Residents in the Monitor’s circulation area who died over the past 12 months touched the lives of many people, on both the local and national levels.
We lost giants in human rights and culture, as well as lesser-known people whose day-to-day routines and interests meant so much to so many in their communities.
Here’s a look at some of the people we lost in 2018:
It’s hard to believe that in Wood, we had a pioneer of national importance living right here, in our own backyard.
But we did.
Before Wood died on Aug. 20 at the age of 95, the Concord resident had long laid important groundwork in the struggle for human rights, in his case gay rights.
In fact, it’s hard to find a gay person anywhere who made this much noise this long ago, because Wood was marching on Washington, D.C., in 1965, when the Civil Rights Movement focused on African Americans. He was there representing the gay community.
And not only that, but Wood had the chutzpah to be a man of the cloth, wearing his collar as he marched in D.C., and Philadelphia, writing books about gay issues with his real name on the cover, stating emphatically that gay people could, in fact, be valuable churchgoing members of the community before that was fashionable.
Let the record show that Wood, who moved to Concord from New York City 30 years ago and lived out his senior years at Havenwood-Heritage Heights retirement community, emerged as the first author of a book calling for Christian churches to accept gays.
Said Rejean Blanchette of Deerfield, whom was married to a man by the Concord reverend, “None of us would be where we are now if not for people like Bob Wood.”
Like Wood’s passing, the death of Hall reached across the country and touched others, this time in the literary world.
The great poet died on June 23 in Wilmot at the age of 89. Hall was named U.S. Poet Laureate in 2006, but he also held his own quite nicely with magazine articles, plays, short stories and children’s books.
In 1975, Hall and his late wife, fellow poet Jane Kenyon, moved to Eagle Pond Farm in Wilmot, where he had enjoyed summers with his grandfather as a boy. It was there, during the final 43 years of his life, that Hall continued his writing career, incorporating into his work the sorrow he felt after the death of Kenyon from cancer in 1995 and his own fading health in recent years.
President Barack Obama gave Hall the National Medal of the Arts at a White House ceremony in 2010, and then Hall gave us prose after his poetic genius had no place left to go.
The Monitor was lucky enough to have a great seat in the theater of Hall, because our former editor, Mike Pride, was his close friend for decades. Through Pride, Hall came to our offices and recited some of his poetry, always with style and flair.
In fact, Pride was one of two eulogists at Hall’s funeral.
“He chose a literary task,” Pride said that day, “he labored till it was done right, he sold it, and he started the cycle again.”
The death of the Concord High School principal, on Aug. 19 at age 62, had long been expected, ever since Connolly was diagnosed with ALS, always terminal, in 2014.
That, however, did not fully prepare the community, which packed the South Congregational Church for a public memorial and Concord High for a celebration of Connolly’s life.
Connolly spent 36 years working in education. He was named New Hampshire Middle School Teacher of the Year at Gilbert H. Hood Middle School in Derry in 2001, the year he was hired to steer the ship at Concord High.
In 14 years here, Connolly nurtured a bond with students, relating to them with an eye-to-eye style, listening to them, hearing them.
In the months and years leading up to his death, Connolly inspired anyone who came in contact with him, as he maintained his spot in front of the school greeting students before the morning bell.
Not even his confinement to a wheelchair later could stop Connolly and his daily tradition, as he navigated on icy walkways to welcome everyone who walked through the school’s doors.
“Connolly Tough” fundraisers began popping up around the city to help the family deal with the day-to-day costs of making a loved one suffering from a serious illness as comfortable as possible.
A documentary on his life by local filmmaker Dan Habib was shown at Red River Theatre, the press box at Memorial Field was named after Connolly and both his children, Jim Connolly and Ally Davis, pursued careers in education.
During his final year at Concord High, in 2016, Connolly, unable to speak, communicated with students through a computerized device and his expressive eyes.
Everyone understood him.
On Nov. 8, the mother of Christa McAuliffe – the Concord High social studies teacher who died trying to become the first citizen to enter space – passed away at the age of 94.
Before she died, however, Corrigan, who lived in Framingham, Mass., made sure to make her presence felt here, because Concord had become such a big part of her daughter’s life.
In the years since McAuliffe beat out 10,000 colleagues before the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff in 1986, Corrigan became an unofficial ambassador here, visiting the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center several times and bringing messages about the importance of education, taking risks in life and creating big goals.
Corrigan came to Concord to break ground on the Discovery Center, located on the campus of New Hampshire Technical Institute. She donated Christa’s sheet music, from the days her daughter played piano as a little girl. She donated her Girl Scout pins, too.
Corrigan herself went back to school and earned a teaching degree after her daughter’s death, reinforcing the thoughts and feelings she brought to the museum named after Christa.
