Two wars, two generations, one flag

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (June 9, 2005): When Sgt. First Class Garth MacDonald leaves his bunker in Iraq to go on a mission, he takes with him a rare artifact: a Maine state flag that was carried by a soldier in Vietnam more than 30 years ago – his uncle Jim.

MacDonald, a 1986 Scarborough High School graduate, is a member of the 716th Military Police Battalion, part of the 101st Airborne Division, based in Fort Campbell, Ky. He is now on his second tour in Iraq, and is again in Mosul, helping train Iraqi police officers, who do their jobs under constant threats to their lives and families.

Although the circumstances surrounding the wars and their lives are different, MacDonald's service runs parallel in many ways to that of his uncle. Although they both won medals for bravery, neither MacDonald nor his uncle talk much about them. They have at times used the same words in correspondence with family. And carrying a Maine flag has been important to both of them.

When Jim went over to Vietnam – he had dropped out of college and volunteered to fight – he wanted a Maine state flag. Carol called state officials, asking them to send a flag to her brother.

She got nowhere, and ended up calling Gorham Flag Company, whose owner not only hand-delivered the flag to her, he gave her a discount on the purchase.

That flag went to Vietnam and flew there, and returned home safely with Jim.

“When Garth went over the first time, Jim couldn’t find the flag,” so Carol sent another, new Maine state flag to him in Iraq. Garth wanted the flag, and his mother wanted him to have it, to pass on the tradition.

When he came home in April 2004 after about a year in Iraq, she went to greet him in Kentucky, but Garth got to Maine first: His homecoming flight stopped to refuel in Bangor, and “he was very proud to say he was from Maine.”

After some time at home in Tennessee, where he lives with his wife and three sons, just over the state line from the fort, the family headed up to Maine’s North Woods to unwind and reconnect.

“We knew it was just a matter of time before he’d have to go back, but you don’t think about that,” Carol said.

By the second time Garth was heading to Iraq – in January – Jim (who lives in Presque Isle) had cleaned his attic and found the flag, the same flag he had flown in Vietnam.

Now that flag hangs on the wall in Garth’s office bunker, and goes on missions when he leaves the base.

The similarities between her son and her brother startle Carol, and make her smile with pride. Both men went through jump school, and are quiet about their combat medals.

On his first tour, MacDonald, a career soldier, earned a Bronze Star for courage under fire during a firefight with Shiite militants in Karbala in October 2003, during which his battalion’s commanding officer, Lt. Col. Kim Orlando, was killed, along with two other soldiers.

“Garth drove his Humvee between incoming fire and the wounded,” shielding them from the enemy, said his mother, Carol MacDonald.

His uncle did a similarly brave thing in Vietnam, calling in fire on his own position during a firefight. He didn't tell her about it for decades – not until Carol told him about Garth’s medal.

“These folks who get these medals are never overjoyed,” she said.

Jim told her he thought he could have avoided the dangerous situation for which he was honored. Garth, who will be 38 in October, told his mother, “I just did what I had to do.”

There are differences too, mostly in the circumstances surrounding their service. Jim signed up for an unpopular war, and his family was left with little emotional support and only rare contacts with him.

“We didn’t have e-mails. You waited for the mud-coated letter with that red dust,” Carol remembered. She has a single picture of her brother during his service.

By contrast, Garth has slideshows of his service on his laptop computer, Carol is part of a Kentucky-based Family Readiness Group by e-mail, and the two are often in touch by e-mail. Carol has even figured out how to make the technology keep her even closer: She sends Garth greeting cards through the America Online service, which tells her when he has picked up the message, even if he doesn’t write back right away.

But the similarities keep coming. “Just before Jim came home, he sent me a letter and at the end of it he said, ‘Keep the faith,’” Carol recalled. Though he had never heard about that letter, Garth used the same three words to end an e-mail he sent when on his way home from his first tour in Iraq.

Both have cared for the flag. “This one he will bring home and give back to Jim,” Carol said. “He may live in another state, but Maine has always been his home.”

