Pease Greeters Roll Out the Welcome Mat for Arriving Troops

By Larry Favinger
Staff Columnist
PEASE TRADEPORT—
A tradition begun in 2005 continues today to impact the lives of many veterans, men and woman on active military duty, and civilians.
It was in that spring that the Seacoast Detachment, Marine Corps League met the first flight of troops landing at Pease and returning from the battlefront in the Near East. Since then, according to Jack P. Savastano of North Hampton, the Pease Greeters public affairs officer, more than 320 flights of men and women, going to and coming from the battlefront, have been met.
“This is not a small piece of Americana,” Savastano said earlier this week. “It’s a big piece of Americana.”
Back in 2005, the Pease Development Authority noticed the situation with the troops coming in and contacted the Marine Corps League. It has grown from there.
“We started basically with an empty air terminal,” Savastano said. “Now you’re talking overflow parking.”
Since it began, the Pease Greeters group has not missed a single flight and has grown to well over 100 elders and youths, all offering their thanks and greetings for these heroes, said Ed Johnson, chairman of the group, in a letter on the Greeters’ website.
Now, veterans and civilians of all ages join the Greeters, who come from throughout the Seacoast area of Southern Maine and Southeastern New Hampshire and beyond. “The kids are very happy to come meet the troops,” Savastano said.
Even as the reputation of the Pease Greeters grows, there is, Savastano said, “Still a little bit of shock and awe” once they arrive here.
Many of them bring gifts, especially those retuning from overseas. These artifacts presented by the troops are on display in the terminal.
One of the main displays is from a different era, a 48-star American flag that hit the beach at Guadalcanal in 1942. One of the Greeters, Jerry McConnell, Savastano said, was with that flag when it went ashore.
With the crowds growing, at times even including a high school band, new sound equipment was needed, so a group of students from Marshwood Middle School raised $1,600 to buy a new, bigger system in two hours at a bowl-a-thon.
The Greeters don’t know what services those arriving are from, but as soon as they find out, that service’s song is played in the terminal as the troops enter and they are greeted by handshakes, cheers and flashing cameras.
While on the ground they are welcome to call anywhere they wish on a special bank of phones. Initially, Johnson said, cell phones were freely offered by the Greeters for the troops to call home with news. Now a bank of phones may be used free of charge, exclusively for the veterans, courtesy of Whaleback Systems, a company located in the Pease Tradeport.
There are refreshments available and, if by chance a soldier comes from the area, efforts are made to get the family together for at least a few minutes.
Savastano noted that parents of one arrival were contacted and brought to the terminal by police escort. Another troop mentioned he had a brother in the Coast Guard serving “at the shipyard up here.”
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Security was contacted. They located the young man and he was brought to Pease for a short but heart-felt reunion with his twin brother.
There have been troops come through who were born here while a parent was serving at the now closed Pease Air Force Base or the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
The stories are endless.
Each group that comes through is photographed and those pictures are displayed in the terminal and on a website the troops can access.
In a short ceremony they are welcomed, there is a short session where old warriors meet the young warriors, and each of the troops is given gifts, most of which are donated by people and businesses in the area.
Lindt Chocolate and the Bose Corporation have donated items, among others, area women have baked thousands of cookies, and the commander of each unit is presented a sweatshirt signed by the Greeters.
Savastano has been impressed by the faces of the young Americans who have come through the terminal.
“You look at the faces of these kids,” he said. “It’s infectious. It is an eagerness to serve their country. That’s what you see in their faces.”
Information on arriving flights and the nationally known and honored Pease Greeters is available at the group’s website, www.peasegreeters.org.

