On Saturday morning, if you were out and about, you may have seen Rotarians from the Rotary Club of Dover NH as we shopped for those in need through our Homeless project as we partner with Community Action Partnership of Strafford County to deliver items in need, including wool gloves, hats, long underwear, wool socks, rain coats, tarps and gift cards to Dunkin Donuts.

We look to delivering these items this week to CAP so that they can get to those in need in our Dover community.

1. How long have you been in Rotary?

Twenty years!

2. My favorite Rotary moments:

I used to love the "Unwanted Christmas Gift auction" that John Cogan used to do. He would always pick on Malcolm, especially if Malcolm wasn't in attendance! I also enjoy the Annual Golf Tournament.

3. Where I currently live and where I grew up:

I currently line in Downtown Dover.

I was born in Cleveland, Ohio. My father was originally from New Jersey but was working on his PHD in Clinical Psychology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. When I was in 4th grade, we spent a year in England while my dad taught a visiting year at the University of Leeds. It was fascinating to go to an English school and study about Guy Fawkes, Kings and Queens, and learn how to spell words the English way.

The most important thing that happened while we lived in England was that my homeroom teacher happened to be the choir director. She asked me to play piano for a piece that the choir was singing and that started my lifelong career as an accompanist!

After England, my father was offered a job at UNH and we settled in Durham where I stayed through high school graduation and then college. Since then I have lived in Boston, York, Dover, back to Durham, Rochester, and finally back to Dover where we plan to stay!

4. My Hobbies:

I love to read, swim, crochet, walk the dog, go to theater in Boston and NYC with my husband of 34 years, and watch movies.

5. My Business Profession or Current Working or Non-Working Environment:

I am primarily a piano teacher and professional pianist for church, choirs and musical theater.

1. How long have you been in Rotary?

I have been a Rotarian for 11 years. I joined Rotary in Utica NY at the urging of my financial advisor, Catherine McEnroe, who is still a member of that club.

2. My favorite Rotary moments:

It was in Utica that I developed a passion for reading to first and second graders once a week in a program that was developed long before I came on the scene. At one time 60 Utica Rotarians participated, but by the time I got involved it was less than a dozen and finally was terminated. We would have continued it forever, but due to a state wide change in education policy, all “extraneous” enrichment offered by non-school personnel was severely cut back or terminated just as I was leaving Utica to head to the NH Seacoast in 2013.

3. Where I currently live and where I grew up:

I live in Dover after 17 years of living in Utica and 17 years before that in Salem MA where I met my late wife, Mary. I was born in Ithaca NY and stayed there for all of 6 months, not too many memories of life high above Cayuga’s waters, I’m afraid. After that my life was a whirlwind of changing residences, Oak Park Illinois, the Bronx, Johnson, Cranston, and Providence, Rhode Island all before I was 7. I did end up in Providence from the 4th grade through graduating from Brown University with a degree in Anthropology. Next it was 5 years in Rochester NY as an anthropology grad student and a staff announcer for WBBF-FM a commercial classical radio station. When it went under on Valentine’s day 1976 with me as the last on air announcer [I played Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony], the local public radio station WXXI picked us up.

4. My Hobbies:

My hobbies include the two “s”s, singing and sailing. As a tenor I never have a problem finding a spot in a community chorus or small ensemble. During the pandemic I have been exploring the wonders of virtual performance! Until I came to Seacoast NH I’ve always had some sort of a sailboat. Not sure if I’ll venture down that path again, but I’m severely tempted every other week. Pre-pandemically I indulged in my passion by volunteering as crew on the gundalow “Piscataqua” handling lines four times the diameter of what I had been used to on my 21 foot sloop. When I was in my 50s and academic jobs were drying up yet another time, I retooled as a Museum Director thanks to a magnificent program at Framingham State. The thrill of my life was becoming Museum Director/Manager for the Shako:wi Cultural Center of the Oneida Nation of New York. At last I had found a niche that matched my skills and talents and was of use to the public!

5. My Business Profession or Current Working or Non-Working Environment:

I’ve been retired since 2009 and a widower since early 2015 so have had time to devote to one of my first loves – writing. I have been writing poetry since my teen-aged years, but have been more disciplined about it in the past five years writing at least one poem a day. My “The Mary Poems” appeared in 2016 and I have some of my individual poems published in print an online.

6. Something my fellow Rotarians don’t know about me:

Something my fellow Rotarians might not know about me is that when I was a pre-adolescent I was a student at Christopher Wren School in London England. As the sole Yank, I was encouraged to provide entertainment to my mates at Christmas, so I played a mock guitar and sang “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” to the whole school at the Christmas Pageant, successfully to my surprise. More to the point, the education I got in the short time I was in First Form [=7 th grade here] was so intensive I didn’t have to crack a book to get an A in almost any subject after I got back to the States until the 10 th grade although I had been only a fair to middling student in “Merry Olde” [as we jokingly called England]

7. Final words:

My final thought is that the fellowship, sincerity of purpose, and follow through on community service projects that Rotary provides has been a source of comfort to and purpose for me ever since I joined back in Utica in October of 2009. I still can’t think of a better way to stay in touch with the pulse of our community here in Dover and to be afforded the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of all of our citizens. It is an honor to be part of a pragmatic outfit that lives up to its ideals.

