Legion hall gets a refit

Published in the Current

SOUTH PORTLAND (May 26, 2005): The bright blue landmark on Broadway is now a more gentle gray, though veterans are still hard at work fixing up the inside of the Stewart P. Morrill American Legion Post 35.

“We’re trying to really make this place viable for rentals,” said Post Commander Roger Sabourin, as he watched friends scrape and repaint kitchen cabinets and install a light fixture in the entryway.

The veterans group has spent nearly all of a $75,000 loan they got through a friendly loan officer – himself a Vietnam veteran – at Peoples Heritage Bank, insulating and residing the building, installing new windows, bringing in Internet access, fixing up ceilings and repainting walls in the building, which is also a South Portland polling place and a Red Cross emergency shelter.

Its bright blue color was created by accident, when an effort began to repaint the building blue rather than the previous olive-drab green, which had coated both the interior and exterior of the post.

The blue paint was not enough to cover the durable green hue, Sabourin said, and when the sun baked the colors together, it became the eye-catching (and eye-assaulting) almost-neon color familiar to many in the city.

The post’s meeting room, lined with the names and photos of veterans of wars past, was almost completely redone by the post’s oldest member, Clarence Howard, 85, including putting a new coat of paint on the extra-high ceiling.

Much of the money went to A-Best Window, which replaced all the building’s windows and re-sided it to improve energy efficiency.

“Before this thing, we were heating half of South Portland,” said Sabourin. Only half in jest, he said the post was responsible for local weather patterns. Looking out the windows at Mill Cove next to the Hannaford supermarket, Sabourin said, “you notice the bay froze over this year. We closed the windows.”

The post had owned the building outright, but now has to make monthly mortgage payments for the improvements, which will help keep maintenance costs down as well as make it more attractive as a rental space for groups to meet in.

There are three rooms that will be available for rent – two are complete now and work is about to begin on the third, mostly conducted by veterans themselves.

The building is also home to the U.S. Navy Sea Cadets program in South Portland, and the Portland Amateur Wireless Association.

It is now completely handicap-accessible, except for the small rooms on the third floor.

Sabourin had hoped the work would be done in time for Memorial Day, but now he is hoping it will be “July Fourth, or Veterans Day. We’ll get it done.”

He said the work is important to carry on the long history the city has of providing troops for the U.S. military, and helps to honor all who serve, including the four Medal of Honor winners he said are buried in the city’s cemeteries.

“South Portland has a great, great history of veterans,” Sabourin said.

Editorial: Where’s the relief?

Published in the Current

(May 26, 2005): Gov. John Baldacci is about to stick it to Maine taxpayers because he won't – or can't – make the hard choices we need our leader to make.

After proposing the state borrow nearly $450 million to cover day-to-day operating expenses, and getting it past legislators, who should have stood up to that kind of ploy, Baldacci has reversed himself.

He says his change of heart is because the federal Base Realignment and Closing Commission has proposed closing Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and downsizing Brunswick Naval Air Station. He should have said his change of heart was because running state programs on a credit card is bad government.

Either way, to get out of the borrowing hole, he and Democratic leaders in the Legislature have asked all state departments to submit revised budgets with 5 percent across-the-board cuts.

That’s not a bad start, but across-the-board isn’t the way to go. Specifically, cutting state aid to local schools – as proposed by the Department of Education Tuesday and described on Page 1 – is the opposite of what should happen.

Admittedly, those reductions are from amounts significantly higher than last year, and will still result in net increases in state aid for Cape Elizabeth, Scarborough and South Portland.

But by removing hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue from local school budgets – $108,000 from Cape, $254,000 from Scarborough and $209,000 from South Portland – Baldacci’s plan goes directly against the efforts of citizens, legislators and even his own initiatives to increase state aid to education.

He set out this budget season to ramp up state school funding – in response to statewide referenda demanding tax relief. He even made some headway toward that goal – though not enough.
And, now he's already backing away from the little ground the state has gained because he can't seem to balance the budget.

The problem is not that the state is giving too much money to Maine's towns – just the opposite. Rather, the problem with state government is that it spends too much money just running itself.

Surely the Department of Education can handle deep cuts in its staff, without backpaddling on aid to local districts. Many of the department's workers seem to be constantly revising the Byzantine rules of the Maine Learning Results, sending teachers, administrators, students and parents into expensive annual conniptions trying to figure out what state regulators want, and how to give it to them.

Other Education staffers, perhaps trying to save their own jobs, came up with this ridiculous proposal, which would tear down the fragile beginnings of tax reform in Maine. Their usefulness in state government – and that of anyone who directed them to do that work – should come under close scrutiny.

There are also 500 vacant positions in state government that are included in the budget and could be eliminated without hurting anyone. Baldacci could consolidate government departments, too. He could also raise more revenue by raising the cigarette tax or the sales tax.

Perhaps Baldacci already expects to pay for his budget antics in next November’s gubernatorial election. But that should not prevent a man who has spent much of his adult life in public service from listening to what the people want and need.

He needs to make hard decisions now. One of those decisions should be to act on what the people are saying. And this, in case he doesn't know, is what they say: Raise – not lower – state aid to education. Lower significantly – not some small amount like 5 percent – state spending on administration and overhead.

The people of Maine need tax reform. School funding, as one of the major cost-drivers, is a good place to start injecting more state money, to reduce schools’ pressure on local property taxes.

But as state school funding climbs more slowly, the goal of real tax reform is farther away. And what matters to most of us is not that Baldacci pays later, but that we end up footing the bill now.

Jeff Inglis, editor

Family welcomes injured soldier home

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (May 19, 2005): Just a month after being injured in a roadside explosion in Iraq, Army Cpl. Jack Howland returned to Maine to spend two weeks recuperating at home.

Howland, whose family is almost entirely in Scarborough but whose parents live in Porter, was the guest of honor Saturday at a surprise party at the Clambake Restaurant on Pine Point Road in Scarborough.

More than 50 friends, neighbors and relatives attended the gathering, including Howland’s three living grandparents, Philip and Sue Bayley and Gladys Howland.

There were four generations of each side of the family to welcome Jack home, just 24 hours after his delayed flight had landed in Portland.

Traveling with him was his girlfriend, Teena Sphar of Midway, Ga., and Teena’s daughter, Taylor. They had expected to arrive far earlier in the day, but bad weather and airline schedules delayed them for hours.

When the trio finally came through the gate, family members were there with a banner, and a crowd of strangers waiting for other loved ones let out a huge cheer.

Howland, 23, had been in an Army Humvee, protecting a convoy near Baghdad, when a roadside bomb exploded, burning his eyes and lungs and injuring another soldier in his vehicle.

He had spent four and a half months in Iraq, and found himself airlifted to a U.S. military hospital in Germany and then back to the States for more treatment.

Howland’s eyes are now fine, and his lungs have healed to about 60 percent of their normal function. They are continuing to heal, and Howland will return to Georgia for more medical treatment in a couple weeks.

His family’s surprise party was a simple subterfuge, with Howland’s mother, Mary (Bayley) Howland, saying she was going shopping with her daughter-in-law, Heather Howland, and Sphar, who was on her first trip to Maine and her first meeting of her boyfriend’s family.

They suggested to Jack that they should all meet up for dinner at the Clambake later on.

But instead of going shopping, the three women and other friends and relatives went straight to the Clambake in the mid-afternoon, and began setting up. One appropriate decoration was already in the room – a mounted “jackalope” on the wall, like a hunting trophy.

Jack’s uncle Dana Howland is the manager at the Clambake, and Jack worked at the restaurant for seven years before entering the Army three years ago. He is a member of the 94th Maintenance Company, 87 Corps Support Battalion, stationed at Fort Stewart, Ga., where he met Sphar.

The party grew as Jack’s arrival neared, and when he walked into the room he was totally surprised by the crowd.

“It’s a totally joyous celebration for us. It could have been totally different,” his mother said.

“I had no idea,” Jack said with a grin, amid shaking hands and hugging friends and relations.

His grandmother Sue Bayley was glad to see her grandson – and several other grandchildren who came to celebrate – but still had her mind on Jack’s comrades in Iraq. “I just wish they could all come home,” she said.

Short outage keeps police busy

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (May 19, 2005): An equipment failure caused a widespread power outage in Scarborough on Friday the 13th, shutting down traffic lights at busy intersections and interrupting electrical and Internet service for about 1,900 homes and businesses.

According to Central Maine Power spokeswoman Gail Rice, the outage, which lasted from about 10 a.m. to about 11 a.m., was caused by an equipment failure in a substation that took out two circuits.

Police scrambled to direct traffic at intersections all along Route 1, Gorham Road and Payne Road, and the Scarborough Fire-Police were also called out. But only one Scarborough fire-policeman responded, so Cape Elizabeth sent its fire-police unit to help as well.

The police department used its Code Red reverse-911 calling system to alert residents to the situation, and to ask people to drive carefully, especially through busy intersections.

