1/21/19

Book of the Week (1/21/2019)

Counter Culture: Clams, Convents and a Circle of Global Citizens by Eleanor Dunfey-Freiburger (Portsmouth, N.H. : Peter Randall Publisher, 2019).

New Hampshire author, Eleanor Dunfey-Freiburger as the youngest of twelve children, presents the unique history of her large, intriguing family, The Dunfeys. "Counter Culture" traces this incredible family's history from their Irish origins to their Granite State entrepreneurship in businesses such as Dunfey's Fried Clam Stand in Hampton, NH, Omni/Dunfey Hotels and beyond!
"When LeRoy ‘Roy” Dunfey called out “Hey...Dunfey” in his fried clam restaurant in the 1940s, at least seven of his twelve children would turn around. Then he’d point to the one he needed without having to remember names. Roy and Catherine ‘Kate’ Manning had met and married thirty years earlier as teenage workers in Lowell, Massachusetts textile mills. With little formal education or resources, but with a store of humor, entrepreneurial zest, and spiritual roots, they collared the American dream starting out in 1915 with Dunfey’s Orchestra, a luncheonette, and a baby every two years through the Great Depression to the doorstep of World War II. Written by their twelfth child, this saga reveals the lasting influence her parents had on each of their dozen kids: around the kitchen table digesting political fare; over restaurant counters meeting a diverse world of people; into and out of convents serving as educators; on to Boston’s Parker House, Omni International Hotel boardrooms, and, for forty-five years, still around the table of the family’s not-for-profit Global Citizens Circle’s civil dialogues." --Amazon.com
Eleanor Dunfey is Professor Emerita at Southern New Hampshire University where she was the first endowed chair of business ethics and civic engagement, and a professor of world religions and contemporary moral issues for 25 years. She taught in the University’s Malaysia program in 2001.
For the past 15 years, Professor Dunfey has chaired Global Citizens Circle, a non-profit educational forum that, for 40 years, brought together diverse groups of people for civil discourse and action on critical issues in our communities, nation, and world.
Eleanor has been a member of many NH boards, most recently the Endowment for Health and the Bhutanese Community of NH.
When many refugees from South Africa and Central America received scholarships and attended SNHU in the 1980s, Eleanor and her husband, Dr. Jim Freiburger, were priviliged to have a number of refugee families live with them and have kept in close contact with them for the past 28 years.
She is the recipient of honorary degrees from Southern New Hampshire University in 2014 and Franklin Pierce University in 2008. She is married to SNHU Professor Emeritus James Freiburger; they have two grown children and five grandchildren.--Building Community in NH website

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