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In 2023, the College was notified by Abby Gross Walker ’77 that her mother, Abby Minot Gross W’37, P’77, had passed away at ninety-nine years of age and had included a provision in her estate plans for the College. The bequest was designated specifically for an endowed fund established by her late husband, Bill Gross ’37, P’77, who referred to the two Abbys in the family as Abby Sr. and Abby Jr. Bill established many endowed funds at ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾, with several dedicated to the support of the ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ Scientific Station at Kent Island (BSSKI). Abby Sr.’s bequest will be added to the corpus of the Professor Alfred O. Gross Fund for Kent Island, which provides annual support for operating expenses at BSSKI.  

The Gross and Minot families have supported the College’s biological field station on Kent Island since the 1930s, and it is Bill Gross who was chiefly responsible for the College coming to own this unique island in the Grand Manan Archipelago in the Bay of Fundy.

Bill, the son of Alfred and Edna Gross, grew up on Boody Street in Brunswick, Maine, with his brother, Tom ’40, and sister, Louise Gross Minot P’70. He listed “exploring” as one the things he enjoyed most in his Brunswick High School yearbook. Bill came by his interest from tagging along with his father, Alfred O. Gross, who went on numerous safaris, expeditions, and birding trips during his forty-one-year career as a professor of natural history at ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾.

A self-taught naturalist, Alfred Gross struck out for college when no one from his farming community did so. At the University of Illinois, Alfred undertook the first census of birds in Illinois, walking the length and breadth of the entire state. He went on to Harvard, earning his PhD before accepting a faculty position at the Medical School of Maine at ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ College in 1912. He joined the College’s biology faculty when the medical school closed. During his tenure at ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾, he authored 256 scientific articles and amassed one of the finest ornithological libraries, consisting of upwards of five thousand items, which he donated to ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ in 1959. An inveterate explorer, fascinated by birds, Alfred traveled all over the world, studying them in every state in the United States, every province in Canada, and twenty European countries, as well as countries in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, the Middle East, and lands “down under.”

Within days of completing his freshman year at ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾, and as his father was leaving on an Arctic expedition with Donald B. MacMillan, Bill departed on an expedition to the Bay of Fundy in Canada with three ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ students—Frederic Fisher ’35, Frank “Burt” Whitman ’35, and Paul Favor ’36—to study birds and mammals on Kent Island and to undertake a climate study.  

At that time, the island was owned by J. Sterling Rockefeller. (How Rockefeller came to own Kent Island is an amazing tale.) Bill’s 1934 expedition led to Rockefeller giving the island to the College. Rockefeller’s goal in acquiring the island was to try to save Eider ducks who nested there from having humans steal their eggs and the feather-lining of their nests, causing nest failure. But he was deeply interested in an institution owning the island and using it as a scientific research station. Bill’s experience on Kent Island underpinned his deep love and appreciation for the place for the rest of his life.  

Careful readers of this story may have noticed that Abby Gross’s maiden name was Minot and that Louise Minot was the daughter of Alfred and Edna Gross. Louise met her future husband, Otis Minot, when he was on active duty attached to the weather station at the air station in Brunswick during WWII. This led to Louise’s brother, Bill Gross, meeting Otis’s sister, Abby Minot.  

Louise and Otis Minot’s son, Ed '70, met his wife, Midge, when they were on Kent Island in the summer of 1969. Ed followed in his grandfather’s footsteps, pursuing his PhD and becoming a professor at Massey University in New Zealand. Like his grandfather, Ed is keenly interested in birds. In the summer of 2017, Ed and Midge served as codirectors of the ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ Scientific Station at Kent Island. 

The College and its Kent Islanders are indebted to the Gross and Minot families for their deep and enduring love and support of the ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø±¬ÍøÕ¾ College Scientific Station Kent Island.