Kathryn Drusilla Fielding Stemper, Secretary to the President Emerita, died on January 25, 2008, in New Harbor, Maine.

Born on May 12, 1912, in New London, Conn., she prepared for college at the Williams Memorial Institute and graduated from Connecticut College for Women (now Connecticut College) in 1932. She worked as a secretary at the Travelers’ Bank and Trust in Hartford, Conn., before returning to Connecticut College as secretary to President Katherine Blunt and President Rosemary Parks. In 1957, she became the secretary to President James Stacy Coles H’68 at Bowdoin and served as secretary to President Roger Howell ’58 until her retirement in 1978. She was made an honorary member of the Bowdoin Alumni Association. The Class of 1958 made her an honorary member of the Class, and the citation presented to her read, “Incomparable secretary to Bowdoin’s presidents, she knoweth how to soothe the savage breasts of perturbed professors and smooth the ruffled feathers of rambunctious undergraduates; invincibly discreet, she is as compassionate as a House Mother, as efficient as a computer, her only ‘feed- back’ is the milk of human kindness. If her office were next to the Oval Room in the White House, the United States would be basking in an Era of Good Feeling equaled only by the administration of George Washington.” She was an active member of the United Methodist Church in New London, Conn., and in Damariscotta, Maine. In 1978, she married Herman Stemper, who died in 1992. She is survived by two sisters, Elizabeth Fielding of Oxton Hill, Md., and Ruth Fielding Henard of Boulder, Colo., and several nieces and nephews.