Out of Grief, an Amazing Tribute Rises

By Jim Kanak
Staff Columnist
KENNEBUNK/SHAPLEIGH—
Four years ago, two area teenagers responded to a tragedy by organizing an event that has become an annual tribute to a deceased friend and a significant fundraiser in the cause to help those impacted by cancer.
Jordan Sanford of Shapleigh and Jackson Tupper of Kennebunk, competitive snowboarders, lost their friend and colleague, Tucker Olmsted, to lymphoma at age 14. The young men decided to do something that would serve to commemorate their friend. The result was Tucker’s Boardercross for Cancer, a snowboard competition held at Sunday River that raises money for the Maine Children’s Cancer Program.
“Tucker died from lymphoma,” Sanford said. “ We had competed against him in snowboarding. Jackson and I got together and came up with the idea of boardercross. Tucker had competed in it. He was a great friend we wanted to remember.”
The race is held on President’s Day weekend in February each year and has raised more than $50,000 for the Maine Children’s Cancer Program. Sanford and Tupper and their families put the event together. “It’s a huge commitment,” Tupper said. “Each year we start to prepare in September or October and continue until a month or two after the event. We have to get raffle items, donations, T-shirt designs, and things like that. Afterwards, we do the thank you’s.”
“Jackson and I do most of the work,” said Sanford. “But we have a lot of help from our parents. It takes about an hour a day.”
Sanford and Tupper compete nationally in snowboarding. The United States of America Snowboard Association sanctions the Sunday River event. “We get about 80 competitors,” Sanford said. “For this one, friends also come in, so we get over 100 people. It’s definitely a big turnout.”
Debra Matson, Program Manager of the Children’s Cancer Program, said the event initially came as a surprise. “The boys worked through Tucker’s parents,” Matson said. “The next thing we knew, we got a check. It’s amazing, a big event for them to have pulled off doing everything by themselves.”
For the program, Tucker’s Boardercross for Cancer has become an important source of funds. “We rely heavily of fundraising dollars,” said Matson. “We’re a pediatric oncology program. We couldn’t exist without fundraising. The money we get from the boys’ event will be used to help us develop new programs.”
Sanford and Tupper have been snowboarding since early childhood. In fact, they met on the slopes. “We’ve been friends since third grade,” Tupper said. “I met Jordan on the slopes of Sunday River and we’ve been really good buddies ever since. We have traveled everywhere together, competing in snowboarding.”
Jackson graduated from Kennebunk High School this year and plans to attend the University of Vermont in the fall. Sanford will enter his junior year at Berwick Academy is the fall. They each say they’ve learned much from their experience with Tucker’s Boardercross.
“It shows that hard work pays off in the end,” Sanford said. “We’ve touched so many people in different ways. A friend’s death didn’t go forgotten. It’s a great event. It’s tough to put it into words. I want to continue with this as we go forward.”
Tupper agreed. “We really want to run the fundraiser again,” he said. ‘It’s really what we want to carry on. It will be harder with me going off to college and Jordan traveling a lot more for snowboarding and everything.”
Matson said the event was a positive commentary on the two young men’s characters. “They just want to do this,” she said. “It’s their friend and it’s their cause. They’re not doing it for the recognition. We have invited them to come up and meet with our board so we can thank them.”
Photo caption: From left, Jackson Tupper, Jordan Sanford and Tucker Olmsted as youngsters. (Courtesy photo)

