Dory "Puddy" BOLAND

Dory Boland Skemp

Dory's 2011 Autobiography

I have been living in Rhode Island since 1972 so here it goes from the beginning in 1961:

Went to the University of Colorado in Boulder and officially majored in journalism and unofficially in skiing. Dropped out in senior year and my father stopped talking to me for six months.

Came back east and went to work at McCall's Needlework & Crafts Magazine in NYC as the assistant knitting editor. Basically I was a go-fer for all of the editors and it was the most fun job I ever had.

Married Eric Skemp, Staples class of '58. Our marriage only lasted seven years but I got two fabulous sons out of that deal. My son Carter is an architect now although he spent seven years as a pro windsurfer in Maui before going to RISD for a fine arts degree followed by Harvard for a master’s in architecture. I lost my Robby, my oldest and a fisherman, to suicide and I never go even a single day without thinking about him.

Worked at RISD (RI School of Design) for 35 years. Started part-time when my boys were little by running the work-study program and moving full-time into administration (Financial Aid). RISD is an amazing place and I absolutely loved working there but it’s even more amazing to me that I do not miss it at all now.

Went back to school in the 1980s to finish that bachelor's degree. This time I went to Roger Williams College where my Colorado credits were accepted and all I had to do was to take 16 historic preservation classes (my new major), mostly at night although I knocked off two with a month’s study in England.

Have done all sorts of historic preservation stuff in RI from being president of a historical society to being the chair of a historic district commission and running historic house tours, walking tours and lecture series while serving on boards of various historic and arts groups.

In the late 1980s I started to think about what I could do for a second job. Any preservation job where I could actually earn money would also be during the day and I wasn't prepared to give up my RISD paycheck. So, real estate it was as I thought it would be all about houses and I love houses, especially historic ones. Turns out that real estate is really all about people, not houses, but I gave it my all with a very supportive firm to back me up during the weekdays while I was busy at RISD. Now 22 years later, after retiring from RISD, I have a ready-made full-time job in real estate just when the economy has tanked!

Last summer after 38 years in Bristol in three different houses, two of them historic and one on a beach, I moved all of 4.9 miles to the next town of Warren. Bought a 211-year-old wreck of a house originally built as a cooper's shop in the heart of this historic and funky little town. Am slowly restoring it with major help from my very own architect. I did this before when young and crazy and promised never to take on such a project again. Obviously I forgot although this time I’m not actually doing all the work myself. I do the little jobs such as stripping paint off the staircase handrail and eventually will start stripping off layers of wallpaper while hoping the plaster won’t come crumbling off the walls, too.

So what do I do for fun other than daydreaming about building a small glass house (designed by my son, of course) in Haiku, high in the hills above Maui’s North Shore? In reality…my “Cooper Shop” came with small adorable gardens albeit neglected and I am happiest while messing around in them. I jumped into genealogy 20 years ago after returning from Ireland and deciding I really did want to know exactly where my Irish grandfathers’ families lived. Well, it mushroomed from the grandfathers to the grandmothers and I’ve found all sorts of folks going back to 17^th century NY, NJ, CT and MA. What's especially interesting as I wander around historic cemeteries and libraries are the family names other than my own which are so familiar from growing up in Westport. Many of us in the Class of ‘61 are probably related as unknown 9^th or 10^th cousins!

So, that's it and life is pretty good. After 50 years I'm two and a half hours away from Westport living in a historic house that needs a ton of work and selling real estate in a really down market. I consider myself lucky for other than a little nagging arthritis and the embarrassment of being heavier and shorter than in 1961, I have my health and most of my memory.

Dory’s Update (2021)

Life is still pretty good for me since our last reunion 10 years ago — now a whopping 60 years out from Staples for all of us. “Whodda’" thought back then that we would be meeting up on something called Zoom during the year most of us are turning 78?

I am still selling real estate in what is now a super active market, even more so during the pandemic. And I keep myself out of trouble with my preservation work, now mostly focussed around the historical society in Bristol. While I am still a board member there, I stay away from being an officer anymore and instead just manage the website and do some committee work. I also do genealogical research for me and a few other people. The pandemic last summer allowed me to have even more time in my garden which therefore looked totally fantastic, and I still have that 200 year old house which always needs attention. Last spring the north side and schoolhouse were painted and this coming spring the south side will get painted. And so it goes. Schoolhouse? For some reason, a one-room, late 18th century schoolhouse was moved to my back garden, maybe 175 years ago. It’s very sweet. And while I’m on the subject, the rear part of the house is even older as it was originally a cooper shop in the day when the Warren River, a block from me, was a thriving ship building port.

The one not so good part of life is that my big and only brother Joel, Staples ’55, sadly died in 2019 and I can’t even begin to speak about just how much I miss him as we were very close although we lived 1000 miles apart. He was an amazing brother…he was always my rock.

So it's 2021, and here I am living in Warren, RI, with my sweet “street-dog” rescue from the Philippines and an aging but still amusing orange tabby cat. Life is good.