Also on today’s menu:
Completing ‘The Grid’
Mountain View Fires Assistant Director
Milo Pike Literally Paved His Career
While visiting our cottage in the North Country this week, we learned that writer and publisher John Harrigan of Colebrook, an avid outdoorsman whose columns appeared in the Union Leader and the Salmon Press papers, among others, had died on December 26 at age 75.
Harrigan had been diagnosed with an advanced cancer in November, according to his sister, Mary Trowbridge.
During his 52-year career in journalism, Harrigan served as an independent voice who nurtured several reporters at the Coos County Democrat, the Northern Beacon, and the Colebrook News and Sentinel. Barbara Tetreault, retired managing editor of the Berlin Daily Sun, said Harrigan’s passing is a real loss for the world of journalism and for the North Country.
“John also had a sense of humor that manifested itself in pothole ads and April Fool’s editions,” she said.
In old newspaper parlance, when an edition was put on the bed of a press, it was said to have been “put to bed.” His last column having been written, Harrigan would probably appreciate seeing the term applied to his career.
Completing ‘The Grid’
Josh Brooks, a physical therapist who took up hiking as a weekend hobby, has completed “The Grid” — a task that involves hiking all 48 of the state’s 4,000-foot peaks in each month of the year. Brooks completed the task on December 18 with a summit of Mount Moosilauke.
Once his paperwork is cleared by Ed Hawkins, who keeps the records for the unofficial scorebook, Brooks believes he will be the 133rd person who has ever accomplished the “The Grid,” finishing a little less than four years after summiting his first of the state’s 4,000-footers.
Brooks, who grew up in Alexandria and graduated from Newfound Regional High School in 1993, served in the U.S. Army, spending a decade as a pharmacy technician, then 16 years in the Reserves that included a 10-and-a-half-month deployment to Honduras. He now lives in Laconia, where he and his wife raised their daughters, and he works as a therapist for a practice in Gilford managed by Frisbie Memorial Hospital.
Mountain View Fires Assistant Director
Patti Cain, the former assistant director of nursing at Mountain View Community nursing home in Ossipee, was abruptly fired last month when her position was eliminated. She had 44 years of nursing experience and had been at the nursing home for 12 years.
Cain had the third-highest position, behind Administrator Dee Brown and Director of Nursing Sue Dodier. Brown said the elimination of Cain’s $100,000 position freed up money that could go toward helping with the recruitment of nursing staff amidst the sort of nursing shortage that nursing homes and other healthcare facilities are experiencing.
Cain was offered three weeks’ severance, but she refused to sign the separation agreement in order to contest her firing.
Milo Pike Literally Paved His Career
Luther Pike of New Hampton formed Pike’s Improved Concrete Company in 1872. His great-grandson, Milo, is now 92, and he recently looked back on his career that grew the business from 12 men, two trucks, and wheelbarrow into a multi-million company with 1,400 employees that eventually was purchased by a corporation with headquarters in Ireland.
In its heyday, Pike Industries’ headquarters in Tilton included an enormous plant with an airplane runway, two planes and a helicopter — which enabled Pike to jet between job sites.
Pike now divides his time between Hudson, Florida, and Belmont, New Hampshire.
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Josh Brooks is my cousin Sandy's son. It is a great accomplishment. I tell him he's nuts...in a good way.