Fergie (the Duchess, not the pop singer) in Lowell this week LOWELL — Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, will take local residents down
the “Road to Authentic Life” when she appears Wednesday at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. Ferguson is this year’s speaker at the Middlesex Community College Celebrity Forum. Since its advent in 1999, the annual event has drawn speakers such as Colin Powell, Walter Cronkite, George and Barbara Bush, and Jay Leno. With the recession and the 2008 presidential election making news, Dennis Malvers, dean of college advancement at Middlesex, said the college considered speakers from the political and economic arenas. But in the end, they decided on Ferguson in order to give the public a break from the headlines. “(We thought) let’s do something that might be a little bit more personally enriching,” Malvers said. Middlesex President Carole Cowan said the college was also looking for its first international speaker, and the Duchess of York fit the bill. Ferguson seemed to be living a fairy tale when she married Prince Andrew, The Duke of York, in 1986. Yet after two daughters and 10 years of marriage, the Duke and Duchess divorced in 1996.
During her program, “The Road to Authentic Life,” she will share what she calls the rocky road that she’s taken to what is a genuine way of living, Malvers said.