Lincoln County Historical Society opens season (2025)

Colonial Maine Living History Association reenactors honor veterans on Memorial Day, at the Pownalborough Court House, in Dresden. The event begins at 11 a.m., on Monday, May 26. (photo courtesy of Bob Bond)

The Lincoln County Historical Association (LCHA) is kicking off its 2025 season with a range of engaging events that invite the public to experience history in different ways. Highlights include a Memorial Day ceremony, a visit from historical archaeologist Tim Dinsmore, new hands-on experiences at the Old Jail, and Community Day offering free admission to three historic sites on Sunday, June 1.

Seasonal programming begins on Monday, May 26, at 11 a.m., with a Memorial Day observance at the Pownalborough Court House, in Dresden, where visitors can join historical reenactors in honoring nine veterans of three different wars buried in the Old Court House Cemetery. The event will include flower placements on graves, a brief prayer, and a ceremonial flag-raising, followed by guided tours of the 1761 Pownalborough Court House.

On Saturday, May 31, historical archaeologist Tim Dinsmore will be at the Chapman-Hall House, in Damariscotta, from 12:30 to 4:00 p.m., to talk with visitors about his archaeological work at the site. This informal opportunity gives guests the chance to learn about the goals and findings of the excavation, and ask questions about historical archaeology.

Sunday, June 1, marks LCHA’s annual Community Day, with free admission to all three historic sites: Pownalborough Court House (1761) in Dresden, Chapman-Hall House (1754), in Damariscotta, and the Lincoln County Museum & Old Jail (1811), in Wiscasset.

At the Old Jail Museum, families can engage in new hands-on activities that bring 19th-century daily life to life for younger visitors. Children will explore what it was like for the jailer’s family in the early 1800s, making for an interactive and educational experience.

Seasonal hours begin after these special events, and all sites will be open during weekends through the summer. Pownalborough Court House will be open Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. through Indigenous Peoples Day. Chapman-Hall House will be open Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m. through October 12, and the Old Jail Museum will be open Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m. through September 28.

For more details, including event information and seasonal programming, visit www.lincolncountyhistory.org or follow LCHA on social media. Facebook: Lincoln County Historical Association (Maine) and Pownalborough Court House Museum, instagram: @historicallincolncounty.

Support Maine 4-H with a paper clover donation at your local Tractor Supply

The Jolly Juniors 4-H Club hosting a bake sale during the Paper Clover Campaign at the Tractor Supply Co. store in Ellsworth. Pictured left to right: Leah, Samantha, Brenda Jordan (Club Leader), and Cassidy.

The bi-annual Paper Clover fundraising campaign is in full swing at Tractor Supply stores across the state. Imagine a generation of young people in Maine equipped with the skills to lead, innovate and build a brighter future. This vision becomes a reality through the long-standing partnership between 4-H and Tractor Supply Company. Since 2010, this effective collaboration has raised over $24 million nationwide through the Paper Clover campaign, directly impacting the lives of countless youth by providing them with invaluable life and work-ready skills.

Donations to the Paper Clover campaign make a local impact, with 100 percent of the funds raised in Maine directly benefitting Maine 4-H youth and providing vital resources for hands-on learning experiences, leadership development and community engagement. These funds also directly support Maine’s 4-H Camps and Learning Centers, offering transformative opportunities for young people to connect with the outdoors, build confidence and develop essential life skills.

This spring’s campaign, which runs through May 5, holds special significance as Maine proudly declares 2025 the Year of Youth in Agriculture, a statewide initiative celebrating and supporting the young individuals shaping the future of our agricultural landscape. The initiative underscores the role 4-H plays in cultivating the next generation of farmers, producers and agricultural advocates. The Year of Youth in Agriculture will feature various events, educational opportunities and leadership development programs including the upcoming Northeast Livestock Exposition (NELE), taking place at the Windsor Fairgrounds from Friday, May 16 to Sunday, May 18. This event will showcase the talent and dedication of young livestock exhibitors, many of whom are Maine 4-H members.

Maine 4-H provides experiential opportunities for young people to develop essential skills in animal science, crop production, and sustainable farming practices. The Paper Clover program directly supports these local programs, helping to ensure a vibrant future for Maine’s agricultural sector.

