Rosamond Orford, a Brit by birth, has been living in Norwich for quite some time. First, living down by where the Ompompanoosuc runs into the Connecticut River, and then moving to a quaint farmhouse on Union Village Road. At her farmhouse, Rosamond has a lovely studio where she has many of her framed photographs on display. People occasionally come by to browse and buy a print.

Rosamond grew up in the southern part of England. “I started taking photographs at the age of 11 when my parents gave me a Kodak Bellows camera,” she said. “I floundered a little in finding a suitable post-secondary path.” But luck prevailed, and she had the opportunity to travel to the United States with a friend. She went to Wyoming and then to Aspen, Colorado, where her interest in photography took off.

“I became a more serious photographer after taking a course with David and Cheri Hiser in Aspen, which opened my eyes to the fact that abstract ideas and emotions could be communicated by a photograph,” Rosamond said. “There is an old Eastern saying: ‘When the pupil is ready, the teacher will come’.” Rosamond decided to stay in the United States. She got married and moved to the Upper Valley where her husband got a job as an English teacher at Hanover High School. Rosamond loves the Upper Valley, but she would have liked to have spent more time in the West where she enjoyed the vast landscapes.

Rosamond has a particular love of taking pictures of water and capturing the variety of patterns the light makes on the water. She has had the good fortune to travel – Cuba, India, Morocco, Kenya, Nepal are some of the places she’s visited over the years. She has wonderful photos of these places in her studio.

Rosamond started a publishing company called Upcountry Publishing. She published calendars and then postcards and note cards. Then she published her first book: Water Colours – Photographs by Rosamond Orford. It is a collection of her photographs (you can buy the book directly from her or online).

Rosamond made the transition from dark rooms to digital fairly painlessly. She is somewhat of a purist. She doesn’t like to use filters and enhancers to digitally modify photographs. For her, “the seeing is the important piece,” she said. “Creativity is in the perception.” Along her creative journey, Rosamond started to paint in watercolor. Some of her water colors adorn her living room.

Rosamond’s family owns a house in the Lake District in North West England, so it is easy for her to return to her homeland when she wants to. It is a mountainous region with many lakes and beautiful vistas – an ideal place for a photographer that loves water and landscapes.    

In addition to being an artist, Rosamond also has a history of being a community activist. She and some community members were strongly opposed to a water development on the Ompompanoosuc River that would have reduced the flow in the river and diminish the beauty of its several waterfalls. The group fought hard, involving legislators, and finally won a settlement that allows the river to flow naturally. Her commitment “to fight for the river” illustrates how Rosamond loves the flow of the river with its patterns and reflections.

Rosamond’s character has not been affected at all by her success. She is someone you would meet in the pub or on a ramble. She is down to earth and quintessentially British. Sadly, some of her work was destroyed in a house fire several years ago. But her living room and studio are adorned with beautiful framed photographic prints and watercolors. Occasionally, someone will show up to look at the artwork and maybe buy a piece. 

At 84, Rosamond is slowing down a bit. Unfortunately, she inherited her father’s arthritis. But her passion for seeing beautiful scenes and capturing them is still strong. The essence of her work is “seeing” and then capturing it on film or in a painting. She doesn’t need all the “bells and whistles” of modern photography. Rosamond has a message for all of us: we need to open our eyes to the beauty around us. It can become a way of life.

Rosamond is very proud of her work. I think if you call ahead, she would be very happy to invite you into her studio.

All the photographs shown in this article are copyrighted by Rosamond Orford and may not be used without permission.

Oh, Paul and Wendy Manganiello – I’ve never heard anyone say anything bad about either of them,” says Peter Mason, a retired doctor who lives in Lebanon. Though perfectly capable of wisecracks, Peter has no reason to bring out verbal daggers for Paul and Wendy. “They’re two of the nicest people in the whole world.” More to the point, he continues, “They’re both totally committed to social justice. More than any other couple I know, they walk the talk. There’s not a hypocritical bone in his or her… in either of their…” His encomium falls apart over grammar, but his meaning is clear. Paul, a gynecological specialist, was a co-founder with Peter Mason of the Good Neighbor Health Clinic in White River. “I call him the godfather of Good Neighbor,” says Peter. “He’s passionate about the homeless, the uninsured. And Wendy [a surgical nurse] exhibits just the most caring, compassion, and confidence. She has done some wonderful things with patients with devastating illness.”