Cape drivers win plow roadeo

Published in the Current

CAPE ELIZABETH (May 19, 2005): Two Cape Elizabeth Public Works drivers have won the Cumberland County Snowplow “Roadeo,” and will compete for the state championship June 2 in Skowhegan.

Jason Emery and Ron O’Brien won Cape’s first county championship, with the lowest combined score for their navigations of a snowplow truck and a wing – as much as 15 feet wide – through a closed course while avoiding fire hydrants, cones and parked vehicles.

The pair, who Emery said does “nothing” to train, doesn’t even drive plow trucks through the winter.

“We both plow on loaders,” O’Brien said. “What it boils down to is teamwork, just like our everyday jobs.” The pair are both seated in the cab of a plow truck, and take turns driving and being the spotter. “He watches the wing,” O’Brien said.

This is the pair’s fifth year competing, but their first as teammates. Last year, when both had low scores but on different teams, they decided to join up this year.

It paid off with the trophy. O’Brien also took second in the individual scoring, narrowly missing a personal win because “I clipped one of the vehicles.”

Stabbing accused appears in court

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (May 5, 2005): A Scarborough teenager accused of trying to kill a friend in the woods behind the Scarborough Public Library appeared in court last week to hear the charges against her.

Lyndsey McLaughlin, 15, was charged last month with two Class A felonies: attempted murder and elevated aggravated assault. Police believe she stabbed Barbara Kring, 20, also of Scarborough, in the neck and stomach March 8.

McLaughlin then stabbed herself in the abdomen, according to Scarborough police. Both young women were taken to Maine Medical Center, where they were treated and later released.

At her court hearing April 25, McLaughlin heard the charges against her, but did not enter a plea, according to court documents. McLaughlin has been charged as a juvenile because she has no prior criminal record, according to District Attorney Stephanie Anderson.

McLaughlin, a freshman at Scarborough High School, has been at home since her release from the hospital, and school officials have said they are working with the family to prepare for her return to school. Her next court date is set for July 11.

Kring, a 2004 Scarborough High School graduate, was a student at Southern Maine Community College, but left the school following the attack. She and her mother have said she intends to return to the college in the fall.

Kring recently published a first-person account of the attack in the SMCC student newspaper, The Beacon, where she was a staff writer.

McLaughlin’s family declined to comment on the incident or Kring’s account.

Teen leaves India, adoption papers behind

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (May 5, 2005): Linsey Payson was in Calcutta, India, talking on the phone with her boyfriend. It was mid-April, just days before Scarborough High School would go on spring break.

The adoption papers that would let the high school senior bring home a 3-year-old blind Indian boy were signed and ready to go.

But as she talked to her boyfriend, Andrew Flynn, and as he told her she had a lot of life left to experience, she came to agree that her life would never be the same, and that she was too young – 18 – to take on such a huge responsibility.

And though she had already talked her parents into signing the adoption papers – Payson herself couldn’t adopt the child because she is not married – she didn’t submit them to the Catholic nuns running the orphanage where Robi had been consigned by his family, who are caring for his four siblings, who are not blind.

Payson had gone to Calcutta to volunteer with the Missionaries of Charity, the order of nuns founded by Mother Teresa, who care for the sick and the dying, as well as orphans in one of the world’s poorest and most crowded cities.

She spent two months there, volunteering in a section of the orphanage where disabled children lived. "She loves kids," said Flynn. "She just always wants to be around kids."

“I spent most of my time working with Robi,” Payson said, though there were plenty of others – most with autism or muscular problems that prevented them from being accepted in mainstream Indian society. And though it was an orphanage, many of the children had families, who had refused to care for them.

When Payson arrived in India, she was overwhelmed.

Feeling lucky

In what she now calls “my biggest dream and my worst nightmare,” she found herself staying in what was for Calcutta a “five-star” hotel, where bugs crawled across the floor and water periodically ran black from the taps. Her room caught fire twice, flooding once as the sprinklers let go.

She paid about $13 a night, and was able to get a television – “I understood about three channels out of 100” – some cupboards and her own private bathroom.

On the streets, she saw people washing in just water, too poor to buy soap. Some owned only the ragged clothes on their backs and a piece of cardboard to cushion the hard sidewalk on which they slept.

Payson ate breakfast at Mother House, the nuns’ headquarters, each morning, in a courtyard open to the sky. “If it rained, we ate breakfast in the rain,” she said.

Then she would go to work at Shishu Bhavan, the orphanage, where 25 disabled children and 250 actual orphans lived.

Meeting Robi

When she first came to the orphanage, the sisters had written off Robi as having behavioral or mental problems. Payson came to understand they were wrong, and was able to help them see it too.

He wouldn’t eat when the sisters said it was mealtime, so they had to force-feed him on the floor while the other children ate at a table.

But when Payson met him and talked with him, Robi opened up. He started eating, and spoke for the first time. He started mimicking her speech, copying her every word at times.

He was able to join the other children at the table, and began learning letters and numbers in the rudimentary classes the volunteers conducted at the orphanage.

Along the way, Payson fell in love.

“He’s just absolutely amazing,” she said, thinking back to the smiling boy whose only real problem is that he needs a cornea transplant.

The two spent a lot of time together, and Payson came to feel as though she were the mother Robi didn’t have. They would talk and play together, smile and laugh.

Payson decided she wanted to take Robi back to the U.S., where he could get surgery and where he could have a real family – Payson’s.

“He was the reason I got out of bed” each morning in a country where street crime is punished by beatings as police look on, and where people earn a living pedaling others around the city on rickshaws.

"Linsey has always been the child that was unrelenting in what she wanted," Payson's mother, Novella, wrote in a letter to the Current in March. "If she asked for something and did not get the answer she wanted, she would not give up until you saw things her way."

She looked into adoption so deeply and wrote and spoke so passionately about her wish that her parents signed the papers, and the sisters at the orphanage were prepared to revoke Robi’s mother’s parental rights and send him home with the 18-year-old from Scarborough he had known only three months. Her mother had even found a surgeon in Portland who agreed to do the surgery free of charge.

But when the time came, Payson did not turn in the adoption papers. She got on the plane alone, leaving Robi behind, too young to understand why she had come or why she was going.

Thinking back

She returned just before April school vacation, and has spent the days since healing – both from a parasite that still plagues her and from the pain of separation from a child she considers her own.

She is back at work before and after school in the Community Services childcare program at Blue Point School, and is also back – as a Police Explorer – stopping the traffic on Gorham Road to let the high school buses exit in the afternoon.

But when she is alone, it hits.

“I just sit in my room and say I can’t believe I left him there,” she said. “I feel like I left my child in a Third World country.”

She is comforted – though not much – by the thought that the sisters came to see Robi as having promise. They were going to try to get him the surgery he needs and send him to school outside the orphanage, though Payson hasn’t heard any updates since her departure.

One of the nuns told her before she left, “If you hadn’t come here, he would have sat in the corner for the rest of his life.”

But that’s not enough for Payson, who had a modest view of her endeavor. “I didn’t think that going there, being a high school student, that I could make a difference,” she said, knowing now that she has.

“I would love to go back and see him, I would. I would love even more to bring him here,” she said. “I feel like I should have.”

Spreading the word

Last week was her first week home from school, and she has spoken to eight classes at Scarborough High School, as well as a group of teachers and administrators, about the trip.

She went in part because she was inspired by the story of Susan Conroy, a South Portland woman who volunteered with Mother Teresa and spoke to Scarborough students last year.

Now, in her talks, she has inspired at least one student to consider going to India as well, according to history teacher John Lewis.

Payson is still trying to adjust to her homecoming, and life with a new perspective. She hears her friends and classmates say things like “my life sucks,” and wants to tell them, “No it doesn’t. You don’t know the half of it. … At least you have shoes on your feet.”

When kids complain about school, she thinks, “All the kids on the street in India would love to go to school, and they can’t.”

She kept a 200-page journal during her trip, and her mother and a teacher want her to publish it. Payson isn’t so sure.

“If I was someone, I don’t know if I would want to read it,” she said.

She is still working on finding a home for Robi, even as she prepares to graduate from high school next month and attend the University of Southern Maine in the fall.

At night, she dreams Robi is getting off a plane with one of the sisters from Calcutta.

“I feel like there’s a piece of me missing. … I know it’s him.”

Planning Board worried about existing Wal-Mart

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (May 5, 2005): Members of the Scarborough Planning Board worried Monday about the fate of an existing Wal-Mart, slated to be vacated after construction of a new 24-hour Wal-Mart Supercenter across the street.

At a hearing where Wal-Mart developers had hoped to get final approval, the board refused to grant that, saying there were state and federal permits outstanding and other issues remaining unresolved.

The board also indicated they might impose new restrictions on the project, which would put a 212,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter, a 138,000-square-foot Lowe’s, four 75,000-square-foot “high-turnover” restaurants and a 75,000-square-foot retail space on 90 wooded acres between Spring Street, Mussey Road and the Maine Turnpike spur to Route 1.

