Insight: Into the Deep Freeze

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Stepping outdoors at this time of year can be a chilling experience but for me, the coldest conditions that I have ever been in happened to be when I covered sled dog racing in Laconia, New Hampshire for the daily newspaper there.

A musher guides a team of sled dogs during the World
Championship Sled Dog Derby in Laconia, New
Hampshire in 2015. COURTESY PHOTO 

In a tradition that harkens back to 1929, sled dog teams and mushers gather in Laconia every winter to compete in a three-day race in various classes on a 15-mile course around Lake Opechee and Paugus Bay. Some of the top sled dog racing teams from across the globe compete in what is billed as the “World Championship Sled Dog Derby.”

The first year I worked for the newspaper in Laconia the event was scrubbed because of a lack of snow and ice but by the time the second year rolled around, temperatures dropped below zero and there was plenty of snow to hold the races.

As the editor of the newspaper, I could have assigned a reporter to provide coverage of the sled dog races, but it was something I wanted to do myself. Being a longtime sportswriter, I had watched televised reporting of the 1,000-mile Iditarod sled dog race in Alaska through the years and thought it would be interesting to attend this race in New Hampshire and write about it.

On the day that the Laconia races were to be held, the thermometer started dropping and fell 13 degrees overnight. When I started my car in the newspaper parking lot to drive to the event, it was minus 18 degrees and sunny at 10 a.m.

I had been forewarned to dress warmly and so I was wearing thermal underwear, a heavy sweater, a wool cap, a scarf, gloves, and an insulated parka. But even that combination did not prepare me for spending time interviewing racing participants in that sort of cold.

In under 10 minutes outside, I was told by a race administrator to go back to my car to warm up. He suggested that I conduct interviews and photography for the newspaper in 10-minute stretches, and in the meantime, he told me to leave my car running with the heat turned on and to retreat back there when I needed to warm up.

First off, I decided to interview a racing team musher from Syracuse, New York. He and his wife and son had brought their six-dog team to Laconia for the event. It was the second time they had competed there. He told me that all his dogs were Siberian Huskies, and they had recently replaced the team’s dog harnesses.

He told me that racing sled dogs each wear individual harnesses and then what are called tuglines are attached to those forming a loop which connects to a master gangline for the musher to guide the team. To keep each dog in the proper position, they can also be attached to a neckline for maximum control by the team’s musher.

Not every dog racing team was made up of huskies. I found out that some teams had Samoyeds or Malamutes, while other had Chinooks or German Shorthaired Pointers. All the dogs competing on the Syracuse team weighed between 35 and 65 pounds and their lead dog, a huskie named “Bo,” was placed in front because he was the oldest and the strongest of the entire team.

According to the musher, the team had practiced on their farm over the summer and fall. Each of the dogs’ meals were calculated and maintained by a veterinarian to keep their weight under control and to provide the dogs with plenty of power and energy for the racing circuit. This particular team from New York state would travel to events in Illinois and Ohio and throughout New England and Canada every winter to compete in sled dog racing and in six years had won eight different trophies and cash prizes.

They drove to the events each winter in a pickup truck pulling a camper which housed their dogs in crates when they weren’t racing. He said that his dogs weren’t bothered by the cold because they were accustomed to sub-zero temperatures.

I also interviewed a race official who monitored the start of the races. He told me that there were two categories for racing teams with one being for six-dog sleds and the other being “unlimited,” containing between 14 and 16 dogs in each team. Because each race was 15 miles and compiled over three days, he said the winning team was trying to log the best aggregate time accumulated in that time frame.

By the time those interviews were finished, I was absolutely freezing. Despite the layers of clothing I was wearing, the cold still penetrated and each trip back to the car to warm up took longer and longer. I stepped to a position on a snowbank near the starting line and got photographs of dog teams and mushers beginning that day’s race.

Being outside in minus 18-degree weather was not something I would prefer to do again, and it was the coldest I have ever been in my lifetime, but experiencing the sled dog races and writing about it is something I can say can be checked off my bucket list.<

Insight: Instrumental to my happiness

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Music is such an integral part of our daily lives that it’s hard to imagine what the world would be like without it.

Nancy Pierce, left, and her school principal Mary Jane Cooney,
right, meet singer Peter Noone before the Herman's Hermits
concert in Laconia, New Hampshire in September 2016.
PHOTO BY ED PIERCE

The people who create, compose and play music are observers of life, of possibilities, of tragedies and of joy. They inspire us and provide the soundtrack for each of our lives.

Here are a couple of stories about how I met several musicians whose songs are still remembered today.

In 1973, I was fortunate to be nominated to work for the Student Entertainment Committee at New Mexico Highlands University. The committee’s mission was to use fees appropriated during student registration to bring nationally known musicians and entertainers to perform on our campus. We booked bands and selected available dates for their performances.