To learn more about Maine 4-H or to enroll, please visit the program website or contact 207.581.3877, 1.800.287.0274 (in Maine) or extension@maine.edu

Local students go to state house to support girls’ sports and spaces

Bianca Wright, of Benton, speaking before the Maine Judiciary Committee, in Augusta. (contributed photo)

Female student athletes from across the state came to Augusta to testify in favor of bills to protect women’s sports and spaces. Most Mainers recognize these bills are commonsense policy that needs to be passed.

Dozens of brave girls came to testify in front of the Judiciary Committee. They shared their stories of how they’ve been negatively impacted by Maine’s current practice that allows biological men to compete in girls’ sports and invade women’s spaces.
“The vast majority of Mainers believe the rights of biological girls and women must be upheld. It’s up to us as legislators to protect these girls,” said Sen. Sue Bernard, R-Aroostook. “These bills will ensure privacy, safety and fairness for all Maine girls and re-affirm the protections that have been afforded to women since the passage of Title IX in 1972.”

Zoe Hutchins, of Fairfield, speaking before the Maine Judiciary Committee, in Augusta. (contributed photo)

Vassalboro Community School counselors are there for support, Part 2

VCS counselors Jamie Routhier and Gina Davis. (The Town Line file photo)

by Mary Grow

(Click here to read part 1 of this story!)

Vassalboro Community School (VCS) counselors Jamie Routhier and Gina Davis share responsibility for assisting any among the school’s approximately 420 students who need support with social or academic (or both) problems, and teachers and administrators who need advice in challenging situations.

In addition, the two counselors oversee a variety of programs run wholly or partly by outside groups, programs they imported – or created – to meet a perceived need.

One program Routhier and Davis mention with pride is called Colby Cares About Kids (CCAK): a collaboration with Colby College, in Waterville, to match Colby students as mentors to VCS students in grades two through eight.

In the spring of 2025, the two reported, there are 22 Colby mentors, seven young men and 15 young women, working with an equal number of students, half of them boys and half girls.

Mentors are trained in the fall and spring. They visit weekly and engage in varied activities with the students – reading together, walking on the trails around VCS, just talking.

Each mentor stays with his or her student until the mentor graduates or leaves the CCAK program. Each year’s program ends with a celebration at Colby, in May.

Another program is titled Hardy Girls/Healthy Women, created in Maine in 2000. Its website lists four characteristics it promotes for girls and nonbinary young people: curiosity, critical thinking, coalition-building and challenging the status quo.

A newly introduced program for students in grades five through eight is titled Sources of Strength and comes through the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Routhier says it is aimed at showing student leaders personal (physical and mental health) and social (family support, positive friendships) resources to get through hard times.

Body safety lessons, involving experts from the state department of education and the Maine Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers, teach students how to cope with sexual abuse. Routhier cited a state law requiring all Maine K-5 schools to have “a written policy for child sexual abuse prevention, education and response.”

Another safety program is the Maine State Police’s Online Safety Presentation, designed to help students better understand the risks associated with online sharing.

The two programs that take the most time for the counselors are the FoodBag program and the Cares Closet, which distribute food and clothing/household supplies, respectively. Both are in constant use, therefore in need of constant restocking.

Anyone considering a donation to the FoodBag or the Cares Closet, or seeking more information about any of these VCS programs, is invited to email Jamie Routhier, jrouthier@vcsvikings.org or Gina Davis, gdavis@vcsvikings.org.

The number of Vassalboro families using one or both programs varies; Routhier said it is typically 20-plus. Routhier and Davis created a needs assessment form and invite families to sign up at the beginning of each academic year, but new enrollments during the year – and withdrawals if a situation improves – are welcome.

The FoodBag operates with assistance from Good Shepherd Food Bank, the Vassalboro Parent-Teacher Organization and the school’s JMG (Jobs for Maine Graduates) program. Food is organized and distributed to meet each family’s needs.

Distributions are monthly, usually before a long weekend or vacation week, including a bag at the end of the school year. In the 2024-25 school year there were two November distributions, as the PTO helped send complete Thanksgiving meals to 24 families.