The new restrictions could mean that Wal-Mart would face a penalty if the company’s existing store remained vacant for too long after the new store opens. The board did not mention any particular timelines.

Board member Susan Auglis raised the first concern, asking if there could be a “penalty” if the building were left vacant, as many former Wal-Marts have been around the country.

Town Attorney Chris Vaniotis said the board could grant a time-restricted approval to the existing Wal-Mart property, which must be modified to allow a new road to cross the parking lot if the larger project is to be approved.

Board member Bill Shanahan said he wanted a timeline as well. “So much effort’s gone into rebuilding this area” that it would be bad to have a large vacant lot amid Payne Road’s booming development.

Board member Mark Porada suggested the building be demolished “so that you don’t have an empty box sitting there for years.”

Board Chairman Mike Wood said he wants to “protect the town as to what this site might look like and how it might be used” after the Wal-Mart Supercenter opens, which is slated for mid-2006.

The board reviewed several elements of the project and tabled the entire set of proposals until sometime in late May or early June.

Editorial: Changing times

Published in the Current

(May 5, 2005): The problem with a legislative proposal pushed by Cape Town Councilor Mike Mowles and sponsored by Republican Rep. Kevin Glynn of South Portland is not that changing from Eastern Time to Atlantic Time would probably make us all feel better.

And Mowles is right to think that having an extra hour of daylight in the evening might be more fun, could be safer and would likely save us money on energy bills.

The problem isn’t that Maine is way out east of the rest of the United States and with different national boundaries might actually be in the Atlantic Time Zone.

It’s also an interesting point that the rest of New England, still on Eastern Time, would think it was the same time as Maine all summer long, when they would go on daylight-saving time and we would not.

While we’d be even more isolated in winter than before, perhaps the summertime adjustment would reduce some of the worst problems for the big tourist season.

The real problem is that the proposal doesn’t pass the straight-face test, a requirement if the issue is to pass a statewide referendum.

We were surprised to learn of the proposal from Mowles last week, when he was fresh from testifying for it in Augusta. And two people sitting nearby, who heard his exuberance in favor of the idea, immediately chimed in with the instinctive questions we all have:

What about the economy? Would putting Maine an hour ahead of the country make us even less of a place businesses would look at as a serious option? What about scheduling appointments with people in other states? What about making phone calls to family and friends elsewhere? Will other New England states go along with it? Should we change something that has worked for years, just to make ourselves feel better?

But behind this particular legislative request for extra daylight, something darker lurks.

The fact that the State and Local Government Committee members went for it unanimously paints a frightening picture of what really goes on in the Statehouse.

If lawmakers are so out of touch with actual Mainers that they believe we would all come around to their point of view if only we understood reality – we need “education,” as the public-relations folks say – they are hopelessly far from understanding what else might actually make life better here.

But then again, as we wake up each black morning to the foibles and whims of those elected to represent us, maybe we could use that extra hour of sunlight at the end of the day, to make us feel a little better about it all.

National pride

Bethany Roy should be very proud of herself, and her family, her school and community should be too.

Roy, known to many around Cape Elizabeth as a participant in more activities and groups than any of us can remember, has been named a Presidential Scholar and will be honored in Washington, D.C., though she may not be there because of a family trip.

The honor has been conferred on only two people from Maine this year, and is given to fewer than 150 of the most promising high school seniors nationwide.

Congratulations to her, and to those who have taught, helped and supported her along the way, and continue to do so today.

Jeff Inglis, editor

Senior center gathers steam

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (April 25, 2005): A Scarborough town councilor is teaming up with local seniors to back a $1 million referendum to build a senior center on the old drive-in property.

The bond would pay for a 5,000-square-foot building that would be constructed on the property named Memorial Park last week.

A draft of the proposed building is expected to be unveiled at a lunch meeting Thursday, May 26, at noon at the Hillcrest Community Center.

At an April 21 joint meeting of two town senior-citizen groups, Senior Series and Senior Voices, Town Council Chairman Jeff Messer offered the seniors a two-acre section of town-owned land, which was recently rejected by a group looking to build a YMCA.

He also said he would “try to gather the support politically on the council to make sure the question gets on the ballot” in November, which would require council action by early September. He estimated the bond would cost 2 or 3 cents on the tax rate.

“I think the time has come for seniors to have a place to call their own,” Messer told the group assembled at Scarborough Downs. He recalled the failure of the 2000 referendum on a community center, which would have included space for senior activities.

“We don’t have a senior center, and I think everybody here would be anxious to have one at some point,” Messer said.

While he said he would work within town government to get the question out to voters, “the seniors would have to be front and center from here to Election Day,” mobilizing voters to support the measure.

Messer asked the seniors to think of suggestions for what they want in a senior center, so the town can come up with a plan for a building where “seniors would have priority,” though if seniors were not using the space at a particular time the center “would have rooms available for other groups.”

He said the land became available when the Y turned down the two-acre parcel because it was too small for a building the size the Y is envisioning. Messer said the senior center would not have to have a gym or other large, expensive amenities, in part because of the Y.

“The YMCA has a lot of momentum” and may fill many of the roles of a community center, he said, but “the seniors really need to have something of their own.”

Sharing the load

The effort has brought together two groups, one private, organized and led by Elizabeth McCann – Senior Voices, which meets at Scarborough Downs – and the other town-sponsored and hosted by the Hillcrest Manufactured Housing Community, Senior Series.

“We’re happy that we’re going to be together a lot more,” McCann said at the first joint meeting of the groups.

One member of the audience proposed the two groups join permanently. Messer urged the groups to “act as one voice on this question,” whether or not they joined administratively.

Marty Craine, vice chairman of Senior Voices, backed the idea. “We better get out there and talk to people about this,” he said, suggesting groups use their membership lists and other contacts.

Ted Tibbals, who has attended meetings of both groups, spoke passionately in favor of the idea, and asked rhetorically who wasn’t in favor of it. When one woman, who had been worried about the proposal’s cost, raised her hand, it sent ripples of surprise through the room.

Tibbals suggested the senior center include meeting space; facilities for movies, slides and music; an office; a conference room for three or four people; a small exercise room with treadmill and exercise bike “with very limited equipment;” storage space and a kitchen because “certainly we’re going to want to have some meals.”

Other suggestions included an area for a monthly health clinic that could “start with a good scale” and perhaps include a visit from a nurse from time to time. Community Services would have offices in the building, according to Director Bruce Gullifer, but would also look for volunteers to help staff it.

Town Councilor Carol Rancourt, who works at the Southern Maine Agency on Aging, suggested that seniors take trips – perhaps organized by the town – to visit other nearby senior centers to evaluate their buildings and programs.

Tibbals said he liked the idea that seniors would have priority, because, even though the Downs and Hillcrest are generous to share their space, they’re not available whenever seniors want to use them.

“The important thing is we all work together,” he said, broadening his exhortation to the whole community.

“I’m not anti-education, but if I’m willing to approve these school projects, I’m willing to approve a senior center,”he said. “If the school department wants us to support their projects, they darn well better support ours.”

Political timing

Messer said the timing of this question in November is key to its success. Next year the schools are expecting to have a multi-million-dollar referendum on the ballot, to renovate and expand existing schools, or to construct new ones.

“November of 2005 is the most opportune time,” he said, also because it is an off-year election, in which seniors tend to vote far more often than younger people. In off-years, Messer estimated, at least half of the voters are senior citizens.

But, he said, with seniors making up about one-third of the town’s voters, younger people would do well to support seniors’ efforts, in hopes that the seniors would back the big school projects in the future.

Craine said seniors would continue to support education in town.

“We backed the schools, and we always will, and we’ll be backing another one,” he said, calling this year “the best shot that we’ll ever have” to get a senior center, which he said is “long overdue in this community.”

Town Manager Ron Owens said the town wants “to develop a project here that will be supported by the entire community,” and promised to “try to manage it to keep that cost down to the taxpayer.”

One senior asked if it would be better to convert the Bessey School into a center. Messer said that would cost $2.5 million to $3 million to refit, when a new building could be built for under $1 million and could later be expanded. Gullifer said the Memorial Park site could support an addition of 2,000 or 3,000 square feet to an original 5,000-square-foot building, and cautioned the seniors to “be careful not to outprice" themselves when coming up with ideas for the building.

Other questions included whether the building should be called a “senior center” on the ballot. One senior suggested calling it a “community center” instead.

“If it’s tagged a senior facility, we’re in the minority, it won’t fly,” said one senior.

Another asked if the school expansion project might leave available a building that could be, in part, a senior center, perhaps joined with a teen center and some town or school office space.

Land found for Higgins Beach cottages

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (April 21, 2005): A real estate agent has found land for up to two Higgins Beach cottages of five a local developer donated for Habitat for Humanity.

The agent, Rita Yarnold of Bay Realty, declined to say where the land is or provide any other details, because the deal is not yet secure.

A Higgins Beach developer, who wishes to remain anonymous, has offered Habitat for Humanity five cottages on Kelly Lane, if the housing group can find land for them. The developer declined to comment for this story.