Cyber Safety Expert Visits Marshwood Middle School: An 8th Grader’s Perspective

By Suzannah Blass
& Rosie Alleva
Marshwood Middle School
Students
SOUTH BERWICK—
Cyberbullying, predators, sexting, and social networking - do you really know what your kids are being exposed to on the web? Many parents don’t, but Jayne A. Hitchcock does, and it’s her job to help educate parents, kids, and teachers about these topics. She is the president of Working to Halt Online Abuse, WHO@. Jayne travels to different schools, businesses, and other organizations to train and inform the public about these significant issues. She has appeared on popular T.V. programs such as Primetime Thursday with Diane Sawyer, CNN, and Good Morning America, as well as in Time Magazine. She has also written a book related to her work entitled Net Crimes and Misdemeanors. On Nov. 19, Jayne visited our school to inform us about these types of issues.
Some kids may think that they know everything there is to know about the Internet, but at the assembly we, the students of Marshwood, realized this wasn’t true at all. Few of us actually realized how easy it is for people we don’t know to look us up online and how susceptible to predators we are. The point of this assembly was in no way to discourage kids from using social networking sites but rather to simply warn us of what could happen and how to be safe while using them.
Sexting, a term used to describe sending explicit photos to one another through texts or computers, may seem like no big deal. But it is. If the picture is of someone under age, both the sender and people who look at the picture can be charged with child pornography. When pictures are posted on the web, the person posting them might not realize that the picture they posted would stay on the web forever, that it would travel so fast, or that they could be fired in the future because of it! It’s not only pictures, though. When you type a status or post a comment on Facebook, or really anything else online, it will stay there forever and is open to the whole Internet. Friends, family, supervisors, co-workers, and even people you don’t know could see these things. As we learned in the assembly, you should never put anything onto the Internet that you will later regret.
Everything in the assembly just seemed like fact after fact, real life problems that were happening to kids just like us, but still, they weren’t us. Jayne said something that caught everyone’s ear, teachers and kids alike. She revealed to us that she had made an alter ego on Facebook. Jayne “friend requested” 60 MMS honor students. Of those 60, 58 kids had accepted and became her friend (even though they had no knowledge of who she was). When she said this instantly murmurs spread throughout the gym as people racked their brains to remember if they had accepted anyone they didn’t really know. Many people were probably regretting it now. She, as her alter ego, then had easy access to phone numbers, emails, pictures, videos, and even addresses. Yes, it is just that simple. This was a major eye opener. These weren’t only facts; they were statistics about us. They actually made everything seem all the more real. Things went from, “That could never be me!” to “This is real and I should be more cautious.”
The assembly ended shortly after, when the students and teachers were dismissed out of the gym to carry on the school day. Even though this may have been the end of the assembly, it wasn’t the end of predators on the web or sexting. Many of the ideas, facts, and statistics that Jayne had told us were scary, but they were all true. They affected many of us and got us thinking for the rest of the day. Many kids were trying to figure out who Jayne’s alter ego was, and were scared that they may have befriended her. Some said that when they got home they would change their profile settings to make themselves safer, some said they would check to make sure their friends were truly their friends, and some said that they would put less information in their profiles. The assembly showed all of us how important it is to go out of our way and make sure we are safe. In addition, it warned us never to sext. Overall, even if some kids shrugged off what was told to us during this assembly, many didn’t and thanks to this assembly those kids will now be safer.
Photo caption: L-R, Rosie Alleva, Jayne Hitchcock, and Suzannah Blass after a recent seminar on cyber safety at Marshwood Middle School. (Courtesy photo)

