Three Civic and Business Leaders Join NH Preservation Alliance Board

Byron Champlin, Jeanie Forrester and Lorraine Stuart Merrill have joined the board of directors of the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance.

Champlin is an at-large councilor on the Concord City Council who recently retired after 27 years with Lincoln Financial Group and its predecessor companies. Earlier in his career, he was a reporter for The Union Leader, a communications officer for the N.H. House of Representatives, and a public relations director for Colby-Sawyer College. An independent historian and arts advocate, Champlin has written and lectured on Concord’s role in World War I and has worked to advance the creative economy in New Hampshire.

Forrester is the town administrator in Tilton and a selectboard member in Meredith, where she lives. She began her government service in the administration of then-Governor John H. Sununu and served as a New Hampshire Senator from 2010 to 2016. Forrester is the co-owner of Forrester Environmental Services. She was previously the executive director for Main Street programs in Meredith and Plymouth.

Merrill and her family own and operate a dairy farm in Stratham. She served as commissioner of New Hampshire’s Department of Agriculture for a decade, and 18 years on the USNH Board of Trustees. Also a journalist and technical writer, in 2008 Merrill and collaborators demographer Peter Francese and filmmaker Jay Childs produced a book and documentary titled, Communities and Consequences: The Unbalancing of New Hampshire’s Human Ecology and What We Can Do About It. The trio is currently updating their research and producing a sequel documentary and book.