Sea Cadets visit for firefighting class

Published in the Current

SOUTH PORTLAND (July 14, 2005): Just over a dozen U.S. Navy Sea Cadets, including three from California and one from New Mexico, visited South Portland this week for training in Maine’s first firefighting and damage-control class for Sea Cadets.

The cadets, young men and women between the ages of 14 and 18, stayed at the Stewart Morrill American Legion Post on Broadway, and marched along the South Portland Greenbelt walkway to and from classes at the Coast Guard station on High Street.

Only one of the cadets was from Maine, while the others came from across the country. The class was organized by Roger Sabourin of South Portland, a retired Navy lieutenant who is commander of the Legion post and commander of the South Portland-based CG Group Portland Division of the U.S. Navy Sea Cadets.

The cadets’ week of classes, which included a trip to South Portland’s Central Fire Station for classes about fighting structure fires, earned them certification as firefighters on land and aboard ships.

The culminating drill involved a training unit owned by the Coast Guard, which places trainees in a shipboard situation where as many as eight different things can go wrong at once, Sabourin said. That teaches them to prioritize what pipes to repair first, for example.

On their first day, the cadets jumped right in, practicing using fire hydrants and carrying fire hoses in relay races. Each of them had to pass a physical fitness test before entering the class, which is just one of many the Sea Cadets program offers – including a version of the Navy SEAL special-operations classes.

Her granddaughter is a grandmother

Published in the Current

SOUTH PORTLAND (July 7, 2005): Yesterday was the 95th birthday for Marion Minerva Upton Burnham, a lifelong resident of South Portland, whose descendants now number 70, with another on the way.

Burnham, born July 6, 1910, is the eldest of five living generations of girls. Her eldest daughter Ruth has an eldest daughter Cathy, whose eldest daughter Melissa has a daughter Marissa.

“I went to two parties yesterday,” Marion said during a June 28 interview. One was for the 70th birthday of her son, Allen, who lives in Gray. The other was the first birthday for a great-great-granddaughter who lives in Westbrook.

She has twice been uprooted by development in the city. “Oil tanks took my folks’ house,” for the construction of the Portland Pipeline along Front Street, precipitating a move to Preble Street in Ferry Village.

But then World War II came, and the shipyards took that house.

“When they put the railroad track in for the shipyard, it went right through our house,” said Marion’s son Allen Burnham. Marion’s mother used to sell ice cream out of a cart to workers coming off shift at the shipyard. She gave the proceeds to her church.

The family moved to Thornton Heights, where they stayed for years, until Marion’s husband Ernest had several heart attacks in 1956. Then the family moved to a single-story home in Stanwood Park.

“I’ve lived in all parts of South Portland,” Marion said.

And all those years – even today – she has had company. Marion took care of her own mother, Ernest’s mother and his aunt, and her sister and brother-in-law, at times when they needed help. “My husband and I only had about two years together” with no one else in the house, she said.

Years of togetherness

“We’ve always been kind of close,” said Ruth Small of Portland, Marion’s eldest daughter, beginning an oft-repeated chain of different voices continuing each other’s thoughts and sentences.

“We see each other often enough,” said her brother, Allen.

“That’s what’s great about this family,” said Ruth’s daughter Cathy Lemar of Gardiner.

“I remember growing up, every Sunday the family got together,” Ruth said, ending the thought.

And they’re closely tied to South Portland. After Marion married Ernest – who was from Boothbay – the couple moved to a Portland apartment for a brief time.

After about two months, “I was ready to come back,” Marion said. They moved in with her parents for a time, and their daughters Ruth and Beatrice were born in the house on Front Street. Allen, the youngest, was born at the Maine Eye and Ear Infirmary in Portland.

Ernest worked at the Chaplin Motor Company on Forest Avenue. Marion, who had picked sardines during school, worked first in a rug shop and then in food service at Mercy Hospital.

Of her six siblings, Marion is the oldest and the only one still alive. Her children stay close by – Bea lives the longest distance away, in Texas with the husband she met in the Army.

“They’re awful good to me,” Marion said. Bea visits several times a year, to see her active mother.

"You rattle the keys and she's ready to go," Bea said in a phone interview.

Marion’s memory remains sharp – "she's got a better memory than I do," said Bea – and she has an endless supply of stories about her life and her family. A family favorite is about her driving lesson out in Scarborough, with Ernest giving her directions.

She came to an intersection, and Ernest told her to turn one way. She did, but he realized his mistake and told her to turn the other way. “We took down mailboxes,” Marion said, drawing peals of laughter.

Marion also remembers embarrassments with good humor. A longtime member of local churches – People United Methodist until the early 1940s and Thornton Heights United Methodist for the 62 years since her move to that neighborhood – she recalls hosting a church group at home, where she and Ernest raised hounds.

During the gathering, a hound gave birth. “Was I ever put out,” Marion said.

Sharing stories

In addition to Marion’s stories, other family members have collected many more.

Bea remembers the house on Front Street was just over the fence from school. "We used to just push the boards to the side and crawl through."