This week I have the opportunity to interview and learn about our Rotarian, Ken Plante.

Sit back, relax and let’s learn about Ken.

1. How long have you been in Rotary?

Ten years or so.

2. My favorite Rotary moments:

Hands on projects. They are a great opportunity to get to know other members. See you at the shredding event on Saturday.

3. Where I currently live and where I grew up:

I grew up in Somersworth and moved to Dover with my parents in 1980. Elaine and I live on Back Road in Dover.

4. My Hobbies:

Cycling, golf, skiing, cooking. I also enjoy working in the yard when I have time.

5. My Business Profession or Current Working or Non-Working Environment:

I own and operate Tri-City Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram and Tri-City Subaru.

6. Something my fellow Rotarians don’t know about me:

You probably didn’t know that I’m a Dead Head. I spent many days and nights of my misguided youth seeing the band in concert. Fortunately they have their own channel on Sirius radio so I can still catch a show.

7. Final words:

You probably didn’t know that I’m a Dead Head. I spent many days and nights of my misguided youth seeing the band in concert. Fortunately they have their own channel on Sirius radio so I can still catch a show.

1. How long have you been in Rotary?

I have been in the Dover Rotary Club for 38 years and served as President from 1996 to 1997. For the last three years I have also been the Assistant District Gover-nor with primary District responsibility for the Dover, Rochester, So. Berwick, and Durham Great Bay Rotary Clubs.

2. My favorite Rotary moments:

There have been so many in 38 years but four occasions stand out. I remember the construction and dedication of the Rotary Garden at Henry Law Park during my term as President. This was one of the first large projects we did af-ter becoming successful with our bingo fundraiser. The Garden seemed to set the stage (yes, pun intended) for other large projects like the Rotary Arts Pavilion, the flag pavilion and Kerry Forbes Memorial, Park Street Park and countless other pro-jects and donations large and small most with excellent LINKAGE to the efforts of our Rotary club.

I remember the Rotary Drill Team led by our wonderful deceased member Rev. Dave Slater. There were about 15 of us in business suits and briefcases marching in the Christmas Parade doing intricate (??) marching maneuvers and exchanging briefcases. The crowd loved it. I also am thankful for the opportunity to give the keynote address at both the 90th and 95th Anniversary celebrations of the club. It required me to review the club’s amazing history of Service above Self and made me proud of the impact the club has made for what is now approaching 100 years. Few organizations can claim such a record of service.

3. Where I currently live and where I grew up.

My wife Vi and I have lived in Durham for 47 years. I consider myself a resident of Durham and a citizen of Dover. Vi and I have been married for 51 years and have two wonderful children and two grandchildren.

I grew up in Peabody, Mass. and attended the public schools. My family was a typi-cal Ozzie and Harriet middle class family with my father being a business executive and my mother was a stay-at-home mom. After Peabody High, I attended Tufts University and the best thing that happened to me at Tufts was I met my future wife, Vi, who was also a Tufts student one year behind me. We were married in 1969. Tufts was extremely difficult for me and in my Freshman year I went to the admis-sion office to ask if I was an experimental admission ! As time went by, Tufts really prepared me well for Law School at Boston University. I graduated from BU Law in 1971 and thereafter we moved to New Hampshire, bought a house, passed the Bar exam and started work as a freshly minted attorney.

4. My Hobbies:

I enjoy traveling by land and by sea. My wife and I have visited every continent ex-cept Antarctica. We particularly enjoy the Far East. Our favorites are India and the Taj Mahal, China and the Great Wall, Egypt and the Pyramids, Africa and the Serengeti, Cambodia and Thailand.

I also enjoy playing golf and cruising on my small boat on Great Bay. I enjoyed rid-ing horses with my wife in the Dover Christmas parade until recently when horses were not allowed.

5. My Business Profession or Current Working or Non-Working Environment:

I practiced law from 1971 until my retirement in 2014. In the beginning, I was a gen-eral practitioner and handled both civil and criminal cases but this all changed in 1981 when I represented Dover Rotarian Kerry Forbes when his housing project was denied in Dover despite the fact that it completely complied with the law. The planning board listened to the neighbors and not the law. The denial was promptly overturned in court proving, in fact, that one could fight city hall and win.

