Louisa and Bill Newlin
Louisa and Bill Newlin.
By COA President Darron Collins ’92
Louisa and Bill Newlin are ventricles in the beating heart of College of the Atlantic, absolutely core to who we are and what we do. For four decades they have supported the idea, the work, and the people of COA through their philanthropy, their teaching, their writing and research, and their leadership on the COA Board of Trustees. To document their full impact on the college would require the length of the entire magazine, but I simply cannot leave the COA presidency without putting some words about them in indelible print.
Speaking of indelible prints, I’ll never forget the time Bill and I wandered the lower reaches of Old Mill Brook on the COA Cox Protectorate in search of brook trout when Bill lost his balance and fell backward into the thick, odorous mud. Darron, I’m going to need some help here, he said calmly. We were just barely able to unearth him. He left a perfect outline of his body in the mud, which seemed very appropriate given his love and commitment to the freshwater environs of Mount Desert Island. Bill imagined and orchestrated two editions of The College of the Atlantic Guide to the Lakes and Ponds of Mt. Desert: Discovering the Freshwater Gems of Maine's Largest Island, the second of which was done alongside COA David Rockefeller Family Chair in Ecosystem Management and Protection Ken Cline and a group of COA students, and became the first volume ever published by The College of the Atlantic Press. Louisa—helping round out the family’s diverse, human-ecological interests—taught Shakespeare at COA, and left her own distinct impressions on students here through that work.
As central as the two are, it’s hard to not consider their family tree when describing the Newlin-COA relationship. Louisa’s father, Bill Foulke Sr., was a COA board member. Bill’s son Bill Jr. chaired the board and spoke these words to me: We would like to offer you the position as president of College of the Atlantic. Bill Newlin’s sister, the remarkable Lucy Bell Sellers, is the godmother of theater here at COA. Lucy Bell’s late husband, Peter, was a mathematician, scholar at Rockefeller University, and former COA board member. Lucy Bell and Peter’s daughter, Frances Stead-Sellers, is a Washington Post editor and has been a key part of the COA Summer Institute. The tendrils of the Newlin family tree run deep and wide here. (Tendrils, a botanical reference, make sense when you consider the Elizabeth Battles Newlin Chair in Botany, named after Bill Newlin’s mother.)
Although it feels next to impossible to supplant a colloquial name with a formal one here at COA, I’m on a mission to do so with the Newlin Gardens, which just about everyone refers to as the Red Bricks. That entire courtyard area west of Thorndike Library—arguably the center of gravity for the entire college—is, indeed, the Newlin Gardens, named in honor of Bill’s father, and should be voiced as such! If you can sneak past the watchful eye of our head gardener, Barbara Meyers '89, look around amongst the low-lying vegetation and you will see a plaque there with the garden’s official name, a present but not flashy marker, perfectly aligned with the Newlin way of being. Next time you see Bill or Louisa or anyone of the wider Newlin-Foulke-Sellers clan, tell them Thank you, and that the omens here at COA are very, very good.
