News from The News

New Charlotte News board members

Dave Quickel and Sylvie

Dave Quickel
In 2004, Dave founded Stony Loam Farm in East Charlotte. On 32 acres of certified organic land, Dave raises a variety of vegetables that he sells throughout Chittenden County to supermarkets and restaurants, at his own CSA on the Hinesburg Road and at the Shelburne Farmers Market. Before settling in Charlotte, Dave graduated from the University of Vermont in 1991, with a degree in political science, followed by graduate work at the University of Montana in environmental studies. From 1997 to 2002, Dave was the farm manager at Bingham Brook Farm in Charlotte.

Louise McCarren
Louise retired in 2010 after seven years as the CEO of the Western Electricity Coordinating Council, a nonprofit company responsible for the reliability of the Bulk Transmission System in the Western Interconnection (14 western states, British Columbia, Alberta and Baja Mexico). Before that she was, among other things, the managing director and then president of Verizon, Vermont; assistant to the president for Special Projects at the University of Vermont; Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Public Service; chair of the Vermont Public Service Board; and a partner in the Burlington law firm Sheehey Brue Gray and Furlong. She has also taught at the University of Vermont, St. Michael’s College and Dartmouth College—and has lived in Charlotte for 45 years and in the same house in West Charlotte for 40 years.

Tom O’Brien

Tom O’Brien
Tom died this past New Year’s Eve. On behalf of the board and staff of The News, I’d like to express our sadness at his death, our best wishes to his family and our great appreciation for all that he did for Charlotte and especially for this paper.

Tom served on the board of directors of The News from 2008 to 2016. He and Meg Smith were co-presidents of the board in 2012-2013. “It was the only way,” Meg said, “I would agree to serve as chair, knowing that I needed Tom’s innate enthusiasm to keep me going, and only through Tom’s eyes did I catch the community spirit that the newspaper represented.”

When Meg left the board Tom and I shared the presidency from 2013 to 2016. No matter what confronted us at the paper during that time—the unexpected resignation of an editor or an unexpected drop in advertising revenue—Tom just grinned that huge smile of his, and off we went in search of a solution, which we always seemed to find.

Working with Tom was always a joy. We’ll miss him here at The News, but the joy he brought to all of us remains part of the institutional memory of the paper. Cheers, Tom, and thanks.