In the last six months, Chebeague Island has welcomed two new families into the recently finished affordable housing duplex on Schoolhouse Road. Although neither family had any direct ties to Chebeague before making the move, it was more than just the availability of housing that drew them to the island.
They found job opportunities, a great place to raise and educate their kids, and a welcoming community. “Everyone’s family,” says Michelle Jackson, who moved to Chebeague in August to become the town clerk, joined by her husband Andrew and her three children.
For Kelly Lockary and her partner Denise Bonville, who arrived in December, the appeal of island life is just the opposite of the isolation many people might imagine. “You’re never really alone out here,” says Lockary. (They learned this after someone lent them gas when they forgot when the island pump was open.)
Although backers of the affordable housing project on Chebeague originally hoped islanders would move in, that didn’t happen, even after the application deadline was extended. But the new tenants bring school-aged children, a sense of adventure and a strong desire to be part of island life.
“A lot of people were like, `You’re crazy for moving to the island,'” Michelle Jackson recalls with a smile. Her mainland friends joked about their family freezing, starving and being isolated.
Last spring, Jackson was working for the town of Gray as an administrative assistant to the town manager. She discovered that Chebeague Island was looking for a town clerk and told her husband Andrew, wishing there was a way they could afford a house on the island. Then she discovered the island’s affordable housing opportunity, where rent is determined as a percentage of a resident’s income.
The Jacksons visited Chebeague last May when their future home was still just a “mud pit and a basement.” But Jackson remembers hearing the island’s stone sloop history and seeing the town buildings. The whole family remembers the beaches andfourth-grader Brennan going for an “accidental” dip in the ocean. They met members of the Chebeague Island Community Association, which built the affordable housing units, and teachers at the school. They remember how nice everyone was.
“We just decided to go for it,” Michelle Jackson recalls, smiling broadly.
Things quickly fell into place. She became Town Clerk and the family was approved to occupy half of the new affordable housing duplex. Andrew landed a job as a deckhand for the Chebeague Transportation Company (CTC).
The timing of the move was also important for Michelle’s three children, Brennan, Ellie and Taliah, who were about to start a new school year.
The 6:40 a.m. ferry from Chebeague is not an easy commute for Taliah, a freshman at Greely High School, and Ellie, a sixth-grader at Yarmouth Middle School. In January they’re up before sunrise, but the long trip allows them to wake up by the time they reach school.
Brennan attends the Chebeague Island School, where his parents say the personalized attention has helped him become an advanced math student. His favorite beach is “2-Minute Beach,” so named by the Jacksons because of its proximity to their home. (It’s known to the rest of Chebeague as Chandler’s Cove.)
The Jackson kids are participating in after-school programs — like piano lessons and basketball — at the Recreation Center. When they lived in Raymond, bike rides were limited to their driveway; now, the island’s the limit.
“They explored the island very well,” says Andrew Jackson.
Michelle Jackson speaks with a deep affection for old friends and coworkers on the mainland, but says she doesn’t feel isolated. She is writing a young adult fantasy novel, and the weather has been good for writing. She and her husband like the winter quiet as well as neighborhood gatherings.
When asked about getting to know the community Andrew Jackson says that his job as a CTC deckhand makes that pretty easy. “I know a lot of people,” he says, then confesses with a chuckle that there’s still more to learn. “I’m not sure how they’re all related, though.”
Chebeaguers have been quick to welcome Kelly Lockary and her partner Denise Bonville, who reside in the other half of the affordable housing duplex. Lockary is known as the bus driver who likes to cook. Bonville has met many people on the boat, welcoming her and her family to the island.
“Chebeague to me feels the way Great Diamond used to feel,” says Bonville, who grew up on Great Diamond and has also lived on Long Island and Peaks. “It still has a really nice, intimate, small-town feel about it. I’ve been wanting to go back to that forever.”
When the couple lived in Yarmouth, Bonville worked in a café where she met several Chebeague residents, one of whom took her on an “amazing” tour of the island.
Lockary and Bonville learned about the affordable housing opportunity through the newspaper, café patrons and CTC bus riders. (Lockary began working as a bus-driver and deckhand for CTC in May.)
“I love being on the ocean,” Lockary says with a smile. “Any day of the year, any circumstance.”
After less than two months, Lockary and Bonville feel like they’ve gotten the hang of life on Chebeague. Lockary laughs as she recalls missing the ferry twice in a row while they were moving in November.
Bonville, who runs a cleaning business in Yarmouth, does landscaping in the summer and also has a dog-walking business, enjoys the commute and the opportunity to “ease into the day” with a slow boat ride. Ideally, she wants to be able to work on the island. Lockary drives the bus for Freeport, Pownal and Durham schools, but is trained in culinary arts. In Boston she was a caterer and ran a commissary at the University of Massachusetts. She agrees that the island commute is therapeutic. “Being in a boat on the water draws the negative energy out of you.”
The couple has four children, three of whom are grown and in college or living elsewhere. Joquin is eight and in the second grade at the Chebeague Island School.
Bonville hopes to apply for a CTC deckhand position, but she’d also like to teach dance classes — she studied midwifery and dance at Oberlin College — and get involved in hospice care. Lockary has considered teaching cooking at the Recreation Center, providing meals for the island’s elderly, or starting a floating farm stand.
As a lesbian couple, Lockary and Bonville say they were very conscious of how their relationship might be perceived by islanders. They believe they have found a community of people that accepts diverse definitions of what it means to be a family, and more importantly have settled into a safe place for their son to grow up.
“He’ll go out into the world someday and realize what he had here,” says Bonville, with a hint of pride.
Anna Maine is a participant in The Working Waterfront’s Student Journalism Program and a resident of Chebeague.