As Wendy starts to talk about choosing to be a nurse, Paul interjects, “So you could marry a doctor! That’s what your mother wanted.” She laughs and waves his teasing interruption away saying, “Don’t put that in.” More reflectively, she recalls that even in high school she was drawn to nursing because it’s “a service calling.” Her specialty is ostomy care, helping patients with (for example) colitis or Crohn’s disease, or paraplegics. She enjoys both the connections she’s formed with patients she sees regularly and the improved lives she’s helped them experience.

Paul and Wendy both grew up in New Jersey. They met in Philadelphia where she was a nursing student on duty in the ward where he, a medical student at Jefferson Medical College, was recovering from surgery for a leg injury. Though Paul is more apt to leap into the conversation than Wendy, he rejects the notion of being interviewed without her. “I couldn’t have done anything without her,” he maintains, and indeed their lives, through 41 years of marriage, are closely braided.

In the early ’70s, when Paul and Wendy met, the bond between a mouthy Italian Catholic and a restrained, self-described “WASPy Lutheran” was a stretch, says Wendy, smiling at the recollection. “It doesn’t seem so difficult now, but… He pushed me out of my comfort zone. He’s so involved with his work that I’ve become more independent. The hardest thing at the beginning was the religious difference.” “It’s been a growth process for both of us,” concurs Paul.

Wendy and Paul married in 1975, and two years later headed to Georgia for Paul’s fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology. In 1979, he was recruited to Dartmouth-Hitchcock to develop an infertility program. Before then, people seeking such help went to Boston. “The woman’s age is a major factor in successful conception,” says Paul, “but even with someone under 35, in good health, it can be a year till she conceives.” It didn’t take long for the infertility clinic to become busy, even though much of the treatment was not covered by insurance. It was a time of experimentation and expanding frontiers; the world’s first birth from in vitro fertilization was in July, 1978. “Imagine being the first women to try these techniques,” says Paul – hormone treatments, surgical procedures. “It boggles the mind that women would do so much to have a child. Women are absolutely amazing.”

Parenting two children strengthened the way Paul and Wendy worked as a team. “We’d strategize by phone,” says Wendy, describing how they developed a united front. Paul notes, “It was important for us to keep things in balance: family, job, community. We tried to do [community projects] as much as possible with the kids.” When Paul and Wendy and their first child, Marc, had arrived in the Upper Valley, they felt a bit adrift, not knowing anyone. They found community in Hanover’s Our Savior Lutheran Church (OSLC). “There was a woman in church who made me realize the issue of homelessness in the Upper Valley,” says Paul. Local churches were taking turns opening their doors to those who needed a place to spend the night, with volunteers from the congregations rotating as supervisors. In conversations with general practitioner Peter Mason, Paul grew more aware of the number of uninsured people in the Upper Valley. Working with others in the medical, church, and social service communities, Peter and Paul created the Good Neighbor clinic.

Initially, Good Neighbor provided care in the St. Paul’s parsonage on Tafts Flats in White River. “When Governor Dean came for the ribbon-cutting,” recalls Paul, “he said ‘I’m determined, I have the goal of shutting you down,’ and we said we welcomed that goal.” Twenty-five years later the region – like the nation – is still a long way from closing its charitable clinics.

While he’s happy with the community he has found in the Upper Valley and at OSLC, Paul is dismayed by punitive misreading of the Gospels. “I feel some Christians have hijacked my religion,” he says. “I go to church and I listen and read, and I wonder where did they get those ideas? Religion can be a positive force, but it can also be negative, brutal. Our faith encourages us to give unconditional love to our neighbors. At times that’s hard, but that’s what it means to be a ‘practicing Christian’ – you’re not quite there yet”

Paul is an advocate of reforming health care away from the usual fee-for-service system. He also shares the growing view that informed patients participating in health care decisions would in fact help lower costs, while also feeling greater satisfaction with their treatments. The measure of success should be an improved outcome, not how many tests or treatments were used. “Only 10 or 20 percent of ‘health’ is what the medical community provides,” he declares. “The rest are the social and behavioral determinates individuals bring to the clinical encounter. We can always do better.”

