Western Washington County is known for its rugged coastline, lobster boats, wild blueberry barrens, farms, and small-town living. As with any small town, Downeast communities have their share of older homes in need of repair. This summer, the Mission’s Housing Rehabilitation program returns to normal, full operations.
It couldn’t be better timing for Downeast. Since 2003, the program has ensured youth, families, and seniors have warm, safe homes. Improvements vary from installing storm windows to rebuilding rooftops. However, the pandemic forced the program to make some modifications for 2020 and 2021. To protect volunteers and Downeast residents, the Mission supplied materials to locals who could manage their own home repairs. Despite the adaptation, the program maintained a high level of impact. In 2021, the Mission repaired 11 homes across 10 Washington County towns.
For 2022, the aim is to return to a higher number of repaired homes. Housing Rehabilitation Manager Scott Shaw said, “We’re thinking positive this year. We plan to will host volunteer groups on our Cherryfield campus as we did pre-pandemic.”
Each year, more than 150 volunteers from Ohio, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maine descend onto the Downeast campus in Cherryfield. Their mission? Rehabilitate and refurbish 14 to 20 homes. ” The whole summer is almost already booked with a dozen groups of volunteers. We’ll have another group of 100 people from Ohio alone,” Scott said. “A group that size takes over the town!”
The program will host some volunteers at Mission Downeast’s Weald Bethel Community Center, which itself was renovated, in part, to welcome such groups. Once Mission volunteers repair homes, owners are eligible for additional state and federal weatherization programs through our partnership with Downeast Community Partners and a Mission-based grant made by a generous foundation.
Homeowners wishing to participate in the program can still apply for housing repair until April 20, 2022. Paper applications are available at Maine Seacoast Mission Downeast in Cherryfield and in town offices from Jonesboro to Gouldsboro.
For Sharon Daley, RN, telemedicine enables everything she does for the Mission’s Island Health program. From scheduling and coordinating care, lab draws, and flu vaccines to meeting with the eldercare partner network and holding her own patient appointments, connecting virtually is essential. “It allows for a wide range of health services, including primary care, medical specialties, behavioral health, and substance abuse,” she says.
Islanders can stay in their communities obtain medical services and stay in touch with loved ones, which is something everyone deserves.
– Sharon Daley, Director of Island Health
While regions of Maine struggle for reliable internet connectivity, islands tend to fare better. “I think that’s why islanders responded so positively and quickly to telemedicine. It’s hard to get off the island for services,” remarked Sharon. “It’s not just a one-hour session with a provider. Islanders must factor in water crossings by mail boats or ferries as well as additional commuting by vehicle. During this time of year, weather affects boat schedules, which in turn means canceling and rescheduling health appointments.” With a decrease in staffing at many provider sites, it takes more time to rebook those appointments.
A recent grant award from the Celia Lipton Farris and Victor W. Farris Foundation will help Sharon and the Mission diminish those challenges. The Farris Foundation supports projects designed to enable people to help themselves lead successful, inspired, and fulfilling lives. Further, these grants focus on supporting projects that stimulate innovation, strengthen individuals and families, and can demonstrate a sustainable impact.
Sharon explained, “The Farris Foundation grant gives us the ability to furnish islanders with iPads. In addition to placing the technology, it also means providing education on how to use it.”
The option to meet virtually will allow essential health services. For island residents, technology also increases connectivity to family, friends, and ordering supplies like food. This means decreasing isolation. If there’s an older adult in a home, they can connect to family members, friends, and the world off-island. This alleviates the sense of remoteness and improves cognitive and emotional health.
In addition, Sharon’s team is identifying people to use iPads for medical visits, counseling, and to attend meetings like AA. “Telemedicine and technology exists for people to access services they would otherwise obtain on the mainland. It means islanders can stay in their communities obtain medical services and stay in touch with loved ones, which is something everyone deserves.”
For a window into Sharon’s work and the Island Health program, watch In Our Words, presented by Walgreen’s Studios.
It’s Thank you Thursday. Today’s shout out of Mission love goes to the YWCA of Mount Desert Island in Bar Harbor.
The YWCA MDI’s sweatshirt drive collected 90 pieces of clothing for the Golden Acres Homes, delivering the clothes to the Mission’s Downeast Campus. Mission Family and Community Resource Coordinator Stephanie Moores (shown in photo) sorted the items for distribution to the eight Hancock and Washington County homes.
According to its Facebook page, YWCA MDI, founded in 1904, is dedicated to eliminating racism, empowering women, and promoting justice, freedom, and dignity for all. The organization offers safe, affordable accommodations to women and girls on Mount Desert Island. Women of all ages are welcome to participate in the programs.
Thank you, YWCA MDI. This is what community looks like.