After the dates were booked and confirmed, and once the performers arrived in town for their shows, committee members would assist them with transportation to and from the shows or locate area restaurants or other activities they requested.

Being a fan of progressive country in the early 1970s, I had both of B.W. Stevenson’s first two albums, once self-titled and the other called “Lead Free.” His music was powerful and ranged from singing about heartbreak to understanding the human condition. When I learned that the committee had booked him to perform a concert at our school, I volunteered to assist him and his band while they were in town.

They arrived by tour bus late in the evening the day before their show. I met Stevenson, who promptly instructed me to call him “Buck,” short for his nickname, Buckwheat. We made sure that the hotel suite he had chosen for his band was satisfactory and the next day I guided Stevenson and the band to the auditorium for a sound check prior to the concert.

While waiting backstage to be introduced, Stevenson pulled me aside and asked me if I knew of any parties or things to do in town after the concert. I told him that my fraternity was having a party with a keg of beer later and I invited him and the band to stop by. During the concert, Stevenson performed songs from his latest album, and I really liked one of them called “My Maria.” It was a smash hit for him and is the song he is most remembered for today.

After the concert, Stevenson and his band did indeed drop by our fraternity house and I had him autograph his albums in my collection. I found it incredible that I was standing and talking with someone whose music was all over the radio and it’s a memory that I cherish to this day. I was saddened to learn 14 years later that Stevenson had died at the age of 38 following open-heart surgery in Texas.

In 2016, I was the Editor of the daily newspaper in Laconia, New Hampshire and wanted to write about an upcoming concert there featuring Peter Noone of the 1960s band Herman’s Hermits. Event organizers gave me his cell phone number and I called him in California and did a phone interview with him while he was waiting to board a plane for the East Coast.

I asked him lots of questions about his career and his music and by the time that lengthy phone conversation ended, I felt like I understood Peter better and it was evident that his charisma, personality and talent were a major factor in his success. He had first started with the band as a 15-year-old lead singer and said he was proud of what he had accomplished in his career. He mentioned a fact I didn’t know that in 1965, Herman’s Hermits had sold more records worldwide than The Beatles did.

To me, Noone came across as down to earth, candid and humorous. I told him that I could recall dancing to one of his songs called "Listen People" with one of my classmates, Janet McGraw Howland, at a dance at Carlton Webster Junior High School in Henrietta, New York and he laughed and said, “Don’t we all wish we were young again?”

Before ending our conversation, I asked Noone if I could bring my wife Nancy backstage before the show to meet him and take a photo. He agreed to do so, and we got to his concert early and met up with my wife’s boss, Mary Jane Cooney, who was also attending the show. She was the principal of the Holy Trinity Catholic School in Laconia and when I told her we were going backstage to meet Peter Noone, she asked if she could go with us.

The three of us then met Peter and he graciously let us take photographs with him. He thanked me for writing about his concert for the newspaper and we returned to our seats. During the show, he dazzled the audience with some of Herman's Hermits' biggest hits such as “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter,” or “Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat,” "I'm Henry the VIII, I Am," and “I’m Into Something Good.”

A week or so later, Noone sent me an autographed photo and a CD of Herman’s Hermits’ greatest hits. Without reservation, I can say he’s as genuine as they get and remains one of my all-time favorite entertainers.

As a journalist, through the years I’ve met and interviewed many singers, but these two really stand out. <

Insight: Moon beams and big dreams

By Ed Pierce

Managing Editor

I sat in Miss Weaver’s second-grade classroom that day totally in awe of what was happening and the possibilities that a special event held for all Americans.

NASA astronaut Alan Shepard aboard
Freedom 7 takes off from Cape
Canaveral in Florida on May 5, 1961
on his way to becoming the first
American in space.
COURTESY PHOTO  

The date was Friday May 5, 1961, and it started out like any other normal school day at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School in Brighton, New York. Along with my classmates, we were quietly reading at our desks about 10:15 a.m. when there was a knock at our classroom door, and a priest wheeled in a large portable television set.

Miss Weaver instructed us to put down our books and watch the television because a special event was about to happen that we would remember for the rest of our lives. It was live coverage of the first-ever attempt to launch an American astronaut into space from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The astronaut aboard the spacecraft called Freedom 7 was Alan Shepard, one of the original U.S. Mercury astronauts. It was the first time I heard NASA’s Mission Control Countdown tick away “10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, liftoff.”

We all cheered as the rocket took off and eventually reached a suborbital altitude of 115 miles. Shepard’s spacecraft traveled downrange for 302 nautical miles from Cape Canaveral. During the flight, Shepard was able to observe the Earth from space and tested his altitude control system. He also was able to turn the spacecraft around so its heat shield could protect him during atmospheric re-entry and tested Freedom 7’s retrorockets.