It’s hard to keep your eyes on your hosts when you visit Greg and Toni Prince’s house in Union Village, because intriguing objects and vistas draw your attention here, there, and everywhere. Inviting doorways with glimpses of trees and pastures, a gaggle of toy horses gathered in consultation on a shelf, and an antique sled perched in the corner pull your gaze and attention.

Wood paneling and antique beams warm a high-ceilinged sitting room, part of the Princes’ addition to their 1881 farmhouse. In spite of crisp winter temperatures outside, the space is as cozy and inviting as its owners. While more collections of antiques offer themselves for attention, the eye of a romantic is drawn to a needlework pillow that proclaims “Happiness is being married to your best friend.” Greg and Toni exemplify that happiness.

In their very different ways, Toni and Greg are educational leaders, Greg devoting himself to changing institutions and Toni providing a life-changing experience to children who come to her to learn to ride. Their skills feed and expand on each other. “It began with her,” says Greg, in very real – including chronological and financial – ways. “I was a sailor,” says Greg, “but I married horses.” And they put him through graduate school.

Greg and Toni met at a cocktail party in Washington DC, though neither of them were drinkers. They conversed, but Greg had an appointment elsewhere. “I have to go,” he told her, “but I have a strange question.” He invited her to be his date for a ski week in Vermont that he and a fellow Yale senior were planning. The trip had been an annual event, but for the first three years neither man had managed to find a date for the ski week; now Greg’s classmate had lined up a date, so the pressure was on! A week later Toni responded by telegram, “Twenty-one years of sense and sensibility lead me to accept your invitation.”

After graduation, Greg landed Yale’s fellowship to teach English in China for two years. “The assumption was that since you spoke English, you were qualified to teach it,” he says. Eight weeks of comparative linguistics training provided some information about possible problems from different language structures, and then he was pretty much dropped in at the deep end. “Hong Kong introduced me not just to teaching but to the importance of building institutions as a way to affect long-term change.”

Greg’s first job after China was as history teacher and Director of Guidance and College Placement at Woodberry Forest, an elite Southern prep school in Virginia. Many private academies were being founded in an effort to avoid desegregation; some at Woodberry wanted to desegregate in hope of setting a tide-turning example. Hired to help this cause, Greg occasionally roiled the waters by defending marches in Mississipppi or Freedom Rides when those actions were being condemned by others in the school. In spite of efforts by the headmaster, Greg, and others, the board did not develop sufficient backing for desegregation. The school, as an institution, missed a great chance to be a national leader. Greg was censured twice a year by the board in his three years and told, “If you were a gentleman, you would retire.”

Greg also resisted the idea of tracked classes, and told his “Basic” class they would take the AP test. When the “Basic” students protested, he told them, “You can complain, but I’m not going to bend, and I want to tell you: No matter how peeved you are, it’s nothing to what the AP class’s reaction will be when they find out I’m letting you take the exam.”  At the end of the year, every student had a 3 (out of 5) or better, and the average score of the Basic class was only one-tenth point less than the honors class.

Those “Basic” students rose to meet Greg’s expectations, a pattern many passionate teachers have seen. “I experience it every day,” says Toni of her students, who come for riding lessons but leave with much more. “The kids are like little sponges. They watch the more experienced ones. They’re generous, kind, thoughtful, focused. They want to succeed.”

Greg came to teaching as an adult, but Toni was a trainer of ponies and riders by the time she was ten. “I was a very solitary child,” she says. “Working with horses was the one thing I was very good at. I wanted to be their friend, not their master, not to make them my slave. I was more interested in why they behaved a certain way.

“She was an early horse-whisperer,” Greg chimes in. To Toni, the seemingly mystic connection some call horse-whispering is a matter of paying attention with mind and spirit. Her technique works well with children as with horses, and it’s not magic, she says. “I would [teach horse-whispering] in a heartbeat if I were starting now.”

