I attended college eight years before I graduated from high school! That’s because I grew up in a house surrounded by Bates College dormitories and the campus was my playground. Mount David, a large hill owned by the college was in my back yard and that’s where we would go for sledding or skiing or picnicking. My best friends were children of the professors, and the president of Bates would include me in their with his own two kids in their backyard softball games. We college brats were used by theater students who were learning how to be play directors, and we sometimes played on the big stage in regular college plays. Our Girl Scout leaders were college students. I was often adopted (temporarily) by certain college professors to go along with their own children for swimming excursions at Lake Sabattus or to foreign movies. Now I understand that these invitations from the fathers of my friends were there to fill the gap left by my own father, who passed away when I was nine years old.
My family roots are in Kansas, not Maine. All four grandparents arrived in 1876, as part of a large migration of German speaking Mennonites from what is now Ukraine. Threatened by conscription into the Russian army and attracted by the rich soils of Kansas, they brought their farming skills – even their own seeds – and started the production of winter wheat on which the world depends. The link between Kansas and Maine was Boston Medical School. After my dad became a doctor, he spent several years running the Methodist Medical Mission Dispensary in Boston’s North End, and then in 1929 he became the Superintendent of the Central Maine General Hospital. My family moved to Lewiston and I was born in 1935, the only “true” Mainer and the youngest one in a family of seven.
Unfortunately, it would never have occurred to my parents to send me to an all French parochial school, where I could have become bilingual, so I grew up firmly cemented into our protestant enclave. The best part of my early education was the good coaching I received when I was part of the Lewiston High School debating team, because I learned to argue either side of an issue. I must have persuaded myself to favor the idea of a welfare state and so, to the dismay of my family, in the summer of senior year I broke ranks with my Republican family and worked as a kind of Girl Friday for the Lewiston branch of the state Democratic Party, where I helped elect the U.S. Representative Frank Coffin and Senator Ed Muskie. Despite my best efforts, Stevenson lost his bid to become president, even though in the summer of 1956 I came to Belfast to hear him speak and shake his hand. I wondered at the time why there was so much talk in Belfast about fried chicken – not much mention about the feathers all over Main Street!
I went to Middlebury College and majored in philosophy, with minors in skiing, making authentic French noises and researching marriage opportunities. That’s where I became acquainted with Scott Odell, captain of the sailing team, when he asked me to crew for him on a nice trip to Boston to compete with MIT and others. I can’t remember who won the meet, but I do know that he and I definitely came out ahead, and we’ve been together for at least sixty-five years.
He and I literally sailed our way to Belfast eighteen years ago and are definitely in the happily-ever-after stage of life, the moment when standing on the deck of our Bristol Channel Cutter we looked at each other and said, “Hey, we could LIVE here!” Not just live here, but become part of a generous community that includes organizations like the Restorative Justice Project, to which I’ve been connected soon after we moved here eighteen years ago. To satisfy my curiosity about RJP I interviewed everyone I could to learn about the organization and also about the Reentry Center which RJP helped establish. The spark for restorative justice seems to have come from Reverend Dick Snyder, who later established the Restorative Justice Institute of Maine, RJIM. Rev. Snyder had visited South Africa, where he observed firsthand the results of the Truth and Reconciliation Process and became inspired by the power of ACCOUNTABILITY rather than punishment as a response to harm. The other force in creating RJP was a Unitarian Church Committee on Social Justice, and the support of Sheriff Scott Story, who saw the need to do something to reduce recidivism.
I have seen our organization change and expand, as a volunteer mentor at the Reentry Center and as a member of the Board of Directors. I have witnessed unexpected miracles of reconciliation resulting from the circle process. I have found communion with people who have been incarcerated and are usually abhorred or ignored by the mainstream. I have met my heroes, the restorative justice practitioners. I have learned that the practices of restorative justice apply to many other social actions – keeping everyone included in a conversation. Making sure that everyone has a chance to speak. Being a better LISTENER, above all.