She also recalls "Old Joe's skating rink," a frozen pond near the Coast Guard station where everyone went skating. "That was back in the times when everybody went out and you didn't have to worry about your kids."

Family historian Carol Campbell of South Portland – whose grandmother was a first cousin to Marion’s father – has collected many of the family records and has researched the stories.

Marion’s earliest identified American ancestor was an indentured servant from Scotland, captured by Cromwell at the battle of Dunbar in 1650 and imprisoned in England. Very few survived the harsh conditions of imprisonment, but among them was an Upton, who was sold to Saugus Ironworks in what is now Massachusetts. He worked off his servitude, and one of his descendants, David Upton, served as a Minuteman during the American Revolution and later settled on Chebeague Island, where he is buried.

One story Carol told at a recent family gathering was a story Marion’s daughter Ruth Small had never heard, about her great-grandfather, who was lost at sea.

That man, Marion’s grandfather, Horace Upton, died at sea in an August storm in 1893. When he left for that trip, his youngest daughter, then 3, cried and didn’t want him to go. He came back to the house, sang her the old hymn “Throw Out the Lifeline” to comfort her, and then left again on a trip from which he never returned.

“I just got goosebumps!” Ruth exclaimed as Carol told the story. She remembered the hymn – “I haven’t heard it for a long time” – with its lyrics about a man at sea, “drifting away … sinking in anguish” and in need rescue.

Horace’s two brothers, Capt. George Upton and Capt. Joseph “Joad” Upton, were ferry captains on the Lottie and Mae, running from Ferry Village over to Portland.

Joad also worked as a lighthouse keeper. His last posting was at Two Lights in Cape Elizabeth, where in 1934 he was found dead at the foot of one of the light towers, having fallen from the top after suffering a heart attack or stroke at age 65.

Another lighthouse also figures strongly in Marion’s life: She and Ernest were friends with the Holbrooks, who were the keepers of Bug Light back when there was a keeper’s house next to the beacon. The Holbrooks stayed a bit inland with the Burnhams during the winter, and the Burnhams would visit at the Holbrooks at the seaside during the summer.

Marion’s granddaughter Cathy, in particular, has gotten interested in some of these older stories, fueled in part by the interest of her own grandson, Christopher Armstrong, 10, who loves to hear the tales.

“It never seemed that important to me but it does now,” Cathy said.

Editorial: Looking for dough

Published in the Current

CAPE ELIZABETH (July 7, 2005): The Cape Elizabeth schools should not make Cape’s taxpayers pay extra for one construction project just because another came in cheaper than expected.

The schools are asking the Town Council for permission to take $133,000 the town’s voters earmarked for the Pond Cove expansion and use it to pay for things on the high school renovation’s wish list.

It’s true that the Pond Cove project doesn’t need the money – the actual cost of building the kindergarten wing was 10 percent lower than projected. So this idea does not hurt the Pond Cove project, and it could help the high school.

But voters approved $1.5 million for Pond Cove and $7.9 million for the high school. They did not approve $9.4 million for both together, and they were never asked – or told – what should happen to any money “left over” at the end of either project.

In the absence of the question, and without an advance declaration of intent, voters would fairly assume that any money not needed to accomplish the stated goals of a project would simply not be spent.

If the schools needed to do $100,000 worth of additional work at the high school, they should have included that amount in the request they sent to the voters.

They didn’t include it in the request, though, and for two very good reasons: First, the estimates showed the workers would be able to do what they needed to do with $7.9 million. And second, school and town officials were worried the high school project might not pass if the cost estimate was too high.

So now, nearly two years after getting the projected cost low enough to pass muster with the voters, they want to raise actual spending without voter approval, to cross items off a wish list of “add-alternates,” those items that could be done if more money becomes available.

The original idea of add-alternates was that construction costs were uncertain. If the cost of the high school work had turned out to be lower than expected, as happened with Pond Cove, any “extra” money – anything remaining from the $7.9 million – would be used for other work, such as new upholstery for the auditorium seats.

Voters were told – in the form of the question on the ballot – that local borrowing on each project would be for bonds in an amount “not to exceed” the total carefully chosen by officials balancing school-building needs with voter-approval likelihood.

Voters were not told that if one project ended up with extra money, it might actually be spent on the other – that the amount spent could be a figure that actually did exceed the dollar amount on the ballot.

The argument that both referenda passed with strong majorities doesn’t mean the outcome would have been the same if the amounts were any higher. And the argument that a vote for one project was a vote for the other also doesn’t hold water: The vote tallies were different for the two questions.

Cape Elizabeth taxpayers do support their schools, with millions upon millions of dollars every year. But that support is not a given, and handling money responsibly is the best way to ensure it.

In fact, neither school officials nor the Town Council were certain the support was there back in 2003 when the two projects went out to voters – which was one reason the council didn’t approve the spending outright, without a referendum.

What the schools should be asking to do – and what the residents should demand of the Town Council – is to return that money to the taxpayers, by not borrowing it when it’s not needed.