Arriving in the Upper Valley

As Dartmouth College prepared for coeducation, President Kemeny hired Greg to direct summer programs. The idea was to create a summer term of serious stature, since adding a fourth term would instantly make room for women students. “I was told to make money,” says Greg. “I was hired to be an entrepreneur.” The couple moved to Norwich and found their Union Village farm, which has been Toni’s base ever since.

“One of my proudest achievements at Dartmouth,” recalls Greg, “was some of the faculty I hired for the summer who came from places no one normally ever would have looked. When they came, they were seen to be so outstanding everyone wanted them to stay.” Michael Dorris, from Franconia College, who helped found Dartmouth’s nationally recognized Native American Studies program, was one of these. So was Bill Cook, an African American, who eventually became chair of the English department. When Greg hired Bill Cook, he simply said Bill was from Princeton, and no one ever questioned the decision. When Cook, who’d been teaching at Princeton High School, later heard that story from Greg, he exclaimed, “That explains why some of my colleagues came up to me at graduation and pointed out ‘This one’s from Harvard, that one’s from Yale.’ I couldn’t figure out why they thought I cared.”

After almost 20 years at Dartmouth, Greg became president of Hampshire College. “I was an improbable choice – white, male, Ivy-League,” he says. Student protest was a way of life at Hampshire; Greg helped them understand their actions. When NYPD chief Lee Brown came to speak, a protest was planned but didn’t materialize. Afterwards Greg called the organizers into his office to see what had happened. “We didn’t know he was black,” they explained. Greg hoped he would never again be as embarrassed by Hampshire students as he was that day – they could not have done anything that would have been more disrespectful of Brown. Later a student said, “I never dreamed I’d be at a college where the president would be excoriating me for not protesting.”

Changing Students, Changing Worlds

Greg and Toni with family.

Greg mortgaged his future when he recruited a woman for the Hampshire College board whose dear cause was Pathways to College, which helps disadvantaged students prep for college; for every year she gave to Hampshire, he’d serve on Pathways’ board. The program appeals to his convictions: “The fastest way to change a high school is to get the students to do it.” Part of Pathways’ mission is to help promising students network with each other and become those change agents. Those same skills are the ones they’ll need to succeed in college.

Nowadays, Greg travels for Pathways, while Toni continues to care for her six ponies, which she does without help. She gives lessons in the summer, but does not train year-round with an indoor ring. She hopes kids try different sports, or take some time off – and the ponies too. “People mostly have horses now, but ponies are more like cats,” she says affectionately. Soon the place will once again be full of children “hanging around, helping each other get it done,” she adds. “Children are incredible teachers, because they’re there, or they have been there. If you give them an opportunity, they run with it. Parents get it – this place is not competitive. The kids learn partnership, self-control, and joy.”

I like the day,” says Ned Redpath with his characteristic smile. “I’m up at 5. I like the people I work with – there’s a good energy in the office.” He should know: he’s shaped his business over 36-plus years in the Upper Valley, first as an independent office, then gathering a team of realtors into the Hanover franchise of the Coldwell Banker group.

Not many children would say “I want to be a realtor when I grow up,” but Ned became interested in the profession about as early as anyone. His roommate at St. Lawrence University was the son of realtors in Montclair, NJ, where Ned had lived for his last two years of high school. The two young men talked about the business a lot. After college and a tour in the military (where the luck of the draw put Ned in Germany instead of Vietnam), he went to work for the roommate’s parents. Ned enjoyed living in Montclair, which had some green space and very easy access to the entertainments of New York City, but, he says, “There was just something missing. It turns out it was the lifestyle.”

Ned, Woody, Kelsey, Amy, Bo and Cathie Redpath at Christmastime

Ned had grown up with occasional visits to his grandmother’s big summer house in Nelson, NH and he was drawn to New England; perhaps it was the call of his preschool years, spent on the South Shore, in Cohasset, MA. “I woke up one day and told my wife at the time, ‘We’re going to New Hampshire,’ he recalls. “I wanted a college town, for the culture and sports, and to be involved in the community.” Before long, he had a job with Linwood Bean, owner of Webster Associates. Bean’s son Clint was also just out of the military and joining the business. Before long, they bought out Clint’s father. “I had the experience and Clint had the bloodlines,” laughs Ned. “It was much better here than in Montclair – in 1972 there was only one stoplight” in Hanover.

