Thornton Academy Postscripts Alumni Magazine Fall 2008 | Page 20

Academy

Thornton
Giving Back to TA
James H. Leary ’47 and his wife Edna encouraged TA donations on their 50th anniversary
Jim Leary ’47 and his wife Edna have a lesson
to teach when it comes to giving back to their
community. For their 50th wedding anniversary
last year, they asked friends and family to make a
donation to Thornton Academy in lieu of gifts.
“People feel they have to give something but a
lot of times it’s an item that you have out for a while
but it just ends up in the attic,” Jim said.
Edna agreed. “We don’t need gifts. Thornton can
use the money, and I don’t have to dust it.”
Their generosity raised more than $1,000 for the
Thornton Fund.
Anyone living in Saco may have heard of the
Leary Farm. Jim says he has been “semi-retired” for
years but doesn’t know much about what it means
to take a day off. He and Edna along with two more
generations of the family keep busy – on holidays,
Submitted photo
on weekends and all the days in between – with
about 100 cows on their property.
Jim Leary and his wife, Edna, at their 50th wedding
It’s the last dairy farm in Saco, a city once
anniversary. In lieu of gifts, family and friends were
encouraged to make donations to the Thornton Fund.
populated
by dozens of
similar operations. The business is now run by the couple’s son
Tim Leary ’77, who milks the cows twice daily just as someone
in the family has done there each day, every day for more than
60 years.
Jim says he believes that there were about 50 other farms
just like his back when he graduated from Thornton Academy.
And that’s certainly not the only thing to change over the years.
“When I was in school, there were no more than six cars in
the parking lot and most of those were owned by the teachers,”
he said. “Main Street was a two-lane road back then. I graduated
with a class of 80 students. It’s so different today even though
it doesn’t feel like that long ago.”
Jim, who lived in Scarborough until he was 13, said his life
was never the same after an uncle passed away and left the 125See Giving Back on page 5

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Postscripts

Fall 2008 * Vol. 43, No. 2

Thornton

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