GRANTHAM — In more than four decades in the Upper Valley, Merle Schotanus seemed to live several lifetimes.
He ran Sugar Springs Farm, a fruit and maple sugar operation in Grantham. He served as town moderator for 20 years, won seven terms in the state House of Representatives and served on the University of New Hampshire System board for 11 years. He also shepherded a group of cyclists who raised thousands in donations for the Norris Cotton Cancer Center through the annual Prouty benefit bike ride.
That capacity for leadership and achievement didn’t come from nowhere. Before he came to the Upper Valley, Schotanus was a career Army officer, an ambitious man in a segment of the Army, the infantry, that often leads to positions at the highest level.
It didn’t work out that way, and the Army’s loss was New Hampshire’s gain.
Schotanus died Nov. 4 of a fast-moving acute leukemia. He was 89.
He was born in Illinois in 1931, the only child of a farm family.
He joined the Illinois Army National Guard in 1948, when he was still in high school. He met Helen Matteson when they were both at Ripon College, in Wisconsin, where he studied political science, a helpful subject for military advancement.
“He graduated from Ripon College on like June 2, my parents were married on June 13,” and right away he was commissioned as an Army lieutenant and stationed at Fort Campbell, Ky., said Sue Ellen Schotanus, the younger of Merle and Helen’s two daughters.
From there the Army posted him all over the world: three years in Germany; Fort Benning, Ga.; a stint teaching Reserve Officer Training Corps at the University of Illinois; Fort Leavenworth, Kan. He served in Vietnam and earned a master’s degree in political science at the University of Wisconsin. He studied at the Army War College and worked with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. All the while, he was moving up through the ranks.
In 1969, he and Helen bought around 250 acres and a rustic cabin in Grantham, and started to spend summers there. Helen was a remedial reading teacher at Taylor Elementary School in Arlington, Va., so she had summers off, and Merle would take all of his year’s leave time, 28 days. By 1974, Merle had retired from the Army at the rank of colonel.
The reasons for such a momentous life change are bound to be complex, and Schotanus (who pronounced his name Skau-tanus, while most other people said Show-tanus) shared different reasons with different people. Even added up, they might not account for a full portrait of why he left the center of national decision-making for a Sullivan County hillside.
Steve Taylor, of Meriden, said Schotanus told him that he was up for a generalship, but helped produce a report on the Vietnam War that ran counter to the political winds. Assigned to the Pentagon, he felt like a paper pusher and that advancement wasn’t in the cards, so he left for New Hampshire to farm.
“He said that that abruptly sidetracked his career,” said Taylor, former state Agriculture Commissioner. He and Schotanus served together on the UNH system board. “He fit the mold of the now-defunct progressive Yankee Republican,” Taylor said, politicians who didn’t wear their ideology too tightly and who got things done.
Mary Anna Dunn, Helen Schotanus’ much younger sister, heard a different story. Though he had the requisite ambition, Merle said he lacked a key credential.
“He knew he was not going to make general because he had not gone to West Point,” the Army’s premier training ground for young officers, Dunn said in a phone interview from Colorado.
There was another reason that was closer to home. Helen had had enough of military life.
When longtime officers are evaluated for promotion to general, that assessment is all-encompassing and included the officer’s wife, who was expected to help advance her husband’s career.
“He was up for generalship and my mother decided she didn’t want to play the Army game anymore,” Sue Schotanus said. Helen knew she would have to entertain, but she had her own career in education.
Sue was living at home after high school and working in a hospital on the graveyard shift. Her father had just come home from a year in South Korea; Helen had stayed in Virginia with the girls. “I’d wake up to them screaming at each other about the subject,” she said. They nearly divorced.
For some combination of reasons, Merle Schotanus retired from the Army in 1974 and moved to Grantham to start what would become Sugar Springs Farm. That had been his plan, his daughter said, but he implemented it a little earlier than he’d intended.
Merle and Helen had scouted New England, and chose the Grantham plot for its beauty and because it was the most land for the money. They paid $100 an acre, Sue Schotanus said.
“The wheels were always turning, and he was always planning for something,” Sue Schotanus said. Helen stayed in Arlington and taught for another couple of years when Merle moved north.
The Grantham farm was planted in strawberries, blueberries and raspberries, and Schotanus planted apple trees. Taylor called it “a showplace,” and “the cutest little place you ever saw.” Schotanus also tended a huge garden.
“I miss his garden enormously, because he was very generous,” said Barbara H. Jones, a Grantham resident and longtime friend of Schotanus who co-organized the Grantham Mountaineers, a band of Prouty riders, with him.
His military mien stayed with him long after he left the service, she said. He had persistence, but not always patience.
His determination and military discipline could cut both ways: It helped him to be of greater service to the world, but he could be a my-way-or-the-highway authority figure, too, Sue Schotanus said. Colonels expect their orders to be followed.
“My father and I did not get along,” she said. He worked long days and “had pretty high standards when he got into the Pentagon. My sister and I were kind of on our own.”
His discipline suited him in other facets of his life in New Hampshire, and his retirement from the military filed down some of his hard edges. The last time he rode the Prouty, for example, a few years back, he had an electric-assisted bike, and carried supplemental oxygen. He was honorary chairman in 2018.
“I can’t tell you the number of people who joined the Grantham Mountaineers who had their arms twisted by Merle,” Jones said.
“Merle would ask you for something and then he would smile, and he had the biggest smile,” said Rep. Dan Wolf, R-Newbury, who considered Schotanus a mentor, both in politics and in farming.
While working his farm, Merle doted on his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, providing them with garden plots of their own and letting them ride on the tractor with him.
The Schotanus family suffered a tragedy in 2015, when their elder daughter, Anna, died by suicide. She’d had mental health issues all her life, Sue said.
“It was heartbreaking for both of them, for all of us,” she said. Anna had lived in Grantham for a time, but lived most of her life in Virginia, where she had better access to social services than in New Hampshire.
“It was very traumatic for him,” said state Rep. Karen Ebel, D-New London. “Who wouldn’t be traumatized by a child’s death?”
Ebel carpooled with Schotanus to board meetings of the New Hampshire chapter of The Nature Conservancy, and she considered him a political mentor. He also brought her arugula from his garden.
“I learned from him how to be an effective legislator,” Ebel said.
A military man to the last, Schotanus has his memorial service all planned out, Sue Schotanus said. A service is set for June 12, and burial the next day, his and Helen’s wedding anniversary, with military honors.
“As my mother said, he’s a force of nature,” Sue Schotanus said.
“He was a great man. He really was.”
Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.
Correction
Helen Schotanus completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Illinois. An earlier photo caption with this story incorrectly identified the school.
