Andrea Rugh

I was born in St. Louis, Mo where my father, Richard Bear, a biochemist, worked at the university. When I was almost 3, my parents and I came to Woods Hole one summer so my father could work in the lab. We lived in the old brick dormitory that still fronts on Eel Pond. My father used to tell the story of how he once asked me to wait on the front stairs of the dormitory until they came down to go to dinner. However when they arrived I was nowhere to be found. After searching everywhere they headed toward the dining hall which at that time was across the street from the present-day aquarium. Of course there I was patiently sitting on the steps wondering what had taken them so long.

Pictures of that summer made up the last in our family album, and clearly we had had a wonderful time going to the beach, relaxing with friends, and me swinging on the monkey bars in the old school yard. In the fall of that year my mother was diagnosed with cancer and she died two years later. Throughout my childhood I looked at those pictures again and again and decided that someday I would go back to see if Woods Hole was really as wonderful as it looked in the pictures. As a college student I applied for and was accepted as a chambermaid at the MBL the first summer and a kitchen worker the second. In the first job my nemesis was the Cheerios scattered over the rooms of researchers with small kids that I had to vacuum up every morning. In the kitchen job I remember John Valois coming in mornings and complaining that the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I made for the crew of the supply boat were too dry. Then and there he showed me how to make them right. And on the kitchen crew one day James Watson came in brandishing a water pistol at me when I wouldn't give him an extra pat of butter. Woods Hole of course was much more than Cheerios and pats of butter. It was beach parties and long walks and bouillabaisse made from leftover experiments and cooked over Bunsen burners. Woods Hole turned out to be exactly that wonderful spot I was looking for -- my mother had been right and her enjoyment was passed on to me.

Luckily for me I met and married a summer person whose father, Roberts Rugh, like mine had connections with Woods Hole. Bill joined the foreign service and I became an anthropologist with both of us specialized in countries of the Middle East. In my career I worked on international development projects and wrote books on Middle Eastern culture and society. Altogether we spent almost 40 years living and working in Muslim countries before we retired to Maryland. Little did I imagine that WH would continue to be our family's retreat and that almost every year during our postings overseas we would return for summers here. Our three boys came to think of America as a place of eternal summers with Science School, folk singing, movies and long days on the beach. One of them, Doug, lives in Pocasset and with his wife has an Art gallery in the Queen's Buyway. The boys and their children still come every summer. The eldest grandchild Thomas will be an intern at WHOI this summer before going on to university.

Our house is across the street from Stony Beach at 37 Gosnold Rd. and we are staunch supporters of "Saving Stony" -- not that we wouldn't still have access if the adjacent properties were sold but that it would be impossible for so many friends who come in cars to join us for our traditional 4 o'clock swims. Stony to us is the "heart of Woods Hole" and without it the town would change irreversibly.