The Cares Closet provides needy students with “hygiene products, clothing, winter items, shoes and boots.” Its mission includes the program formerly called Christmas magic, giving families what Routhier calls “winter survival supplies” like warm clothes, books, games and craft supplies.

Routhier expressed gratitude to Vassalboro resident Amy Davidoff for her organizing help. Keeping clothing donations sorted by type, size, sex and season is time-consuming.

Routhier and Davis encourage teachers to refer any student they think could use anything in the closet. “We would rather be searching to replenish our supply than have it sit there when a family is in need,” Routhier said.

One more program, called the Civil Rights Team, was suspended for the 2024-25 academic year. Routhier said there is “a lot of student excitement” in favor of restarting it in the fall of 2025. As the title suggests, its goal is to empower students to understand civil rights and share their knowledge.

ShineOnCass hosts annual baby shower

Goat yoga instructors Shawna Lachance, left, and Chelsey Oliver are assisted by Holly Lachance, Quinn Easler, and a newborn baby goat at the ShineOnCass Animal Baby Shower & PJ Party. (contributed photo)

More than 100 children dressed in pajamas came to Hart-to-Hart Farm & Education Center, in Albion, on Sunday, May 4, to welcome newborn farm animals (also in jammies), give back to their community, and honor the legacy of Cassidy Charette at the annual ShineOnCass Animal Baby Shower & PJ Party.

The event featured hands-on educational sessions, including teaching kids how to milk a cow, fetch eggs from chickens, card lamb’s wool, and stretch out at goat yoga. Children were able to hold the newborn babies, learn how to care for them, and experience a working, organic farm.

Hart-to-Hart Farm is a family-owned and operated organic dairy farm that offers a variety of summer educational programs for children, adults and families. The event is held each year in memory of Cassidy Charette, an Oakland teen who died in a hayride accident in 2014. Cassidy, known for her kindness as an active community volunteer, was also passionate about caring for animals as a long-time summer camper at Hart-to-Hart Farm.

Families attending the event donated money and a truckload of food and pet items gifted to Humane Society Waterville Area in honor of Cassidy, who was also a shelter volunteer.

For information about Hart-to-Hart Farm & Education Center, visit hart2hartfarm.org. To learn more about the ShineOnCass Foundation, visit shineoncass.org.

Palermo Historical Society celebrates 30 years

PHS volunteer Michelle Glidden looks on with pride as Sawyer Cotter-Hayes works the grain grinder, full of Palermo-grown dent corn. (contributed photo)

by William Armstrong,
PHS President

To live in Palermo is to live among history, and this is true whether you know the history or not. It’s in the name and shape of our roads – Turner Ridge, Banton, Parmenter – and of the families who have lived here for generations. It’s in the houses, like the ones that survived the Branch Mills Fire of 1908 or the camps that surround Sheepscot Pond. It’s in the people, like local sons Millard Howard and Milton Dowe, who had so much love for this town that they each wrote a comprehensive history of it. That love and pride brought townsfolk together 30 years ago to found the Palermo Historical Society, and keeps us celebrating and preserving that history today.

We recently got to celebrate some local history with the third graders of Palermo Consolidated School, restarting a fond tradition. It was a delight to see the excitement and wonder in these kids’ eyes as they contemplated a 19th century life without electricity or iPads. Our intrepid volunteers demonstrated homesteader techniques like grain grinding, hand and loom weaving, and log cabin construction, and told stories of settlers working together to erect sawmills, grain mills, and churches (in that order!).

Our Society meets in the historic Worthing House, at 54 North Palermo Rd, right in the Branch Mills village. We love to collaborate with other local organizations, and are hosting Palermo’s American Legion Post #163 for a Memorial Day commemoration, starting at 11 a.m., on the May 26.

The society’s vice-president, Paul Hunter, is leading a popular monthly series on ancestry and genealogy in partnership with the Palermo Community Library – see their Facebook for more information. Later in June, we celebrate the anniversary of Palermo’s founding with our annual Founder’s Day Cookout, scheduled for June 21.