Yarnold, who is also president of the Portland Board of Realtors, has represented him in the sales of five large homes built along Kelly Lane in the past two years, and is representing him in the sale of a house now under construction on the road. She said she proposed the idea of donating houses to the developer in late 2004.

Yarnold said she would also likely represent any future development along the lane. The land on which the cottages sit, listed as about an acre in town records, is valued by the town at $240,000, and the buildings are valued at $180,000.

Until recently, vacationers rented the cottages for $1,000 a week, Yarnold said. They have wide-board flooring and cathedral ceilings, and were originally cottages on the ground. The present owner’s mother owned them previously and raised them onto tall foundations to add space, Yarnold said.

The Portland Board of Realtors has partnered with the local Habitat for Humanity group, to help Habitat find land on which to either build houses or move donated houses, according to Steve Bolton, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Portland.

“They are out searching for land like crazy as we speak,” he said.

The group usually needs to find three lots a year, so five is a big number, he said. It’s especially challenging because of the booming housing market.

“A lot of the lots we used to get, the ones the builders didn’t want, are now profitable for the builders,” Bolton said.

‘Freedom Park’ to be proposed as name

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (April 21, 2005): The Scarborough Town Council was expected to hear a recommendation that the new town park on the old drive-in property be named "Freedom Park" at its meeting Wednesday night, after the Current’s deadline.

Jack Cowie III, chairman of the Community Services and Recreation Advisory Board, was to make the recommendation at the meeting. The recommendation was also to include the concept that other elements of the park, including the gazebo and a walking trail, be given specific names in honor of prominent citizens or local history.

And Cowie told the Current Tuesday he would suggest to councilors that the park be “an unscheduled open space” whose fields are available on a first-come, first-served basis to the general public, without a reservation.

That would allow people to have a place for outdoor recreation, without running into the problem of “youth sports or adult rental occupying 100 percent of the space 100 percent of the time,” Cowie said.

“Right now it’s all about prescribed, organized sports,” he said. The multi-purpose field, which will be ready to be played on this fall, is now slated to be used for various Community Services programs and to be available for travel teams and adult leagues to reserve on a regular basis, Cowie said.

But that means other community groups, and private citizens, are kept off the fields, which is a problem for some members of the board, he said.

The park name was the subject of some study, including solicitations to the public for suggestions. Some names that resulted were "Underhill Farm," suggested by the Historical Society, and "Owascoag," a Native American word meaning “place of much grass.”

Cowie said he ruled out "Owascoag" because he didn’t want to “stir the pot” of political correctness, which was last hot when the Scarborough High School team name was changed from Redskins to Red Storm.

And because the family that owned Underhill Farm, which was on the land where the park now sits, had not donated the land to the town, he decided not to choose that name, either.

The board voted, and the top vote-getter was "Veterans Park," followed by "Memorial Park," "Oak Hill Park," "Community Park" and then "Freedom Park" in fifth place, Cowie said.

But Freedom Park had “what I felt was the most compelling support statement,” that “in the aftermath of 9/11 we have a lot to be grateful for.”

While Veterans Park would commemorate the sacrifices of members of the military, after 9/11 people are more appreciative of “everybody who serves in public service,” notably police, firefighters and ambulance workers.

“Freedom Park would allow support and recognition of everybody, including veterans,” Cowie said.

He said the board also wanted to provide opportunities to give names to “sub-elements of the park, like the walking trail that goes around it, (and) the gazebo.” He said Underhill could be a name used for one of those items, and something else could be named in memory of Clifford “Kippy” Mitchell, a longtime town employee and volunteer who died recently.

300-year-old oak falls, twice

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (April 21, 2005): After weathering this winter's snow and wind storms, a 300-year-old oak tree just waking up for the spring fell across Holmes Road unexpectedly Tuesday morning, damaging a van and closing the road two separate times during the day.

The incident has prompted town officials to inspect and identify other old oaks that may need to be taken down.

At about 7:45 a.m., one large limb fell across the road, smashing the rear window of a passing van. “I just felt an impact,” said Scott Mincher, the van’s driver. “I looked in the mirror and my (rear) windshield was shattered.”

Mincher, who was unhurt, drove away and returned with a chainsaw to help clear the road. Onlookers and those who heard the story told him he should buy a lottery ticket.

While he was gone, a neighbor, Dan McMahan, had grabbed his own chainsaw and started work.

The drivers of other cars, who had to stop because the road was blocked, got out of their vehicles and helped, McMahan said. One person was driving a pickup truck. He swung around, attached a chain to his tow hitch and pulled one large section of the limb to the side of the road, where McMahan cut it up and with help was able to roll it into the ditch, clearing the roadway.

Hours later, a second, larger section came down, tearing off the side of the tree trunk and sending more branches flying across the road.

“It’s too bad it didn’t hit my truck,” said neighbor Arthur Gallant. His white Chevy pickup, on a rebuilt motor and transmission, was just a foot beyond the farthest branches.

“I wouldn’t have cried over that truck,” he said.

Gallant said he was surprised the tree picked a warm, windless day to fall apart, since it had already survived the heavy snows and high winds of this past winter. All the same, he knew it was an old tree, and “I’ve been eyeing it because I was afraid it would take the wires down.”

But when it fell, the limbs just rattled the wires and left them standing.

The tree was taken down later in the afternoon by Bartlett Tree Experts of Scarborough.

Tim Lindsay, a consulting arborist with the company, said the tree "failed" because of "a decay organism that was working very quickly within the tree."

He said fungi were rotting the tree from the inside out, which caused some limbs to appear normal from the outside, despite being discolored on the inside and far lighter than they should be, almost "like balsa wood."

The only way to discover the damage before a limb falls is to drill into the tree and inspect the wood that is removed.

The fungi "work very fast in degrading the wood in the fall of the year and the spring," Lindsay said.

That seasonal spurt, plus the tree's emergence from winter dormancy, led to the collapse. "The buds were swollen and they were ready to pop," Lindsay said. The weight of water now flowing up from the roots into the limbs of the tree overloaded the degraded wood, tearing the tree apart.

Lindsay said he and Public Works Director Mike Shaw will be on the lookout around town for other large oak trees that may be in similar straits and need to be tested.

Faye Holmes, who owns the house lot on which the tree sits, said she hoped other oaks on her property would be allowed to stand. The tree that fell Tuesday has “been in my father’s family for over 100 years,” she said, as part of what used to be Emerson Farm.

She was sad the broken tree had to come down. “The place won’t be the same without it.”

Parents, schools have role in keeping kids healthy

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (April 14, 2005): Today’s children are so unhealthy, they may not live as long as their grandparents have.

Dr. Steven Kirsch, a family-practice doctor in Scarborough, gave that message to a group of parents at a presentation on youth obesity and wellness sponsored by the Wentworth PTA last week.

Kirsch and Dr. Lisa Letourneau, another Scarborough doctor involved in the Maine Youth Overweight Collaborative and a founder of the Scarborough Wellness Initiative, told parents how the culture has changed to encourage obesity in children and adults, and gave some ideas on how to change personal habits to stay healthy.

“It’s not only for our youth but for us and older adults as well,” Kirsch said. He showed data of adult obesity by state, and a picture of a Time Magazine cover from 1995, with the headline “The Girth of a Nation,” saying Americans have been growing more and more overweight every year.

“It’s not easy modifying your diet,” he said, urging people to eat based on their level of activity. “Your energy in, if it exceeds your energy out, you’ll end up gaining weight,” he said.

On the “energy in” subject, he talked about what he called “portion distortion,” a phenomenon over the past 20 years in which foods have increased in size and calories. For example, a “regular” size bagel has doubled in size and calories in the past 20 years, and a “small” portion of French fries has nearly tripled in size and calories, Kirsch said.

He said many people know they should be having so many servings of different types of foods, but few know what a serving really is.

“The serving size of a piece of meat should be about the size of a deck of cards,” he said. A serving of vegetables or fruit is about the size of a baseball, and “if you want a serving of sweets,” that should be the size of a domino.

Kirsch noted that kids today have less “energy out,” playing video games or watching TV more than young people did in the past.

“As a kid, all we used to do is play baseball as a group in the neighborhood, and we were riding our bikes everywhere,” Kirsch said.

Letourneau said all is not lost, and encouraged the parents in the room to work to improve their health and their children’s.

“It’s everything. It’s not just one thing,” she said. “Until we make it easier to make good choices (rather) than bad choices … we’re going to be fighting an uphill battle” to get people to change their personal behavior about eating and exercise.

She asked parents to think about what they do that might unconsciously encourage their kids to eat unhealthy foods. For example, she said, many parents bring sweets for kids to eat after sports competitions.

“If we’re at a sporting event, why bring it?” she asked, noting that many athletic areas have advertising for sodas, candies or other foods, including on scoreboards.

She said the snack bar by the main high school fields often has unhealthy foods, and suggested it stock apples and other better snacks.

“I guarantee it. If that’s all the kids have to choose from, they will buy it,” she said.

