July 17 , 2007 Conrad C. Born

Our classmate Conrad C. Born died on July 17, 2007 at his home in Falmouth, Maine, of leukemia first diagnosed only two months before. He had decided to suspend chemotherapy treatments, because he felt they were causing his condition to become worse, not better.

Conrad came to Dartmouth from the Dublin School in New Hampshire and majored in philosophy. He belonged to the Outing and Sailing clubs while in Hanover, was an avid backpacker and an enthusiast about automobiles. His roommate for three years, Mel Converse, recalls that he owned a Volkswagen "bug," with a license plate that said, GULP. But one night the car was wrecked and Conrad injured when he was involved in a head-on collision with someone who was driving on the wrong side of the road near Claremont, N.H. It did not blunt his enthusiasm for motoring, and he soon owned another car.

Upon graduating from Dartmouth, Conrad joined the U.S. Coast Guard, went to Officer's Candidate School, and later served on the island of Rhodes in Greece on  a ship supporting the Voice of America. Later, returning to the U.S., he was assigned to the buoy tender, Coast Guard Cutter "Spar," and when he left active duty still served the Coast Guard as an instructor of boat safety courses.

Later, he pursued a career in computer programming and data processing, living in seacoast New Hampshire and southern Maine. He continued to backpack and had a boat in which he and his family sailed the New England coast. He also traveled widely with the family throughout the U.S. and made several trips to the Caribbean. He had a lifelong love of photography.

When he took ill, both Mel and another of our classmates who had lived down the hall in Cutter Hall at Dartmouth, Ken Gordon, paid him a last visit for what Ken described as "a wonderful two-hour conversation."

Conrad is survived by his wife of 20 years, Patricia, two sons, Christian of South Berwick, Ga., and George of Key West, Fla., his former wife, Virginia Spencer, a step-daughter, Kathryn Mavity and her husband, Michael, of Epsom, N.H., a step-son, Robert Jepson of Concord, N.H., five grandchildren, and a sister, Mary Born Jenkins of Westbank, British Columbia.

The family asked that contributions in his memory be sent to the Hospice of Southern Maine, 180 U.S. Route 1, #1, Scarborough, Maine 04074, the Westbrook Animal Refuge League, 449 Stroudwater St., Westbrook, Maine 04092 or to the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, 1 Bowdoin Mill Island, Suite 201, Topsham, Maine 04086.