August means Palermo Days and the return of the 20th Maine Company B Civil War reenactors, camping out on our lawn. Our 30th anniversary season concludes in October with a new apple festival, organized in collaboration with PHS member and renowned apple expert, John Bunker. Mark Saturday, October 11, in your calendar for what is going to be a fun and hands-on celebration of all of what the humble apple provides us. All of our meetings and events are family-friendly and all are welcome.

The cornerstone of the Society’s achievements over the past 30 years is our dedicated membership, and there’s never been a better time to join us! Annual dues are just $5, and to commemorate our anniversary all new members receive a gift copy of Millard Howard’s definitive “An Introduction to the Early History of Palermo.” Members receive our seasonal newsletter, support our collection of antiques and artifacts, and guide our future. Our work in maintaining the historic Worthing House and grounds is never done, and we are always open to partnering with local businesses in pursuit of that goal.

The Palermo Historical Society was founded in 1995 with the express mission of preserving and cataloging our town’s history. That mission has taken many forms over the past 30 years, and our collection now includes books, maps, diaries, mementos, furniture, clothing, plateware, tools, all available to be viewed at our gifted home, the Worthing House, at 54 North Palermo Rd. We also have some especially rare treasures, like an antique barn loom (gift of Elsie Adams), one of the oldest telephones in Palermo (gift of Miriam Keller), the homemade diving helmet Milton Dowe used to walk across the bottom of Branch Pond, a working Edison phonograph with a collection of wax cylinder recordings (gift of Janet Potter).

To view any of our collection, please contact palermohistorical@gmail.com or join a meeting on the fourth Tuesday, at 6 p.m., March through October. You may get in touch with William Armstrong, PHS president, directly at armstrongpalermo@gmail.com.

EVENTS: Oakland Legion Memorial Day parade

This year’s Memorial Day Parade will be on Monday, May 26, starting at noon.

Before the parade there will be a service held at Lakeview Cemetery At 11 a.m., to honor and remember those veterans who have passed.

For his many years of service Dana Wrigley has been chosen as your Grand Marshal. Also, many organizations will be in attendance. The Kora Temple Riders and Clowns, Military Vehicles, Oakland Middle School Band, antique cars and trucks, along with many others.

Sons of American Legion will be hosting their traditional BBQ starting at the end of the parade with burgers, hot dogs, beans and more at the Legion Hall.

The parade will be lining up At the Messalonskee Middle School. All participants are expected to arrive and line up beginning at 11 a.m. At noon it will proceed down Pleasant Street, continuing onto Main Street, from there to Memorial Hall for a ceremony and ending up at the Oakland Post Office. This will be one of the best parades in the area!

If your organization, class or group are interested in participating please contact Bonnie Audet at the Legion Hall and leave a message (207)-465-2446.

New Dimensions FCU announces 2025 scholarship winners

Sofia DeRosby

New Dimensions Federal Credit Union (NDFCU) is proud to announce the recipients of its 2025 Scholarship Program: Sofia Derosby and Alan Crawford III. Each student has been awarded $2,500 for their college tuition this fall, recognizing their outstanding academic achievements, community involvement, and exemplary essays.

Sofia Derosby, a graduate of Messalonskee High School, will attend the University of Maine to pursue a degree in music education. Alan Crawford III, a Forest Hills Consolidated School graduate, will study computer technology, at Central Maine Community College. Both students impressed the scholarship committee with their academic excellence and strong recommendations.

Alan Crawford

Ryan Poulin, CEO of New Dimensions, expressed his pride in this year’s winners, stating, “We are excited to support these talented students as they take the next step in their educational journeys. Both Sofia and Alan demonstrate the qualities we admire: dedication, hard work, and a passion for learning. We look forward to seeing their continued success.”

For more information on New Dimensions FCU’s scholarship program, please visit https://www.newdimensionsfcu.com/resources/youth-scholarships/ or contact the Marketing Department at marketing@newdimensionsfcu.com.

More Americans now enrolled in Auto-IRA Programs

More than one million private sector workers nationwide have enrolled in state retirement savings programs, a major milestone in the effort to address the nation’s retirement savings challenges. These options allow employees whose workplaces do not offer retirement plans to automatically contribute a portion of their paycheck to a retirement savings account.

