Obituary of Dudley Page Cotton

Dudley Page Cotton, Jr. D. Page Cotton of Tucson, Arizona, and Bremen, Maine, died from complications following surgery on Saturday, March 8, 2014. He was born in Damariscotta, Maine, on October 26, 1936, son of Dudley Page and Josephine Norris Cotton. Page's childhood was spent on his parents' mink farm in Bremen, Maine, where he attended the one-room Medomak School. During the War years, he lived with his family aboard the "Seamaid", a sixty-two foot yawl, in Portland Harbor. Page graduated from Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut, in 1955. After two years' service in the U.S. Naval Reserve, he attended the University of Arizona, graduating with a Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1965, as a member of the first class of the Department of Architecture, when classes were held at an old Safeway store on Park. A few years later, he earned a Masters degree in Structural Engineering. Holding registration for both architecture and engineering, he remained in Tucson for the remainder of his life, developing a successful engineering practice. He was hired by the University of Arizona to teach engineering to architectural students--a position he held for thirty years. His lifelong pursuits included the riding and rebuilding of motorcycles and cars, sailing on the coast of Maine and the Gulf of California, landscape photography, and traveling, which included a year and a half sojourn around Europe, a motorcycle trip to the end of Baja, California, and his annual commute to and from the coast of Maine to summer with his family. Page will be remembered by nearly everyone who knew him for his loyal and generous friendship, his minimalist sense of design, and his ability to give new meaning to the concepts of economy, exactitude and organization. He is survived by his brother, Jefferson Cotton. and sister-in-law, Kamala Grohman, of Bremen, Maine; two nieces, Anina Meyer of Adelaide, Australia and Bremen, Maine, and Josephine Cotton of Bremen, Maine; and a great-nephew, Oliver Wilkinson of Adelaide, Australia. A commemorative celebration will take place at Page's house on Saturday, April 19, 2014; please email cottonazme@juno.com for time and directions. Arrangements by ADAIR FUNERAL HOMES, Dodge Chapel.