union of Black Episcopalians, he belonged to the Fellowship of the Way of the Cross. Prior to World War II he worked for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and during the war he was a machinist at the Watertown Arsenal and worked at Brighton Marine Hospital in Boston. For 55 years, starting in 1928, he served churches in Washington, D.C., Massachusetts, Virginia, and in Jamaica, West Indies, where he lived for 20 years.
He then attended Bates for two years before attending Bishop Payne Divinity School (now integrated with the Protestant Episcopal Seminary in Virginia), where he was valedictorian of his Class of 1928. Navy in France and England during World War I. Mitchell left high school to serve in the U.S. Later to become a priest who served Episcopal Anglican churses for 55 years, James W. A sister, Mary O’Brien, predeceased her in 1978.
For Katharine O’Brien, the greatest honor was when “something I said or did…reached some unlikely student and made a difference in his or her life.” She was a member of many professional organizations and she was a communicant of St. She was elected to the New York Academy of Science in 1967, was a fellow of the International Academy of Poetry, and was among those at a Smithsonian event honoring American women who earned Ph.D.s prior to 1940. Among her many honors were the prestigious Deborah Morton Award from Westbrook College in 1985, an honorary Doctor of Science in Education degree from the University of Maine in 1960 and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Bowdoin in 1965. In 1967 she published a book of poems, Excavation and Other Verse, and her poetry was published in 40 magazines, newspapers, and anthologies. She studied piano in New York City, played in many recitals, composed a choral setting for a Thomas Hardy poem, and she directed the Girls’ Glee Club at Deering High School. The five summers she taught math teachers at Brown was “sheer joy,” she said. Her students won state and national math contests and in 1964 the graduating class established a math award in her honor. During her 43-year teaching career, she chaired the math department at the College of New Rochelle for 11 years, then moved back to her hometown of Portland to teach math at Deering High School. at Cornell in 1924, where she was elected to Sigma Xi, and a Ph.D. After teaching a year at Smith College, she earned her M.A.
O’Brien was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and the Bates Key. She had no immediate survivors except a niece, Barbara Schenck Collins ’51.Ī mathematician, musician, and poet, Katharine E. A member of national, state, and county teachers associations, she also belonged to the National Retired Teachers Assn. After she retired in 1961, she took a course at Lewis Hotel Training School in Washington, D.C., traveled, and, in 1969, moved to Grey Gables in Ojai, Calif., home of National Retired Teachers Assn., where she pursued her lifelong interest in Shakespeare as a member of the Shakespeare Club, and sang in a local choir. From 1947 to 1949 she assisted in the library at Potsdam State College (now SUNY/Potsdam). Earlier she had been an elementary school teacher for 23 years. In the summers she studied at Columbia, Chautauqua, and Genesee normal schools, earning the New York State Permanent Library Certificate. A teacher and librarian, Dorothy Holt taught English for 16 years in the New York schools of Oxford, Port Jervis (where she also was drama coach), and Elmira.