MCI to honor Sierra Leone RPCV Rosalie Williams
MCI to honor champion of diversity
By CHRIS CHURCHILL
Staff Writer
Copyright © 2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
PITTSFIELD -- Maine Central Institute has announced that Rosalie Williams, who has been associated with the institution for more than 25 years, will be the honorary chair for the 2005 version of the high school's annual auction.
School leaders believe Williams' experiences -- both as a world traveler and advocate for the school's international student presence -- dovetail nicely with the "Around the World in 80 Days" theme of this year's auction, which will be held in May.
Williams said she is pleased to help the school she recently retired from but still loves.
"It's a great honor," she said Wednesday from her home near MCI's South Main Street campus. "(And) it's true that I've had a significant interest in the diversity at MCI. It gives our students in this provincial town of Pittsfield a chance to have some global exposure."
There are about 70 international students at MCI, representing about 15 percent of the student body at a private institution that serves as the public high school for students from Pittsfield, Detroit and Burnham. Williams said the school contains a breadth of cultures she would have benefited from as she grew up in the western Maine town of West Paris.
But her exposure to the world came later. After college, she joined the Peace Corps, spending two years in Sierra Leon. "Outside of marrying my husband, it was the best thing that ever happened to me," Williams said.
That husband, Peter Williams, served at MCI with Rosalie. He was a teacher, a trustee, and, briefly, an interim head of school.
Despite their professional duties, the Williamses found time to travel. There were teaching assignments in China and Jamaica. And there were tours of Europe and cross-country trips, including one detailed in the Web site www.peterandrosalie.com.
Last August, Peter Williams died in a motorcycle crash in New Hampshire's mountains, shortly after retirement from teaching post at the University of Maine at Farmington. He was 63.
"I'm going to do all I can to memorialize my husband," said Williams, adding that she is planning a Web site devoted to his life.
Williams said the Pittsfield and MCI community "has been extremely kind and caring" in the wake of the tragedy.
She said she has established new goals for her post-retirement life, including attempting to reconnect with the people she and Peter met while traveling and performing public-service work.
To that end, Williams is working with the fundraising campaign for a new wing on the Pittsfield Public Library.
And she hopes she'll continue to travel, mentioning Scandinavia and a return to China as possible trips.
But she intend to be in Pittsfield in May, she said, for school's auction and tribute to diversity.
The annual event has raised more than $100,000 in the last five years -- including about $25,000 last year -- with the money benefiting student music, athletic and other extracurricular programs.
School spokeswoman Carolyn Smith said there was no doubt Williams should be this year's honorary chair. "We felt if we were going to have (diversity) as our theme," Smith said, "then she was the only person (we could choose)."
Chris Churchill -- 861-9252
cchurchill@centralmaine.com