Navy Secretary Mabus Visits Shipyard

By Larry Favinger
Staff Columnist
KITTERY—
Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus got a first hand look at the work and workers of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Monday and was suitably impressed by both.
“This has been a terrific day for me,” Secretary Mabus said, during a short meeting with the press at the shipyard’s pass office following his tour.
Turning his attention to the workforce he said, “I want to brag on them” for doing the kind of work they do because there is “zero tolerance” for defects where submarines are concerned.
“I want to thank the people here for being so welcoming and for doing such a good job for the Navy and the country,” he said.
He said the work on submarines at the yard is being done well, under cost and ahead of schedule, meaning that more of the submarines can be kept at sea.
He cited the cooperation between all parties involved at the shipyard for accomplishing this, and noted that what happens at Portsmouth happens other places as well. “This is one shipyard,” he said of the Navy facilities, “and one Navy.”
During the briefing Secretary Mabus was flanked by U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee, and U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud.
Pingree said it was “wonderful to have you (Secretary Mabus) here” to see the fine work being done in the state of Maine. Earlier in the day Secretary Mabus toured Bath Iron Works with Rep. Pingree and Michaud and U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe.
Rep. Michaud also thanked the secretary for visiting the shipyard because “the work they do here is vital.” He said the work at Portsmouth is “the gold standard” for the Navy.
Secretary Mabus is the 75th United States Secretary of the Navy, sworn into office May 19. In his position he leads the Navy and Marine Corps and is responsible for an annual budget in excess of $150 billion and nearly 900,000 men and women.
The Secretary of the Navy is responsible for conducting all the affairs of the Department of the Navy, including recruiting, organizing, supplying, equipping, training, and mobilizing along with overseeing the construction, outfitting, and repair of naval ships, equipment and facilities.
Prior to joining the administration of President Barack Obama, Secretary Mabus served in many government positions and in the private sector.
A former governor of Mississippi, he worked for the enactment of the Better Education for Success Tomorrow program, considered to be one of the most comprehensive education reform programs in America.
He is a former Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the Clinton Administration in 1994. Prior to becoming Governor he was elected State Auditor of Mississippi and served as a Surface Warfare Officer in the U.S. Navy aboard the cruiser USS Little Rock.
Secretary Mabus is a native of Ackerman, Miss., and received a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Mississippi, a Master’s Degree from Johns Hopkins University, and a Law Degree from Harvard Law School.
He has been awarded the U.S. Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Award, the U.S. Army’s Distinguished Civilian Service Award, the Martin Luther King Social Responsibility Award from the King Center in Atlanta, the National Wildlife Federation Conservation Achievement Award, the King Abdul Aziz Award from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the Mississippi Association of Educators’ Friend of Education Award.
Photo caption: Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus. (Wikipedia.org photo)

Stories of Maine’s Survivor

By Chip Schrader
Book Review Editor
Sometimes a rainy day makes a good book better. Making Waves: The Stories of Maine’s Bob Crowley is a great book in the rain, or on a sunny Maine morning with the smell of the North Atlantic not too far away. One word of caution, this book about the 2008 Survivor winner will be read in one sitting, rain or shine.
In the preface, author David Ladd gives a context in which this book is written. He and Bob Crowley have commuted to work and listened to a thousand of Crowley’s stories. Ladd compiled the endless miles of conversation into this pocket sized book that reads like the tales of old Maine mythology.
Crowley’s father was a Protestant, a marine engineer and a lobsterman who rode his Indian motorcycle in a leather jacket. His mother was Catholic and married the elder Crowley who was “beneath her social class,” according to her father. They met during their service in Manila in World War IIwhere she rebelled by not only being a nurse, but by serving her country. Her successful father believed any sort of servitude was beneath his daughter.
The influence Crowley’s parents had on him was immeasurable. His father’s integrity, prudence and service to this country were beyond Crowley’s fathoming, and his mother’s traditional sense of hospitality was legendary. Vagrants, fishermen, and passersby were invited to stay with his family and to enjoy a home cooked meal at any time. Crowley recalls a guestbook that represented a language from every continent except Antarctica.
At the age of fifteen, Crowley’s parents left him on the island cottage in Casco Bay where his father checked on him weekly. This unique parenting gave him an early sense of independence and plenty of opportunity to cause mischief, particularly building pyrotechnics that one day scorched a good portion of his face when building a pipe bomb.
Crowley’s sense of curiosity led him to jobs as a forester, fisherman, lobsterman, a moth eradication expert, an archaeologist for the Smithsonian, and finally a physics teacher who fully admits he is more incorrigible than his own students.
A particularly amusing story comes about when Crowley goes to Labrador to participate in an archaeological expedition with a group of Inuit people as guides. A favorite Inuit pastime, Crowley states, is to torment the “white man” and scare the living wits out of him. Among the mischief was a close encounter with a polar bear where an Inuit feigned bad aim.
At the end of the trek, Crowley recalls these gentle people fondly and their practical jokes scarring, but also a kind means of including their guest into their community.
Crowley eventually settled in to a job teaching physics. The politics and procedure of public education only brought out Crowley’s rebellious side as his antics compiled into a file that was “thicker than a stack of sandbags meant to hold back a tsunami.” After years of being an independent thinker, he lets us in on the insight that “people are not respected for who they really are and what they actually do, but the position and authority they hold.”
This biography reads like a collection of tall tales of a modern day Paul Bunyan. They are believable, funny, spirited and kind stories about a life that is very interesting while purely Maine. Even for those who haven’t seen Survivor, this book is a clear winner.
Photo caption: Book cover of Making Waves: The Stories of Maine’s Bob Crowley as told to David Ladd. (Courtesy photo)

