Puritan Mainers abhor open controversy and avoid public display. They tend to minimize or, better still, deny any history that appears ostentatious (or, Heaven forbid, possibly sinful!) until succeeding generations forget it entirely. Thus embarrassing incidents in Maine history, such as the stealing of the statehouse in 1879, the burning of Falmouth (what is now Portland) by the British during the revolution, and the raid on Casco Bay by a Confederate warship, were omitted in the junior high Maine history texts of my time.

Nevertheless, my seventh grade teacher, a career one-room school teacher until the consolidated Poland Community School was first opened in September, 1954, once mentioned that a remarkable religious event occurred in the first half of the 1800s in an area of West Poland called Rabbit Valley or “the Promised Land.”  There seems to be absolutely no mention of these goings-on in history texts or town accounts despite the fact that this activity indirectly resulted in the birth of a major Protestant denomination. From a few internet sites, particularly the website of the Seventh Day Adventists, I’ve been able to piece together what happened.

It all began when Rev. William Miller, a Baptist preacher from upstate New York, came to the conclusion after years of study that no prophesies in the Old Testament Book of Revelations had yet come to pass. Miller was apparently sincere; he did not consider himself a prophet but just an enlightened interpreter of the Word of God. Among his conclusions was that the number of “days” mentioned in Revelations actually referred to years. By his calculations, therefore, Judgment Day would take place on October 22, 1843.

In the years prior to the scheduled event, Miller convinced hundreds, perhaps thousands of followers that they needed to settle their worldlyaffairs and prepare with him for the end of the world. The faithful Millerites liquidated their estates since there would be no need for such. At some point it was decided that the flock would gather in West Poland, Maine, in an area not far from Tripp Lake Camp and now known either as Rabbit Valley or the Promised Land, to be received en masse into the Kingdom of Heaven. Thus Rabbit Valley filled with h8undreds, if not thousands, of the faithful by October, 1843.

When the date passed without incident (to the great astonishment and enormous disappointment of all), William Miller went back to the Book of Revelations and discovered that his predictions were one year short. The real thing, he declared, would occur on October 22, 1844.

The second failure of Miller’s predictions the following year brought anger and frustration to most and complete nervous breakdown for some. Miller perhaps wisely seems to have disappeared after that, never to be heard from again. However, in the aftermath an opportunistic, if not divinely inspired, former Millerite, Mrs. Ellen G. White, gave convincing public testimony in a meeting place on “MacGuire Hill” in Poland, Maine in 1845 (probably the Meguire Hill Meetinghouse) to a series of visions she claimed to have received from God. Mrs. White’s prolific visions and writings from that point on into the first decade of the Twentieth Century gave rise out of the rubble of the Millerite movement to the Seventh Day Adventist Church. (It was one of White’s numerous visions which led to the vegetarian beliefs and customs in practice by modern day Adventists.)

In recent times, Seventh Day Adventist historians and theologians have reviewed Ellen White’s teachings and claims with brutal honesty. They have proven that her first public “vision” was a hoax, plaguerized from an experience related to her from a local dairy farmer. Her prolific writing was for the most part plaguerism and doubtless all of her subsequent visions.

It led Seventh Day Adventist scholars to admit their theology has little or no basis in the Bible. But this in no way detracts from the sincerity of adherents to this denomination or lessens their humanitarian accomplishments.

I admire the willingness of latter day Adventists to openly and honestly examine their roots. Leaders of other denominations have at times gone to great expense to confiscate, hide, and deny inconvenient documents.

  

Charlotte Grant Walker, 84, passed away peacefully Tuesday, October 26th after a long illness at the Orchard Park Nursing Home in Farmington, ME where she has resided for the last 2-1/2 years. 

Charlotte was born April 17, 1926 in Lewiston, ME, the daughter of the late Eugene V. and Jennie (Barlow) Grant.  She graduated from Lewiston H.S. in 1943 and earned a mathematics degree at Bates College, Class of 1947. 

Charlotte is survived by her husband of 63 years, Elmer F. (Ted) Walker, Jr. and her three sons; Peter G. and Nancy Walker of Fort Morgan, CO, Thomas E. and Ann Walker of Farmington, ME and David and Becky Walker of Statesville, NC.  Charlotte leaves six grandchildren; Corey Walker of Pueblo, CO, Emily Walker of Pocatello, ID, Eric Walker of Manchester, NH, Jameson Walker of Helena, MT, Christopher Walker of Kingston, WA and Jennie Walker of Winston-Salem, NC.  Charlotte also leaves five great grandchildren.  Charlotte was predeceased by two brothers, William Grant and Eugene Grant, Jr. 

Charlotte and Ted made their home in Poland Spring, ME while running the family business Ted Walker, Inc., Mechanical Contractors.  Charlotte was an original board member instrumental in the building of the Alvan B. Ricker Memorial Library in Poland, ME, Past President of the Ladies Auxiliary of the Maine Association of Plumbing, Heating and Cooling Contractors and a former member of the National Association of Women in Construction. 