Letourneau also lamented the economics of many school lunch programs, including Scarborough’s, which must be financially self-supporting. That effectively forces them to sell sodas and sugary foods to make a profit to support sales of healthier foods.

Letourneau said there are bright spots. She has heard of students complaining about long lines at the salad bar at Scarborough Middle School, forced them to wait or to choose other foods to get to class on time.

And several fifth-grade classrooms are tracking their exercise through a program called “Maine in Motion,” in which each student uses a pedometer to measure how many steps they walk each day.

“Kids who are more active in school actually learn more,” Letourneau said. Many young children play sports in town, but once they get to the middle school and have to try out for teams, very few continue athletics, she said.

Letourneau said the solutions to weight problems start at home. “When an issue is identified with a child, it’s not about the child; it’s about the family,” she said. “The whole family has to be involved in choosing a healthy lifestyle.”

Parents can encourage their kids to follow what Letourneau called a 5-2-1-0 program, in which kids eat five fruits or vegetables a day, watch no more than two hours of TV or video games, do one hour of physical activity and drink zero sodas. “Juices can be just as bad…Water water water is good,” she said.

To change the “culture of overeating,” she urged parents to take the lead. “We are absolutely role models for our kids.”

Interest in neighborhood watch grows

Published in the Current

The organization of a Mitchell Road neighborhood watch group has already improved communication between residents and Cape Elizabeth police.

On Monday, for example, a Manter Road resident called police to ask about an unknown car parked in front of her home for several hours.

The woman also called Mary Chris Bulger, a Lydon Lane resident helping to organize the neighborhood watch, to let her know, and told Bulger she wouldn’t have called police if she hadn’t attended a neighborhood watch meeting last month.

“People are much more aware and certainly calling the police themselves” as well as calling or e-mailing their neighbors, Bulger said. “I think that’s how it will go.”

The effort has also sparked interest in similar groups from residents elsewhere in Cape Elizabeth.

Community Liaison Officer Mark Dorval welcomes the prospect of other such groups starting around town. “The more eyes and ears out there the merrier,” he said.

Also welcoming the wider interest is Mary Chris Bulger, a Lydon Lane resident who, with Pam Salerno of Manter Street, is coordinating the Mitchell Road group, which will meet on Wednesday, April 27, at 6:30 p.m. at the town center fire station in Cape Elizabeth to discuss how the effort will work.

Bulger said her group will continue to focus on the Mitchell Road area, and encouraged people elsewhere in town to meet with their own neighbors to set up their own programs.

At the April 27 meeting, Dorval will give a presentation on “being a good eyewitness” to help people know what details of a person or scene are most helpful to police.

Dorval said he hopes the effort improves the sense of community in the area. “In today’s day and age, a lot of people don’t know who their neighbors are,” he said.

The group will also plan presentations for future meetings, which are expected to occur at regular intervals, either monthly or every other month.

“In order for a neighborhood watch to be effective, you need to keep people’s interest,” Dorval said.

Bulger has her own plan to keep the group in people’s minds.

She has an e-mail list of about 22 households who will get regular updates about the group’s activities and programs.

“What I would be happy with is for people to be observant” and call police with questions or concerns, Bulger said.

She said people who live near each other are meeting each other for the first time as a result of the group. “I met several of my neighbors I didn’t know,” she said.

The group has sprung up after concerns arose that an intruder was repeatedly entering homes in the neighborhood and watching people while they slept. No one was harmed, nothing was taken, and the intruder fled as soon as the residents awoke, according to police.

“Hopefully they’ll catch this guy,” Bulger said.

Capt. Brent Sinclair said the department has “got a lot of calls,” including about 10 people suggesting specific names of people they want police to check out.

Of the 10 calls, two named the same person, Sinclair said, while the others all suggested different names.

“Everybody seems to think it looks like somebody they know or have seen,” he said. Police are following up on those leads now.

Editorial: Barring the press

Published in the Current

The state Department of Education should reverse its practice of preventing the media from accompanying public officials on tours of public school buildings being built with public money.

That practice was invoked Wednesday to bar reporters from a tour of Scarborough High School’s renovation and construction site, though the quality of the work done on the project has been under public scrutiny in recent weeks, and was the subject of the tour.

The closing of the tour means the public has one more reason to fear that there are real problems with the construction quality at the high school, and that the schools are trying to cover them up.

Dale Douglas of the department told us Wednesday that the practice is meant to allow state employees – public servants – to speak freely to each other, and said the department is concerned that its employees’ comments might be misconstrued by the media.

But thousands of other public officials in our towns and elsewhere, from town councils to state legislators, conduct their business in front of the media on a regular basis, without complaint or concern. They make their comments openly and conduct frank discussions, including asking hard questions, and their comments are fairly and accurately reported in our paper and hundreds of other media outlets.

The Department of Education doesn’t want to play by the same rules. And Superintendent William Michaud took their side, likening the event to an executive session or an internal investigation.

Michaud forgets that an executive session can only happen when a majority of officials in an elective body vote – in public – to close the door, and only after saying why state law allows them to do so. And the timing of this “internal investigation” – if that is what it is – is unusual, coming as it does after a full public airing of concerns about the construction project, and after the public release of the schools’ extensive rebuttal to the concerns.

It would have been a big help to everyone involved if the public – in the form of the press, the public’s representative – had been allowed on the tour. If there are real problems, we would have seen them and reported on them. If there are not problems, we would have told you that. And if there is not a way to tell without deeper investigation, we would have explained that.

Now, the school board and school officials must consider whether they think the town should spend $20,000 on an outside engineer.

But they have barred one of the few ways to keep the council from conducting what some of them have said is an unneeded outside review.

It’s true that the state officials will issue a report in a week’s time, and that report will be made public. But given the scrutiny and skepticism the report is certain to face, it would have helped all involved – and most of all you, the public – if you had been able to see the process of researching the report. How complete was the state’s review of the construction work? We may never know, and we should.

Michaud should have argued with the state officials that, in light of the public nature of this situation, having the press on the tour would help the schools make their case that everything is “fine,” to use the word of Board of Education Chairman David Beneman.

Unless, of course, there are real problems with the school, or unless there’s no way to tell without being a professional engineer.

In those cases, having the press along would not help the schools. But in those cases, it’s time to spend the money on an outside expert.

Students learn about choice of new pope

Published in the Current

SOUTH PORTLAND (April 7, 2005): Holy Cross School Principal Deacon Steve Harnois took a group of students into the school's chapel Monday, with its frescos and murals on the walls, as millions around the world mourned the death of the pope.

Harnois has been using the death of Pope John Paul II to teach students about the traditions surrounding the death of the pope and the process of choosing a new one.

Taking students into the school's chapel, "like the Sistine Chapel," is helping Harnois recreate for the students the experience of the cardinals, as they vote to choose the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

“We learned basically what’s going to be happening as the cardinals arrive in Rome,” Harnois said of the events at the pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade school on the corner of Broadway and Cottage Road.

Pope John Paul II, born Karol Wojtyla in Poland in 1920, died Saturday at age 84, after more than 26 years as the leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

The school is beginning each morning this week by praying the “‘Our Father,’ ‘Hail Mary’ and ‘Glory Be’ for the repose of his soul,” Harnois said.

Harnois gave teachers information on Pope John Paul II, and on the process of choosing a new pope, and are discussing the events with their students.

Harnois, who worked 29 years in public education before moving to the Catholic schools seven years ago, said death is not a problem topic at Holy Cross.

“It’s much easier to handle death here than in the public schools … because you can go into Christian beliefs,” he said.

In religion classes, students have talked about John Paul II and what he did during his papacy, as well as the traditions surrounding the death of a pope and the election of a new one.

Some of the students asked about the practices of hitting the pope on the head with a silver mallet and calling out the pope's original name, Harnois said. He told them those measures were to ensure the pope was not stricken with the “sleeping sickness” in the 16th and 17th centuries, which made people appear dead when they were really still alive.

“We talked about all the different traditions that have evolved over the years,” Harnois said, including the prayers before each balloting, why the cardinals’ ballots are threaded by a needle onto a thread and why the ballots are burned after each vote.

Those practices were developed to prevent cardinals from casting more than one vote, which led to questions from students who wondered why holy men would try to cheat. Harnois has discussed with the students how some people throughout history have been more interested in the “power of the papacy rather than the goodness of it.”

And to explain why a newly chosen pope has to pick a new name, Harnois looks to the Bible. “It comes from Jesus changing Simon’s name to Peter,” he said, referring to an event in which Jesus renamed one of his disciples to reflect a new, reborn set of beliefs.

Harnois, who was in his late 20s when John Paul II became pope, is now 65. He has also addressed some of the larger issues the cardinals face when they meet to choose a pope.

“The needs of the church, the needs of the kingdom of God, should be discussed,” Harnois said. If there are specific people who meet those needs, their skills might be mentioned, but there is nothing like what Americans might call campaigning. Cardinals do not urge each other to vote for one or another person in particular, he said.

