Long time North Country resident and retired educator, Ralph Aldrich, passed peacefully at the Pines Care Facility in Lyndonville after bidding a peaceful and loving goodbye to Martha-Jane, his wife of 54 years. Ralph had suffered from Parkinson’s Disease for the last eight years. A well-known singing tenor in the region, Ralph spent part of his last day listening to recordings of the lovely Requiems of Faure and Durufle’s works in which he soloed many times. Ralph was a cherished member of the North Country Chorus, and his contributions to them touched six decades.
Ralph was born in Lancaster, NH on September 21, 1935 the son of E. Neil and Shirley (Morse) Aldrich and attended school in Dalton and Whitefield. He held degrees from Plymouth Teachers College and Boston University, where he was a doctoral candidate, and held an M.F.A. from Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. He had served with the US Air Force. After his retirement, he worked for the Grafton County Guardianship Program and received an award from the Grafton County Courthouse for advocacy in coordinating for the elderly.
Ralph will be remembered fondly by members of the North Country Chamber Players, for whom he served as a board member, and by the Chorus of Westerly, RI, whose summer chorale symposium at Camp Ogontz Ralph attended for twenty summers. Ralph and Martha-Jane loved to travel and took numerous tours with Elder Hostel and the Nashua Chorale Society among other groups and took many tours with his beloved North Country Chorus. It was on one of those tours, at a church in Dublin, Ireland, that he shared his rendition of the solo work in Durufle’s Requiem.
Ralph Aldrich, Professor of English, Emeritus, joined the Lyndon faculty in 1969 to head up the new English for secondary teachers’ license program, preparing aspiring teachers for schools in Vermont and throughout the region. After his teaching, though, he is most proud of the work he did, for 15 of his 26 years at LSC, on the Appointment, Promotion and Tenure Committee-many of those years as chair. In both roles, he helped aspiring teachers find their voice, guiding both students and younger colleagues to successful careers.
If Aldrich’s vocation was teaching, his avocation was singing. He has sung at countless Lyndon commencements, convocations and student orientations, and, long after retiring, at the college’s St. Patrick’s Day concert, a tradition he instituted and continued to produce for many years into his retirement.
His humor and open manner made him the center of a close-knit college community during his days there, and he made sure everyone was welcome at the end-of-year social gatherings for which he became known.
Family includes his wife Martha-Jane (Holmes) Aldrich of Littleton, NH; a sister Sheila (Aldrich) Phillips of Surry, NH and nieces and nephews.
A Memorial Service will be held at the North Congregational Church in St. Johnsbury, VT on Thursday July 14, 2016 at 7 PM. In lieu of flowers, donations in his memory may be made to The Lyndon State College, 101 College Rd., Lyndonville, VT, 05851 to be directed to the E. Ralph and Martha-Jane Aldrich Scholarship Foundation or to the North Country Chorus, PO Box 184, Wells River, VT, 05081. The Bryant Funeral Homes, Berlin and Gorham, NH are in charge of the arrangements.