Charlotte’s smile will be missed by all her family and loving friends.

A memorial service will be held at the Poland Community Church on November 20, 2010 at 1:00pm.  In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in Charlotte’s honor to the Poland Spring Preservation Society, P.O. Box 444, Poland Spring, ME 04274 or the Poland Fire Rescue Department, 1231 Maine St., Poland, ME 04274.

This and the following photo courtesy of HomeofHeroes.com

My dad and the dad’s of practically all of my classmates in grade school in the 1950s had gone to war during the previous decade. We were all fluent in such subjects as German tanks and Japanese aircraft. Most of us knew a lot less about the Korean War although I was a tremendous fan of the F-86 Sabrejet. For some reason the press and our folks just never said much about it.

Around the end of 1959 when I turned 11, I joined the Boy Scouts. They met each week in a defunct, fairly large one-room school house behind the little grocery store in Poland Corner. (By that time the consolidated Poland Community School – grades 1-8 – had replaced the Town of Poland’s series of one-room schools.) One night during my second year of scouting, the Scout Master, Gary Durgin, announced we were going to have a special guest, Army Ranger Major Lewis Millett. A real soldier! I paid little attention to whatever the Scoutmaster said after that.

When the Major walked in, you could have heard a pin drop. I remember him as tall, but at 12 all grownups looked tall. I do know he was lean and in excellent shape. He wore the tan, probably camo fatigues of the Rangers with the matching soft slouch hat, not a beret. His uniform lacked most of the medals and fruit salad he might have worn for a more formal occasion. At that point in his life he was clean-shaven. He was not sporting his trademark red handlebar moustache.

Despite just oozing command and respect, Millett was surprisingly soft spoken. Probably it was his audience, but he talked in general terms about military service and briefly spoke about his most recent assignment as an “advisor” in a little country in Southeast Asia called Vietnam. Afterwards he just mingled among us both talking and asking questions. Imagine that! A real Army officer asking insignificant me questions!

I had heard of Vietnam. So I asked him if we were going to win. He smiled warmly and said confidently, “Oh. Yeah. We will.” (If left up to him, I have no doubt that the U.S. military would have kicked ass and taken names.)

It was years later that I researched the back ground of Lewis L. Millett. Little had I known just how remarkable that 40-year-old soldier I’d met as a Boy Scout really was.

Millett was born in 1920 in Mechanic Falls, Maine, formerly part of my town, Poland, until they seceded and re-incorporated in the 1890s. In 1940, after two years in the Massachusetts National Guard, Millett enlisted in the Army Air Force.

As the USAAF was training him in aerial gunnery, European nations were falling to Hitler like dominos. That incensed Millett. He was especially angry with the people of the United States who were adamantly isolationist in 1940. Lewis Millett deserted his post and traveled to Canada, enlisting in the Canadian Army with the hope of being sent over to fight. He got his wish, helping to man an antiaircraft battery in London during the Blitz. In 1942 Millett heard about a deal where American boys in the British Commonwealth forces could simply transfer over into American military service. He rejoined the U.S. Army.

We next join Sgt. Lewis Millett in North Africa where his unit was helping to drive Erwin Rommel’s Axis forces back onto the European continent. Millett had already gained a reputation as a scrapper when his platoon was attacked by a German fighter, a Messerchmidt Bf-109. The aircraft made 2-3 strafing runs at the pinned-down Americans when Millett, the experienced “wing shot,” hit the German pilot in the head as he went by. End of threat. For that episode Lewis L. Millett was awarded the Silver Star. For his overall performance under fire, he was given a battlefield promotion to officer rank. He was now Second Lieutenant Millett.[1]

Millett took part in the invasion of Sicily and later the landing at Anzio on the Italian coast. With his fame ever growing, the Army decided they could not completely ignore the fact that Millett had deserted in 1940. At some point on the battlefield, Millett was notified that he had been court martialed and fined $52.

After WW II, Millett left the military for a few years, married, and completed three years of college in Lewiston, Maine before being called back to active duty by the Army Reserve. (After Korea he was able to finish his degree at a college in California.)

In the winter of 1951 Captain Lewis Millett was in Command of Company E of the 27^th Infantry Regiment. Army Intelligence had translated a flyer being circulated by the Red Chinese declaring that American soldiers did not have the heart for hand-to-hand combat. Millett’s reaction was, “I’ll show those sons-a-bitches!” He began to intensively train his men in hand-to-hand combat, particularly with the bayonet.

The need for such skills came quickly. On February 7, 1951 near Soam-ni in what is now again North Korea, Millett led his men against a superior Chinese force on Hill 180. The Chinese pinned one platoon down with heavy fire. Millett brought his other two platoons forward. Soon they were low on ammunition. So the Captain ordered “fix bayonets” and led the charge up the hill. Millett and his men left a trail of communist bodies in their wakes as they took the hill and the Chinese fled in panic. Millett himself was wounded (it accounted for one of four Purple Hearts he received in combat), but refused evacuation until his men were all taken care of. Later in the same month Millett led a similar bayonet charge with successful results.