In Maine, the Maine Retirement Investment Trust (MERIT) has enabled thousands of workers to save for their future.

“These options work because they make saving easy,” said Noël Bonam, AARP Maine State Director. “MERIT has empowered more than 13,000 workers to start building their retirement security — many for the very first time. We’re proud Maine is leading the way.”

Auto-IRA and other state-facilitated retirement options now operate in 20 states, with additional states at various stages of implementation. These programs are free to employers and designed to be easy for businesses and workers alike.

“These programs show that when saving for retirement is easy and automatic, people do it,” said Nancy LeaMond, AARP Executive Vice President and Chief Advocacy & Engagement Officer. “Thanks to state action, over a million Americans who were previously unable to save for retirement through their job are now doing that, though too many hardworking people are still left behind. Now state leaders and Congress must work to ensure every American worker has access to a retirement savings option at work where they can easily save for their future.”

According to AARP research, nearly half of American workers in the private sector ─ 56 million people ─ still lack access to a retirement plan through their employer. Small businesses are especially likely to not have an employer-based retirement option in place. Auto-IRA programs can help close this retirement savings gap; they don’t charge fees to employers and are designed to be simple for both employers and employees to use.

AARP has been a leading advocate for these options, working at both the state and federal levels to expand access to retirement savings. AARP has endorsed proposed federal legislation, including the bipartisan Retirement Savings for Americans Act and the Automatic IRA Act, both of which would help improve retirement security for American workers.

AARP Maine advocacy led to the establishment of MERIT in 2021. Legislators in Maine are currently considering legislation (LD 355, An Act to Advance the Maine Retirement Savings Program) that would further expand and strengthen the program in order to ensure that even more Mainers have easy access to a retirement savings plan for years to come.

For more on AARP’s advocacy on retirement security and broader efforts to strengthen financial security, view AARP’s Financial Security Fact Sheet.

The history and the fate of the building at 363 Route 3

363 Route 3. (The Town Line file photo by Roland D. Hallee)

by Mary Grow

Chapter One: the Building’s Story

Historical information on the wooden building at 363 Route 3, in China, comes from a combination of town records, provided by China Town Manager Rebecca Hapgood and Codes Enforcement Officer Nicholas French, and local people’s memories.

These sources say that Richard and Rita Hussey had the building constructed in 1990, on the lot they bought in August 1989. Over the years, it went through physical changes and changes of use, as businesses came and went.

A tax record says it started as a one-story building with a basement and an unfinished attic. The second floor got finished, and once served as an apartment. Sometimes the building had a deck, sometimes a drive-up window.

Its first tenant was a Cannon Towel outlet. Beale’s Video rented it, either before or after it was home to Thomas Holyoke’s Top Ten Donuts and More, in 2003.

Around 2004 and/or 2005, Colleen Smith’s South China Coffee Shop was the tenant. In 2007, a second-floor apartment was added above the driving school then using the main floor.

In 2011, Norman Elvin, an Augusta businessman doing business as G & E Realty, bought the building. He converted it to a restaurant with take-out that he named Norm’s Chicken and Seafood, opened in 2012.

In September 2016, G & E Realty gave the building to Grace Academy, a non-profit organization founded by Michelle Bourque in 2009, as a home for her private school, Grace Academy. She and staff taught there until the school closed in June 2022.

On June 2, 2021, by a deed signed by Grace Academy’s vice-president, Lisa Durant, the non-profit sold the property to Joseph Bourque, Michelle Bourque’s husband, to repay loans he had made to Grace Academy.

On Aug. 22, 2024, Bourque sold to Calito Development Group, of Torrington, Connecticut. Calito, represented by Skowhegan engineer, Steven Govoni, applied to the China Planning board for a permit to build a single-story, 9,100-square-foot steel building on the lot, a project that would require removing or demolishing the existing building.

Planning board members reviewed the application according to China’s ordinance standards, found that all requirements were met and approved the permit at their Jan. 4, 2025, meeting.

