Ellie Armstrong

Woods Hole Girl

Hazel Blanchard Prosser and C. Ladd Prosser, my parents, met each other in Woods Hole at the MBL sometime in the 1930's actually at an MBL Club dance. They searched for a soft rock to sit on at Nobska Beach where they carried on their long love affair and courtship. She went off to Munchen, Germany to study bees with VonFrisch and he to Oxford, England to study neurophysiology with Huxley. They reunited in Woods Hole, Hazel working in the MBL Library and Ladd teaching in the Physiology Course.

They said I was imprinted on Woods Hole before I was born July 23, 1939. We came to Woods Hole almost every summer of my life. My parents bought a cottage in Gansett Woods on Gardiner Road which we all loved and which became our home away from home. We lived in Chicago, Illinois and Urbana-Champagne during the winter for my school years, then I lived in Boston-Sweden-D.C.-Michigan- Pennsylvania and finally in 1981 we moved to Woods Hole year-round and here we will stay.

I learned to swim and row and sail at Little Gansett Beach, learned my way around Woods Hole walking all over town to Science School as a student then as an assistant and then as a teacher for 30 years. Marine Ecology and Botany were major interests and I worked for 12 years at MBL, 6 running the Natural History Collection, i.e. the Gray Museum, and 6 running the MBL Associates Program.

We founded the first Waldorf School in Woods Hole where it lived for 5 years before growing out of the space it occupied in the Woods Hole School Building. It now has over 100 students in Cotuit.

We instituted the parking sticker program to clear the streets of Vineyard Island parkers.

We continued running the contra and folk dances and family dance programs with live music and superb instructors from Boston in the Woods Hole Community Hall. In fact we jumped whole heartedly into the community life of this dear little town that we love so much.

Two out of three kids have gone out into the world and come back to Woods Hole to live and now there are three grandchildren living here too. Whether sliding down the hills of the snowy golf course or skating on the ponds or picnicing on Devil's Foot Island or swimming at the beach, we enjoy all the seasons.

A sunset over Buzzards Bay in the summer is a great delight and we try not to miss too many of them.

I feel so grateful to have ended up here in Woods Hole, such a gorgeous place with really nice, smart, interesting people, an international flavor and healthy life style.