The flight itself lasted for 15 minutes and 28 seconds and reached a speed of 5,180 mph before Freedom 7 splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Bahamas. Our class continued watching the recovery as U.S. Navy frogmen retrieved Shepard and Freedom 7 and flew them by helicopter to the aircraft carrier USS Lake Champlain.

With his successful flight, Alan Shepard became the first American in space and by 11:30 a.m., the large portable television was wheeled out of our classroom and our class got ready to go to the cafeteria for lunch.

It was a significant milestone for this nation and a few days later I was watching the evening news and saw where President John F. Kennedy welcomed Shepard to the White House. He presented him with the NASA Distinguished Service Medal in a ceremony and during his remarks, the president also saluted the work done by so many others for Shepard’s flight to be a success.

For days after that, all the members of our second-grade class pretended to be astronauts while out on the school playground. By the end of that month, President Kennedy addressed a joint session of Congress and challenged the nation to claim a leadership role in space exploration and to land a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s decade.

It was a source of pride and common purpose for Americans and each subsequent NASA manned space flight became must-see television, no matter what age you were. Americans were ecstatic when Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon in July 1969 and were worried and fearful when an accident crippled the Apollo 13 spacecraft on its mission to the moon but miraculously made it back to earth safely in April 1970.

Shepard had been grounded by NASA following his 1961 spaceflight after suffering from an ear ailment called Meniere’s disease but was restored to flight status following surgery to alleviate the issue. He led the Apollo 14 mission to the moon and at age 47 became the oldest astronaut to walk on the moon, and the only one of the original seven Mercury astronauts to make it there.

In 1994, my life came full circle when I met Alan Shepard while he was at a promotional event in Titusville, Florida. Shepard and two journalists, Jay Barbee and Howard Benedict, had written a book called “Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America’s Race to the Moon.” I got to spend a few moments speaking to Alan Shepard and I told him about how fascinated members of our second-grade class were that morning in 1961 to watch his Freedom 7 flight.

He told me that he felt all Americans were part of his mission that day and he thanked me for watching. Shepard died in 1998 from leukemia and I was saddened to hear that news.

When I landed a job working for a newspaper in Laconia, New Hampshire in 2014, on at least several occasions I interviewed and met several people who had grown up in Derry, New Hampshire with Alan Shepard and had attended middle school classes at Oak Street School in Derry with him.

I also interviewed a U.S. Army veteran who resided at the New Hampshire Veterans Home in Tilton who had been in the same Boy Scout troop as Alan Shepard. He told me the future astronaut loved building things and enlisted the assistance of his fellow scouts to construct a rowboat.

You never know where life will lead you and I certainly never dreamed sitting in my second-grade classroom in May 1961 that I would some day meet the first American in space. <

Andy Young: We're Number One

By Andy Young

Locally there was much joy earlier this month when the Windham High School boys’ basketball team won its first-ever Maine Class AA State Championship.

But it’s hardly the first time the town of Windham has faced stiff competition and emerged triumphant. In fact, Windham, Maine already owns a distinction which the eight other American municipalities with the same name can only wish they possessed.

Some of those envious other places are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to vying for the title of Best Windham. For example, Windham, Iowa is just an unincorporated community that lies 11 miles west of Iowa City, midway between the villages of Frytown and Cosgrove. The United States Census doesn’t collect population data in a way that shows exactly how many people live in unincorporated villages, but in 1925, the last time such numbers were available, Iowa’s Windham had a mere 35 residents.

Oddly, two of America’s eight other Windhams lie in the same state. There’s a Windham Township, Pennsylvania in both Bradford County and Wyoming County, but it’s tough to differentiate between the two. Bradford County’s Windham Township is home to 818 souls, whereas the Wyoming County Windham Township’s population is only 737.

The only other Windhams in America that lie outside New England are Windham, New York (population 1,708) and Windham, Montana, a 267-acre, 43-person CDP (census-designated place) located in Judith Basin County. But when it comes to elevation, the other Windhams can’t compete with Montana’s, which lies 4,264 feet above sea level. New York’s Windham, with a location 1,893 feet above the ocean, stands a distant second in this category. Windham, Vermont takes home the bronze, at 1,759 feet. This particular portion of the Windham decathlon isn’t a strong event for Maine’s Windham, which at 236 feet above sea level lies just higher than the Windhams of Connecticut (233 feet) and New Hampshire (194 feet).

While New York’s Windham, which locals there refer to as “Land in the Sky” and/or “The Gem of the Catskills,” may hold the title of highest-elevated Windham east of the Mississippi, it has a less enviable distinction as well. In 1937 it was home to Camp Highland, a Nazi-sponsored summer camp for German-American boys.