After about five years, Ned took a year off to be executive director of a regional professional tennis tour, a fundraiser. He would line up about 20 players for a specific tournament, paying them with seed money from a sponsoring charity. Selling lessons, exhibitions, and tickets to the tournament would recoup the seed money, and more. Sometimes Ned would play to fill out the draw, a challenge he enjoyed. “These guys were good, they weren’t on the circuit, but they were very good,” he recalls.

“Tennis has been a phenomenal door-opener most of my life,” notes Ned. When he moved to the Upper Valley, he joined the Varsity Courts Club, which rented time on the Dartmouth courts. It was a good way for him to stand out. “I guess I was OK – people said, ‘Oh my god, who is this guy?’” Ned recalls. He adds, “My hero was Chuck McKinley. He was a smaller stature guy, like me, and he played serve and volley too.” At the nearby squash courts he met Cathie DeYoe, and eventually the pair realized they were a good match. Next year they will celebrate 30 years of marriage.

Ned and Cathie

In late 1978, Ned opened his own office in Hanover on Main St. in a third floor walkup, but moved to more convenient quarters on Main Street above the old Peter Christians, then moved 10 years later to his present site on West Wheelock. Over 30 years ago he joined the Coldwell Banker franchise. National franchises give local businesspeople national reach, explains Ned: “If someone sells their house in Texas to move here, and they’re looking to buy, say they’ve had a good experience with Coldwell Banker selling their house, they’re more likely to turn to us.” Success breeds success, he finds; now over 70% of clients are repeat customers. The office sells between 400 and 500 units each year.

Though Ned himself now spends more time in administrative work, and less time listing and selling, he enjoys helping people and is willing to flex to meet the expectations of others. “You can’t just be yourself,” he says. “You have to be apolitical, a-religious. You dress up, not down. And have a clean car, no dogs!” He admits that his family’s fondness for Labrador retrievers has clashed with this stricture.

Ned is happy with the community he’s found in Norwich. “Definitely, without question, we’re dirt-road people,” he says. “We have a post-and-beam, Norwich mentality. In Montclair it was wing-tips, suits, and camel-hair coats.”

Ned is in a line of work that makes him keenly aware of development pressures, though it would be shooting the messenger to think that realtors cause growth. He recalls a trip to Tucson: “It was all parking lots and shopping malls and golf courses; the poor desert was really taking it.” Fairly recently Norwich was a small farming town, he says, but now the land “is a little bit in danger, because it’s just too valuable” unless it’s in conservation.

You might wonder if there’s a genetic component to choosing to be a realtor. Ned’s daughter Amy works with Redpath and Co. His daughter Kelsey is a realtor in Park City, UT. Maybe so, laughs Ned, “it could be, or something learned from watching. It’s personality and the ability to be a chameleon.” Wanting to help people – and being willing to help them through times of major decision and stress – are necessary traits. It’s not about architecture and design features; as Ned points out, “It’s a people-oriented business.”

Unifying Faith and Place

A neatly shoveled and remarkably wide path through February’s snowpack leads to the front door of the Reeves house at the top of Elm Street. The house itself, nestled into the shoulder of the hill, offers extensive vistas over the Connecticut Valley. The site is a fitting one for Sarah Reeves, whose training and interests combine inner reflection and relating to place in the world. A visitor instantly feels welcome; Sarah’s face, when not already smiling, looks as though it’s about to.

“Without really knowing it, I absorbed a sense of being rooted in the land and enjoying it” while growing up in the Nashoba Valley of Massachusetts, where her father was an apple grower. “Then you learn about land conservation, and now we’re in a crisis, threatening the viability of the earth – the fragile, beautiful earth – to sustain us and many other species. earth – to sustain us and many other species. Yet, discoveries in science – from origins of the universe to DNA – are reawakening awe and wonder, a convergence of science and faith, calling us to action.”

“There were only thirteen kids in my eighth grade at Westford,” Sarah remembers, “so my parents sent me to the Northfield School for Girls – now it’s part of Northfield Mount Hermon. The school was founded by 19th century evangelist, Dwight L. Moody. But, says Sarah, “In required Bible study, the teachers were looking for you to be thoughtful, and give reasons for a position, rather than espouse one.” Having been raised by Unitarian parents who emphasized combining reason and faith, Sarah dove right in, with a steady dialogue about the value of forgiveness, too.