For his incredible bravery on Hill 180, President Truman bestowed upon Lewis L. Millett the Medal of Honor. His citation reads:

Capt. Millett, Company E, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action. While personally leading his company in an attack against a strongly held position he noted that the 1st Platoon was pinned down by small-arms, automatic, and antitank fire. Capt. Millett ordered the 3d Platoon forward, placed himself at the head of the 2 platoons, and, with fixed bayonet, led the assault up the fire-swept hill. In the fierce charge Capt. Millett bayoneted 2 enemy soldiers and boldly continued on, throwing grenades, clubbing and bayoneting the enemy, while urging his men forward by shouting encouragement. Despite vicious opposing fire, the whirlwind hand-to-hand assault carried to the crest of the hill. His dauntless leadership and personal courage so inspired his men that they stormed into the hostile position and used their bayonets with such lethal effect that the enemy fled in wild disorder. During this fierce onslaught Capt. Millett was wounded by grenade fragments but refused evacuation until the objective was taken and firmly secured. The superb leadership, conspicuous courage, and consummate devotion to duty demonstrated by Capt. Millett were directly responsible for the successful accomplishment of a hazardous mission and reflect the highest credit on himself and the heroic traditions of the military service.

Since the MOH is no longer awarded for more than one act of valor, Millett was awarded the second highest combat medal, the Distinguished Service Cross, for his second bayonet charge. Historians say they were the first such complete bayonet charges by the U.S. military since the Battle of Cold Harbor in the Civil War.

The complete medal tally for Lewis L. Millett is as follows:

Medal of Honor

Distinguished Service Cross

Silver Star,

2 Legion of Merit Medals

3 Bronze Stars

4 Purple Hearts

3 Air Medals.

Expressing disgust that America quit in Vietnam, Colonel Lewis Lee Millett resigned from the Army in 1973. He joked that he was likely the only soldier in the U.S. Army to receive a court martial and still full colonel.

Millett died last November just short of his 89^th birthday. He was, of course, buried with full military honors.

A SOLDIER’S PRAYER

by Col. Lewis L. Millett

I’ve fought when others feared to serve.
I’ve gone where many failed to go.
I’ve lost friends in war and strife, who valued duty over the love of life.
I’ve shared the comradeship of pain
I’ve searched these lands for men that we’ve lost.
I’ve sons who’ve served our land of liberty who’d fight to see that other lands are free.
I’ve seen the weak forsake humanity.
I’ve heard fakers praise our enemy.
I’ve seen challenged men stand ever bolder.
I’ve seen the duty, the honor, the sacrifice of the soldier.
Now, I understand the meaning of all lives,
The lives of comrades of not so long ago.
So to you who answered duties siren call, may
God bless you my son, may God bless you all. 

In the 46+ years I have been (legally) driving, I have owned just about one of everything and two or three of a few. In fact, my very first automobile after I got my license in the fall of 1963 was a 1956 Olds 88 that my grandfather surrendered to me when he decided to give up driving. Along with it came about ten well worn tires which I managed to rotate around and keep it propped up on inflated wheels most days. That car must have weighed as much as today’s average bus. It contained a substantial amount of steel (one of my aunts suggested the frame was probably cast iron).

It had a big (for the time) V-8 and might have been a fairly fast car if it weren’t for the self regulation of only one working motor mount. If I punched it, it shook like it was trying to break the sound barrier. (“Captain! I don’t know how much more those di-lithium crystals can take!”) It didn’t take me long to figure out I’d have to baby it if it was going to last. The old dinosaur never let me down in the two years I drove it.

When it finally coughed its last, it was right in my folks’ yard when I came home from school. In those days the local mechanic made house calls. I think my dad may have given him a do-not-resuscitate document. I was told that replacing the timing chain would cost more than the beast was worth. I sold it the following week for $35 to a stock car racing team that wanted the hulk for parts.

Thirty years later I bought a second hand Oldsmobile Omega that turned out to be the second worst lemon I ever owned. (Nothing but nothing could compare to the Ford Pinto. But that’s another story.) I knew I’d made a bad purchase when “Meg’s” oil plug was removed and nothing flowed out. DOH! Once the sawdust-oil mixture was dug out of the crankcase, Meg’s motor developed a loud tick from the bad engine bearings. Replacing her engine with a rebuilt one would have cost about as much as I paid for the car in the first place. Instead I sold the hulk while it still could move under its own power to West Side Auto Parts near Fort Morgan.

But there was one Oldsmobile that was a gem. When my son Corey was in college I bought him a used Subaru sedan to drive back and forth to school. This was about 1991 or 1992 as I recall. One summer night he went out with the guys and never showed up again until the next morning. The Subaru had a big fold across the roof with grass and flowers pinched in the crease. Corey’s attempts to put a good spin on what happened made less sense than when Teddy Kennedy tried to explain how he gave Mary Jo Kopechne a ride home from Chappaquiddick Island. At any rate I suddenly found myself in need of yet another used car.

