Denise Backus

I was born in NYC in 1937 and moved to rural Maine at age 4 when war started for America. My mother and her best friend joined forces and kids while husbands were overseas (my father was a war correspondent in Europe.) I went to a one-room, eight grade country schoolhouse, pot-bellied stove and outhouse… very Little House on the Prairie and even then, pretty unusual. We stayed there until my mother, sister, and I moved to Camden, ME, post-divorce. After years of being an at-home writer, she took a job as first editor of Down East Magazine.

Three years in Camden schools and then my last two years of high school went to Northfield School for Girls, followed by four years at the Women's College of the University of North Carolina (now UNC Greensboro), principally because Randall Jarrell taught there. Then to NYC and entry jobs at Newsweek, the McCall's Magazine, then a short marriage that took me to California, then Boston (divorce).

A dear friend who had lived in Woods Hole some years earlier said it was time to leave Boston and try for a job in Woods Hole. In those days you could get an interview at Personnel at WHOI and I did, was told there were two jobs available, "one in Biology and one in Chemistry; I think you'd like Biology." In Oct. I began working for Dick Backus and Bill Schevill as a combination secretary and lab assistant. Serendipity! I lived at 89 Water St. (over the boatyard, now Liberty House and Howlingbird). The cost of the whole second floor including heat and lights was $125, which I could just afford. I arrived with a first grader, Adah Franklin (now Wright) and a pre-schooler, John Franklin. There was no day care and the only pre-school (The Woods Hole Child Center) was filled. In 1973, I moved to the Education Office at WHOI and was there until 1977. In 1974 Dick and I were married and our children numbered five and incuded Dick's kids, Jane (now Gelernter), Ed, and Dave Backus.

In 1977 I left WHOI to work at the New Alchemy Institute (now Alchemy Farm) in Hatchville. After 10 very happy years there, at age 50, I went back to school at Boston University and became a clinical social worker. I interned at Falmouth Human Services and after some years at a clinic joined the Center for Family Therapy. About the time I started school, Dick retired and began his own new life as a botanist. Our shared passion was gardening, me the neophyte and he, a wonderful teacher. Woods Hole Library plant sale was the recipient of many plants dug by devoted library folks.

Family, friends, travel, grandchildren arriving and growing up, the gardens, books, community involvement (300 Committee Board member, Neighborhood Falmouth board, LWV Observer), more than 20 years of Tai Ji, and long walks all make for memories to treasure as I continue these next years without Dick ever mindful of our wonderful 40 years together.