“I was really excited to meet her and I could tell right away where Christa got that spark from,” said Jeanne Gerulskis, the longtime director of the Discovery Center. “Those deep brown eyes, and she was teensy, a very small woman with an incredibly warm, delightful personality.”
Concord had made great strides incorporating refugees and immigrants who had endured under difficult circumstances, which is why a car accident on Nov. 2 seemed so very ironic.
Uwituze 24, and Zawadi, 25, both single mothers, had lived in the United States for less than three years, after traveling 10,000 miles from their home countries and living a combined 25 years in refugee camps, in Uganda and Tanzania.
They died in a wreck when Uwituze lost control of her car as the women were coming home from their factory jobs in Northwood. The car skidded off Interstate 93 and hit a tree in Canterbury, killing both women instantly.
In the days after the tragedy, logistics became difficult as officials here, none of whom spoke Swahili, tried to coordinate necessary tasks – telling the women’s children, alerting their boss, communicating with loved ones back in Africa, burial arrangements, storing personal belongings left in their Concord apartments.
When the smoke had cleared, we learned the two women had started their jobs at Freudenberg-NOK Sealing Technologies in Northfield three days before they died, working the same shift.
We learned they came from refugee camps and lived in small tents with no electricity or access to healthcare. And we learned that a pastor named Clement Kigugu, who lived in Rwanda and tried to bring peace to victims of an ethnic war, was essential in bringing clarity and closure to those who knew the two women best.
“They’re going to be buried side by side,” Kigugu said during the funeral, a rainy day last month at Blossom Hill Cemetery. “They will always be here together.”
Taylor of Hopkinton was just 39 when she fell to her death while hiking up a challenging mountain in Colorado on July 21.
Taylor was drawn to the mountains at an early age, skiing, hiking and climbing. She grew up in Berlin and learned to ski at Wildcat Mountain before moving to Hopkinton and joining several elite-level Nordic ski teams.
Taylor continued skiing at Middlebury College, coached youth Nordic teams and later, after moving to Colorado, began testing herself even further through ultra marathon running and adventure racing.
As her obituary stated, “She fell to her death when a rock came loose as she reached for it during a steep scramble on the Willow Peak Ridge in the Gore Range in Colorado.”
In 2017, Taylor won a 100-mile ultra-endurance race that included running and climbing across the peaks, valleys and wooded areas near Salida, Colo.
Afterward, she told a local newspaper, “I’m not out just to race, just to get bibs on. That was never the idea. It was all about spending big days in the mountains.”
Shaw’s dream was to move to Montana and pursue his HVAC license.
On April 30, however, he was killed in a car crash when another driver failed to stop at the end of the Interstate 89 off-ramp near Exit 1.
The 2015 Concord High School graduate was 20.
The area in which Shaw died soon became a shrine to the popular young man who loved to fish and who was playing video games with a friend the night he died.
Six months later, Joseph Leonard Jr. of Dover was charged with negligent homicide. The Merrimack County Attorney’s Office claimed Leonard was driving at an excessive speed while his blood alcohol level was above the legal limit of .08.
Shaw’s loved ones were relieved when charges were finally filed, saying they had been long overdue.
“JUSTICE FOR TSHAW,” read a sign that had been posted near the crash site. “WHEN WILL IT HAPPEN?”
Leonard pleaded not guilty last month and is out on bail awaiting his next hearing.
A house fire on July 24 took the life of Beverly Johnson, who was found dead inside her home on Pine Street in Contoocook. She was 85.
Johnson graduated from Hopkinton High School in 1951, and her love for the community was seen clearly through her work with the Golden Group, a weekly luncheon that had steep roots in the town.
Johnson also collected money for the monthly Odd Fellows Kearsarge Lodge No. 23 breakfasts, and she was instrumental in the energy connected with other senior programs that involved line dancing, a wellness program, day trips during foliage season, and arts and crafts projects.
Perhaps her favorite activity was watching her grandson, point guard Tommy Johnson, play basketball for Kearsarge Regional High School.
Johnson rarely missed a game.
Also passing this past year were: Chip Rice of Concord, a popular Democratic lawmaker; Phil Callanan of Concord, the principal at Mill Brook Elementary School in Concord; Chris Audet of Penacook, a father of four who loved to fish; Paul Henle of Concord, a former member of the State House of Representatives; Roger Quimby of Concord, a loyal fan of the University of New Hampshire hockey team; Scott Cloutier of Concord, a longtime employee at the Department of Transportation; Kenneth McKenna of Concord, a roofer and staple in the White Park area; Peter Brodeur of Andover, a tour guide at the Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum; and Raymond Sumner Perry Jr., of Dunbarton, an avid cycler and human rights activist.