Thereafter, developers and municipalities became my constant clients seeking ap-provals usually for large projects and advice on planning and zoning issues. It was a difficult practice in that my clients were very sophisticated and demanding and hear-ings were conducted at night and trials in the daytime were frequent. My major cli-ents were Walmart, Home Depot, McDonalds, Market Basket, Liberty Mutual, Wentworth-Douglass Hospital, Huggins Hospital etc., as well as significant residen-tial real estate developers. I appeared before the NH Supreme Court about 40 times and also appeared countless times in lower courts. On the municipal side I assisted many cities and towns, the most memorable of which was the representation of the Town of Newington relative to the transition of Pease AFB to civilian uses.

6. Something my fellow Rotarians don’t know about me:

For over 20 years I sang in church with the St. Thomas More folk group in Durham! My goal in life was to be a major league baseball player. The closest I came was in my senior year in high school when I pitched against Tony Conigliaro who later be-came a star for the Boston Red Sox. There were about 15 major league scouts in suits at the game. The first ball Tony hit off me was an easy ground out to third base. His next time up he hit a ball off me that is still in orbit ! The Red Sox chose Tony and not me!

7. Final words:

The imposition of COVID-19 restrictions has made it clearer to me than ever, that Rotary is all about person to person contact with likeminded Rotarians dedicated to doing good for the less fortunate. ZOOM is no real substitute for the personal side of Rotary. Hopefully, when the virus is defeated, we can get together and return to spreading the good news of Rotary to others and renew doing strong, community based projects.

This week I have the opportunity to interview and learn about our Rotarian, Rebecca Johnson.

Sit back, relax and let’s learn about Rebecca.

1. How long have you been in Rotary?

I think maybe 3 years.

2. My favorite Rotary moments:

I love hanging out with the folks at Bingo, both rotarians and non-rotarians. I always get a laugh or two and go home with the awful music from the computers stuck in my head. The back to school program is another one of my favorites. I enjoy the direct and tangible impact we are able to make with that program.

3. Where I currently live and where I grew up:

My husband, Dog Wyatt, Cats Oscar and Damien, Chinchilla Dash, a dozen or so chickens including our Rooster, Goliath and I live in rural South Berwick. We love our quiet little homestead. We have a little cape, a blacksmith shop, lots of bee hives and a large garden where I grow lots of flowers from Spring to Fall. I grew up in Barrington.

4. My Hobbies:

I live and work my number 1 hobby, which is working with plants and flowers. I grow them, care for them and use them to create art. When I'm taking a break from flowers (which isn't a lot), I like to spend time with my husband and pets. Eric and I go to lots of concerts, movies and theatre productions and can't wait to get back to that again. We love to travel and stay at interesting air bnbs along the way.

5. My Business Profession or Current Working or Non-Working Environment:

I am first and foremost a small business owner. This means that I am the accountant, customer service, creator, sales person, delivery person and custodian. I love it! Flowers are my passion and I'm lucky that my passion is also my career.

6. Something my fellow Rotarians don’t know about me:

You can make it to Bangor, ME from Dover, NH in 1hour and 15 minutes or from Harrisburg, PA to Dover, NH in 6hrs and 20 minutes if you let me drive.

7. Final words:

I think my final words will be something like "look out for that tree!"

1. How long have you been in Rotary?

I joined the Rotary club of Dover in February of 2018, so that makes it a little over 2 years. I was instantly overwhelmed by the warmth and fellowship offered by the club.

2. My favorite Rotary moments:

My most favorite moment was the support I received by the club when I became a US Citizen. Many Rotarians made the trip up to Yarmouth, Maine to see me and cheer on me while I took the oath.

3. Where I currently live and where I grew up:

I currently live in Wells, ME. I have lived in York County since I moved to the US from Bulgaria in 2006. I grew up in Bulgaria and moved to the US right after I turned 21. At first it was just an adventure, but soon after my move, I realized that this is where I belong.

4. My Hobbies:

I love being physically active. I grew up playing different sports and if you ask my mom she will tell you that there isn’t a sport that I haven’t tried.

My latest interest are Olympic weight lifting and CrossFit. I also enjoy traveling. I wish I could do more of it and I’m sure I will once we can travel again safely.

5. My Business Profession or Current Working or Non-Working Environment:

My current title is VP Residential Lending Officer. I work for Kennebunk Sav-ings Bank, and I have worked here for 8 years. I did not go to school for bank-ing or even anything related to banking, but somehow a small leap turned into a career. I started working at the bank as a teller and moved through many posi-tions and promotions to where I am today.

6. Something my fellow Rotarians don’t know about me:

I am afraid of heights, terrified of spiders, and I can use nunchucks.

7. Final words:

I love being part of the Rotary club of Dover. Being so far away from my family is often hard. I have felt welcomed and cared for since my first meeting with the club.

Thank you to Jim Munro for introducing me to the club and to all of you Rotari-ans for making it feel like family.