“I feel about my son the same way I did about my brother,” Carol said. “They go away, they shoot people, they come back changed forever. … That’s the saddest part.”

Editorial: No vacancy

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (June 9, 2005): The Scarborough Planning Board’s concern over what happens to the present Wal-Mart building is well-placed, especially now that the board has approved a new, 24-hour super Wal-Mart that will be built across the street.

Wal-Mart’s operation in Maine started relatively small, with a 114,000-square-foot store on Payne Road in 1992

Since then, the company has opened 11 department stores, 11 Supercenters and three Sam’s Clubs around the state, in locations from Biddeford to Presque Isle.

Wal-Mart apparently has even bigger plans for Maine, with a regional distribution center in Lewiston, a 24-hour Supercenter proposed in Scarborough and a similar one not five miles away in Westbrook, all in the works.

Earlier this year, the company vacated a 93,000-square-foot building on 17 acres in Waterville, to head to a new 207,000-square-foot Supercenter nearby.

Now that’s happening in Scarborough, too. But what is to come of the existing building? Could a company, which as of January had 325 vacant buildings nationwide totaling 25 million square feet, leave this one vacant for a long time?

If it did, that would leave a large black mark right in the middle of prime retail territory. That’s what residents, businesses and town officials are worried about, and what the Planning Board has moved to control.

The board has that option only because the two store locations are so close together that Wal-Mart itself needs to run the road to the new store across the existing store’s parking lot.

So the board has cleverly applied the rules about approving projects, granting approval for the road with conditions that would allow them effectively to close a portion of it if they don’t like what’s going on at the old store – even if that is nothing.

That gives Wal-Mart a real incentive to do something with the store, and fast. In fact, the company says it is close to a deal already, and may have something set up within the next 90 days, though the new store will take months to build.

It’s true that the location, right on Payne Road, in what has become the retail destination area around the Maine Mall, is profitable and likely desirable. And all the people heading to Wal-Mart will pretty much have to drive right by the old one. That’s quite a carrot for developers, though the expense of converting or refitting such a large building might make them look just a little ways down Payne Road to some of the vacant land.

The Planning Board’s efforts give Scarborough a stick to go with the carrot.

Covering the city

Readers will notice this week that we have added two special contributors who will help us improve our coverage of South Portland, without losing our focus on Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth.

Alan D. Johnson is a former publicist and reporter, most recently contributing to his previous community’s newspaper in Florida, and has covered a wide range of topics.

Leora Zucker, a former member of the Israeli Defence Forces, is a student at Southern Maine Community College, where she is involved with the campus newspaper, the Beacon. Both live in South Portland.

We welcome them to our family of writers, and look forward to working with both of them.

Jeff Inglis, editor

Editorial: What are they on?

Published in the Current

CAPE ELIZABETH (June 2, 2005): You have to admire the gall of the Cape Elizabeth High School student government, who asked point-blank for a rule change that would let students drink, smoke and do drugs more often, with fewer consequences.

And you have to wonder why the school administration and School Board have begun actually considering such a change.

While the present substance-abuse policies are incomplete – they don’t address third offenses, for example – and vague in places, the students’ proposed changes aren’t the way to fix them.

What the students want is clearly laid out in the proposal from the Student Advisory Council: “if substances are used at any time when the participant is not under contract, i.e. between or before seasons, the consequences outlined below do not apply.”

Of course, the students want each contract to last only for a single season, rather than all year long, as is now the case. That lets them take advantage of the “between or before seasons” time and drink all they want.

And then: Rather than a first offense (except if a student turns herself in) being the end of the season for the student, the SAC wants that to happen upon a second offense. Only upon a third offense – rather than the present rules’ second infraction – would a student be kicked off all teams for the rest of the year.

It gets better: “‘Extra-curricular’ identifies with many activities offered at Cape Elizabeth High School, but to be consistent, a student is only suspended from activities in which they represent the school or compete in.” So students could still participate in non-competitive school activities, no matter how many times they get caught drinking.