When it comes to population though, Maine’s Windham rules northern New England. The 2020 census says 18,434 people live here, which is 2,617 more than reside in Windham, New Hampshire and 18,015 more than tiny Windham that Vermont contains. But alas, that same census certifies that Windham, Connecticut is home to 24,428, which makes them the top Windham in that category not only in New England, but the entire United States.

However, if size really does matter, Windham, Maine is easily number one. The Iowa and Montana Windhams are mere postage stamps, and the Wyoming County Windham Township consists of just 23.2 square miles. The other three New England Windhams aren’t much bigger; Vermont’s consists of just 26.1 square miles, New Hampshire’s has 27.78, and Connecticut’s is 27.9. The Windham Township in Bradford County, Pennsylvania is a slightly more sizable 32.29 square miles, but that’s dwarfed by Windham, New York’s area: 45.34 square miles.

However, the largest American Windham by far is Maine’s! At a massive 50.15 square miles, the Pine Tree State’s Windham is nearly 10 percent larger than the runner-up Windham, New York’s. And it would still be bigger even if the judges didn’t count the 3.59 square miles of Windham, Maine’s total area that’s water.

Most importantly though, Maine’s Windham owns one other distinction that New York’s only wishes it could claim.

Our state’s Windham has never hosted a Nazi-sponsored summer camp. <

Insight: Connecting with my spirit animal

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Earlier this summer I had a conversation with a friend who asked me if I knew about spirit animals.

Gracie was a rescue cat that traveled with the Pierce Family
from Florida to New Hampshire to Maine in her lifetime.
PHOTO BY ED PIERCE 

Not having a clue as to what that is, my friend shared with me that in some spiritual traditions or cultures, what is known as a spirit animal helps guide or protect a person on a journey through life and whose characteristics that person may share or embody. 

The term itself may be based upon beliefs held by Native Americans that it’s possible to connect with your spirit animal through meditation and they act similar to what some Christians believe are guardian angels.

My friend told me that spirit animals often visit us during times of great uncertainty or change and that identifying and interacting with them can provide us with new perspectives about our lives and a deeper spiritual connection to our place in the world.

Spirit animals are creatures we may be naturally drawn to, and my friend said thinking about what animal could be my own spirit animal would take time but once I did identify it, I could begin to see how this could be of some sort of service to me in the future.

According to my friend, studies conducted worldwide show that the most popular spirit animals are the wolf, followed by bears, deer, horses, and eagles, based upon a person’s personal strengths, weaknesses, and traits.

 
For example, a wolf can symbolize a mix of power, loyalty, guardianship, teamwork, and wildness, while a bear is known for strength, power, and tenacity. A deer is associated with gentleness, kindness, and innocence. Horses are known for freedom, nobleness, and endurance, and eagles can symbolize independence, freedom, and self-expression.

 
With my busy schedule, I never really gave the conversation about spirit animals much thought until last weekend, when an odd thing happened to me. My favorite baseball team, the Baltimore Orioles, are playing games on the West Coast and on Saturday evening I stayed up late and watched the Orioles’ game against the Seattle Mariners on television.

 
The game started at 9:40 p.m. and went into extra innings before the Orioles won, 1-0, at about 12:30 a.m. Sunday. I went to bed and was sleeping soundly when something unusual woke me up.

For many years, our cat Gracie would sleep at the foot of our bed. She was a rescue cat that I took in before Nancy and I got married. She was very gentle and had been used by her previous owner as a companion to her husband, who was dying of cancer. After he died when Gracie was only 1, the owner was going to dump the cat at the local animal shelter before flying to New Jersey a day before a major hurricane was about to strike the area.

 
I volunteered to take the cat and give it a good home. Nancy came to love Gracie too after we were married the next year. We almost lost her before even getting to know her though. In the first year we had her, she was diagnosed by our veterinarian with bladder stones and was in bad shape. Money was tight and when we were told that she needed an operation costing $2,100 to save her life, we wondered how we could come up with it.

 
But our veterinarian told us he trusted us, and we agreed to pay him $300 each time we were paid. Gracie had her surgery, and the veterinarian completely rebuilt her bladder so it could function properly. She was placed on a special dry food diet so she would not encounter further bladder issues.

 
With her health restored, we then enjoyed Gracie’s company for many years, and she went with us through moves from a rented condominium to our new house in Florida. She rode on the backseat of our car when we moved from Florida to New Hampshire, and then with me in the U-Haul truck from New Hampshire to Maine.

 
She loved to sit and sleep in the sunlight and was a great companion on rainy days while reading a book or sitting in the chair beside me while I worked on the computer. Once when my cousin, his wife and their daughter visited us in New Hampshire, Nancy joined them in staging a “cat party” with Gracie as the special guest of honor.

 
But two months after we moved to Maine, Gracie’s health began to decline sharply. She was now 16 years old, and she stopped eating. One day Nancy and I came home from work and found she had died. It was very sad and although years have passed since then, both of us miss her to this day.

