When Dr. Donaldson Koons, chairman of the geology department at Colby College and secretary of Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection, said to me back in 1972, “Did you really write this?” I was shocked.

He was holding the manuscript of what would become my first book, “Polluted Paradise” (published in 1973), and I’d nervously asked him to read it. He’d surprisingly agreed.

A brilliant, often acerbic man whom I admired for his sharp mind and expertise as a scientist, now he stood there in his office observing me with a gimlet eye, and his question was more than unnerving.

“Of course I wrote it!” I blurted, but wanted to howl, “What other idiot author/artist would spend three years researching pollution problems in the state of Maine with hardly any money but a lot of anger at the yearly fish kill in the Kennebec?”

Don Koons didn’t smile or palliate. He simply said, “Would you like me to write the foreword?” and I nearly fainted with amazed joy. He’d put his imprimatur on my work.

That gimlet eye will be much missed.

Jean Ann Pollard

Winslow

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