The solution was an old creampuff in the form of a 1974 Oldsmobile Delta 88 4-door sedan complete with the famous 454 Rocket engine and a carburetor that could suck pigeons out of the sky. It had relatively low mileage and was in excellent shape for an 18-year-old vehicle. I got it for exactly half of what Corey’s Subaru Taco had cost me. She was 18 feet 10 inches from bow to stern light, white with red interior. Let’s see you roll that one over, Kid!

It wasn’t long before Corey loved that old car. He asked me for a distinguished name and I came up with the “U.S.S. Alice Briggs Mitchell” in honor of my 7^th grade teacher back in Maine. Alice literally became a family member. On the road she was rock steady. In traffic she was a brute and a bully.

But all good cars come to the end of their usefulness. After Corey graduated and he and Amy were married, he traded Alice off for something newer and more economical. I hope she’s still alive out there somewhere. Who knows? Maybe Alice is the 454 Rocket that Kathy Mattea sang about.

Growing up in a very rural area of Maine, having other kids to play with was the exception, not the rule. My social skills were slow to develop. Rural grade school was okay; but high school in the city was absolutely painful. Scholastically I was placed in the same classes with the A-list kids. But being an outsider and the son of a plumber, they were never going to cut me any slack socially. To make matters worse, I had the physical coordination and athletic ability of a top-heavy rock. I couldn’t make the B-list either.

By my junior year in high school I reached my full height of an even 6 feet. My legs were so short I wore pants with a 29-inch leg. My torso was so long I could not wear a hat while sitting in a car. I was a giant penguin!

I hated gym class. But it wasn’t just inability to keep up. It was the Athletic Director, Coach Grenda. Coach Grenda was one of the first adults I ever encountered who was truly cruel. Being the head football coach of a 4A school (as high as it went in Maine), Steve Grenda enjoyed considerable status in the community. To the jocks, he was a god. To those of us at the other end of the scale, he was the personification of evil.

The first time he ever hurt me was when I had to go to him for something after school – maybe to be let in to the locker room to retrieve some needed sneakers or something. As he waited for me, he asked, “Are you related to John Walker?”

“He’s my first cousin,” I replied. John was a star football and baseball player five years older than me.

“Too bad you aren’t more like him,” Coach Grenda replied, then turned his back on me and walked away.

I was crushed.

Later, after enduring almost three years of daily phys-ed classes, a good-looking jock – a wealthy doctor’s son – showed up for gym one day in black sneakers. Coach Grenda insisted we wear only white ones. The coach called Ricky out in front of the line and dressed him down for his lack of respect.

Ricky’s response was to divert attention away from the black shoes at my expense. With a grin, the handsome and confident A-list kid pointed me out and said, “At least I have the ability to do everything you ask of me, Coach. I’m not some fat klutz like him.”

The coach and most of the class all turned to stare at me. I wanted to throw up.

But it got worse. Coach Grenda glared at me for a second, shrugged his shoulders, and turned his back again. He let it stand. Class resumed and I was left standing by myself, my self-esteem in complete ruins.

Imagine my horror as a freshman at the University of Maine, to find I’d have to take two semesters of athletics or physical education to graduate. It was already a terrifying period in history. Our country’s leaders were pouring my generation into a war that made little sense while our World War II parents cheered them on. Make one slip in college and hello Southeast Asia, son.

I opted to get the worst part over with quickly. I reported to the Field House three times a week for PE 101. But it wasn’t so bad this time. The first thing I learned was that not all phys-ed instructors are evil and mean. The T-A was polite and treated me courteously. I was graded by my personal progress and never once compared with the others in my class. I got through that semester with a “C,” the best I felt I could hope for.

Early in my second semester, while taking PE 102, I had a series of accidents that involved violently twisting my right knee. The doctor at the campus infirmary sent me to an orthopedic specialist in Bangor who diagnosed stretched tendons and torn cartilage. Rather than operate – in those days there was no arthroscopic repair – he wanted me to wait and try to strengthen my knee by weight lifting and walking.

After 3 weeks of hobbling to classes on crutches, I limped into PE one afternoon with a note from my doctor. While I was standing there, another student walked up with a nearly identical note. Coach Grenda would have seized the moment to berate us for sloughing off. But our T-A was sympathetic. He said, “Alright, as soon as I get these other guys started, I’ll set up a weight room regimen for you two and you can spot each other. The second half of the hour I want you to jog, or at least walk around the track and strengthen those knees.”

For the rest of the semester I did leg lifts and walked around the gritty Field House track with the sophomore, Steve. Steve was a very big man, at least 4 inches taller than me. He, too, was funny shaped with very long torso, extra short legs, and barrel-chested. He was extremely hairy with a permanent 5 o’clock shadow. Together we must have looked like a pair of great apes stumbling around the dimly lit track. Physical “short straws.” Losers.

At first I was intimidated by Steve’s appearance. He looked gruff and imposing. I could never tell if his faded gym shorts and threadbare T-shirts were of necessity or an anti-establishmentarian statement. But he turned out to be gentle and, like me, a bit shy and withdrawn. We got along well enough, although I suspect neither one of us, for the same reason, dared open up very much in that environment.

