Obituary of Ann R. Fogg

Ann Royce Fogg of Monroe, Maine died Thursday, November 7, 2019, at the age of 85 in Waldo County Hospital, Belfast, passing away peacefully while a friend read poetry to her. She was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, June 11, 1934 to Leonard Southworth Cunningham and Hazel (Beach) Royce Cunningham. She will be remembered by the Fogg and Sorensen families, her longtime college friend Betty Lou Grant, her many friends in Monroe including Lynn Swiriduk, Rebecca Childs and Joan Cheetum, teaching colleagues and many others whose lives she touched in a positive and vibrant way. She graduated from West Springfield public schools in 1952 and the University of Massachusetts in 1956, with a bachelor’s degree in English. On November 17, 1956 she and David Thomas Fogg of Braintree, Massachusetts married. While he was in military service at Fort Leonard Wood they lived in Missouri and Ann taught in a rural two-room school. Back in Massachusetts, she worked at Stone House Gardens in Norwell, as a textbook editor at Allyn and Bacon in Boston, and returned to teaching following David’s death in 1961. In 1968 she earned a master’s degree in English at Simmons College in Boston and after another year of graduate work spent several years teaching in Vermont, where also she pursued a life-long passion for skiing. Returning to Massachusetts, she taught at an alternative school and community colleges. Ann also did freelance writing for weekly and daily newspapers on the South Shore. She lived for several years with a cooperative community on an old farm in Norwell where she formed a number of life-long friendships. In 1980, she and Egil Groth Sorensen bought 20 acres of south-facing wooded land in Monroe where they built a timber-frame, passive-solar, wood-heated house of Egil’s design. They married in 1983. Egil, a native of Norway, was working as a marine engineer on the Great Lakes in the summer and as a full-time ski patroller at Killington in Vermont where they met. Ann and Egil made several trips together to Norway to visit family and she made one on her own in 2007 for nine weeks. She studied Norwegian from the time she met Egil until a couple of years before her death so that she could converse and correspond with family members. Egil died in 2003. For 12 years Ann taught English at University College Bangor (now UMA-Bangor), where she was a member and chair of the Women in the Curriculum Committee and several other faculty committees. She was passionate about teaching, and spent many hours working with students individually on their writing. She retired in 1999. After retirement, Ann returned to freelance writing and became more active in the community. She was a member and chair of the Monroe Conservation Commission and one of those responsible for the creation of The Northern Pond Conservation Area. Ann helped maintain trails and mark boundaries, participating in work crews up until late April 2019. She was a sought-after book group facilitator in several mid-coast communities, and served on the Monroe Library Board of Trustees. For many years she read poetry weekly to a dedicated group at Brewer Rehab, carefully choosing poems to reflect the outer world or following the requests of her listeners. Always active, Ann was an avid gardener, loved to go for a daily swim in the summer, participated in week-long canoe camp trips with other women of like mind. She lived for the good snowfalls of winter so she could strap on her cross country skis and take to the trails. A Celebration of Life will be held for Ann in Monroe on May 2, 2020 so that a walk at her beloved Northern Pond can be incorporated and time spent outdoors where Ann was most happy.