Wendy L. Klodt

Wendy Lynne Klodt was born in San Bernardino, California, on October 3, 1946, to Beth (Bowen) and Gordon R. Klodt. She spent her childhood in Southern California and always considered herself a Western girl. After moving to Abington, Pennsylvania, during high school, Wendy attended Antioch College (much to her father's chagrin) and following graduation set out for a career in musical theater. But the Silk Road beckoned, and Wendy spent most of the '70s commuting to Afghanistan, manufacturing hippie frocks in Kabul to sell in the East Village (and later to Bloomingdales). Her only respite from this grueling work was a year as a guest of the shah in the women's prison at Mashhad, Iran, after being ratted out crossing the border from Herat while "doing a favor for a friend." She spent the year knitting and learning Farsi, and was released in December 1974, possibly with the help of Kissinger and CIA director Richard Helms on behalf of her father Gordon, by then president of Merck Canada. Wendy moved to Maine in the late '70s, after catching a ride to Cape Neddick during a solo hitchhiking trip to Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon. Thus began the Fair Skies chapter, first a succession of ephemeral shops selling eclectic women's clothing in Kennebunkport and Ogunquit, then Wendy's own building in Perkins Cove in 1978, followed by a second building in Portsmouth in 1983, and for 14 years a third store on Main Street in Ogunquit. Textiles were her passion and her livelihood, the inspiration for travel and collecting and the source of the means to make that possible. Seventy hours a week in season and not much less off season meant very little spare time, but singing with the Portsmouth Women's Chorus and the a cappella group King's Revels kept alive her love of singing and performing that stretched back to high school drama club. A high point was singing with the Surry (Maine) Opera Company in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1995. In 1994 Wendy met David Meikle, who for 20 years did his best to convince her that the boss doesn't have to be in every store every day, especially in February. The result was an unconventional relationship, and a lot of midwinter travel; a ten-below-zero day at an outdoor livestock fair in rural Romania made for many trips to Spain and Portugal in the years that followed. Three trips to Japan focused an appreciation for ceramics and woodblock prints that brought serenity during her final months. In 1999 Wendy bought two acres of woods along the cove of the Cape Neddick River, where she could worship the trees and rocks and try to keep the deer from eating the hosta. At the end of her life, she lived in Cape Neddick, Maine. She died of cancer in hospice in Naples, Florida, on Saturday, June 13, 2015.