I wish I could say we became close friends. As it was, after that class saying hello when we met on the sidewalk was about the only interaction I had with the guy.

Life went on. With the conclusion of that gym class my obligation to physical education mercifully ended. I stayed within my shell through all eight semesters of college and graduated in 4 years. It was the only way to do it in the 1960s without taking a sabbatical for Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara. By 1970 the war in Vietnam was winding down a little and Uncle Sam was getting more picky about who he drafted. My knee kept me out of the Service through two consecutive draft notices.

I stayed in my shell and brooded out my undergraduate years. My former gym partner began to come out of his. His forte was the pen. By the time he was a senior, Steve wrote a weekly column in the campus newspaper that had everyone scrambling for the free periodical as bundles of it landed on the steps, just to read what he had to say. We all thought he had great talent. Rumor had it that Steve wrote at least a thousand words every day.

It took me another decade to realize I had potential of my own. It took even longer to gain the self-confidence to comfortably approach people and initiate conversations. By that time, Steve Grenda was just a bad memory – a very small man who didn’t matter. The other Steve – Stephen King – proved to me that it is possible to be very successful in life without ever wearing an athletic uniform.

THEY CALL HER “DOUBLE UGLY”

Peter Walker

What would you get if you put wings on a combine? The result couldn’t be much uglier than the funny-looking twin-engine airplane that spent a great deal of time at the Fort Morgan Airport Saturday morning practicing landings and takeoffs.

The unmarked grayish aircraft, it turns out, is a recent acquisition of the United States Air Force. Four young pilots from the 318^th Special Operations Squadron at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico have been assigned to familiarize themselves with the special plane.

Made in Poland under a Russian license, the plane is a PZL M28 Skytruck light utility transport, a copy of the very rugged Antonov An-28.

Why a Polish-made Soviet design for USAF? Just ten minutes watching the ungainly appearing contraption perform and one can readily see its advantages, especially for special ops.

Joe Rigli and I stood with 1^st Lieutenant Louis Gabriel of the 318^th while his buddies put the plane through its paces. Lt. Gabriel’s enthusiasm was infectious.

The lumpy machine can’t go very fast due to its lack of aerodynamics. But it is powered by two US-built Pratt & Whitney PT-6 turboprop engines each generating about 1,100 horsepower. With that kind of power, Gabriel says, a pilot can bully his way through situations that would otherwise call for finesse.

According to Gabriel, the plane’s greatest advantages are its short-takeoff-and-landing (STOL) capabilities and its general solidness. Making a steep decent at about 100 mph the plane flared out at the last second and plopped on rough prairie on its rugged fixed landing gear. A quick reversal of both engines and the aircraft comes to a stop in a cloud of dust in little over 200 yards.

Standing about 200 yards down the field from the Skytruck we watched a pilot build up rpms. The aircraft’s nose dropped as it strained against its brakes. The pilot released them and the machine bumped forward on the rough ground.

Before the plane reached us the nose wheel lifted and the nose came up. Still 30 yards away the main gear left the ground as well. The pilot held the plane close to the field for another 200 yards, then the 8-ton aircraft suddenly jumped skyward at an astonishing rate of climb.

The M28 is equipped with a large door on the rear of the aircraft that would doubtless facilitate quick loading and off-loading in the field as well as parachute jumpers.

Lt. Gabriel, a Hawaii native who graduated from the Air Force Academy last year, was one of only three pilots in his class to receive jet training. Although he wanted to fly fighters, he is clearly delighted with the mission he has been given.

“It’s an absolute blast to fly!” he told us.

The contingent of pilots and airmen from Cannon are temporarily assigned to Buckley AFB in Aurora. When asked if they will be using Fort Morgan Airport again, Gabriel said he thought they probably would. It has both paved and unpaved strips and minimal air traffic most days.

TANGLED TRAILS

Peter Walker

I grew up a-dreamin’ of being a cowboy,

and lovin’ the cowboy ways.

Willy Nelson “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys”

Dreams of riding the range are not restricted to kids in the western North America. Nor are they limited to little boys. In my rural Maine grade school in the 1950s many of my daydreams were of going west when I grew up. My big loves in those days were hunting and fishing. Maine is a big timber state and, in those days, moose were still relatively scarce, and deer hunting for the most part consisted, it seemed to me, of wandering around in dense cover hoping for a chance encounter with an equally disoriented buck. I wanted to go west where the animals were abundant and the land so wide open that every hunt resulted in success.  

Pursuin’ the life of my high-ridin’ heroes,
I burned up my childhood days.