Local Quilt Shop Featured in National Publication

CAPE NEDDICK/ DES MOINES, Iowa—
Knight’s Quilt Shop, www.mainequiltshop.com, a quilt shop in Cape Neddick, has been chosen as one of the 10 featured shops across the United States and Canada for the Fall 2009 issue of Quilt Sampler magazine, published by Better Homes and Gardens.
Quilt Sampler, published twice a year, has been profiling North America’s top quilt shops for the past 13 years. Quilt shops submit a detailed application on their history, business promotions, charitable work, teaching schedules and design philosophies. A panel of quilt experts led by Jennifer Keltner, group editor of American Patchwork & Quilting® magazine, narrows down the applications to 10 featured shops for each issue. The names of the selected shops are kept secret and unveiled at the spring International Quilt Market.
Competition to be included in Quilt Sampler is keen. Nearly 3,000 quilt shops are eligible to apply for this year’s honor. Knight’s Quilt Shop and the other nine shops chosen were photographed and interviewed by a team from Quilt Sampler, and a multi-page profile of the shop will appear in the issue, which will be available on newsstands on Sept. 8, 2009.
Employees of each quilt shop also design an original quilt for the magazine, and the full-sized pattern for the quilt appears in the issue of Quilt Sampler.
Quilt Sampler has proven to be a huge success, and early, out-of-print issues are collector’s items. Chosen shops are inundated with visitors and requests for the shop’s quilt patterns and fabrics. Quilters are known to try and visit all 10 shops in each issue, getting the signature of each shop owner in their copy of the issue.
The art of quilting has changed dramatically since the days of quilting bees in church basements, with quilting enjoying a major renaissance across the country. A Comprehensive Study of the Quilting Marketplace, released in 2003 by American Patchwork & Quilting magazine, reports that the U.S. quilting market is comprised of 11 million households. The total value of the U.S. quilting industry has grown to an annual expenditure of $2.7 billion. Further research shows that readers of American Patchwork & Quilting spend an average of $1,121 per year on quilting supplies and complete nearly 10 projects per year. This group is overwhelmingly female, well educated, affluent, and have been quilting for almost twelve years.

Thornton Academy to Open New Dormitory

By Devin Beliveau
Staff Columnist
SACO—
Thornton Academy is going international. This August, the independent high school in Saco will open up a brand new dormitory, and fill it with up to 38 tuition-paying boarding students. “We have around 31 signed up,” said Mark Powers, Director of Admissions at Thornton Academy.
So far, all 31 of the students are from China and Taiwan. “I did some international recruiting this fall. I went to South Korea, Taiwan, China, Thailand, and Japan,” said Powers. The trip “was about 3 weeks long, and I went to fairs much like college fairs, set up a table, and met with students and their families.”
Powers said the biggest surprise of his trip were the bilingual abilities of the students he met. “I couldn’t get over how well everyone spoke English. Even the younger kids who I met applying for freshmen year had already taken 5 or 6 years of English.” English is a standard part of the Chinese school curriculum.
The typical school size in China is about 5,000 students, according to Powers. “Classes range from 50-60 students per class, and they’re taking 12-13 classes a day, with no room for extracurricular activities or athletics,” he explained.
Powers believes that these students are choosing TA because “they recognize the critical thinking that American education, Thornton in particular, tries to get across to its students.” They also want to go to TA to “prepare for a university here in the United States and improve their English along the way.”
There will be a number of ways in which the new boarding students can take advantage of the opportunities Thornton has to offer, according to Kelli Corrigan, a Math Teacher and the newly appointed Director of Residential Life & Residential Students. “After the academic day is done around 2 p.m., the students can either participate in athletics or clubs, we have over 40 to choose from. And if they are not participating in an athletic event or club, then we will have an individualized event for them,” explained Corrigan. “I will meet with all the students who are not doing an athletic event or club every Monday, and we’ll come up with activities that they want to do that week.” Such activities may include fishing, surfing, hiking, Ultimate Frisbee and other active endeavors.
In the evening after dinner, “there will be a tutorial program available where all of our content areas will be covered by faculty members,” said Corrigan. Then boarding students will return to a dorm that will be run and monitored by 5 current TA faculty members.
New courses being added, such as AP Physics, will be a byproduct of the new boarding program. Having the library open on Sundays, a new intramural athletics program, and new weekend activity programming will also benefit the day students as well as the boarding students.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for students here in Saco to really learn about different kinds of people. We’re a pretty homogeneous group here at TA. The different cultures and academic interests these boarding students will bring will expand our students’ horizons,” said Powers.
Corrigan agreed, “It’s going to be an amazing eye-opener (for TA students) to see that there is a world beyond ours. I think it’s great.”
Construction on the dormitory began last year and is expected to finish near the beginning of August. Despite the current make-up of the dorm, it is not strictly an international program. Thornton also hopes to eventually draw boarding students from Maine and other states.
Photo caption: The new dormitory at Thornton Academy will house up to 38 students. (Jen Hass photo)

