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LINEC Steering Committee Members 2022-23

Nola Jordan, Chair

Nola is a retired high school French teacher.  Born and raised in Kentucky, she spent her working life in Connecticut.  When retirement brought her to New Hampshire, she began seeking ways to become part of the community.  She worked part-time in a small independent bookstore – a dream job for a lifelong reader – and began volunteering with several organizations:  Concord Hospital, the Concord Cold Weather Shelter, Kearsarge Food Pantry, and the Friendly Kitchen.  She served three terms as a trustee of her local library, the final four years as Treasurer.

In 2010 friends introduced her to LINEC.  Taking courses through LINEC has enabled Nola to pursue on going interests as well as explore new ones.  An added benefit has been the opportunity to get to know and connect with so many interesting fellow learners.

Throughout her life, learning about the world through travel has been Nola’s great passion, albeit one drastically curtailed at the moment.  Closer to home, she loves being outdoors, whether hiking, skiing, golfing or birding.  When Mother Nature keeps her inside, she enjoys reading, knitting and learning to play the recorder.

Bob Anderson, Vice-Chair & Nominating Committee Member

My first contact with LINEC was through a course offered a few years ago at the Mt. Kearsage Indian Museum. Since the COVID lockdown I have delved into a variety of courses to foster new learning. LINEC is a goldmine.

My interests include day sailing, veggie gardening, getting outside, some sketching and watercolor. The Kent Street Coalition and voting rights action is a commitment as well as serving on other community boards and committees. Hannah and I enjoy our life together in Concord, finding ways to stay in touch with family across the country.

Before retirement I was a hospital chaplain and clinical educator of chaplaincy, serving seven different hospitals in the Northeast over 45 years. My last fulltime position was in New York City where I grew up. I valued the challenges of ministering, teaching and writing in multi-cultural/faith metropolitan settings with a focus on clinical learning. I stepped into retirement seven years ago and continue as a group facilitator in UCC (United Church of Christ) monthly clergy support groups.

Lee deBell, Treasurer

Lee has been an active member and Treasurer of LINEC since 2011.

Prior to retiring from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2010, Lee spent the final eighteen years of his career as a national training specialist, developing implementation and training plans for the nationwide rollout of multiple large strategic computer systems in the agency. He also served as the lead instructor for many of the training courses offered and led a team that developed and implemented a “Train-the-Trainer” program to develop additional instructor teams throughout the United States.

Lee is also a volunteer Instructor, Deputy State Director, and Data Manager for the AARP Driver Safety Program in New Hampshire and enjoys teaching the AARP Smart Driver classroom training course.

Lee enjoys photographing nature and finding ways to use technology to improve how we manage and carry out our daily lives. He and his wife, Charlotte, also enjoy their family and friends, reading, international travel (prior to Covid), and spending time enjoying nature.

Chris Hague, Publicity and Marketing

As I set out in life, I had no expectations of becoming a librarian. I taught fifth grade at the school I had attended, under the same beloved principal who was there when I was a child, then moved on to Hatfield, Massachusetts, where I taught fifth and sixth grade language arts while earning my PhT (Put Husband Through) at UMass. When he graduated, we moved to New Hampshire, where I taught in Bow and held various positions in the Bow Education Association, which I thoroughly enjoyed. But I left, and spent some years at a scattering of part-time jobs as well as the full-time job of being a young parent.
Quite by chance, I was recruited to the evening shift at the Weare Public Library. From there my responsibilities and work hours expanded until I retired in 2016 after 17 years as director. The bridge between classroom teaching and library services is short. Today’s library is more than a repository for books. It’s an institution that fosters lifelong learning and personal development.

With this vocational history, there was a natural attraction to LINEC, where people share a common interest in the topics LINEC presents and the personal contacts it fosters. Besides enjoying LINEC classes, I am Vice President of the Eleanor Campbell Charitable Fund and Co-Chair of its Scholarship Committee. I’m a longtime member of Kitchen Table Writers, a spinoff from the writers’ group I started at the library. Other interests include knitting, sewing, reading, and spending time exploring outdoors with the family.

Don Melander, Curriculum Committee Chair

Don Melander is a Professor of Literature and Humanities emeritus at New England College where he taught literature, writing, and humanities courses and served in several administrative positions for over 50 years. In the early 1980s he served on the board of the New Hampshire Humanities Council, for whom he led book discussions for over 20 years at libraries around the state, and for over a decade at the end of his career he served as dramaturge for the Open Door Theatre. He holds a BA in English and history from Northern Illinois University, and an MA and PhD in English and American Literature from Syracuse University. Don has been leading seminars on American poetry for over ten years and on movies for about half that time. Don is joining the Steering Committee in his capacity as the new Chair of the Curriculum Committee.