 
Early last Sunday morning, I woke up feeling something laying across my leg. It felt like Gracie’s paw as she used to do at night for years when stretched out on our bed. I reached down to pet her, but there was nothing there.

 
I was reminded of my conversation about my “spirit animal” and I thought to myself that maybe Gracie had returned to watch over me, fulfilling that role in my life.

 
That would be simply perfect for me. <

Andy Young: Dreaming of hosting while guesting

By Andy Young

When Maine’s schools took their annual April break last week, I decided to take an actual driving vacation, my first such junket in quite some time. But even if I had the wherewithal to go tour some famous landmarks or national parks, I’d have opted instead for doing exactly what I did: visit some good people I hadn’t seen for a while.

Taking this trip reminded me of just how lucky I am to be able to do this sort of thing. The quality of the nation’s roads, the ease with which one can obtain fuel, and clarity with which federal and state roadways are marked is something too many Americans take for granted. I for one am particularly glad our country’s interstate highway system is so efficiently laid out; were it not, directionally challenged people like me would never be able to effectively navigate their way between places hundreds of miles apart.

The seven-day, 1,317-mile whirlwind tour covered nine states, although I never did set foot in three of them. New Hampshire, New York, and Delaware were literally drive-through states on this journey.

My first visit was with someone who was a role model and father figure to me and literally thousands of others during his half-century (and counting) on the faculty at the university that eventually awarded me a diploma. I enjoy every visit there, which always ends with me being given some new bit of college-themed apparel. The only time my host ever stops smiling occurs if I attempt to take out my wallet and pay for dinner at whatever restaurant we’ve chosen. “Put that thing away!” he’ll growl, and dutifully I do.

Subsequent stops in four other Connecticut towns yielded quality time with another college friend, a couple whose sons I babysat for many moons ago, and cousins who qualify as both friends and family.

Next up: more quality family time in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, where a day and a half passed in what seemed like an hour. Similarly, the three-hour visit I had in Reading, Pa. with a fellow writer and baseball enthusiast seemed to go by in about ten minutes. From there I drove south to two places where people who were important to me when we lived near one another decades ago confirmed that they’re still just as special today, even though they currently reside 476 miles (Lincoln University, Pa.) and 544 miles (Silver Spring, Maryland) from where I do.

Alas, all good things must end, and when Wednesday morning arrived, I realized it was time to head north. Getting home from suburban Washington, D.C. should have taken nine hours, but thanks to traffic in New Jersey and Connecticut (which I feel should be renamed “New New Jersey”) the trek took nearly 12.

As great as the trip was, I feel slightly guilty, since I didn’t pay for a darned thing the entire time I was on the road: no one would let me.

However, what I did do, was to try to convince each person I encountered to come up and visit Maine this summer. It would be a treat to have any or all of them drop by at some point in the not-too-distant future.

It’s not realistic to expect everyone I invited to come north this year, which is why the chances of my going from being “America’s Guest” to “America’s Host” are pretty slender. But if I can entice even one person to visit sometime soon it’ll give me the opportunity to do something I’ve always wanted to try: growl “Put that thing away” when my dinner guest reaches for their wallet! <

Insight: An epiphany that should resonate with all ages

A piece of the World Trade Center is on display
in front of the Laconia Police Department in
Laconia, New Hampshire to pay tribute to the
victims of that tragic terrorist attack.
PHOTO BY TRISH BEAUCHESNE

By Ed Pierce

Managing Editor

I recently watched the six-part TV series on Hulu called “9/11: One Day in America” and a flood of memories came rushing back to me about that fateful day in American history and my own connections to the attacks that day.

For those who haven’t seen that series, it was created by National Geographic and includes unseen footage from the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and interviews with firefighters, survivors, loved ones of victims, civilian rescuers, police officers and helicopter pilots. What I watched was stories of incredible courage, the will to endure and to embrace life, tragic circumstances and above all, the indomitable human spirit.

There are portions of the series that choked me up and brought tears to my eyes 20 years afterward, and unbelievable tales I had never heard before on the evening news or read about in newspapers or magazines.

When it was finished, I came away with a profound sadness for those who lost their lives to such senseless acts and a greater understanding of what happened that day and how ordinary people took extraordinary measures to help their fellow man.

One such individual, Chuck Sereika, I had met in 2009 in Vero Beach, Florida. He was introduced to me as someone who had been at the site of the World Trade Center in 2001, but that was all I knew about him. He operated a home cleaning business and I only spoke to him for a few minutes.

My impression was that Chuck Sereika was a normal guy trying to make a living like everyone else. But in watching this series on Hulu, something clicked, and I then realized what a hero this ordinary man was.

On Sept. 11, Chuck Sereika was in his apartment in New York City and was trying to resume a normal life after giving up his career as a paramedic. The stress of that job fed an addiction and he quit and was not long out of a treatment facility on that tragic day.