At Smith College Sarah majored in religion – but almost in math. “I would ask the ‘stupid’ questions,” she says, “the elephant in the room that everyone was wondering about but thought everyone else understood.”

After college, Sarah earned a one-year fellowship for graduate study at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan. Within two weeks she had met David Reeves, and “almost immediately knew he was the one.” The feeling was completely mutual. While David, a year ahead of Sarah, finished at Union, she went to the University in Marburg, Germany for her second year. “It was one of my dreams to go back to Germany, where I’d been for the summer when I was sixteen,” Sarah says. Before tackling theological study in German, she went to Cologne for two months of language study. “The teacher befriended me, and on vacations we’d travel together to new places. We’d decide, ‘Let’s do Baroque’ or something.”

Sarah with husband Dave, and sons Ben and David

Upon Sarah’s return from Germany and Dave’s graduation from Union, they were married in Westford’s historic church. (They exited to find Sarah’s dad with a top hat and cigar on a tractor pulling a flatbed, used for apple boxes in the orchards, decorated and decked to carry the wedding party through the town.) They moved to Cambridge, where Dave started studies towards a PhD at Harvard, and Sarah, her final year towards an MDiv degree. “We moved into an apartment in Cambridge which we just loved, but my father thought it was a firetrap.”

Later they were back in Germany for David’s studies; Sarah taught English for Berlitz to earn their keep. “I had two classes in one place, for example, one for executives, who were so afraid to make a mistake, and another for some upper branch workers – foremen – and they went right at it. They learned so fast!” When Dave received a fellowship, she went to the University of Tübingen, to be better grounded in church history and the discipline of research.

Then David landed a teaching job at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. Sarah worked through the Community Renewal Society as a “mission consultant” to a church on the North Side, in a parish where older German members were giving way to an influx of Hispanic parishioners. She also worked in an inner city youth job skills program.

When the couple’s first child, Rachel, was born, an error with anesthesia left her with severe cognitive and physical deficits. Sarah cared for her until she was three and a half, and then, in a heart-wrenching decision which turned out the best for all, sought residential care for their daughter. Rachel died at 20. Because of her potential expenses, Dave had been studying the stock market and investing; he fell in love with the financial markets. This became his career. He resigned from McCormick.

Sarah with her two brothers (two sisters not pictured)

The family was “looking for rootedness,” says Sarah. Her parents had retired early, moved to Vershire, and planted a new orchard, escaping sprawl in Massachusetts [see sidebar poem]. Her mother said, “You’re a country girl. Why don’t you look around here?” Visiting by herself late in 1983, Sarah found the Elm Street house. It was perfect: close to town, hilly (you can say that again!), good schools – their boys, David and Ben, were in elementary school – in the country, but “had some couth.”

Sarah worked in ministry, but then chose not to continue as a pastor because of wanting to spend time with her family. She earned a degree in landscape design and planning, focusing on native plants, and established her own business. When the Marion Cross expansion was finished there was no money for landscaping. Sarah was part of a push to raise money and involve every child in the school with the work. For ten years she worked with the Conservation Commission to inventory resources in town such as agricultural and forest land, and scenic spots; the inventories would be used for later town planning. She also served on the boards of the Upper Valley Land Trust and the Vermont Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, as well as being the President of the Association of Vermont Conservation Commissions. Now Sarah is on the Energy Committee, but claims “merely to support the awesome work of Linda Gray and the others.”

Retirement recreations include writing poetry, taking pictures, and teaching courses on faith and spirituality in the OSHER@Dartmouth program. “The fun thing about teaching is you have to learn it!” she laughs. She turns serious when she talks about what she teaches. “The Buddhists have refined the techniques of meditation so it’s accessible to people of all faiths, and secular people, too,” she says. “Some people – Bill McKibben is one – are developing a new view of creation. It’s not anthropocentric. This incredible world that we marvel at – we’re not just stewards, but a part of the creation, a part of nature. We’re not here to dominate it.”