Who I Am
My grandparents were immigrants – from Ireland, England and Canada. They married and reared their families in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where my parents were born. My mother was the daughter of a carpenter and one of ten siblings who survived infancy. She dropped out of school in the 9th grade to help her older sister care for her newborn daughter. My father was one of seven children whose mill-worker father died when my Dad was twelve years old. My brother and I grew up in a factory neighborhood in Andover where everyone on the street, including my parents, worked for the J.P. Stevens Company. I graduated from Merrimack College in 1966 and over the next five years earned Master’s and Doctoral degrees at Duke University.

My father became unemployed in 1972 after thirty-five years with Stevens when the company moved the last of its operations to the South. He had no pension from Stevens – a famously anti-union company – and so, at age 62, he started working in a Main Street hardware store. When he became eligible for Social Security, my parents moved from their rented house to a new rent-subsidized elderly housing complex in Andover. My father died in 1980 and my mother remained at Frye Circle until she moved to an assisted living facility in the same mill (converted to apartments in the mid-1990’s) in which she had worked as a mill girl. She died in 2005. I think my parents would say that they lived a good life. But if it not for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid their final years would have been unimaginable. I always thought of my own Social Security taxes not as money being stockpiled for my retirement but rather as money I was contributing to my parents’ retirement.

In 1968, when I was a graduate student and Judith Delaney was a newly certified R.N., we married and moved away from New England. North Carolina was our first home but Maine is our last. We bought our home in York in 1999. I have been a professor (at the University of California), a department chair and a dean (at Northeastern University), provost (at Elizabethtown College of Pennsylvania), and president of a small company providing study-abroad programs to hundreds of college students every year (BCA). After thirty-five years in higher education, I was ready for new challenges and so, in 2006, I retired. But I did not slow down.

Judith and I raised our six sons to be responsible and hard-working citizens – something we have always tried to model to them. We have seen each of them graduate from college, some go on to graduate school, most get married and have children of their own. Our sixth grandchild is due to be born at York Hospital in April. We always tried to instill in our sons a sense that they had to look out not only for themselves and one another, but also for others who have not had the opportunities they have known. We have tried to live according to the values we instilled in our family.

Through teaching, one learns not only about one’s subject but also about people, organizations, conflict, and what is important to individuals and to groups. I want to bring the skills I have acquired as a professor and as a leader to the problems that face us here in Maine.

Ron McAllister
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188 Woodbridge Rd.
York, Maine 03909
207-363-1134
ron@ronmcallister.org
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Family

• Married since 1969 to Judith McAllister
• Six sons
• Six grandchildren

Education

• Merrimack College (B.A., 1966)
• Duke University (Ph.D., 1971)

Career

• College Professor
• University of California, Riverside
• Northeastern University, Boston
• Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania
• Executive Experience
• Dean and Provost (Elizabethtown)
• Acting President (Elizabethtown)
• President (Brethren Colleges Abroad)

Areas of Expertise

• Social Science Research Methods
• Conflict Resolution and Transformation
• Politics and Culture of Northern Ireland

York Community Involvement

• Parks and Recreation Board Chair
• Community Wellness Coalition Board
• York Diversity Forum Board
• York County Prevention Collaborative