Kate Webber, an AmeriCorps volunteer on Swan’s Island, talked about her work to digitally record and exhibit town history four years after fire leveled the town library and destroyed historical documents.
An Island Fellow with the Island Institute, Webber said that while she fell in love with the island, she doesn’t plan to marry a lobsterman, as her predecessor did, but will head off for a graduate degree in history. The job is diverse: “I can knit socks now,” said the Bates College graduate from upstate New York. “If I smell like bacon it’s from cooking breakfast…I’m lead singer in a band. I started up some contradancing on the island.”
Webber was one of several AmeriCorps-supported volunteers to tout the value of the national service program at a forum with Wendy Spencer, AmeriCorps’ CEO. Spencer listened intently as volunteers told of their work on Maine islands and elsewhere in the state. Scott Sell, a former Island Fellow who now works for the Island Institute in communications, talked about how his experience led to personal growth along with help for the Frenchboro Island school, where he spent “two years and two long winters. Once a new person comes to an island, everybody wants a piece of you,” he said, so he wound up running bingo games, showing movies, coaching hockey and baseball and serving as sternman for Frenchboro’s oldest lobsterman.
A Connecticut native, Sell tried living in California. “I’m really glad to be back in Maine where my heart is,” he said.
Last spring, Spencer became CEO of Americorps’ parent, the quasi-public Corporation for National and Community Service. Her trip to Bangor last month made it the 13th state she has visited to see first hand what volunteers are up to. She said she had just met with 40 members of Congress to urge support for her budget. Congressman Mike Michaud of Maine was among those attending a local-foods dinner, prepared by AmeriCorps volunteers.
Donna Wiegle of Swan’s Island, a longtime volunteer, said the local school enrollment has risen from 35 to 54 students. “The school is the heart of the community…without the school the community would collapse.” With Island Fellows creating computer links with other island schools, Swan’s Island school is thriving, she said, and “the funding that comes to the Island Institute from AmeriCorps makes it possible.”
Arriving in bright sunshine, Spencer quipped, “any day in Maine is a good day.” A former colleague, Maryalice Crofton, head of the Maine Commission for Community Service, coordinated Spencer’s whirlwind visit, which included the Blaine House conference on Service and Volunteerism at the University of Maine in Orono.
Crofton said Spencer is the first woman to be national director of Americorps and the first person appointed from the field, and is someone who worked her way up. “She’s somebody that understands what’s going on. She values all programs holistically,” Crofton said.
Besides Island Fellows, participating AmeriCorps members included food, conservation and health groups. Spencer visited the Penobscot Community Health Care, the only low-income clinic of its kind north of Boston. She toured the facility with clinic director Ken Schmidt, a seasonal resident of Great Cranberry Island.
Steve Cartwright is a freelance contributor living in Waldoboro.