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Class Note Bios

Vernon Stapleford ’37, ’38 Teams Up with Peter the Mouse

As a child growing up on a farm in rural Maine, Vernon Stapleford had a pet mouse that he named Peter. Many years later, Vernon is still having fun with his furry friend.

Vernon has written 36 short stories featuring himself, cast as Uncle Bing, a nickname given him by a niece, and Peter. He shares them with elementary schoolchildren throughout New England.

The first story he ever made up about Peter was one he used to tell one of his daughters every night before she went to bed. “She just loved it and wanted to hear the same story over and over again,” he says.

Years later when his children had grown and had children of their own, Vernon began writing more stories about the adventures of Uncle Bing and Peter for his granddaughter. And a few years ago, his daughter, June Monahan, who works at a school in Westbrook, Conn., asked him to send her some of his stories to share with teachers and students there.

“The response from the students has been great,” Vernon says, noting that he has received cards and notes from his young fans. And teachers have asked him to send more stories, all of which focus on aspects of farm life at a time when people cut ice blocks by hand and mowed hay.

In Mousy Story No. 12, for example, Uncle Bing and Peter head into the barn to check the mother hen to see if any chicks have hatched. Uncle Bing checks the mother hen, who is not too pleased about the intrusion, and helps remove chunks of shell from a newly hatched chick. While he is doing this, however, Peter gets himself into some trouble with a hen who chases him around the room and up a pole.

Other stories involve adventures ranging from skiing and horseback riding to picking blueberries, and some even feature Uncle Bing’s brother. “All of the stories are based on an actual event,” Vernon notes.

He is now sharing his charming stories, complete with illustrations done by his 15-year-old grandniece, in his daughter’s school in Connecticut, and in schools in Boothbay Harbor and Edgecomb, Maine, in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

Vernon spent his career as an industrial arts teacher in schools in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut before retiring from an East Haven, Conn., school in 1973. He and his wife, Ginny, built a log home in Boothbay Harbor in 1975 and have lived there ever since.

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Greg Dove ’86

As the new director of the Portland Public Market, Greg Dove has a number of challenges ahead. He must improve the market’s financial picture and work to turn around the public perception that items at the market are a bit too expensive for the average consumer.Despite these challenges, Greg believes he has found his dream job. “I’m very interested in the community and in keeping this building an excellent meeting place for the public. I think it’s all those connections that make this the best job in the city,” he stated in a Portland Press Herald article. Before becoming Market director, Greg served as Market manager for two years. Before that, he was the general manager at Smiling Hill Farm in Westbrook. Greg has a bachelor’s degree in business administration from USM and is currently pursuing a master’s in business administration.

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Randall Landry ’90

Randall Landry has always been interested in solving difficult problems.

It’s what spurred the Oakland, Maine, native to leave his job as an engineering tech at Fairchild Semiconductor to pursue his electrical engineering degree at USM in the 1990s and to earn his master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Vermont in 1992 and 1994.

And it’s what motivates him today in his job as a principal research scientist at Mitre Corp., a federally funded R&D center that works to solve complex problems for the U.S. Department of Defense, in addition to other government agencies.

“We do everything from highly classified work for the CIA or Department of Defense to work for the Air Force or Navy or other branches of the service,” Randall says.

One of the problems that Randall and his Mitre colleagues are helping to solve now is how to get information to military personnel on the front lines. The challenges are to devise a communications system that is highly mobile and will function in remote and rugged terrains throughout the world.

Randall, whose graduate degrees had an emphasis in telecommunications analysis and design, is working on a project to create a futuristic satellite network where constellations of satellites placed far apart could be interconnected via advanced laser technology. “It’s almost as if we’re applying the Internet telecommunications model to space,” he explains.

Because of the way communication systems have been engineered in the past, it is difficult for one branch of the military to share information with another branch in a dynamic fashion. Systems tend to be mission-specific and not interoperable. “Disseminating information in today's battlefield is very difficult,” he adds.

“We'd like to be able to send important information, such as surveillance and reconnaissance data, to the modern war fighter on a dynamic basis,” he said. “Many of the underlying technologies exist to allow this to happen but it requires a shift in the communications paradigm toward that of a flexible and extensible ‘Internet-like’ infrastructure.”

It also requires a substantial investment of money. “The military is faced with very unique operating conditions, including highly mobile users, remote operations in regions where no fixed communications networks exist, and the requirement for highly secure communications,” he says. “These are just some of the challenges that make it impossible to simply integrate commercially available products."

Some of the systems that Randall is talking about would take years to design and get up and running, so they would not have a direct impact on current battles. The impact would not likely be felt for another decade in some cases.

Before coming to Mitre in 1997, Randall worked for Texas Instruments in Dallas for three years. He worked in corporate R&D and conducted research on networking components for high speed systems.

He has also had initial discussions about developing a co-op program with the USM School of Applied Science, Engineering, and Technology that would enable top USM students to work at the R&D center.

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