A College of the Atlantic November, 1983 Bar Harbor, ME 04609 U.S. Postage Paid Nonprofit Organiz. Permit #47 Bar Harbor, Me. COA News Phoenix Fund Takes Flight In the wake of the fire that destroyed Kaelber Hall on July 25, the college has launched a $5,000,000 capital campaign to plan, build and equip new library, classroom, laboratory, dining and auditorium facilities. The three-year Phoenix Fund campaign will also provide an initial endowment for the upkeep of these facilities and provide assistance to faculty whose offices were destroyed. COA president, Judith Swazey, launched the campaign in early October with the announcement that Mrs. Amos Eno and Mr. Lawrence Hadley would serve as co-chairs of the fund drive. A group of trustees, island residents, alumni and parents will also serve on the fund committee. Planning is already underway for the new facilities. Mr. Dan Scully, principal architect with Equinox, Inc., will work in collaboration with nationally recognized campus planner, Denise Scott-Brown to develop drawings for the new buildings and their sites. The two architects will also recommend needed relocations of roads and services and related aspects of the college's rebuilding. Included in the plans are: - an expanded Thorndike Library to house a 50,000 volume collection of books relating to COA's human ecology theme as well as classroom space, an audio-visual room and a library-related computer facility; - a new Kaelber Hall complex to provide classrooms, kitchen and dining facilities, science laboratories and a new Natural History Museum; - The Thomas S. Gates, Jr., Auditorium, named after the college's late Board Chairman and designed to include a 300-seat auditorium, a dance exercise area and supporting facilities. Developed for use by both the college and the island community, the Gates Auditorium will fill long-standing needs for a conference and performance center. A total of $580,000 is already in hand from insurance, gifts and pledges leaving $4,420,000 to be Phoenix sculpture by Priscilla Pattison. raised during the next three years. Carpenter recalled the history of Kaelber Hall, a Through the generosity of a well-known Maine summer cottage built in the late 19th century. "Ironically, it survived the fire of 1947 that burned so much of Mt. sculptress, COA now has a three-dimensional symbol for its Phoenix Fund Campaign. Priscilla Pattison of Desert Island," he said. "Later it became a Catholic Lincolnville presented COA with a 10' black steel Seminary, an appropriate predecessor to a school of sculpture of a Phoenix to mark the site of the fire and Human Ecology. For in the sense that Human Ecology spirit of rebirth. The Phoenix, a legendary bird of tries to include the totality of life and the relations of living Egyptian mythology, was consumed in fire and rose things in its view, it is religious." renewed from its own ashes. "Now the building is gone," he concluded. "The The Phoenix sculpture won first prize in the challenge before us is to create out of the destruction. To Eastern State Exposition in Springfield, Mass. and has the ordinary person, destruction is an annoyance, and been exhibited in Bryant Park in New York City. replacement is the answer. But to the creative person, you Pattison, a graduate of Wellesley College, also don't just replace what was destroyed, you transform it into presented her alma mater with a Phoenix sculpture to something wholly new, something unimagined before. We commemorate the 1914 fire that burned that college's now have the opportunity not just for a new piece of main building. architecture, but also for a new vision of the college." Fall Term Convenes On Optimistic Note "In Eastern mythology, creation and destruction are two faces of the same goddess," faculty member William Carpenter observed at COA's September 12 Convocation. "We have seen destruction in its purest form, a building destroyed by fire. But this is an institution of learning and our job now is to learn from this as from all of our experiences." Carpenter addressed the 125 students and assembled faculty and staff at the traditional opening ceremony of the college's fall term. The Convocation was held in the auditorium exactly seven weeks after an early morning fire destroyed the school's main building, Kaelber Hall, and the adjacent library. The fire was stopped just short of the auditorium which received extensive smoke and water damage. Crews worked around the clock to restore the facility for the opening of the fall term and as COA's president, Judith Swazey, said, "It is nothing short of a miracle that we are all assembled here today." Convocation, 1983. COA Library Is Reborn sorted and stored for a book sale. Numerous volunteers from the community have come forward to help with this With the help of a remarkable network of individuals job. One resident of Bar Harbor's housing for the elderly and library resources across the country, a restored comes regularly, twice a week, to process books; she is Thorndike Library opened on September 12 with 5,000 frequently joined by a retired librarian from the Smith- volumes on the shelves. The library is housed in an unused sonian Museum Library. Several former work/study secondary school industrial arts building leased to the students at the college have also donated time to the college for one year by the town of Bar Harbor. project. To assist in the cataloging process, the library has News of the fire carried in the Chronical of Higher hired a computer cataloguer and the OCLC/NELINET Education, American Libraries, Library Journal, library computer network has donated one year of free Science Magazine and countless other newsletters, computer time, a value estimated at $10,000. brought offers of assistance and gift books in from as far COA librarian Marcia Dworak feels that the library away as South Dakota. will be able to rebuild a "decent collection" entirely from Closer to home the Maine library community the gift books she has and will be receiving. "Judging from responded with unprecedented generosity. Colby College the response to date," she said, "the proposed Thorndike weeded out 3,000 duplicate books for shipment to the Library building may be filled even before the ground is college. In addition, they donated unused shelving, heavy broken for the facility." library tables and study carels. The library of the University of Southern Maine instituted a policy under which the COA library could take out books on semester loan to be set on reserve for student and faculty use. The Maine State Library also gathered duplicate books from libraries throughout the state and donated the services of four professional library personnel to help sort gift books. The library has received a number of gifts from distinguished individuals including copies of publications by Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith, by noted children's book illustrator Trina Schart-Hyman, and by writer/ecologist John McPhee. Numerous faculty members from other colleges have offered their personal libraries and Philip Darling of Harvard shipped his entire 3,000-volume evolution collection to the college. A local law firm also donated up-to-date collections of Corpus Juris Secundum and Laws of the U.S. giving COA a far better law library than it had previously. Finally, publishers, particularly Rodale Press, have offered free replacement copies of some books the college had purchased. Sorting and cataloging the gift books has been a Herculean task. Out of the gift books, less than 1/3 relate Temporary library office in Bar Harbor industrial arts directly to COA's curriculum. The unusable books must be building.