From sixth through eighth grade, Joanie Welch and I always sat in the rear of the room near the window (Walker then Welch). Joan was a down-to-earth country girl as naïve about the world as me. Joanie was a horse woman (and the best dancer by far of any girl in our school). So Joan had the same types of romantic notions about the West as I did. We shared our dreams a lot – usually when we should have been paying attention to the lesson. She wanted to go west to ride horses all day. I wanted to go there and shoot grizzly bears. The cumulative hours that we spent speculating over the relative merits of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho were many. But then, the lessons, dummied down to the lowest common denominator by our middle-aged former one-room school teachers, could have been made a lot less boring.

One of those teachers was in fact my Aunt Glenys. Glenys and my dad’s older brother, Uncle Bob, lived almost within sight of the consolidated school in Poland Corner. They had three children – boy-girl-boy – with the oldest, my cousin Bobbie, nine years older than me. Bobbie was adventurous, with an infectious laugh bordering on a giggle. He was an accomplished hunter and angler and I idolized him from the day he gave me my first fly-tying lesson when I was in the 2^nd grade.

Aunt Glenys and her oldest son always had a very tense relationship. In the 1940s the Poland school system consisted of half a dozen one-room schools scattered around the 36-square-mile township of 1,200 people. Bobby started school in the classic white frame schoolhouse in Poland Corner presided over by Alice B. Mitchell. “Old Lady Mitchell,” called that (behind her back) by every student who ever had her, was very stern. On the other hand, she was far more intellectual and a far more effective teacher than any other in the district. Glenys, a beautiful woman in her day and an only child, was well read and highly opinionated in her own right. Early on she clashed with Alice Mitchell over Bobby’s education. I don’t know the circumstances, but Glenys, after some sort of blow-up with Mrs. Mitchell, pulled Bobby from Poland Corner School in his early years and, from then on through high school, drove him 14 miles to the City of Auburn School District where she and Uncle Bob paid his tuition.

By the time he was in high school Bobby had become a likeable renegade. For at least fifteen years the hollow ball at the top of the flagpole in front of the Poland Town Hall sported an arrow compliments of Bobby’s marksmanship. The grandson of a Maine Game Warden, Bobby’s skill at catching trout or shooting deer, not always by legal means, was well known.  Gifted at anything requiring manual dexterity, Bobby’s gasoline-powered model airplanes were the envy of us younger cousins. By the time he was halfway through high school Bobby completed a one-room cabin on an island owned by my grandfather at the head of the middle lake.

Bobby had only one girlfriend through high school. You could say that he and pretty Faye Allen who lived just a few doors away were childhood sweethearts.  Bobby graduated without distinction from Edward Little High School about the time I finished fourth grade. Sometime during the following year Bobby joined the Navy. I remember the day he left because Aunt Glenys called my mother on the phone and burst into tears and cried for an hour. I was super proud of my older cousin in the U.S. Navy!

Bobby came home on leave the following fall and Dad and I accompanied Uncle Bob and Bobby on a late season duck hunt to tidewater near the mouth of the Kennebec River. It was on that hunt that I sat with Bobby on the edge of a tide flat and shot at a pair of black ducks, my first such experience. Of course I missed, but Bobby got one of the big birds and I was, as always, mightily impressed. Little did I know it would be the last time I would see him for many years.

With boot camp out of the way, Bobby was about to make a clean break with his domineering mother. Bobby went back to the Navy and never wrote or called again. For years. Glenys tried to contact him through the military, but they could do nothing except tell her where he was stationed. He simply dropped from sight. Meanwhile Faye found someone else and married.

In the spring of 1962, Joan Welch and I, along with about 25 classmates, graduated from the 8^th grade at Poland Community School, where we had suffered, or so it seemed at the time, through three years of classes under Old Lady Mitchell. That one consolidated school was the full extent of the Poland, Maine school system at that time. We then had our choice of several public high schools in neighboring towns. Joan chose Casco High School, a little 4-year school of about 150-200 students. I went to junior high school in Auburn and then on to Edward Little, a 3-year institution of 1,500 kids. We wouldn’t see each other again until our senior year.

Cowboys are special with their own brand of misery,
From being alone too long.

When I was seventeen, one evening at the dinner table I heard the explosive news: Bobby had surfaced. He called home. On leave near San Diego two years previously he’d had a bad accident in which he and a rider had parted from his motorcycle on a sharp curve. Bobby ended up with his badly fractured left leg literally wrapped around a guardrail. While recuperating in a naval hospital in California, he’d contracted a terrible staph infection in his mangled leg. The doctors were able to save it at the expense of the muscles in his lower leg. In effect he was left with a living “peg leg” and a free-flopping foot which he’d had to adjust to through months of therapy in a naval hospital. In the year or so since he’d left the Navy he’d made his living as a cowhand on a big ranch in the interior of northern California. Now he wanted to come home and visit.

Wow! A real cowboy! I couldn’t wait to see him.

Two weeks later Bobby stepped off the plane onto Maine soil for the first time in many years. Nothing was ever said, at least in my presence, about why all of this should have been so. Aunt Glenys glowed. Uncle Bob was swelled with pride. Here was this lanky, good-looking man with sandy hair, high-heeled cowboy boots, and a huge silver belt buckle. He talked with the slow, slightly southern drawl so common among military noncoms as he answered all my awe-filled questions. Yes, the deer hunting on the ranch (blacktails) was fabulous. Yes, they had mountain lions. What did he do in the Navy? He’d been a radio operator and third crewman on an A3D reconnaissance jet that flew missions from Alaska to Japan and back.