The “Spirit of Giving” is once again alive and well in Ogunquit

By Devin Beliveau
Staff Columnist
OGUNQUIT—
Ogunquit Spirit of Giving is an annual local event to collect gifts for needy children who otherwise would have no presents at Christmas. Now in its 5th year, it was begun and is still largely run by local business owners.
“We either have our own businesses or we work in businesses,” explained OSG committee member Irene Crocker, who runs Watercress Cottages & Motel in Wells. “We adopted an agency, the Kinship Program.”
The Kinship Program matches up OSG donors with underprivileged kids who are being raised by their grandparents. “These grandparents are bringing up their grandchildren because the kids parents are either dead, drug addicts, or in prison,” explained Bette Hoxie, Director of Adoptive and Foster Families of Maine and the Kinship Program. “The grandparents don’t have a lot of money, and they can’t give (the kids) Christmas gifts.”
That’s where OSG comes in. People who want to help these kids sign up to buy $35-$50 worth of gifts for a specific child. “Most people spend more than that,” said Crocker. “I know I do. We get a list from the Kinship Program. It says ‘This is your child. This is what they would like.’ Some kids want a toothbrush, some want underwear, basic essentials. But we go above and beyond that.”
“When we started out we wanted to serve 50 kids. We did 89 in the first year,” Crocker reflected. “Every year since OSG has added more kids to its list. This year we’re up to 403 kids.”
On Dec. 6 at Mainestreet in Ogunquit, donors dropped off their gifts for the 403 kids. All the gifts were already wrapped and individually addressed. On Dec. 7, gifts were distributed to the homes of the kids free of charge thanks to Bow Street Distribution. Gifts were sent to children from Kittery all the way to Damariscotta, Maine.
“Most of these families are on low income or even no income,” said a grateful Hoxie. “Ogunquit Spirit of Giving means that these kids will have Christmas, that’s really what it means.”
Other OSG committee members include Jason Corbin, Jimmy Lucibello, Michael Maler, Jim Morgan, Normand Paquin, Jerry Peppe, Jeff Porter, Frances Reed, David Sullivan, Suzanne Thompson, and Mike Zamojski. For more information visit www.ogunquitgiving.com.
Photo caption: Spirit of Giving committee member David Sullivan puts presents under the Christmas tree at Spirit of Giving at Mainestreet in Ogunquit on Dec. 6. (Devin Beliveau photo)

York High Graduate wins YAA Scholarship

YORK—
The first recipient of the York Art Association’s Letitia Moore Scholarship is Katie Rasche, a sophomore at Skidmore College. Ms. Rasche, who attended York High School, and was salutatorian at her 2008 graduation, has been on the Dean’s list both semesters of her college freshman year. She is intending to major in Studio Art with a focus on photography. A reception in Ms. Rasche’s honor was held at York Art Association on Saturday, Nov. 28th.
The $5,000 scholarship was awarded to Ms Rasche on the basis of recommendations from her high school art teachers, her academic standing at high school and at Skidmore and her essay which noted “ my educational and career goals are quite simple: I want to make it out of college with an education in something that I can see myself enjoying for the rest of my life, and I want my career to follow suit… It was never really a question that art was always the field of study that I wanted to pursue later in life.”
The Scholarship was established as a part of a trust left to York Art Association by Ms. Moore, who was an artist and member of the Association. The award is given to a deserving college student who has completed their first year at an accredited college or university and is majoring in art or art history. YAA’s scholarship committee was most impressed by what Ms. Rasche had already achieved academically and her positive view of what she expected to accomplish with art as her career focus. Ms. Rasche is hoping to exhibit at YAA in 2010.
Photo caption: L to R: Lou Hargan (Scholarship Committee, YAA), Katie Rasche, and Priscilla Schwartz (VP, YAA). (Gloria Gottlieb photo)

4th Annual 2009 Festival of “Fostering” Trees

YORK—
The Festival of “Fostering” Trees is back for another year and we’ll continue our mission of joining the entire community together by providing a beautiful festival of decorated Christmas Trees for your viewing pleasure while giving back to our community - all at the same time.
How it works:
The Festival of “Fostering” Trees raffles off decorated artificial Christmas Trees that were donated from the community! Come stroll through our enchanted forest of beautiful trees and take a chance on your favorites, no two trees are alike!
All proceeds will help youth living in York County Foster care.
Location, dates, and times: American Legion Post #56 function facility.
Friday – Dec. 4th – 10 a.m.-8 p.m.; Saturday – Dec. 5th – 10 a.m.-8 p.m.; Sunday – Dec. 6th – 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Sunday - Dec. 6th - Raffle @ 4:15 p.m.; Calls placed to winners 6 p.m.-9 p.m.; Monday - Dec. 7th - Pick up of all trees 8 a.m.-noon.
Entry Fee: Support the American Legion’s Toys for Tots Program by donating a new, unwrapped toy and/or gift card or support the York Food Pantry by donating a non-perishable food item or support both by making a monetary donation at the door and this will serve as your entry fee to the Festival. You do not have to purchase raffle tickets in order to stroll around and view all of the beautifully decorated trees and enjoy the Spirit of the Season.
Refreshments served each day. Raffle Tickets are 25 for only $5.FMI Call Janalee @ 361-2116 or 423-4281, or Email @ janaleemoquin8@yahoo.com.
Photo caption: The 4th annual Festival of “Fostering” Trees kicks off Dec. 4. (Courtesy photo)