Fran Philippe, Secretary, Curriculum Committee Member, Mailings

Fran Philippe is an elementary school educator for whom LINEC has played a big part in her retirement, both as a ‘student’ and administratively. She shares her time between local volunteer opportunities and experiencing the beautiful environment in which we live, in any manner she can.

Richard A. Hesse

Prof. Hesse graduated from Georgetown University Law Center and served as a community lawyer in Philadelphia on a fellowship from the University of Pennsylvania. He headed a police community relations project in Philadelphia before moving to Boston where he headed a national project focused on the constitutional rights of consumers. In 1974 he joined the faculty of Franklin Pierce Law Center [now University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law) where he concentrated on state and federal constitutional law and international human rights. Prof. Hesse has been an active advocate for civil and human rights for more than 50 years and was twice awarded the Bill of Rights Award by the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union. He has served as Humanities Council speaker since the early1980’s presenting programs on Civil Liberties and National Security, Free Speech, Freedom of Religion, the United States Supreme Court, The Founding Fathers, Daniel Webster, John Winant and John Marshall. In the late 1990’s he became active in LINEC as a student, a member of the Steering Committee and Curriculum Committee and as a presenter of courses including “1776: the Year That Changed The World,” “Daniel Webster and John Winant,” “Founding Fathers: What Were They Thinking,” “Music As A Mirror of History,” “The Freedom Riders of 1961” and several others.

Shirley Hesse, Nominating Committee Chair

Shirley was born and grew up in Maine.  She earned her BSc degree at Farmington (ME) State Teachers College (now the University of Maine at Farmington) and her MSc degree at the Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel University).  She taught high school in Maine and New Jersey.  In the summer of 1961, she took a wonderful trip around the world before starting graduate school.  Shirley moved to NH with her family (husband, daughter and cat) in 1978.  She enjoys reading, music, (especially opera), gardening, photography, history, and traveling.  With her husband, she has visited all 50 states, most of Canada and all the continents including Antarctica and above the Arctic Circle.  Shirley and Dick have also enjoyed more than 50 Elderhostel/Road Scholar programs and trips.  She has been a member of LINEC for more than 30 years.

Linda Graham, Steering Committee Member

A graduate of Case Western Reserve University in classics, Linda’s life adventure quickly veered into the culture of the time.  She and her husband Ralph Jimenez built their home in the woods of New Hampshire, off the beaten path and off the grid, where they lived, intent on life in the arts, for many years.  Coming back to live in Concord, she worked in various capacities in Early Childhood Education, retiring from the NH Dept. of Health and Human Services, Bureau of Developmental Services.  Free now to continue her work in the visual arts, which has been a tangent to all other work she has done, she practices her art in painting, drawing or collage on a daily basis.  She also has taken the lessons learned from years spent in the woods to speak to and advocate for our wild natural places, especially as the NH leader of the Great Old Broads for Wilderness.

Ann Ludders, Catalog Editor

Having grown up on the West Coast (Vancouver B.C. to be exact), Ann moved to New England with her husband in 1973 and has immersed herself in the history and beauty of the region ever since. After her third child entered the school system, Ann worked in early childhood education for a number of years in several capacities.  And finding it difficult to say no to a request for service, Ann has been on the Board of the Weare Public Library, the Weare Historical Society and currently the Weare/Henniker Quaker Meeting.  She is an avid outdoors person and although she no longer hikes the 4,000 footers, she gets out on the trails regularly, and when not hiking she loves getting her hands dirty in the garden.  Ann and her husband have been enjoying LINEC classes for more than 10 years.

Curtiss Rude, Steering Committee Member

Curtiss Rude has a BS in Physics from Carnegie-Mellon University and an MS in Electrical Engineering (solid-state physics) from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  He worked in the microelectronics industry for IBM in Vermont for 20+ years in a variety of engineering and engineering management roles.  His second career was as a high school chemistry and physics teacher for seven years.  Upon retirement he took up astronomy as a hobby.  He also plays club chess most weeks.  Curtiss and his wife Suzanne have two grown daughters and reside in Loudon.  Curtiss has taught a LINEC course in both the spring and fall sessions in 2023.