Renowned American illustrator and author Ashley Bryan passed away last Friday, February 4, 2022. As a resident of Islesford, Ashley the person and Ashley the artist had a tremendous impact on the island. His contributions extended beyond his art. He was a valued community member and friend.
When honored with the Mission’s Sunbeam award for his contributions in 2012, one young girl said, “Ashley deserves this award because he’s an absolutely amazing person. He teaches us in school. He teaches us in his home. Being in Ashley’s house is like being in Ashley’s imagination. He helps not only in our small community here in Islesford, but in the global community. And he’s an honor to have here on our island.”
Ashley Bryan teaches students in his home on the Maine island of Islesford
During the renaming of the Cranberry Isles school to the Ashley Bryan School, one adult said, “So many of us remembered and realized the lessons that Ashley has taught us, the values that he has taught us, the humanity, the respect, the understanding of other cultures. Love is the only word I can say to describe this relationship.”
Ashley Bryan stands in front of the Cranberry Isles schoolnamed in his honor
Ashley also touched the hearts of Mission staff as well, particularly the crew of the Sunbeam. Here, the Mission shares their personal reflections, and as an organization, we pass our condolences onto Ashley’s family and the community of Islesford.
From the desk of Sharon Daley, Director of Island Health, RN
It should be simple to write about Ashley. In fact, when I try, a few words come to mind, maybe because they describe him so well. They would be wonder, love, and kindness. To meet Ashley, you immediately saw and felt those things. His warmth as he met you; his wanting to know and hear about who you are. As you talked, he might see a flower as simple as a dandelion, and his joy at its beauty led to stories and sharing. He had great joy. Not that he didn’t have pain from the losses he endured, but that joy and faith always shone through.
American artist and author Ashley Bryan admires Maine flora on a warm, sunny day.
I wonder what a world like Ashley’s would be like. I think everyone who met him felt a little bit of wanting to be a better person. I hear that on the island where he lived and from the people he was loved by and loved so dearly. He connected with thousands of people. We can only hope that is what his life and legacy will continue to do and grow.
Ashley Bryan reads aloud to island children
I take back that only a few words come to mind. I could add joy, strength, wisdom, caring, awe-inspiring—the list could go on and on. Here is to you, Ashley, for all we learned from you and the hope that we can all be more like you.
It’s a tremendous understatement to say that Ashley was a uniquely special person. He had qualities in abundance that most of us seem to possess in drips and drabs. It’s a seemingly impossible challenge to list and rank the many virtues that made him so special to so many. From my perspective, he mastered each and every virtue and employed them with effortless grace. Two of his attributes deserve mention, however. These are the aspects of Ashley’s humanity that inspire me daily to be a better person than the one who crawls out from under the blankets each morning.
The first was his almost otherworldly ability to find the transformative power of beauty and art in everything that he touched. I have yet to encounter a piece of his artwork that doesn’t inspire beauty and joy and accentuate the loveliness of whatever medium he used. From pieces of tumbled sea glass to bleached bird bones, Ashley made insipid objects glorious and meaningful. Take a look at any one of his puppets or his stained –glass windows to understand what I mean. His written words bring life and emotion to stories and messages that need to be heard, again and again, and again. I have never witnessed an author who recites with such passion and animation. Ashley danced and sang stories more than he actually read them. Beautiful Blackbird and My People are my absolute favorites.
The second quality I want to mention was Ashley’s ability to make you feel like you were the most special person in the world. Though I wish it otherwise, I can count on my fingers and toes the number of times that Ashley and I shared time and space. My relationship with him was nominal, at best, in comparison to others. Nevertheless, Ashley’s face lit with joy and recognition every time I visited with him on his beloved Islesford. Not once was I turned away or asked to leave after a period of time.
Instead, Ashley welcomed me with literal open arms. I was invited to sit by his side, where he would share thoughts regarding his latest project. A visit with Ashley always included his offering a piece of candy, or two, from the many packages he received from friends, far and wide. I know for a fact that I was not the only person to benefit from his generous hospitality. He treated everyone with equity whether it was your first meeting or your hundredth.
Douglas, Ashley and Mission videographer, Hunter Billings
It may seem as if I have put Ashley on a very high pedestal, but it’s just the opposite: Ashley was the most human and humble of people. He wore his talents, recognition, wisdom, and intellect as casually as he wore his cardigan. I would be remiss if I ended without mentioning just one more of Ashley’s qualities that I admire. Upon reflection, perhaps, it is the one I admire most of all. Perhaps, Ashley’s most virtuous virtue and his most precious gift was his modeling for us that being authentically kind and giving and selfless and loving is obtainable. It is something that each of us can actually achieve if we put our hearts and minds to it.