Three weeks at home and Bobby’s accent disappeared entirely. He announced he would return permanently and flew back to California to settle his affairs. Uncle Bob went with him. When next I saw Bobby, he and Uncle Bob had driven back across the country with a prolonged stop in Cody, Wyoming to visit his sister Judy and brother-in-law, Dick Day. While there they had gone antelope hunting. (Wow!) They arrived in Poland Corner in Bobby’s bright red 1956 Chevy pickup with straight pipes behind the cab, a lariat in the back window, and a western saddle draped over a bale of straw in the truck bed. (Double Wow!)

Old worn-out saddles, and ‘old worn-out memories….

Something happened in the months following Bobby’s return. At first I hung on every word he uttered. I visited him evenings just to ask questions and learn of all the exciting adventures he’d had. Then, gradually, it dawned on me three-fourths of everything he said was complete embellishment. Likeable as my cousin was, he was completely full of baloney and deliberately playing upon my gullibility – or so he thought. Quietly I began to pull away in favor of seeking my own path. I was never really close to him after that.

Not so Joanie. When she met Bobby a year after he came home from California, she fell head over heels for this handsome older man who shared her love and talent for horsemanship. They quickly became “an item” around town and, in another year, became engaged. From that point on it was never “Bobby;” it was “Bobby and Joan.” My Grandmother Walker invited Joan to the Walker family gathering on Christmas Eve, a sure sign that she’s been accepted into the clan. But trouble loomed for Joan. Glenys resented her and often sputtered to family members that Joan was somehow not worthy of her favorite son.

By coincidence, as Bobby and Joan’s wedding date approached, old flame Faye’s marriage blew up. Glenys and Faye’s stepmother Emily worked behind the scenes to get Bobby and Faye together. The old flames were rekindled and suddenly Joan and Bobby’s romance was on the rocks.

The breakup was classic “Glenys.” She broke the engagement between her son and Joan. With Bobby and Joan at the dinner table just two weeks before the planned wedding, Glenys “casually” reminded Bobby that he and Faye were to have dinner at the same table the following evening. Bobby would not look up. Joan sat in shock. She had been replaced. Maybe fired was the better word.

So Bobby and Faye were married. Although he never got around to finishing it – a practice that became his trademark for the rest of his life – Bobby built a home on a lot that our grandfather gave him in the woods a mile south of the Walker family homestead in Poland Spring. They had two beautiful children, a boy and a girl, which they raised in the house with no front porch steps surrounded by half-finished projects.

Bobby tried a succession of trades but was always stymied by his refusal to take written exams. He tried plumbing, but refused to take the journeyman test. He was a skilled pilot, but dropped out of ground school on the last day when it came time to take the written exam. Two years after I married Nancy and began working as a fish culturist at Wade State Fish Hatchery in Casco, Bobby and Faye came to visit us just once. Bobby confided in me that I had the job he’d always dreamed of. (Glenys’s father, Mendell Conant, had been a career Maine Game Warden of considerable fame). I was struck by the irony that Bobby envied me. Bobby ended up managing a small town airport for more than twenty years.

My career with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife progressed through a series of positions from fish culturist to hatchery management to fishery biologist to graduate school to fish pathologist. Nancy and I moved about every year or two and, finally, we left Maine altogether for, of all places, Colorado. At last I’d made my way to the West!

Every now and then when I’d be up on the Great Divide or waiting for a bunch of riders to push a herd of cattle across the road, I’d think of my childhood friend Joan and wonder if she ever broke free of Maine orbit and come West like me.

More then 20 years after my own westward migration I received an e-mail one evening from “Hiline Ranch.” It was Joan Welch Wilfong contacting me to see if I was indeed the same Peter Walker who used to sit in front of her in Poland School. She’d spent much of her adult life in western Maine as the lone paid employee of a horse rescue league. She and her husband Gary decided in the late 1990s to make a trip out west and, once here, knew they could never go back to Maine and be happy. They made a trip home only long enough to settle their affairs, then head back to Colorado with baggage in one pickup and a 4-horse trailer full of rescued critters behind the other. They settled on land near Saguache where they built a beautiful home looking across the San Luis Valley at the Sangre de Christo Range.

My heroes have always been cowboys.
And they still are, it seems.
Sadly, in search of, but one step in back of,
Themselves and their slow-movin’ dreams.

Bobby never finished the front porch steps. As he grew older he became more and more eccentric and more and more reclusive. After their kids were grown, Bobby and Faye went through some rough times and split up for a time during which they officially divorced. Glenys, ever ready to launch all missiles, declared that it was all Faye’s fault and severed all ties permanently. When Bobby and Faye patched things up and resumed life together, that left Glenys on the outside looking in. Bobby rarely if ever had contact with his mother after that.