But, after a clause that does require teen hosts of parties to face consequences, comes the real kicker: “(Note: those under contract who attend a party but do not abuse substances are not subject to the consequences of this policy.)”

It sounds like they're just trying to protect the innocent people at parties. But what it really means is that if a student denies he was drinking, smoking or doing drugs, and no one else comes forward to say otherwise, the only music they’ll face is the singing of Cape fans as they march onto the playing field once again.

Who’s going to come forward and snitch on her friends? Nobody. So the proposed policy is completely ineffective, which is just what the students want.

Let’s remember: Drinking and doing drugs are illegal. The schools can’t condone it in any way, even by loosening the rules.

This is, you will recall, the town that is home to dozens of teens who went wild at Sugarloaf over New Year’s 2003, drawing the ire of the Carrabassett Valley police chief, who was not only upset at the teens but also at the parents who refused to go pick up their wayward children.

It is also a town in which locals of all ages are charged with OUI just about every week, and at least one young person every week – often someone under 18 – gets a summons for illegal possession or transportation of alcohol. (Check the Current’s police logs for details.)

Well-known party spots abound, but when police or school officials intervene, parents have been known to get upset not at their children but at the authorities trying to keep order and enforce the law.

While teen drinking and drug abuse are not unique to Cape, other towns are handling the issue very differently.

In Westbrook recently, when seven top basketball players were caught drinking, those players – and the whole team – had to pay the price. The school board upheld the decision, despite parents’ appeals. The players were suspended from the playoffs, and the team was knocked out of competition.

In South Portland last month, a 17-year-old man was badly beaten with a baseball bat at a party where there was underage drinking, leading the schools to consider strengthening – not weakening – their rules.

But under the Cape students’ proposal, only people unlucky enough to be both over 18 and actually summoned for possession of drugs or alcohol would be punished. (State juvenile-justice laws prevent police from telling school officials the names of those under 18 who get summonses for possession.)

The Cape School Board has some tough questions to answer in their review of the substance-abuse policies: What about the students who commit third offenses? Why don’t the consequences of an infraction in the spring carry over into the fall? Should students who turn themselves in get a lighter punishment?

But the real questions they must answer are these: How did you allow a group of high school students to get you to even consider gutting your alcohol policy? Why did you not just say no?

Jeff Inglis, editor

New tanks coming to Mobil

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (May 27, 2005): The Oak Hill Mobil Mart is still open for business while new gas tanks are installed and the old ones are ripped out over the next several weeks.

There was a brief delay earlier this week when workers digging the holes for the new tanks hit ledge, and had to wait for a hydraulic jackhammer to be brought in. Owner Lisa Brady was concerned she might have to close the station if workers had to blast away the ledge.

The in-ground gas tanks must be replaced because they have served out their useful lives of 10 years, according to state and federal regulations. At the same time, Brady is replacing the pumping units and the canopy over the pumps, to comply with ExxonMobil Corp. regulations. The outside of the building is also getting a “facelift,” she said.

Winds take down trees, power

Published in the Current

(May 26, 2005): High winds downed trees and limbs and took out power to more than 13,000 homes in Southern Maine Monday night, leaving some without power into Tuesday afternoon.

Broad Cove in Cape Elizabeth had some outages Tuesday morning, according to Cape Police Chief Neil Williams. Some “very small pockets” in Scarborough were still out Tuesday afternoon, said Central Maine Power spokeswoman Gail Rice, who said the company hoped to have all power restored by midnight.

She said forecast high winds for Tuesday night might cause more damage and slow repair work.

Several areas in Cape Elizabeth, Scarborough and South Portland had outages ranging from around an hour to several hours Monday night.

The storm also kept local public work crews busy. Scarborough Public Works Director Mike Shaw said he had six workers out for a good portion of Monday night dealing with fallen trees.

The storms also have caused some minor beach erosion, damaged the stairs at Higgins Beach and caused some minor damage at the pier system at Pine Point Fisherman's Co-op.

Shaw said the department has been fortunate there has not been any major damage such as roads washing out. Looking at the bright side, he said things would be far worse if it were snow rather than rain.