A phone call from his sister alerted him to turn on the television and watch the events unfolding live. His sister asked him if he was there and helping and that question prompted him to take his paramedic uniform out of the closet, put in back on and go the World Trade Center site to see if he could be of assistance.

He got there as the darkness of evening fell and walked through the piles of twisted metal and girders with two U.S. Marines trying to find survivors from the collapse of the buildings. Standing on the smoldering metal was so hot that he could feel the rubber on the bottom of his boots melting.

But soon the group followed cries for help to a smoking hole in the ground. Sereika climbed down 20 feet below the surface and found Port Authority policeman Will Jimeno and Sgt. John McLoughlin trapped but alive. It began a massive effort to dig them out and free them from the metal beams pinning them down there. All while Chuck Sereika stayed with them, rendered them whatever assistance he could, and gave them hope that they could survive, which they did.

To think that I had met this man and not known his story at the time left me saddened and appreciative of what ordinary people can do when facing trying times.

When I moved to Laconia, New Hampshire and was working for The Citizen daily newspaper, one of my duties in covering the city of Laconia was to cover the Laconia Police Department. Each time I visited the police station on Fair Street while working on a news story, I passed a modern statue of twisted metal outside at the entrance to the sidewalk.

One day in 2014, I happened to stop and read the inscription and was shocked to learn that it was a piece of the World Trade Center. A foundation gave pieces away to cities across America so its residents would never forget the events of that day and what it means to be an American.

I must have passed by hundreds of times before ever stopping to read the inscription and realizing that part of history was so close by to where I was living and working at the time.   

Ultimately, watching the series about 9/11 left me wondering about what all of the political strife, apprehension of each other, rage and anger and non-stop criticism of each other on social media and on television produces.

We are all Americans and blessed with freedoms other nations and people envy. If the lessons of 9/11 have shown us anything, underneath the politics, the divisive society we live in today and our distrust for our fellow man, it means nothing compared to the common bond and the precious life we as Americans all share. <  

Insight: Looking back at life in seven-year intervals

Ed Pierce at age 7, June 1961

By Ed Pierce

Managing Editor

I recently noticed a Facebook post by a friend that posed a question about what everyone was doing on a summer night in 1976. That got me to thinking about my past and how hard it would be to pinpoint exactly where I was at any given time in my life and what I was doing then.

To make it a bit more challenging and entertaining, I decided to examine my life in seven-year intervals and jot down exactly where I was and what I was up to.

At the age of 7 in June 1961, I had just completed second grade in Miss Weaver’s class at Our Lady of Lourdes School in Brighton, New York. About a month before school was out for the year, I remember the teacher wheeling a portable black and white television on a cart into our classroom so we all could watch coverage of the flight of the first American astronaut to travel into space, Alan Shepard. Later that summer I played in my first season of Little League baseball.

In June 1968 at age 14, I was excited about moving up to the high school that fall after finishing ninth grade at Carlton Webster Junior High School in Henrietta, New York. I also was happy because the band teacher, Mr. Richard Taylor, talked my parents into letting me give up playing the clarinet and the endless hours I had to spend after school practicing that musical instrument. After school I delivered the afternoon newspaper in my neighborhood.

By June 1975, I was 21 and in my second month of working for United Press International in New Mexico as a reporter. That July I was assigned to do an interview and write a story about a future U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, who was visiting Albuquerque. He ordered BLT sandwiches for us from room service and the Boston Red Sox against the Texas Rangers baseball game was on television as we did the interview. I remember him telling me his favorite Red Sox player was Carlton Fisk.

I was 28 in June 1982 and was serving in the U.S. Air Force as the sports editor of the Luke Air Force Base Tallyho weekly newspaper. Later that same year I was promoted to editor of the paper. I was thrilled to see “Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan” at the theater that summer and marveled at how Ricardo Montalban transitioned from good guy Mr. Roark on TV’s Fantasy Island to portraying the sinister Khan in that film.

June 1989 found me at age 35 working as a news reporter for the Valencia County News-Bulletin and covering county and city government activities, school board meetings and the chamber of commerce. My wife had me videotape three hours of ABC afternoon soap operas for her and after watching some of the plots of those shows, I became convinced I could write bizarre scripts for TV too.

In June 1996 I was 42 and was a sportswriter living in Florida. I covered many high school football, basketball, soccer and baseball games for Florida Today newspaper and spent a good deal of time traveling throughout Florida. That was the same year I bought a stick shift, six-cylinder 1995 Pontiac Firebird, which was one of the better cars I’ve ever owned.

By June 2003, I was 49 and had survived a bout with cancer. I had accepted a desk position at Florida Today and was laying out and designing pages for some of the newspaper’s weekly publications. I had developed a keen interest in photography and had saved up and purchased my first digital camera by then.

