Bowdoin College senior drowns while kayaking in Washington state
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Nov. 21—A senior at Bowdoin College drowned early last week while kayaking in the White Salmon River in Washington state.
Finnegan "Finn" Woodruff, 22, of Brunswick died on Nov. 16, a month shy of his 23rd birthday, the Bowdoin Orient reported. Finn Woodruff was the son of Mike Woodruff — director of the school's outing club — and Lucretia Woodruff. He had three siblings: Seamus, Maeve and Daire.
"This is an unfathomable and devastating loss for the Woodruff family, for Finn's classmates and friends, and for our entire community," Clayton Rose, Bowdoin College president, wrote in a letter on Tuesday.
A music and environmental studies major, Finn Woodruff was studying at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, to finish the remaining credits for his degree, which he was to receive next month, the newspaper said.
At the time of his death, he was living along the river in a renovated trailer with his partner of five years, Bowdoin alumna Siena Wiedmann '20.
"This was his dream, to be in a place where he could be paddling all the time. He wouldn't have wanted his life [to be] any other way than what it was," close friend Jacqui Boben told the Bowdoin Orient.
Resources for Bowdoin students will be made available at the college's counseling center, Rose said.
An earlier version of this story misspelled Oregon.