Govoni did not name the store that would inhabit the new building. On-line records about Calito Development Group link it to Dollar General stores. The company got approval for a “generalized retail store”, in Fairfield, in December 2024, according to a Morning Sentinel article.

Codes officer French pointed out that the China Planning Board’s decision-making on Calito’s application included a public hearing that was publicized four times, instead of the usual two. It was first announced for Dec. 10, 2024, and after that meeting was canceled due to a snowstorm, twice more for the Jan. 4, 2025, meeting. No one commented on the application.

As usual, the board chairman announced a 30-day appeal period after the decision. No appeal was filed.

In April 2025, Calito had the Grace Academy building demolished.

Hapgood and French said they tried, without success, to find a new home for the building, limiting their search to lots not too far away due to moving costs.

Chapter Two: Norman Elvin’s story

Norman Elvin, founder and president of G & E Roofing, in Augusta, bought the building at 363 Route 3 in 2011.

He had taken a break from roofing (his sister ran the business, he said, and he kept in close touch) to run the China Dine-ah on Lakeview Drive, in China. This business was a sit-down restaurant; and, Elvin said, he also wanted to try a partly take-out model.

Why a restaurant at all? Because, he said, he’d read that new restaurants have the highest failure rate of any type of business. He thought a main reason was that restaurants are started by chefs, who may lack business experience and access to capital; a restaurant started by a businessman should succeed.

The new venture he named Norm’s Seafood and Chicken. He put in many hours there, while still running the China Dine-ah.

Elvin enjoyed the work; he appreciated his staff and made new friends among the customers. But after more than two years, he realized enough was enough: “I didn’t have any nights, weekends or holidays.”

He transferred ownership of the China Dine-ah in the spring of 2014, and was ready to get out of the restaurant business completely.

Elvin and Michelle Bourque, a South China resident who founded Grace Academy, a private Christian school, in 2009, had known each other casually for years. Bourque was looking for a permanent home for Grace Academy, and she and Elvin began talking about her acquiring his building.

Elvin liked the idea, and, more important to him, he thought his deceased parents, Leslie and Betty Elvin, would have liked it, too.

Leslie Elvin was a mailman, with an RFD route that started early in the morning, six days a week, and brought him home to watch his children’s after-school sports. Betty Elvin, her son says, was a stay-at-home mom.

The household didn’t have much money, but Elvin remembers “tons of love and a really good work ethic.” They modeled generosity; Leslie Elvin volunteered at what was then the Augusta Mental Health Institute, walking with patients, and both assisted at the Augusta food bank.

And they modeled hard work. Elvin remembers his father, every fall, using his two weeks’ vacation from the post office to pick apples in a Monmouth orchard to earn the extra money for the property taxes.

Young Norman delivered newspapers, shoveled snow and mowed lawns.

His parents “taught me to work, love and share,” he summarized. He has done those things, earning a reputation as a philanthropist.

So he donated his building to the non-profit organization named Grace Academy as a home for the school of the same name. His parents’ names were on the school’s sign.

For the first couple years, Elvin said, he was among the school’s financial supporters. Even then, he wondered how profitable it was or would be.

Fast forward to April 2025, when Elvin learned the property had been sold and the building was being demolished.

Elvin was distressed, hurt and increasingly angry, to the point where he was losing sleep. Other community members were also upset, and perplexed; he tried to correct some of the misinformation on social media.

He explained three reasons for his initial reaction.

Had he known years ago that Grace Academy was going to have to close, he could and would have stepped in with more support, before the financial situation became unmanageable.

He considered the loss of the school and the building a disservice to “the future children that would have benefited from that building,” and to the community as a whole.

He believed the Bourques should have seen to it that once debts were paid, money from the sale came back to him, so he could invest in a new project to honor Leslie and Betty Elvin.

During April and into May, Elvin and the Bourques continued to talk at intervals. By early May, Elvin was more resigned. He recognized that the Bourques, too, were hurting, and said he felt more confident that any remaining money would be put to a good use.

Chapter Three: Michelle Bourque’s story

Michelle Bourque has always been pro-education. She has fond memories of some of her teachers; has a teaching certificate and a degree in school counseling; and has been and currently is a public-school teacher.