Bashaw named Chairwoman ofOgunquit Chamber Board of Directors

By Jim Kanak
Staff Columnist
OGUNQUIT—
Carla Bashaw has added some new responsibilities to the ones she routinely executes as the owner of Genesis Day Spa in Ogunquit. She was recently named Chairwoman of the Ogunquit Chamber of Commerce’s 12-member Board of Directors. She takes the post at a time when the Chamber is taking on some new things.
“We want to do fun and family oriented things to get businesses and residents together,” Bashaw said. “Our focus is pulling the community together as well.”
Most immediately, Bahsaw, Chamber President/Executive Director Karen Arel, and their colleagues on the Board are looking to the upcoming Christmas by the Sea weekend on Dec. 11 - 13. “We’re looking for it to be one of our best events,” said Bashaw. “We’ve added a bell choir concert and will continue with carolers at different locations. The carolers will be at the Tree Lighting at Veteran’s Park on Friday night. The Village Spirit Committee is putting on the parade again. We’re still having the chowder and chocolate fest. It’s always fun.”
Bashaw noted that the Chamber puts on events throughout the year, including the OgunquitFest weekend in October, the Patriot’s Day weekend in April, and the Sidewalk Art Show in August.
“In the past few years, we’ve started the Mardi Gras event in the winter and Cinco de Mayo in May,” Bashaw said. “We just did Celebrations by the Sea, where the Dunaway was transformed into an Expo. We’re currently working on a restaurant week in the spring, a new and different way to showcase restaurants. It may be a progressive supper. We’re hoping it will culminate with a wait staff Olympics, with events like hurdles for food servers. We think it will be fun.”
The events aren’t the only thing the Chamber does, Bashaw said. “The Chamber facilitates interactions among members, through things like our monthly Business After Hours,” she said. “We have put on seminars in the past, that have been free to members. We’re working on getting promoted in places like Boston. We use co-op ads that allow members to have exposure at lower cost. We have a calendar of events on our website where members can post events. We try to keep members informed about anything political that might affect them. We offer different services and benefits.”
In the past in Ogunquit, as in many resort communities, there have been some tensions between businesses and the police, particularly over things like parking and traffic enforcement. Bashaw said that situation was much improved. “It’s going great,” she said. “The police and fire chiefs and the Town Manager have taken great strides in creating more of a feeling of unity. The selectmen have been a big part of it as well. It was apparent this summer when we put the fireworks on again.”
Looking to the future, Bashaw said the Chamber wanted to take advantage of the growth its experienced. “The Chamber has grown in the past three years,” she said. “We need the members to get involved and give us their ideas. The Board looks to members for ideas on what would help them.”
Photo caption: Carla Bashaw (Jim Kanak photo)

Christmas on the Coast in Kittery

KITTERY—
The Seacoast Kiwanis Club for the 16th year is sponsoring the Kittery Holiday Parade on Saturday, Dec. 5th. The parade theme is Christmas on the Coast.
The parade begins at 3 p.m. from the Post Office Square on Shapleigh Road, with judging of various units beginning at 2:40 p.m. (Late arrivals will be accepted but may not be judged.) We recommend that participants arrive at around 2 p.m. to allow time for set-up and alignment. Trophies will be awarded for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in each division of the parade.
When the parade leaves Post Office Square it will turn left on Shapleigh, right on Whipple, left on Wentworth, then through the Square, right on Government and finally circling John Paul Jones Park finishing at the Christmas Tree.
At the Park a musical selection will be played by the combined Traip and Shapleigh School Bands followed by the announcement of award winners and lighting of the Tree by Santa and Mrs. Claus.
The Kittery Rotary will serve hot cocoa and cookies. Every one is invited to stay and enjoy the refreshments.
Additional information is available at www.seacoastkiwanis.com and www.facebook.com or by contacting any Kiwanis Member or Glen Philbrook at 439-0721 or Norm Leon at 439-9292.