Rest In Peace, my friend. Though I can hardly imagine you resting at all. I can imagine you reciting My People or dancing your way through Beautiful Blackbird or eating your beloved gummies or creating magnificent creative works of beauty or loving people deeply and honestly. You will always be my hero and inspiration, Ashley Bryan. To Ashley – with gratitude for being you and all my love, admiration, and respect.
Douglas, Ashley, and Emily Axelrod celebrate Ashley’s 95th birthday.
Thank you, Ashley Bryan, for the impact you made not only in Maine and on the Mission, but around the world.
CHERRYFIELD, ME – My name is Jillian. I am the Steward on the Maine Seacoast Mission’s beloved Sunbeam, a job I love. To steward is a pleasing verb meaning to look after. I am proud of the title. As steward, I am responsible for stocking the boat with food and provisions for our trips to islands. Besides making meals for my mateys and guests, and welcoming visitors, I keep things tidy, and bake a lot of cookies.
There are so many Maine spots so close to me I cherish. The many hiking and skiing trails on our road endlessly entertain us. There’s the neighborhood swimming hole on balmy summer days. Behind our house we love to explore the Narraguagus River in canoes and kayaks in summer; on foot, skates, skis and snowshoes when the river is frozen.
My favorite place in Maine is central to all these options: our house. When we aren’t out playing in nature, I especially love being home, making art in my studio, growing vegetables in the dooryard, homestead chores, feeding the wood stove, puttering with Steve, and playing with our pets, Banana and Clarence.
I call our house my recycled castle because my partner, Steve, built it with reclaimed materials. It is a timber framed salt box, a work in progress since 2003.
For beams and lumber Steve dismantled the historic old Cherryfield Grange. He started that project in the fall, with instructions to have the big building gone before April.
While dismantling, Steve found an 1823 coin under the threshold, an old construction dating custom. Some Grange timbers were even older and had notches from earlier use. Reusing these big old beautiful timbers Steve and our friend, Tim, put up the post-and-beam frame in the fall of 2004. We moved in the summer of 2005, racing to hang insulation before winter set in.
That first year we didn’t have staircases between the floors, and we hauled water from the neighbor’s hand pump well.
Steve still has a keen eye for building supplies he can glean and utilize for our house. He turned old hand carved doors and pressed tin into paneling. Over the years we’ve scored parquet flooring for our grand foyer, (aka wood stove room), old light fixtures, railings from a church, ceramic tiles, and glass doors. Our bay window was a floor model at a store. Steve turned a bowling alley lane into our kitchen counter.
Creating our space as we go, and as building fodder presents itself, is fun and gratifying. I don’t think Steve will ever call our house finished. He is now working on a screened-in porch using lumber made out of trees felled on our land, planed at our friend Sam’s mill. For the screening he will use panels from someone’s old gazebo. Steve jokes that it is time to remodel. I say, “Honey, I love our cozy nest. Our recycled castle is already done enough for me.”
But, boy, it sure will be nice to have a screened-in porch. It can get ridiculously buggy here tucked in the woods!
NORTHEAST HARBOR, ME — Maine Seacoast Mission’s Scholarship program application for the 2022-2023 academic year is now available. The deadline for applying is February 26, 2022.
Mission Scholarships are open to individuals who graduate from an accredited public and independent high school or live in Hancock and Washington counties or the islands we serve. Scholarships are based on academic achievement (at least a 2.5 GPA), motivation and aspiration, community service, future academic plan and career goals, an individual’s plan to reduce their financial debt burden, application, and strength of interview. Preference is given to students with a financial need and those interested in living and working in Maine upon program completion.
Since 1918, the Mission has awarded almost $3 million to 3,692 deserving students from Maine’s outer islands and Downeast coastal communities. Each year twenty-five scholarships are given to students based on financial need and academic promise. Because our scholarships can be renewed for multiple years, the Mission has nearly 100 active scholars in any given year.
“Each year the Mission provides scholarships to more than 25 high school seniors and 40 students enrolled in a higher education institution or a career preparation program in Maine, New England, and across the U.S.,” said Downeast Director Melvin D. Adams III, EdD.
Some of our generous donors endow scholarships exclusively for youth in our region. The Mission’s Angus MacDonald scholarship, for example, offers an award of $14,000 over four years to an exceptional high school graduate who has demonstrated superior academic achievement, leadership skills, integrity, and commitment to the community.
For inquiries about Scholarships, email Scholarship Program Coordinator Wendy Harrington at wharrington@seacoastmission.org or call 207-546-5870.
Rooted in a history of compassionate service and mutual trust, Maine Seacoast Mission seeks to strengthen coastal and island communities by educating youth, supporting families, and promoting good health. We offer healthcare, education, food, shelter, and spiritual support by land and by sea. For more information, please visit https://www.seacoastmission.org/