Allen blasts Bush budget plan

Published in the Current and the American Journal

U.S. Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, sharply criticized the budget proposed by President George W. Bush last week, saying Bush’s spending plan “looks like a budget to reduce economic growth.”

Allen plans to run for reelection to the House in 2006 and is mulling challenging Republican incumbent Olympia Snowe for her Senate seat.

In an interview with an editor at Current Publishing, Allen said the president’s budget, as well as the spending resolutions adopted by the House and Senate – are “all disastrous for Maine” and the rest of the country, and could result in inflation.

Allen, a member of the House Budget Committee, blamed the problems on Bush’s desires to spend huge amounts of money on defense and homeland security, cut taxes on upper-class Americans, and reduce domestic spending.

“It’s so hard for the public to understand that their opportunities in life get affected by how the federal government spends their money,” Allen said.

One aspect that particularly hurts Maine is a proposal to “eliminate … the federal funding that supports agricultural research at land grant colleges,” to research forestry, blueberries and potatoes, among other topics. “No orchardist, no blueberry grower, no landowner can do that (research) on his own,” Allen said.

Spending vs. taxes
While Bush’s budget increases spending overall, it reduces spending on the Small Business Administration, environmental protection, adult education, job training, agricultural research and public housing, Allen said.

“Why? Why is because the president can’t reduce the upper-income tax cuts,” Allen said, characterizing those tax cuts as inefficient. “They gave us too little economic stimulation” and too many long-term problems, including “horrendous budget deficits” topping $400 billion.

“We have to have a stronger sense of fiscal responsibility,” Allen said.

He wants federal revenue to more closely match federal spending. Federal spending is now at about 20 percent of gross domestic product, roughly where it has always been, Allen said. But revenue is at 16.3 or 16.4 percent of GDP, the lowest since 1959 – before Medicare and Medicaid began, he said.

He is also angry about being misled about the cost of the war in Iraq.

“We’re spending over $1 billion a week in Iraq,” Allen said. “Speaking in terms of Bath Iron Works, that’s a destroyer every 10 days.”

But that’s not what former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress before the war.

Allen remembers being told that Iraq could pay for its own reconstruction. “The administration went in thinking it would cost very little money,” he said.

He proposed paying for increased domestic spending by getting rid of tax cuts for upper- and middle-income Americans.

“We ought to be investing in those things in particular that either enhance fairness in American society or contribute to economic growth,” he said.

Allen also voices support for federal funding of the Eastern Trail, an effort to create an off-road route from Kittery to South Portland and beyond. He has supported it in the past with earmarks of transportation money, and expects to continue to.

“To understand the value of trails, all you have to do is look at urban and rural trails where they exist,” he said. “They are heavily, heavily used.”

Allen expressed concern that the budget might not get a proper hearing in the chambers of Congress, as members debate the president’s biggest item, the privatization of Social Security.

“The debate over Social Security over private accounts sucks out a lot of the air” Congress would use to discuss other matters, Allen said.

Education and energy
Two topics that need additional scrutiny are the federal education and energy policies, he said.

“No Child Left Behind has become another unfunded mandate,” that has never been given the money it needs to succeed, Allen said.

“There’s not enough money to pay for all the testing and the training that’s required,” he said. “Most educators in Maine would say that we’re spending so much time teaching to the test that we’ve lost the spontaneity” that is crucial to education.

He also wants to revamp the government’s approach to energy, particularly the use of fossil fuels.

“We’ve wasted over four years when we could have been doing an energy policy that could have reduced demand,” he said, blaming the Bush administration for stalling on energy-conservation measures while demanding support for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve in Alaska.

“They wanted to drill but not to save,” Allen said. But in a country that uses 25 percent of the world’s oil and has 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves, “ANWR doesn’t matter,” he said.

“We need to be investing in alternatives,” including cellulosic ethanol, which can be added to gasoline to conserve petroleum-based fuel

Health care
Allen wants to “make our health care system more efficient,” to reduce the cost burden businesses bear, and help cover an estimated 45 million Americans who do not have health insurance.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., floated one idea Allen likes during the 2004 presidential campaign. That idea would have the federal government pick up the cost of all health care cases that cost over $50,000, effectively creating a nationwide high-risk insurance pool.

But Allen doesn’t think that will be approved without some means of containing the costs of health care, which could be a long way off.

He deferred questions on what specific drugs or procedures should or should not be included in government-funded programs, but said medical decisions will become increasingly political because of the expense.

“They’ll have to be because the cost of health care is so high,” he said. “We’re not going to be able to escape this.”

The latest Medicare reform bill requires insurance companies to cover one drug in each class, Allen said, but does not specify which drug, leaving private insurers to decide on their own.

“These are the kinds of things that probably require some kind of public process,” to allow the people at large to prioritize health care spending, Allen said.

He also blasted federal involvement in the Terri Schiavo case, saying it was “a clear case” of a decision that should have stayed within the family. If the family disagreed, he said the courts should handle it.

“Congress had no business, in my view, injecting itself into a family matter,” he said, calling the law bringing the Schiavo case into federal court a political maneuver that ignored “the common sense attitude of a majority” of Americans.

“The silver lining to the Terri Schiavo case is more Americans will do living wills,” Allen said.

Soldier’s widow murdered: Lavinia Gelineau’s body was found in her basement on Central Street Friday afternoon.

Published in the American Journal; co-written with Mike Higgins

The widow of a Maine soldier killed in Iraq last year was brutally murdered by her father last week in Westbrook.

The father, Nicolae Onitiu, 51, strangled Lavinia Gelineau, 25, with a clothesline in the basement of her home on Central Street. Shortly after killing his daughter, police said Onitiu, who was visiting from Romania, took his own life by hanging himself from a floor joist in the basement.

State Police Spokesman Steve McCausland said that before killing himself, Onitiu took the time to smoke a cigarette. Police found the lighter still clutched in his hand.

McCausland said police believe the murder took place sometime late Thursday night or early Friday morning.

Westbrook Police Chief Paul McCarthy said it was the first homicide in the city since Oct. 27, 2000, when 21-year-old Brandon Feyler of Portland was stabbed by Anthony Osborne during an altercation outside Osborne’s home on Seavey Street. McCarthy said Osborne was convicted in connection with Feyler’s death.

Police discovered the bodies of Gelineau and her father on Friday afternoon. Gelineau’s co-workers had called and asked them to check on her because she had failed to show up for work.

Gelineau had worked since August at STRIVE, a non-profit in South Portland supporting young adults with intellectual and emotional disabilities. "It was going to be her last day, and she didn’t come in for work,” said STRIVE Program Manager Peter Brown. “We got concerned about her.”

The staff had planned a party for her, because it was her last day of work, before she headed back to school to become a French teacher. They called and left messages for Gelineau, but never heard back. Not showing up was “very unlike her,” and “a couple of employees had a sense that something was wrong,” Brown said.

The STRIVE staff called police twice, the first time to ask them to check on Gelineau. They asked police to call back to say what they had found. The police said they couldn’t call, but could have Gelineau call to say everything was alright.

Later, having heard nothing, they called Westbrook police again. That time, they were asked to describe the make and model of her car and other information, Brown said.

“We were just putting the pieces together ourselves,” Brown said. And, it wasn’t a good picture.

“We knew it had been, first of all, a really horrible year. And we knew that her father had just come into town, and they had a difficult relationship,” Brown said.

Brown said police called the company around noon on Friday to inform them of Gelineau’s death. He said staff members were given crisis hotline numbers to call if they needed someone to talk with and councilors visited the office on Monday to help staff members deal with the loss.

To say Gelineau was having a difficult year is an understatement.

Last April 20, her husband Christopher Gelineau was killed in combat while serving in Iraq.

By all accounts, Gelineau was devastated by her husband’s death and was still mourning his loss.

Gelineau’s mother, Iuliana Onitiu, had come to live with her daughter shortly after the death of Gelineau’s husband. They had previously shared an apartment in Portland before moving to a house in Westbrook just a couple of weeks ago. Gelineau also has a brother who is still living in Romania.

Shortly before her estranged husband arrived from Romania, Iuliana Onitiu had left Westbrook to visit Christopher’s parents.

McCausland said Nicolae and Iuliana Onitiu had a history of domestic violence.

“She wanted no contact with him,” McCausland said.

While it appeared Gelineau was aware of the previous violence between her parents, McCausland said it did not appear that there had been any previous incidents of violence between her and her father. In fact, about six moths ago, Nicolae Onitiu attempted suicide in Romania, and Gelineau flew to that country to visit him.

Gelineau, however, was wary enough about his visit to speak to co-workers about it, especially about how it would affect her mother.

“She was concerned about her father and her mother being in the same place,” Brown said. But Gelineau was not concerned about herself.

“She thought her father’s concerns were with her mother,” Brown said. “She was confident she could handle her father.”

In the wake of her death, those that knew Gelineau remember her fondly, speaking of her love for her husband and the compassion that she showed to other soldier’s families who were suffering as she was. They remember a woman who worked hard to get her life back on track.

