David Brockway
Mary Alice Guinee, my math teacher at New Rochelle High School, was a close friend of our family. My parents, both also teachers in New Rochelle, included her in their circle of friends, many of whom were teachers. Ms. Guinee spent several summers in an island cottage some 150 feet across a channel from our cabin on a collection of islands in the middle of Lake Wentworth in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. Also in residence on these islands were several current and former teachers from New Rochelle (Harry Durfee, History, Carl Spear, Chemistry).
Despite no indoor plumbing, Ms. Guinee fit right in with the rustic island culture and its iconoclastic inhabitants, enjoying dinners, card parties, sailing and canoeing, and, naturally, teasing my sister and me. She adjusted matter-of-factly to life on bottled propane for cooking/refrigeration, water pumped from the lake, and a bathroom located out in the woods. While lakeside, she also took some remarkable photographs of wildlife, a few of loons and herons I still possess.
She was a devoted, creative teacher with an abiding commitment to challenging her students. She was also an outgoing personality, bright and dynamic, with a drive and energy that belied some health limitations. She was a long-term cancer survivor who had lost an eye to the disease, was devoted to swimming as a means of dealing with chronic fibromyalgia, and yet she routinely undertook numerous demanding travel excursions throughout most of her life despite physical drawbacks.
When she retired to Clearwater, she moved to a community where my parents lived, and I visited her a number of times. She always retained keen memories of her students, a number of whom stayed in touch with her after she left the classroom. She was, I believe, one of those teachers you just never forget, - one that made an impact that lasted as we matured.
--- David Brockway, New Rochelle High Class of 1958