George and Ruth Ayers in an undated photo. George, a longtime astronomy professor in Maine, died May 10 at the age of 96. Photo courtesy of the Ayers family.
George Ayers was a practical man. He took pleasure in walking nearly everywhere he went, spending quiet time in nature with his family and finding a good deal. But his greatest passion was making the seemingly mystical and inexplicable easy to understand.
He devoted his life to teaching astronomy to his many students at the University of Maine, to his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren through a backyard telescope, and to strangers who read his “What’s Up” column in the pages of the Portland Press Herald. Ayers died at home in Gorham on May 10. He was 96.
In an interview at the family home on Sunday, Ayers’ wife and children said that although he was a lifelong teacher, he wasn’t one to lecture. He preferred to draw his students in with practical lessons. His children remember him setting up marbles, tennis balls and basketballs in the backyard to demonstrate the different sizes the planets.
He often took students up to the roof of Bailey Hall at the USM campus in Gorham, where he set up telescopes so they could see faraway galaxies for themselves. Born on Dec. 22, 1927, in Camden, Ayers was the middle brother of five and grew up working at his family’s fish market.
In a letter to his grandchildren, Ayers wrote about the green bicycle he rode as a teenager. When the weather turned warm each sprin.