Pennies for Peace

ELIOT—
It all started with a book called “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson. Sophie
Ritchie, a student in Sarah Petan’s third grade class at Eliot Elementary School, decided to read the story after her parents told her what Greg Mortenson had been doing in Pakistan and Afghanistan to promote peace through education.
After she finished the book, Sophie explained to her class that, “Greg Mortenson was this man who wandered into the tiny village of Korphe (in Pakistan) by accident. He saw that the people were so poor, but they still helped him to get better because he was so sick after attempting to climb K2. To thank the people of Korphe, he helped them build a school for their children.” And he hasn’t stopped building schools and promoting education since.
After her classmates heard Mortenson’s story, several of the students decided to read the book, too. The nineteen students in Petan’s class wanted to help Mortenson with his mission. The children decided to do Pennies for Peace, a fundraising program started by Mortenson’s 10-year-old daughter, Amira. Their class raised $90.82 in pennies in just 2 months time! In Pakistan and Afghanistan a penny can buy a pencil. What a difference that will make in the lives of the children of Korphe! Petan’s third graders at Eliot Elementary School are proud of what they raised and hope that others will join the cause.
In the past 16 years, Mortenson has built over 80 schools. He feels strongly about educating girls, the future mothers in these communities. If you are interested in learning more about Greg Mortenson or Pennies for Peace, check out the website: http://www.threecupsoftea.com/.
Article by Nicole Gastonguay Ritchie, Sophie’s mother.
Photo caption: Petan’s third graders at the Eliot Elementary School. (Courtesy photo)

Brick Store Museum SalutesPresident’s 85th Birthday

KENNEBUNK—
With former President George H. W. Bush’s 85th birthday on June 12 comes an opportunity to reflect upon what he has meant to the Kennebunks, as well as what the Kennebunks—so often referred to as his “anchor to windward”—have meant to him. The Brick Store Museum unveils Happy Birthday, “41”! on Friday, June 12, as its newest History Showcase display, made possible by the Museum’s business partners, Ocean Bank, Captain Jefferds Inn, Captain Lord Mansion, and Kennebunk Savings Bank. History Showcases are temporary displays that change throughout the year and address a timely theme, current event or new acquisition, thus ensuring that visitors are always seeing something new.
President Bush has frequently stated that he has returned to the Kennebunks every year but one, when he was serving his country in WWII. While the world has come to know George H. W. Bush as congressman, ambassador, Director of the CIA, Vice President and 41st President of the United States, to many locals he is the neighbor, friend, golf or fishing companion affectionately known simply as “41.” This commemorative display draws primarily from the Museum’s Bradbury and Kippax collections, replete with memorabilia telling not so much the national story as the story of the unique Maine connection. Personal snapshots, thank-you notes, Kennebunkport souvenirs, local headlines, campaign buttons, and invitations to area events juxtapose statesman Bush with citizen Bush and illustrate the intersection of the international political stage with the village green. The iconic home on Walker’s Point that served as the “Summer White House” and backdrop to so many news anchors’ reports is also a retreat, a gathering place where the Bushes reconnect with family and friends, relive memories and create new ones.
This birthday salute includes a giant card upon which visitors can pen their greetings, which will be presented to the President later this summer. In addition, the display encourages locals to document their own recollections of the President, First Family, press corps, and Secret Service over the years. These anecdotes will be added to the Museum’s archival collections chronicling the President’s enduring presence in the community.
Happy Birthday, “41”! will be on view throughout the summer. The Brick Store Museum is located at 117 Main Street, Kennebunk. Hours are Tuesdays – Fridays, 10 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. and Saturdays, 10 a.m. – 1 p.m. (closed holidays). Admission is by donation, suggested $5 per person. Visit www.brickstoremuseum.org or call 207-985-4802 for more info.
Photo caption: Memorabilia about President George H. W. Bush is on display at the Brick Store Museum. (Courtesy photo)