“She was just a great lady, and she was doing her best to help everyone out,” said Maj. Peter Rogers of the Maine National Guard.

Rogers said that after Christopher Gelineau’s death, Lavinia remained active in the Guard’s Family Assistance Program, and attended the funerals of other Maine soldiers who were killed in Iraq. “She was very strong for a lot of family members,” he said.

Maine National Guard State Family Program Director Sgt. 1st Class Barbara Claudel said Gelineau had a great effect on the lives of soldiers and their families even after losing her husband. She said Gelineau kept in constant contact with many soldiers through e-mail and also shipped care packages overseas to them. “A lot of families had a deep connection to her because of the type of person that she was,” she said.

Like Rogers, Claudel also remembers Gelineau being at the funeral for every Maine soldier killed in action. Claudel remembers Gelineau offering comfort to grieving families by a kind word, a hug or just her presence. Claudel said he was amazed that Gelineau had the capacity for such compassion even in the face of her own tragic loss.

“I don’t know how she had that kind of strength," she said. “I don’t think she ever stopped giving, even though she was grieving.”

Gelineau also took the time to continue pursuing her dreams. She and Christopher met at the University of Southern Maine. Last May, she received her diploma and a diploma posthumously awarded to her husband to a standing ovation from the audience in attendance at the Cumberland County Civic Center.

“A real tragic end,” said Rogers. “Things were just starting to look bright for her.”

Brown said the staff at STRIVE will be feeling Gelineau’s loss for quite some time. “She was a really nice person who had really suffered a lot,” Brown said. “She was very well liked by our clients and our staff alike.”

Claudel said she would remember Gelineau’s compassion to others in the wake of her own tragedy.

“She was a very special person, and she affected every one of us,” she said. “People don’t do that anymore. They don’t reach out, and she just did. She was very special to a lot of people.”

Looking for a bright spot, Claudel said that at least now the pain that Gelineau was feeling for the loss of her beloved husband was finally over. “She grieved and she grieved a long time because she had an undying love for this man,” Claudel said. “She had a love that most of us don’t see, and now she’s with Chris.”

Cape woman helps Vietnamese neighbors

Published in the Current

CAPE ELIZABETH (April 1, 2005): Three decades after she left Vietnam, Lilly Pyle of Cape Elizabeth is leading an effort to help those still living in her native village.

Pyle was born and grew up in the village of Dong Ha in central Vietnam, just inland from Da Nang, in the territory that became known during the Vietnam War as the DMZ, the demilitarized zone.

“It used to be a little village” and even now has only between 3,000 and 5,000 residents – she has been told not to ask for exact numbers for fear the Communist government will think she's a spy.

When she was growing up, an American military base was built nearby. “As children, we went out to the fence to see them,” she said. “I sell bananas and Cokes and stuff” to the servicemen.

In 1972, the Americans pulled back and the Viet Cong took the village after a devastating rocket attack that split up her family for days.

Heading to America

Pyle was in Da Nang then, learning to be a seamstress, and the family ended up in a refugee camp. Pyle quit school to earn money by doing laundry for an American serviceman from Maine, whom she later married and, even later, divorced.

A friend of Pyle’s from the village ended up working for another American, who shared living quarters with Pyle’s future husband.

That village friend married the serviceman she was working for and moved to Maryland. She sent Pyle letters asking her to come to America.

“She sent me pictures of apples and horses,” Pyle said. The serviceman she had worked for, now back in the U.S., promised to support her if she came over.

But still Pyle worried about whether her father, a police officer, would be punished if she left for America.

“He said he owed me my life anywhere that’s safe at the time,” so she left. After a brief trip to Maryland, Pyle went to Maine, where she got married and had two children.

She lost touch with her girlfriend in Maryland, and began life entirely anew in Maine.

Years down the road, Pyle left what had become a very bad relationship.

“If I escaped from that war, I escape again,” she said. She learned to drive, and to read and write English, and left, for the sake of her children, who have both now graduated from college.

Homecoming

In the mid-1990s, in response to a wish from her dying father, Pyle returned to Vietnam for the first time since she had left.

“Imagine you come home 30 years later,” she said. The villagers were poor and hungry.

Government rules required them to build on land they owned, or the government would take the land for someone else. So the villagers built homes, wall by wall, as they could afford the materials.

Others were able to finish a house, but had no other money. “They live in a nice house and (have) no food because they feel the house is going to be (there for) generations,” Pyle said.

“I have always wanted to do something to help,” she said, and so she resolved to raise money to help the villagers – her former neighbors, who remember her as a member of a good family, one of the oldest in the village.

While she was home, she also got bad news: “The children were getting kidnapped and sold to another country for prostitution.”

Many of the people have no jobs, but still have to pay taxes. They also have to pay for their children to attend school.

With Pyle’s money, families are better able to provide for themselves. Some of her money also goes to help the community at large. The first $4,000 she raises this year, for example, will pay for fences and playgrounds at local schools. After that, “I’ll try to see if I can have some form of a day care.”

Seeking donations

Pyle has set up a non-profit organization, the Vietnamese Hope Foundation, to allow donors to deduct contributions from their income taxes. People can find out more about the foundation at its Web site, www.VietnameseHopeFoundation.org, and can send donations to Pyle at PO Box 2752, South Portland, ME 04116.

All of the money goes to the people in the village – she covers the travel expenses herself.

She has returned twice since her father’s death, once with her children and once on her own. Each time she has brought donations to help women and children in Dong Ha.

Many of the women she gives money to are widowed mothers. A lot of the men in the village are dying of cancer – “none of them are over 40” – and the women need the help.

“I can’t save everybody, but I can do a little bit at a time,” Pyle said. “I’ve helped a lot of families.”

But with the American money comes questions from the Vietnamese government, including requests for bribes.

One official demanded she give all the money to him, promising to buy rice to give to everyone in the village. She refused, citing the Biblical proverb “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.”

“I want these people to become independent like me,” she said.

Pyle wants to be sure of where her money is going and personally interviews families that are possible recipients.

“These people never had anything,” she said. “It’s so hard. Everybody the same situation. … I just help one at a time.”

Pyle wants to broaden her foundation’s donor base, who are mostly now friends and customers at her Old Port hair salon. She is trying to get other Vietnamese-Americans around the U.S. to raise money too, to support their villages.

She believes she has found her purpose in life, and has been given the means to carry it out.

“I believe that God has chosen me” to face the challenges of war, emigration, abuse and poverty. Without those experiences, Pyle said, “How would I know how to get out of the gutter? Then I wouldn’t know how to help these people.”

Plant fires under investigation

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (March 31, 2005): The cause of a March 24 fire at RTS Packaging in the Scarborough Industrial Park is under investigation, according to Scarborough Fire Chief Michael Thurlow.

The fire did not do significant damage to the building, though the company did lose some of its products, according to a company spokesman. The company makes cardboard packaging such as dividers in beverage cartons.

Thurlow said the fire appears to have started in a cardboard waste collection system that runs throughout the building and collects scraps of cardboard cut by machinery. Thurlow likened the system to a sawdust collection system in a carpentry workshop.

He said the fire started somewhere in the system by an unknown cause, and said it is not the first time such a fire has started in the system.

“We really don’t know just what’s causing it,” Thurlow said. He said the company is being “very cooperative” and wants to find the cause of the fires as well, to avoid future damage and losses.

Town gets new ambulance

The Scarborough Fire Department has received a new ambulance, which arrived Tuesday. It is part of a multi-year effort to replace the town’s aging ambulances. Two of the three were replaced last year, and the new arrival means all three of the town’s ambulances are new.

A five-year contract with the ambulance dealer means each of the ambulances will be in service for three years before being traded back in for credit toward a new ambulance, according to Fire Chief Michael Thurlow.

“It keeps them under factory warranty,” meaning the town pays “virtually nothing” toward maintenance costs, he said.

The town’s previous ambulances were out of warranty and required a lot of maintenance. The one replaced this week was a 10-year-old model, Thurlow said. “It was a rough ride to Portland,” he said.

The new ambulances cost about $130,000, and if they drive fewer than 36,000 miles in three years – something Thurlow thinks likely – the dealer will give 50 percent of that back to the town in trade-in credit toward a future ambulance.

The contract the town has with the dealer is for five years, starting last year, and can be extended for two additional years beyond that, giving the town fixed prices on the vehicles.

Suicide pact alleged in double stabbing

Published in the Current; co-written with staff writer Ken Tatro

SCARBOROUGH (March 8, 2005): Police believe a 15-year-old Scarborough girl and a 20-year-old Scarborough woman suffered stab wounds Tuesday in the woods off Route 114 because of a suicide pact.

Police found the two in the woods next to the Scarborough Public Library, after the older of the two, Barbara Kring, called from her cell phone just before 5 p.m. Tuesday to report that she and a friend were bleeding and needed help, according to police.

Kring is a 2004 graduate of Scarborough High School. The 15-year-old is a freshman at the school.

