By GERRY deSIMAS, JR.
Special to the Post
CANTON, October 24, 2007 -- Canton High School honored five graduates earlier this month with its sixth annual Wall of Fame induction ceremony. They joined 34 other graduates who have been honored for their leadership and service to the community and in their chosen professions.
Lisa D’Addeo Bohman (Class of 1978), Ralph Chartier (1974), Kenneth King (1947), Barbara Elston Lowell (1974) and the late Ahlene Gibbons Wilder (1915) were inducted into the Wall of Fame.
Bohman, an singer in high school and in college at Trinity in Hartford, has held several communications positions in her career. She has served as director of Communications for the Republicans in the Connecticut State Senate. She has also served as director of public relations for McLean in Simsbury and is currently the executive director of the Avon Chamber of Commerce.
And she has continued to sing, performing as a soloist in seven churches throughout Greater Hartford. She joins her grandfather, John C. Meconkey (1920) in the Wall of Fame.
Chartier was honored for his 26 years of service with the New York City police department. He held a variety of positions including Sergeant/Detective. He worked in narcotics, investigative units and on a plain clothes anti-crime unit. He was a supervisor of one anti-crime unit would worked near Times Square in New York City and other tourist areas.
“I was just one of a thousand guys,” Chartier said. “I didn’t do anything special. I performed my duty just like a lot of other guys did. I would rather be considered as a worthy representative of the good people from the Class of 1974.”
He graduated from Northeastern University in Boston with a degree in criminal justice. He has retired from the police force and now lives in Greentown, Pennsylvania.
King won varsity letters in high school in football, basketball and baseball before going to Springfield College where he earned a degree in physical education. He accepted a teaching position at Granby where he coached soccer, basketball and baseball.
He was named director of athletics at Granby in 1957 and he helped construct the athletic program at the school that won 17 state titles in his 30-year career. The basketball court was renamed the Kenneth L. King gymnasium when he retired in 1987.
“I got a nice solid education from the wonderful teachers I had in Canton. They taught us how to get along with people which was so important,” King said. “It’s a pleasing and honorable moment. Any success I’ve had is due to my family, the educators I worked with, the coaches I competed with and the hundreds of students I was worked with.”
Lowell was honored for her lifelong service to the town of Canton. She taught business and was a reading tutor at Canton. She served as a director for Collinsville Savings Society and on the Canton Police Commission. She served on the Canton Library Board, the Canton Historical Society and on the Board of Deacons at the North Canton Congregational Church. In 2003, she was honored as Canton’s volunteer of the
year.
“It is a thrill and an honor because I’m joining my Dad on the Wall,” Lowell said. Her father is Clair Elston (1912) was inducted in 2003.
Born in 1898, Wilder graduated from Collinsville High in 1915. She attended Smith College in Northampton, Mass., and received a degree in teaching. She taught in Vermont for two years before returning to Collinsville in 1921 to marry Frank Wilder, who worked in the Collins Company in the Electrical Department.
She left teaching to raise a family but when Frank died suddenly at an early age, Ahlene went back to school at age 51 to get recertified to teach. She taught fourth and fifth grade students in Canton for the next 20 years. While touching the lives of hundreds of students, she also served as a mentor to new teachers that joined the school.
Wilder was known to be a firm and fair teacher, even by her own nieces, nephews and grandchildren. She was 101.5 when she died.
