Welcome Our New Members
Fred Carkin
I moved from New Hampshire to Florida in l976. In New Hampshire I was General Manager for Indian Head Association for 4 years. Then moved to Florida with my partner, where we bought a place of our own. Unfortunately, 2 years later, my partner passed away suddenly from a drug overdose.
My Florida career was in the restaurant business. I worked at Jones’ Restaurant as head cook and kitchen manager. From there I went to Chicken King on County Road 486 and was kitchen manager there for 25 years until I retired.
Also, from 1979 to 1989 I was the president of the Hernando Democratic Party.
Other than that, I just keep myself busy…
Roland Fortin (left) and Henry Roy (right)
Roland Fortin
I was born on a cold February morning in Laconic, New Hampshire in 1945.
I attended Dominican College in New York. In 1965 I entered the Augustinian Religious Order, where I spent 8 years as a religious brother teaching K through 12 students. I left the religious Order in 1973 and worked in child care and in retail men’s clothing.
I then moved from New York to New Hampshire for a time to be near my sickly parents.
1988 is when I moved to Florida. In 1990 I opened H&R Dental Lab where I made dentures, and I retired in 2017.
As an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church since 1995, I am able to witness weddings in all 50 states.
Henry Roy
I was born in Spring Valley, NY in 1947. I worked as a dental lab tech, and met my husband in 1974. We moved to New Hampshire in 1978. There I worked as a leader of a Dental lab denture dept until 1988. When we, moved to Florida, we opened our own dental lab in Citrus Co. I retired in 2016 after triple bypass surgery.
In January of this year I had some medical issues and decided I needed some help, so I checked out a few churches and wasn’t greeted by anybody, no hellos or good byes. Then I saw the ad in the local paper for Unitarian Universalists, and thought I would give them a try. I felt welcomed the moment I stepped in the door! I was greeted by Chas and Jean, and they introduced me to everyone. It was then that at last I found a place where I was welcomed and felt I belonged. I am proud to say I am a member of UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS.
Alex Forteau
Alex is a Citrus County native who after graduating high school joined the USAF as a Chaplain Assistant. After serving their country, I came back to raise their family. Alex believes in serving others before self, don’t sweat the petty thing or pet the sweaty things, and live life to the fullest. Thank you NCUU for the opportunity in becoming a member serve something greater than me.
Robin Brumfield
My partner, Derek, and I moved to Pine Ridge in January 2020 after being snowbirds in Dunnellon for 2 winters while I was taking a sabbatical from my job as a Professor and Extension Specialist in Agricultural Economics at Rutgers University. We have three quarter horses and love the trails in Pine Ridge. I have one adult daughter, Suzanne, who lives in NJ with her husband, Max where they both grew up. I was born and grew up in the country outside of Richmond, Kentucky and went to a country Southern Baptist church. I stayed Baptist through college, graduate school, and my job as an Assistant Professor of Horticulture at Penn State. The Baptists became too conservative for me, so I joined the First Unitarian Church of Plainfield, NJ when I was expecting my daughter. When we moved to Florida in 2020, I zoomed to my church in PA and then decided to Zoom here. I enjoyed the sermons, but it was hard to hear the music and other things and I was not getting to know the people. Thank you for the beautiful music box sailboat, and the warmth extended by so many of you confirm to me that I have found my church home.
I developed my love of horses as a child when we visited my grandfather. I started taking vocational agriculture (horticulture) in high school, the first year that girls were allowed to be members of FFA and had a wonderful teacher/mentor who inspired my love of greenhouse production. I went to college at Eastern Kentucky University in my hometown and majored in agriculture and minored in business and mathematics. I went to graduate school at North Carolina State University where I received a master’s and PhD in horticulture with a minor in Business and Economics. After a year back home in Kentucky, I got a job as an assistant professor in Floriculture at Penn State. My husband finished his PhD and took a job in New Jersey where I became a Professor and Extension Specialist in Agricultural Economics at Rutgers University. From 2011 until I retired last year, my passion was empowering women farmers in New Jersey, Türkiye, Guyana, Guatemala, and Nicaragua by helping them develop business plans. We moved here in January of 2020, and I was teaching online until Rutgers said I had to move back or retire, so I retired in 2023. I am still working on learning to garden in Florida.