Scarborough Police Chief Robbie Moulton said Tuesday night that the two females were the only people involved in the incident. He did not know whether one or both of them used the knife police recovered and believe to be the only weapon involved.

What information the police do have so far comes from brief conversations officers had with the women before ambulances took them to Maine Medical Center, where both underwent surgery Tuesday night.

Both were listed in stable condition Wednesday afternoon, police said.

A family member of Kring’s declined to comment when reached by phone Wednesday.

Keith Matassa, coordinator of marine mammal rehabilitation at the University of New England, said Kring was “a great person” and “a really, really good volunteer” for the program, where she has helped treat stranded seals for three years.

A relative of the 15-year-old also declined to comment for this story.

Kring told dispatchers that the pair had a poisonous substance with them, according to police.

Police did recover an unknown liquid at the scene, and sent it to a lab for identification. The substance was not identified by press time, and police were not sure whether either of the women had injected the substance, though two syringes were recovered from the scene.

Grover said police didn't know the nature of the relationship between the two young women. He said police had not yet fully interviewed them, and were withholding some information until the end of the inquiry.

"It is part of an ongoing investigation," Grover said. No charges have been filed.

Scarborough police officials kept the Maine State Police abreast of events through Wednesday morning, before it became clear that both women would survive.

The Maine State Police has jurisdiction over murder investigations throughout the state, except in Portland. But Wednesday, state and local police agreed Scarborough's detectives should handle the case, Grover said.

At Scarborough High School Wednesday, students could get counseling if they needed it, said Principal Andrew Dolloff. The school has several staff members who are trained to help students affected by these types of incidents.

Dolloff said early in the morning he happened past the guidance area and noticed that a couple of the counselors were meeting with small groups of students.

But, for the most part, the school ran normally. There was no formal announcement to students about the incident.

"It's not that you try to downplay the significance ... but we do try to reduce the amount of hysteria or misinformation that is out there," he said.

The location, just yards from the Scarborough Public Library, is a wooded area within view of Wentworth Intermediate School and the Scarborough Middle School.

The general area – and especially the library – is a common place for students and young people to congregate in the afternoons.

"It was like Grand Central Station yesterday," said Assistant Library Director Susan Winch Wednesday.

Library staff were expecting to close early because of the bad weather, and were telling kids to arrange to get picked up before 5 p.m.

"There were just tons of kids in and out and in and out," Winch said. She said she did not know Kring or the other girl involved, and said that library staff often don't know the names of all the kids who spend time in the building after school.

She said "nothing unusual" happened at the library throughout the afternoon.

Springtime is surfing time

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (March 3, 2005): Scarborough surfer and filmmaker Ben Keller is showing two short works in a one-time-only event on Sunday, March 20, at 7 p.m. at the Stadium on Brown Street in Portland.

Keller, whose first major film, the documentary “Ishmael,” chronicled the lives of New England winter surfers, has been working on “Rubberman: A Northeast Surfer’s Journey” as a light-hearted approach to the subject.

“It’s more of a traditional surf movie,” Keller said. “It’s got some of the best surfing I’ve shot.”

“Rubberman” includes scenes of local surfers – Seth Balliett of Pine Point is the star of the 30-minute show – on local beaches like Higgins Beach, Scarborough Beach and “Doc Brown’s,” the section of Cape Elizabeth shoreline along Shore Road where the ocean comes in next to the road.

Keller said the short film also has footage of “a secret spot in Scarborough” that is beginning to become well known, but whose location he would not divulge. It also has shots of Scarborough surfer James Krans.

Calling the movie “a fun timeout for the community,” Keller said it has a “funny plot, horrific acting” and is designed to elicit audience participation such as booing and hissing at the screen.

The event will also include a showing of a 15-minute short film edited by Keller as a tribute to the early days of surfing films, including glimpses of Bob Denver (pre-Gilligan) and Nancy Sinatra, as well as a rare recording of the Supremes singing a surfing song.

The event officially begins at 6 p.m., with tickets costing $3. Proceeds will benefit Keller’s next movie. All ages are welcome. There will also be a raffle of surfing and surf-related gear, including a surfboard.

Digging his way out

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (Feb 17, 2005): Deen Kirchner wanted some company this winter. The Scarborough 12-year-old has "adopted" a fire hydrant for each of the past three winters, and wants everyone in town to do the same.

After big snowstorms, Kirchner shovels snow away from the fire hydrant across the street from his house, which helps firefighters respond more quickly to emergencies.
It takes firefighters about 45 seconds to hook up a hose to a hydrant, Kirchner said. But if they have to dig the hydrant out from under the snow, it can take as long as two minutes -- an eternity for someone whose house is on fire, or who is trapped inside.

Just down the street is another hydrant that regularly gets buried by storms and plows.

"I tried to convince my friend Eric," who lives down the street, to adopt that one, Kirchner said. But it didn't work, so Kirchner is thinking about adopting it as well.

He has encouraged other family members to help him out with "his" hydrant, and after last week's big storm, he got a neighbor to come by with a pickup and a plow to clear away the big mess around the hydrant.

Kirchner, now in sixth grade, started three years ago, after his mother heard about an "adopt-a-hydrant" program in South Portland, where residents were asked to take a few extra minutes while clearing their walks and driveways, to dig out hydrants as well.

"There's not really anything else for kids to volunteer," Kirchner said. A lot of local non-profits are happy to have young people volunteer, but require them to be 13 or older.

"I want to help," Kirchner said.

He also carefully removes any ice from around the fixtures. He said it takes about 20 minutes for him to fix up the hydrant, though he is a fastidious worker and checks back regularly to ensure that warm temperatures and passing vehicles haven't conspired to cover any portion of the hydrant.

He has even brought a degree of engineering to the task. He knows which direction the town plow usually comes from, and keeps that side clearer. That way, the snowplow dumps its load of snow before the hydrant and doesn't cover the hydrant itself.

He keeps an eye on the weather, so he knows when his work will be needed. "When I wake up, I look outside," Kirchner said.

He eats his breakfast in front of the local TV news. And when a big storm is on the way, he makes sure his tools are ready, except this last time.

He forgot to put his shovel upright in a tall snowbank, and after the storm, had to spend 10 minutes looking for it. He eventually found it on the ground, "under all the snow," near the grill.

He also knows how to handle his workload. "When I'd get tired, I'd build a couch" to sit on and rest.

Burst pipes flood Ruth’s, damaging stuff

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (Feb 2, 2005): A non-profit school supply group in Scarborough, Ruth's Reusable Resources, is looking for donations and volunteers after pipes burst flooding the Bessey School, the group's home.

Two pipes burst in the building in the frigid weather over the weekend. The water was not discovered until Tuesday morning. Ruth Libby, the head of the organization, is looking for volunteers to help sort through the debris and donations of money and space to move supplies to.

"It's still pretty wet," Ruth Libby said Tuesday afternoon, as the recovery effort began. Some volunteers have told Libby they will come by after school in the coming days.

Several rooms throughout the old school building are stacked high with paper, books, arts and crafts materials and other school supplies donated by local companies and available for schoolteachers to collect at no charge.

School districts pay $1.50 per student per year for membership in Ruth's. A single teacher can take as much as $300 worth of items in one visit.

"There's enough stuff thrown away daily in this whole state to take care of pretty much every school district," she said. She also has nine 18-wheel trailers filled with items, some filled as many as eight years ago.

The damage is "depressing," Libby said. The building is old and hasn't received much maintenance in recent years. "We're past the spot where this building is feasible."

She has begun a fund-raising effort and is seeking donors of money and space for the items to move. Donations are coming in, though slowly, and warehouse space is hard to find. Those wishing to donate should call 883-8407.

For the moment, she will stay in the Bessey School, where several storage rooms were flooded, some with several inches of water. "It just looked like a waterfall," Libby said workers who found the damage told her.

"A lot of the good computers that we had in there are wet" as are mounds of paper and other supplies that would have been available at no charge to employees of school districts that are members of the Ruth's group.

"Now we have to throw it away," she said, though she is trying to find a way to salvage as much as possible.

There are huge rolls of felt sitting on the floor of what used to be the school gym. Only the bottom couple of inches are wet. "I will figure out a way to cut it, if I have to unroll the whole roll to do it," she said Wednesday.

Some areas of the floor were still wet Wednesday, and Libby was waiting for a Dumpster to be delivered so she could begin clearing things out.

Many of the supplies are stacked in piles, meaning most of the supplies are still dry. But those have to be moved before the wet things on the bottom of the piles can be thrown away.

Several large rooms have water damage, and some rugs may have to be removed, Libby said. That would require moving everything out of the rooms.

She is asking for volunteers to help moving and sorting items. By press time Wednesday, she was not sure when would be the best time for volunteers to come, and suggested people call the office (883-8407) to offer to help.

The flood is the second in Ruth's history. The first, about seven years ago, was the result of roof repairs that let in a deluge from a rainstorm.

That time, she had to throw out more stuff, because most of it was stored directly on the floor. After that flood, she stored many items on wooden pallets or shelves, lifting them at least a couple inches off the ground.