221 graduate from South Portland

Published in the Current

SOUTH PORTLAND (June 9, 2005): South Portland High School graduated 221 seniors Sunday, in ceremonies marked by bright skies, cool breezes and beach balls bouncing among the graduates.

The first diploma was awarded to the family of Anthony Varanelli, a member of the class who died during freshman year.

Honor Essayist Jeana Petillo challenged her classmates to contribute to society. “Giving back is something we can all do, regardless of where we are going next year,” she said.

“Everyday people will continue to influence and inspire others with small acts of kindness,” she said.

Honor Essayist Leia Crosby, who recently returned from a semester in Thailand, echoed the theme, urging her fellow graduates to “have an open mind and an open heart and the courage to take risks.”

She recited a quote from the diploma she received at the end of her Thailand semester: "To live is to risk dying, to hope is to risk despair, and to try is to risk failure. But only a person who risks is free."

She said the school had given them a good foundation on which to build their futures. “South Portland High School has not just given us an education; it has taught us to develop our education on our own,” Crosby said.

Class Salutatorian Shana Kieran, who said she is “going back to basics these days,” told of the recent rediscovery of her favorite childhood book, “Miss Rumphius” by Barbara Cooney.

It is a picture book about a girl who dreams of growing up, going off to see the world, settling by the sea, but has been taught that “she must do something to make the world more beautiful,” Kieran said.

So when she gets older, Miss Rumphius settles by the sea and plants lupin seeds all up and down a hillside outside of town.

“Once in a while we need to get outside of ourselves,” Kieran said, reminding her classmates, teachers and assembled friends and relatives that the class “began our freshman year on Sept. 4, 2001.”

“Over the last four years our awareness of terror and fear have been heightened,” she said. “This is a time when we need people to do things,” like improving the world and helping people gain understanding of each other.

She said there are a lot of groups, even in the school, with people divided by political lines, social issues, class, race and even “people who listen to rap, people who listen to country.”

“Be open to new ideas and new ways of thinking,” she said, suggesting that people do something to make the world better. “It’s not about fixing the world or eliminating evil,” just making things nicer for each other, she said.

Valedictorian Tim Cahill began his address by invoking the age group that has been called “the greatest generation” – the people who were young adults at the beginning of World War II and faced huge challenges that they rose to and overcame.

“Our generation comes of age at a time of uncertainty and fear,” said Cahill. “The challenges for us are great.”

But, he said, in his own class there are “ordinary people already doing extraordinary things.”

He praised nearly two dozen of his classmates by name, and the rest by association, saying they are working in a wide range of ways to make South Portland and the world better places.

He said Hannah Dunphy has "devoted countless number of hours" with Amnesty International, leading the school's group and representing all Maine students to the larger organization.

He told of Shana Kieran and the Key Club's efforts to make money and give it to needy causes, and of Matt Fitzpatrick, "who is too young to join the Marines" but volunteers on weekends training and recruiting others, and will join when he can.

Cahill honored the achievements of Seth York, who will attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point; Martha Shaw, who is joining the Air Force; the class's three Eagle Scouts, Nick Meyer, Sam Jackson and James Kemer; and Kyle Dixon, owner of his own landscaping business and a dedicated volunteer in the community.

He recognized the artistic ability of graffiti artist Eli Shank, whose work can be seen at the legal tagging wall in Portland, and on the class of 2005 T-shirts; and Tyler Dyment's caricatures and Ben Braley's photography.

Cahill told of athletic prowess, too: record-setting track athletes Courtney Albin and Eric Giddings, Whitney Morrow's 1,000-point basketball career, and columnist and softball star Amanda Aceto.

Some students have other interests, too, Cahill said: "Annie Clancy is the heart and soul of all our auditorium performances. Alex Trout is the go-to guy for any kind of technical assistance. ... Casey Doucette and Jeana Petillo work harder than anyone will ever know to keep our class fired up and on track."

He pointed to two students in particular for extending the reach of South Portland High School around the globe: Leia Crosby, who spent a semester in Thailand, and Xibei Ding, who moved to Maine from China this year. "They have shown us how to be citizens of the world," Cahill said.

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.