Glenys died almost 20 years ago after quarreling with nearly everyone in the Walker family. Uncle Bob survived her by 12 years and, at 83, became the oldest person to ever bicycle the length of Pennsylvania. He had dinner with Bobby and Faye weekly right to the last.

By the time he reached 60, Bobby was a total recluse and weighed over 300 pounds. The VA doctors advised him to have his damaged leg amputated, but he refused to go back to them. At the age of 66 he contracted stomach cancer and died.

One evening last fall I pulled into a driveway in the San Luis Valley and was reunited with my old friend Joan. During the course of the evening Bobby’s name came up. It’s funny how things have a way of working out. I advised Joanie to enjoy the Sangres and never look back.

What do the three ships in the photo have in common? They are all fully commissioned warships in the United States Navy. From left to right they are USS Constitution (42-gun frigate), USS Halyburton (FFG-40 – guided missile frigate), and USS Ramage (DDG-61 – guided missile destroyer).

F-18 Hornets of the Blue Angels fly escort overhead as the grand old lady of the U.S. fleet made her way under her own sails in June, 1997 for the first time in 116 years.

Constructed in Boston from 7′ thick live oak and copper fittings and plating forged by Paul Revere, Constitution was first commissioned in 1797. Her unique internal bracing made her sides nearly impregnable to solid cannonballs of the day.

Superior design coupled with equally superior crew training humbled the Royal Navy repeatedly during the War of 1812. “Old Ironsides’” most famous battle was a one-on-one shoot-out with the comparable HMS Guerriere off the East Coast in 1812. Constitution deflected British shot meant to stave in her sides while her own gunners expertly sheered off the British frigate’s masts in one pass. Guerriere surrendered in just half an hour!

Constitution served as a training ship in the Civil War and a floating barracks until her 100th birthday. Public sentiment saved her from destruction and led to her recommissioning in 1925. She now resides on public display at Boston Navy Yard.

The 1997 voyage from Boston to Marblehead and return marked her 200th birthday and demonstrated her complete restoration to battle fitness. She now makes two scheduled “turn around” voyages each year.

A HERO’S STORY

By Peter Walker

One morning in 2003 I heard on KUNC that the hospital ship USS Comfort had embarked from the East Coast for the Persian Gulf. I am a student of history. This was by no means the first time a USS Comfort has set sail to offer care and shelter for American service personnel in time of war.

The present USS Comfort  (hull number TAH-20) is the third such ship to bear the proud name. She was converted to a hospital ship from an oil tanker in 1987 and might still be in reserve had she not been activated for the first conflict with Iraq in 1990.

The first Comfort (AH-3) was converted from a liner in 1906 and brought wounded soldiers home from the Western Front during World War I.

In 1943 USS Comfort (II) was built from the keel up as a military hospital ship. At just under 10,000 tons displacement, she was a large ship for her time. Resembling an ocean liner, Comfort (AH-6) was painted white with large red crosses and carried no armament of any kind.

During World War II, USS Comfort was jointly operated with a U.S. Navy crew and Army medical personnel.

I am going to leave the USS Comfort for a few moments to explain why this seemingly benign auxiliary ship means something to me.

I grew up in the little rural town of Poland in southwestern Maine. As a child and teenager, I attended the Congregational church in the village of Poland Corner. Abutting the west side of the church yard was a large, yellow, frame house that belonged to an older couple, Mr. and Mrs. Chesley.

About four buildings away is the Poland Town Hall, aside from three surviving Grange Halls the only auditorium in the 1950s for a widely dispersed population of some 1,200 people.

Virtually all of the ceremonies and functions of Poland Community School were held on the stage at the back of the Town Hall. At the back of the stage was an Honor Roll that listed the 250 or so young men from Poland, Maine that served in the Armed Forces in World War II.

There was just one woman on that list. Her name was Frances Chesley. Frances Chesley enlisted as a WAAC nurse. In 1944 and 1945 she served on the USS Comfort.

The Comfort was busy throughout the Pacific in 1944. She treated and evacuated wounded, including liberated POWs, from New Guinea and the Philippines and brought them home to California late in the year.

Early 1945 saw the Comfort in the western Pacific once again, this time treating and evacuating wounded soldiers and Marines from Okinawa in early April. After dropping off a load of patients at Guam, Comfort returned to harm’s way. Again she pulled close in to Okinawa to receive wounded. The operating rooms on Comfort were busy day and night.

Prior to April 23, 1945, Comfort led a charmed existence. Despite her clear markings as a ship of mercy and a noncombatant, she had been attacked by several Kamikaze planes and once by a badly mistaken U.S. pilot. The antiaircraft guns of escort ships successfully fought off the Kamikazes until that fateful Sunday morning when, to the horror of sailors on surrounding escorts, a suicide plane dove straight into Comfort’s aft operating room killing 28 personnel including sailors, wounded GIs, doctors, and 6 WAAC nurses.

Frances Chesley was one of four Poland, Maine citizens to make the ultimate sacrifice in World War II.

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