Best Friends Forever
Centenarians found friendship in Fairfax
By LISA M BOUCHER
Messenger Correspondent
FAIRFAX—When Aleita Foss (Chapman) and Doris Ladd (Shepard) met in the early 1920s at Bellows Free Academy, Fairfax and became lifelong friends, the pair never anticipated being the oldest living BFA graduates and the only remaining members of the Class of 1926.
Foss turned 101 on Jan. 8, in a nursing home in Connecticut, where she has been for about six years. Ladd is in a nursing home in St. Albans and turned 100 on July 6.
The best friends remained close into and throughout adulthood, even though their lives took different turns, until time eventually caught up bearing the gifts of old age.
"I think the last time they may have had any contact might have been several years ago," said Bob Chapman, Foss' son and BFA alum. "They last saw each other seven years ago when I took them to the alumni banquet in 2002, it was my 50th reunion and their 76th."
The pair met at BFA when Ladd, a student from East Georgia, went to high school there.
"They got to know each other, because during inclement weather season, when the roads were closed in East Georgia, Doris used to stay at my grandfather's house," said Chapman.
"They lived on Fairfax Plains about a mile from the school." The old Foss Farm was across from the Plains Cemetery on McNall Road.
Foss attended Burlington Business College after she graduated from BFA and married Donald Chapman in 1928 a boy from Williston. The couple lived in the Burlington area until 1945 when Aleita's husband took a job with Pratt and Whitney in Connecticut. She has been there ever since.
Widowed in 1976 at the age of 68, Foss remained in her own home until she was about 90 when she went to live with her daughter, who also lives in Connecticut. She also has another son.
According to Chapman, Foss spent the years in Plainfield, Conn, as a home-maker, active in the community and most notably a member of the Order of the Eastern Stars.
Doris Ladd remained in East Georgia until November 1992 where she moved to in 1914 when she was five years old. It was the home of her maternal grandparents. Her grandfather had passed away in 1912, leaving a small farm to his family and the Ladd's moved in with Doris's grandmother.
A musical family, her grandmother played the organ at the Episcopal Church and her father played the violin. Ladd learned how to play the organ by ear from a few chords she was taught. She attempted formal piano lessons in 1917, but found repeatedly practicing scales to be boring, so soon returned to the favored playing-by-ear.
Ladd later played piano at BFA and spoke of it in an autobiography written for the Georgia Historical Society.
"It was a very difficult transition from a class of five in a one room school to a three-story building with a stage, large auditorium, and subjects for which there had been no preparation, and being asked to play for assembly when I could not read the music!"
Ladd said about entering BFA at age 13 in 1922. "This was offset somewhat by the ability to earn money playing for the school dances. It was also fun to play for gym classes with my good friend, Aleita Foss. We played for 30 minutes why they danced the Virginia reel." (ed. note, Aleita played the banjo)
She tried piano lessons again in the summer of 1924 with a student from Boston's New England Conservatory of Music and after graduating in 1926, Ladd studied with a concert pianist, Marion Mosher Arkley who had moved to Burlington after marrying a physician from Vermont.
"It was a difficult transition from the careless improvisations of a (play-by-ear) player to the exact precise interpretation of a concert pianist," she said in her autobiography. "Practicing three, five, and sometimes seven hours a day enabled me to learn the repertoire in six years instead of the usual 10. Meanwhile, family and friends asked me to teach in Fairfax."
Doris also took on students in Georgia and Essex and in the mid-1930's took some music theory courses at UVM because the piano books had advanced theory in them. She gave piano lessons in Fairfax, Georgia, Essex, and St. Albans to numerous students until 1960 when she began teaching at the new elementary school in Georgia.
She married long time friend Jed Shepard in 1962 at the age of 53 and retired in 1968.
Widowed in February 1992, Ladd moved out of her home in November of 1992 to a room at King's Daughters in St. Albans. She currently resides at St. Albans Health Care and Rehabilitation Center.
The friends managed to remain close across the miles writing letters and seeing each other when Foss-Chapman visited Vermont. A bond was forged between Ladd and Foss's children as well. Chapman continues to visit Ladd when he comes to Vermont each summer.
"I used to take canoe trips down the (Lamoille) River from Fairfax and stop at Doris's place to have a snack and visit," Chapman fondly recalls. (At the right of the Georgia High Bridge you will see Jed Shepard Road, which is where Doris lived)
It is only the ravages of aging and that has kept these two Best Friends Forever apart.
(http://www.vtgrandpa.com/bfa100/aleita_%20foss_chapman.jpg)
Alieta Foss Chapman is shown above with her congratulatory citation from the governor of Connecticut
(http://www.vtgrandpa.com/photos/albums/forum_photos/Doris_Ladd.jpg)
Doris Ladd (Shepard) graduation photo Class of 1926, BFA, Fairfax