If the schools and the council want to spend more on additional work at the high school, the question should go back to the voters. It’s their money.

Jeff Inglis, editor

Two boats sink in one day

Published in the Current

CAPE ELIZABETH (June 30, 2005): Two boats sank off Cape Elizabeth in the course of a few hours Saturday, with no injuries to any aboard or any rescuers.

The first sinking happened in the late morning Saturday. The Cape Elizabeth Water Extrication Team was called to Kettle Cove for a sailboat in trouble at about 9:30 a.m., according to WETeam Capt. Joe Mokry.

“There were four large fellas in a very small boat” watching their 26-foot sailboat take on water.

“It appears they touched the bottom hard,” Mokry said. There was a hole in the bottom of the boat, and the men tried to drive it up onto the beach to prevent it from sinking completely, he said.

That effort failed, and the men waited with WETeam members for the Coast Guard to arrive. The Coast Guard took the men back to Portland.

Mokry said Tuesday the boat had already been salvaged and removed. “In an area like that, you need to get the boat out” to prevent it from being a hazard to navigation. “It was sticking up a few feet anyway above the surface,” Mokry said.

The second boat was a 13-foot Boston whaler that sank off Richmond Island at about 3:30 p.m. when the four men in that boat – loaded with diving gear – came quickly around a corner out of the lee and into five-foot seas. The boat was quickly swamped, and the men were in the water.

A WETeam member was in his own boat nearby, and was able to rescue the four men.

“It’s been pretty busy,” said Mokry, noting an emergency call for a woman on a “large yacht” at anchor near Crescent Beach June 23 and a report of a boat with a fire in the engine room off Richmond Island last week.

Those two both ended well, Mokry said. After Mokry talked to the yacht’s skipper to determine exactly where the boat was, the woman was transferred to a WETeam boat and then to a Cape ambulance for a trip to the hospital.

Location information was also a challenge for the boat on fire. After it was located not “in Kettle Cove near Richmond Island,” as had been reported, but off Prouts Neck in Scarborough, the two men aboard were unhurt and “did everything right,” Mokry said.

The fire in the engine compartment was out, but the boat was disabled. It was helped into harbor in Scarborough, Mokry said.

“We’re thinking it’s going to stay fairly busy,” said Mokry, who in his day job trains emergency workers in rescues in and on the water, as well as on boats.

He said he did a training session down in Wells this weekend, and during the class they did three actual rescues.

“The boats out there are unbelievable,” he said, saying that so many people were cooped up by bad weather for so long that they all want to get their boats out at the same time.

He suggested that people make sure they plan for bad weather – like a fog bank two weeks ago that triggered a search for boaters in Harpswell who were later found unhurt – and other unexpected problems. He suggested people carry a cell phone with a fully charged battery with them, so they can call friends and family in the event they are delayed returning.

Without a way to communicate, such as a cell phone or a radio, people are often reported missing two or three hours after they were expected to return, and “a large-scale search” is begun right away, Mokry said.

More often than not, the people are fine but didn’t have a way to tell anyone they were just pulling up into a cove to wait out bad weather, or had gone a different route for some reason.

“A lot of times it’s really unnecessary because people aren’t planning for contingencies,” he said.

Editorial: Be prepared

Published in the Current

(June 30, 2005): Even before Wednesday afternoon's storm took out power and roads, it was important to be careful when boating, as eight people learned last weekend in the ocean off Cape Elizabeth.

None of the boaters were hurt, which is fortunate, but their boats sank, reminding them and all who recreate on the water that the ocean is a fun place, but has its dangers.

And now, in light of the recent high winds, torrential downpour and lightning strikes, it's even more evident that people heading out onto the water - or even out for a hike, bike ride, picnic or drive - need to have a plan in case the unexpected happens.

As Cape Elizabeth Water Extrication Team Capt. Joe Mokry noted in our Page 1 article, a lot of people are not making those plans, even skipping something as simple as making sure the cell phone is fully charged before an outing.

If people are stuck somewhere or have to take a different route, they can be delayed. Without the ability to communicate with friends and loved ones, those left at home may call the authorities and have them begin a search, risking emergency workers' lives.

There's nothing wrong with calling out all the police, fire, ambulance and water rescue people who are needed, if people are really in danger.

But if there is a way to avoid doing so - if people are really fine, just anchored in a cove to ride out a high wind, for example - a simple cell phone or radio call can save rescuers a lot of time, and the folks at home a lot of worry.

There are plenty of people - and I am one - who would rather not hear a cell phone ring in the middle of the woods or out on the deck of a boat rocking on a lazy sea. But you don't have to spoil the outdoors to be safe.

Bring the cell phone, but turn it off unless you need it. If you're running late, turn it on and make that call. On a boat in a fog bank or on a bike trapped by rising floodwaters, a cell phone suddenly changes from a wilderness-ruiner to a lifesaver.

Taking a few precautions can help you stay safe, and can help those who are prepared to come to our rescue stay as safe as they can, too.

Jeff Inglis, editor