In Memoriam

Richard E. Dunlap '64 He liked nothing better than to make people happy By Karen Tongue Hammond '64

As befits someone who loved acting, Dick Dunlap '64 wore many different hats in his lifetime. In addition to performing with community theater groups, he was also a writer, a radio and television announcer and technician, an avid sports fan, and, says his wife, Wanda, "an unrepentant punster." But Dunlap had a serious side as well, becoming an advocate for people with mental illness and other disabilities later in life.

Dunlap, who died last May at age 68 of complications from diabetes, liked nothing better than to make people happy. His daughter, Abbi Mountain, remembers her father's hilarious facial expressions, which never failed to provoke laughter. He was just as happy with an audience of one as he was performing to a full house in the theater. It didn't matter where he was—if he could spread a little happiness, he would. She recalls hearing a story about her father dining in a restaurant when a child at another table lost a tooth. Dunlap slipped the waitress a dollar bill and asked her to tell the child that it came from the tooth fairy. When he married Wanda, his second wife, her family, with seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, gave him the perfect audience for Bozo the Clown and the Easter Bunny. "He could turn any small event involving the children into a royal affair," Wanda says.

As a boy growing up in Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, Dunlap began his lifelong love affair with baseball, pond hockey, fishing and hiking in the forest, says his brother, Douglas. "He led me on my first hikes, heading out into the fields and woods behind our home in Chesterfield when he was 8 and I was 6." This summer, Doug hiked the Appalachian Trail in his brother's memory.

Even as a child, Dunlap's way with words was evident, says Doug, who remembers him "writing short stories and commentaries on life and reading them to me—the younger brother and captive audience. It was not surprising that he would one day work in broadcasting and later embrace community theater acting."

During his years at UNH, Dunlap spent much of his spare time at the campus radio station, WUNH. He did play-by-play of hockey games perched on a chair on top of a shed. "There were some cold and windy times up there, but Dick loved it," says Doug. During college summers, Dunlap worked at children's camps, using his drama skills to draw out those who seemed left out. Even then, says his brother, "he saw and celebrated the gifts within each person," a skill that he used in a later career as a job developer and coach for people with disabilities.

Dunlap shared his gifts not just in his working life but also in his acting. Together with his wife (with Dunlap in the photo at right of a play performance), he performed in small theaters throughout Maine and ran a theater camp at Pilgrim Lodge, a Christian summer camp on Lake Cobbosseecontee.

Dunlap developed diabetes when he was 19. "I believe that personal experience with chronic illness is part of what inspired him to want to give so much to others," says Abbi. He was a talented raconteur, she says, and hid his serious health issues from those around him. "He was a deep romantic," she adds, "who liked to disguise himself as a clown."

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