Hail & Farewell
Joe
Contino, who taught in the music department for thirty-three
years, died on June 30 at age 77 after a courageous battle with cancer.
He had directed the bands, the drill team, and the instrumental music
program, founded the Youth Orchestra and was a member of the faculty woodwind
quintet and a number of non-university groups, including his beloved Horse
Mountain Jazz Band, which played at the memorial concert for him in September.
Everyone agrees
that he was a first-class musician and teacher, said his longtime colleague
Dorothy Ornest, who accompanied him on the piano in every clarinet recital
from the mid-’60s until his retirement. And he was an accommodating
colleague. When he and Ornest were divided only by a plasterboard wall
in one of the old Mobile Units, they had to devise a way of teaching at
the same time. “When Joe taught saxophone,” says Ornest, “I
couldn’t hear my voice students.” They finally bought some heavy
drapery and hung one on each side of the wall.
Campus sports legend Lou Bush, ’34 died
Sept. 16 in Greenfield at 88. MSC’s first All-American in football,
he had forty-five career touchdowns that are still a campus record. The
5-foot, 6-inch athlete also excelled at basketball and baseball, and was
named a charter member of the UMass Athletic Hall of Fame in 1969. He
had a seven-year career in minor league baseball, and went on to teach
chemistry while coaching several sports at Greenfield High School for
27 years.
Stowell
Goding, 96, a professor of French with interests far beyond that
field, died July 13. He retired from UMass in 1970. During his early years
in Amherst, he initiated a music appreciation course. A scholar, teacher
and world citizen, he was decorated by the French government for assisting
orphans during World War II and for obtaining books for France’s
libraries.