1. How long have you been in Rotary?

Noreen: joined September 1988

Frank: joined November 1982

2. Our favorite Rotary moments:

Noreen - digging in the Rotary garden and watching it grow, installing the Rotary Pavilion sign at the top of the building where it can be seen far and wide, painting the gundalow with Cate and other Rotarians, listening to Rotary stories around a burning barrel selling Christmas trees, ringing the bell at the first and last meetings of an amazing year as president, the Children’s Library project, reading to kids, shoveling mulch in the rain, stuffing backpacks, our 95th Anniversary event, giving Phil the mirrorball, receiving my Paul Harris Fellow, reading the scholarship appli-cations and being convinced the future is in good hands with the next generation.

Frank - freezing on the tarmac of parking lots loaded with trees for sale and stoking the burning barrel to keep Rotarians warm, being president of two clubs, inviting Durham Rotarians to assist with bingo, returning to the Dover Club and Thirsty Tuesdays.

3. Where we currently live and where we grew up:

We grew up in Niagara Falls, NY and met in a bar called the Club; it was a dark and hazy place with sticky floors and a no-name, loud band where college kids gath-ered on Friday nights - some had sideburns and an Elvis swoop, others wore pleat-ed mini skirts and seriously teased hair - some smoked, some drank - perhaps too much - drove home without seat belts to an oddly familiar house (another story for another time) and amazingly turned out to be respectable adults.

One year after we married, we left Niagara Falls to follow job offers and seek new adventures. It was 1968! We drove to Akron, Ohio in an almost new car, stayed a year or so, adopted a dog named Charlie, had a baby boy named Kevin and headed off to , to Des Moines, Iowa. After a year or so, we journeyed back to Niagara Falls, gave Charlie away due to an incident with the mailman and had a baby girl named Shannon. We moved to the Ramada Inn in Dover, NH, with two kids and 22 house plants for three months in the summer of ’76 before crossing state lines to a new home in South Berwick, Maine.

By happenstance, several years later, we drove by a “For Rent” sign at the end of a long driveway to a house on the Bellamy River - it needed a lot of work, the drive-way was dirt, gravel and mush but the view was priceless, so we moved back across state lines to NH. In 1999, the owners decided to build condos on the land and tear the house down. One day we said, “They move houses don’t they?” and we did. We cut it up into three sections, hired a house mover and hauled it, one section at a time, a half mile north onto a lot covered in Queen Anne’s Lace, scrappy trees and broken bricks from an old Dover brickyard. After 20 years of renovation it is still a work in progress but one we are blessed to enjoy.

4. Our Hobbies:

Noreen: I create things … sourdough bread before it was a 2020 pastime, ginger-bread houses gardens, pencil sketches, painting (walls), dresses, drapes, boat cushions, slipcovers, face masks with matching scrunches for nine year girls, and writing a novel that may never get published unless I stop revising it… someday soon.

Frank: I build things … re-assembled pieces of a house into a home with new plumbing, electric, bathrooms, kitchens, stairs, decks, docks and floats, an up and down closet in a stairwell and an elaborate and not always functional television an-tenna system that Noreen doesn’t fully appreciate. I also golf occasionally, have re-ceived enough Prime-swished packages to secure the viability of Amazon delivery systems well into the future and watch Fox News frequently which Noreen doesn’t fully appreciate either.

5. Our Business Professions or Current Working or Non-Working Environments

Noreen: I’m a graduate of UNH and Simmons College with degrees in non-fiction writing and communication management, worked as a reporter for Foster’s Daily Democrat followed by a 30-year career at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital retiring in 2016 as VP of Community Relations. I’ve also authored a history of WDH in addi-tion to my unpublished novel, The Spokesperson, and occasionally free lance as a writer for a variety of projects.

Frank: I’m a graduate of the University of Buffalo and Golden Gate University with business degrees, managed Human Resources for Firestone Tire & Rubber, Dun-lop Tire & Rubber and Davidson Rubber/Textron. Now retired, I plow snow in the winter and water grass that refuses to grow in the summer.

6. Something our fellow Rotarians don’t know about us:

We have an amazing family, a son Kevin and his children 24-year old Derek, and 28-year old Alisha, and a daughter Shannon and her daughter, 9-year old Saman-tha.

We love to travel and every five years on our wedding anniversary in August we travel someplace special. We’ve climbed the Grand Canyon, traveled via train from Toronto to Vancouver, motored around Alaska, toured Southern France, Italy’s Amalfi coast and Portugal’s Algarve. On our 50th we visited the Southwest, looked for aliens at Roswell, watched bats fly out of the Carlsbad Canyon and marveled at the beauty of the White Sands, the Painted Desert and Arches National Parks. Will we ever travel again?

7. Final words:

Eleanore Rosevelt once said, “Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.” Our Rotarian friends, past and pre-sent, have left so many footprints in our hearts - we are truly grateful.