In June 2010, at age 56, I was now the Community Sports Editor for Florida Today and continued to write sports and news articles for the newspaper’s weekly and daily editions. My wife and I had purchased a home and we were planning a trip to visit her family in Vermont later that summer.

June 2017 found me at age 63 in Biddeford, Maine where my company had transferred me from Laconia, New Hampshire to serve as Executive Editor of the daily newspaper there. My wife was hired to teach first grade at the Catholic school nearby and we considered ourselves fortunate to have found a home to buy that featured a garage and a fenced-in backyard after looking at dozens that didn’t.

Not sure where June 2024 will find me, but if the past is any indication, I suppose it will include a few surprises, a few disappointments and much to be proud of. <

Andy Young: On the road again, visiting everyone but the neighbors

By Andy Young

Special to The Windham Eagle

Maine is the nation’s northeastern terminus. It’s also the only one of the 50 states with a one-syllable name, and it’s got more actual coastline than any other inhabitable state. (Okay; Florida and Louisiana both have somewhat more, but who wants to live in a glorified swamp, not to mention ones that are hotbeds of yellow fever, malaria, and similar scourges?) 

And if that’s not unique enough, Maine is the only one of America’s 50 states that borders on one (and only one) other state. And since at this writing Canada is still off-limits to Americans without a vital need to be there, if Mainers want to cross a border, it’s got to be New Hampshire’s.

Thanks to a 15-month “time-out” necessitated by the ongoing (though thankfully subsiding) COVID-19 pandemic, my out-of-state travel since last February has been limited to a single seven-hour mini-excursion last July with my two sons to climb southern Vermont’s Mount Ascutney with their cousin/my niece. But since both the drive down and the return trip were made non-stop, I didn’t get to actually put my feet down onto our lone neighboring state’s soil.

Limiting travel for myself and my family was an important decision I made based on reliable information. When it comes to deciding on my actions during a worldwide pandemic, I’ll heed the advice of distinguished epidemiologists for the same reason I follow my financial advisor’s counsel on monetary matters, my lawyer’s instructions on legal affairs, and my mechanic’s suggestions when it comes to my car.  

But now that the crisis is seemingly on the wane, I’m long since fully vaccinated, and there’s no longer a need to quarantine after returning from out of state, ending my already far-too-lengthy travel sabbatical to attend a long-scheduled family memorial service in New Jersey was an easy decision. That’s why last weekend I drove approximately 800 total miles on a circuitous route to (and back from) the central portion of the Garden State, with stops en route in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, but at first glance the rest of the world (or at least the portion of it I saw) seemed pretty much unchanged. Significant portions of I-495, I-290, I-84, and I-95 were under construction, but that’s been the perpetual state of affairs on those roads since I got my driver’s license four and a half decades ago. Passing over the George Washington Bridge from New York to New Jersey is still a piece of cake at 7 a.m. on a sunny Sunday in late May, but re-crossing it later the same day is an exercise in frustration. My 387-mile trip home, one which MapQuest said should have required a mere six hours and 29 minutes, took two hours longer than that, and a significant amount of my squandered time was spent crawling toward the Hudson River crossing of least resistance, generally flanked by two massive 18-wheelers that blocked out whatever remaining sunlight there was.

But despite the lengthy and occasionally stressful drive, it was great seeing old friends and visiting old haunts, which is why I’m headed for Rhode Island this weekend to see my uncle. I’ll have to go through Boston, but even if traffic’s bad, I’ll bet I can get back in under eight and a half hours.

I’m truly grateful to finally have the freedom to cross the state line without quarantining upon my return. And when I come back from this trip I will, in my most recent travels, have physically set foot in New York, New Jersey, and every New England state – except Maine’s only actual neighbor! <

Andy Young: Dreaming of exotic staycation destinations

By Andy Young

Columnist

Given the ongoing pandemic gripping both the nation and the world, journeying to faraway destinations is clearly not prudent right now. It’s been nearly six months since I last left the state of Maine, which for someone who works less than 25 miles from New Hampshire seems highly unusual.

Like many teachers and parents, I enjoy discovering new places and revisiting old haunts when school is out. But since traveling this summer involves a high level of risk, the only borders I’ll be crossing will be the ones between local towns. And while wandering around in locales more virus-afflicted locales than ours is currently inadvisable, there’s no harm in taking vicarious excursions by writing, dreaming, or reminiscing about them.

Late in the 1980’s my youngest sibling and I informally decided to see which of us could venture to all 50 of the United States first. We each had jobs involving frequent domestic travel and/or short-term relocation, and at the time neither of us was encumbered with children or a significant other. My sister insisted on some basic rules, one of which was that for a state to count you had to either stay overnight there or consume at least one meal within its borders. Her proposed requirements rendered my claims to both Utah (layover between airline flights) and Iowa (a drive across a bridge from Nebraska for a 30-second cameo appearance) null and void, but nothing tangible was at stake. We also mutually agreed that an actual prize might take the fun out of it, so after concurring on guidelines the competition began.

By the mid-90’s each of us had legitimately checked off 48 states.

But then she got married and subsequently became a parent, and a couple of years later I went down that same winding road. It’s a quarter-century later, we’re still deadlocked at 48 states apiece, and today I’m waving the white flag. It’s time to admit, however reluctantly, that I am not going to win the contest.

These days travel is expensive, not to mention potentially hazardous to the health of older people, a demographic into which, by nearly everyone’s definition, I now fit. In addition, I have little things like a mortgage and some college educations to pay for that weren’t a factor back in the 20th century. That my nominal opponent still needs Alaska and Hawaii and isn’t any more likely to get to those places than I am to check off the two states remaining on my list is of little comfort. I’m still holding out hope that a trip to Oregon is in my future, but if I ever have the money necessary to go to Hawaii overnight (or at least eat a meal there), I’d undoubtedly opt to use it for something else.

But I can lay claim to a significant consolation prize: I’ve been to every Canadian province! I got my ninth and tenth when my three children and I motored out to Colorado and Montana eight summers ago and circled back through Saskatchewan and Manitoba on the way home.

It doesn’t look like I’ll make it to Canada this year. But while physically roaming far from home isn’t currently an option, few if any states are more attractive for “staycations” than Maine is. Thanks to our state’s unique geography, visits to Poland, Norway, and Denmark are all within easy driving distance. If I’m yearning for something more exotic (or less Nordic), Mexico and Peru are both doable. Maybe I’ll even try China, if they’re letting people from Cumberland County across the great wall that I imagine surrounds the place. <

Insight: Finding a newspaper editor’s real purpose

It’s surprising that no matter how old you may be, there are still things you can learn about yourself. I bring this up because a while back I discovered my real purpose as a newspaper editor.

I was working as a news reporter for the Laconia Citizen newspaper in Laconia, New Hampshire when I was chosen by the publisher to be that paper’s new editor. After years of leading daily and weekly newspapers previously as an editor, I accepted a reporter’s job in Laconia because it didn’t come with all of the tedious tasks, duties and responsibilities otherwise associated with being an editor.

But when the previous editor had resigned, I was asked to fill the role by the publisher because of my lengthy experience in journalism and skill at organization.

Before the announcement of my promotion had been made public, I attended an early morning committee meeting for a drug-free community coalition where I disclosed to committee members that I was being promoted to serve as editor of the newspaper.

Following the meeting, a friend of mine who also served on that committee, Pastor Shaun Dutile of Laconia, sought me out in the parking lot and posed an interesting question to me.

“Do you know why God has put you in this position as the editor of the newspaper?” Dutile said.

Before I could come up with a reply, he told me that the answer to his question was something that only I could discover through self-introspection and discovery.

“Only you and God will know the reason for you to be put in this position and its purpose is something that you must find out in order to be successful,” he said.

His question got me to thinking about my lengthy career in journalism and what it meant to be placed in charge of supervising the content of a community newspaper.

What I eventually learned -- and it’s pertinent to my new job here as the managing editor at The Windham Eagle -- is that the editor of a community newspaper works diligently on behalf of the readers and not for personal gain.

As the staff member who determines what gets covered in the newspaper and how it is reported, the editor’s role is more than simply correcting typos, choosing photographs to accompany articles and fixing misspelled words in stories.

What I have discovered from first-hand experience is that the editor of a newspaper must always be objective, be a true champion and strong voice for everyone in the community who does not have such an extensive platform that reaches so many people throughout the area. As such, the editor should believe that a student’s Eagle Scout project is as deserving of coverage in the paper as reporting about a late-night town council meeting or the news that a new minister has been appointed to lead a local congregation.

Readers pick up The Windham Eagle with the expectation they will learn something interesting and impactful to their daily lives in every edition of newspaper. And I intend to continue to be as enthusiastic and helpful in doing just that as my predecessor Lorraine Glowczak, was in her time filling the managing editor’s position here.

Before I left New Hampshire to move to Maine in 2016, I had another conversation with Pastor Dutile and I thanked him for posing that question to me when he did. To this very day, I can still hear his words and reflect upon the awesome responsibility placed in me in leading this newspaper, The Windham Eagle.

Through the years, my work as a journalist has taken me to so many different places and I have enjoyed the distinct privilege of meeting and telling the stories of so many different people. But none of those are as important or meaningful to me right now as what you are currently doing in this community, how it affects your lives and those of your neighbors and it’s what makes this such a great place to live and work.

There is a reason I have been placed in this role and what I have learned is that the purpose is to serve you and to champion the Windham and Raymond communities.  <

 —Ed Pierce