She married into a home-schooling family, she said, and home-schooled her own four children. In 2009, her older son, Matt, was in seventh grade when he said to her one day, “I’m lonely.”

Bourque has always been a problem-solver, too. She remembers in fifth grade organizing school events to benefit a teacher who had cancer.

Realizing that many home-schooled children miss the company of their peers, she took on the problem. She had a start: in 2008, the Palermo library hosted meetings of home-schooling families, and the families stayed in touch.

In the summer of 2009, Bourque created a non-profit organization named Grace Academy and assembled a board of directors, home-schooling parents, to create a cooperative home-schoolers’ program.

Crown Regional Christian School was then closing. This private school had been operating in what South China residents still call the old Farrington’s building, southeast of the four corners in South China Village. Palermo resident Dennis Keller owned the building.

Keller accepted Bourque’s request to move her school into the building – and, she said, he warned her “education is a money pit.” The Grace Academy “cottage school” hosted six families, with about two dozen children, four days a week. The fifth day, they welcomed another half-dozen families, with about the same number of children, who did not want all-week classes together.

Bourque was chairman of the Grace Academy board, executive director and fifth-and sixth-grade teacher. Her long-time friend Lisa Durant was board vice-president, academic director and third- and fourth-grade teacher.

Keller sold the building after two years, displacing the school. Grace Academy began moving from one space to another, usually in area churches and libraries. Sometimes the space was free, sometimes there was a fee; sometimes the deal included the Bourques doing the cleaning.

By 2014, the group had 26 families and more than 100 students, meeting in the Church of the Nazarene, on Route 3.

Then came the opportunity to move to Elvin’s building. Bourque led directors and volunteers in converting the building from restaurant to schoolhouse, bringing in desks and chairs, creating classroom space and providing an organized, 6,000-volume library and other resources for home-schoolers.

Grace Academy operated through Covid. In 2020, the board tried to expand by adding a pre-school, hoping to gain enough younger students paying market rate to help with finances. Lack of personnel doomed the experiment.

The “cottage school” was earning too little from “very low” tuition, donations and other sources to begin to cover expenses, which included building improvements, like adding basement and second-floor heat pumps to supplement the ground-floor one; building and grounds maintenance; teaching supplies, like books, paper and chalk, and services, like photocopying; food; and other essentials.

“Instead of being led by our vision, we were being led by bills,” Bourque said.

She personally did all she could, from organizing and teaching to cleaning, maintenance and repairs and grounds work. She sometimes stayed overnight on a snowy winter night to shovel the deck in the morning.

By early 2022, the building belonged to Joseph Bourque, and the Grace Academy directors were discussing closing the school. They did – and accepted a new mission.

In her June 18, 2022, final message, Bourque wrote, “THANK YOU to everyone who supported Grace Academy over the years in one way or another. We did a lot of good and are so grateful to have served our community in this way.”

Bourque sought other tenants for the building, unsuccessfully. When her husband got an unexpected letter from a realty company offering to buy the property, they felt they had no choice but to sell.

Like town officials Hapgood and French, Bourque tried and failed to find a new location for the building, asking other organizations and offering to cover moving costs.

Like Elvin, Bourque is sorry that the building in which she invested nine years of her life is gone. She felt “sick to my stomach” when she heard.

“It was a dream that I worked very, very hard for,” she said.

As of early May, Bourque expects to continue talking with Elvin. “Norm and I are at a good place now,” she said, but “we’re not done yet.”

Chapter Four: Grace Academy’s new mission

Since 2012, the Grace Academy board of directors has been supporting a new initiative for the non-profit organization called Sweet Dreams Bags. Michelle Bourque introduced it, inspired by two national programs.

The 1987 McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance act is a federal law that authorizes federal assistance for homeless children and youth.

The Pajama Program is a national non-profit, with at least one chapter in each state, that “promotes equitable access to healthy sleep so all children can thrive.” It trains “sleep educators” who work with parents in shelters to explain the value of a nighttime routine, a child’s need for sleep and appropriate conditions (silence, darkness).

Grace Academy’s Sweet Dreams Bag is a gift to a homeless child: a sturdy bag with a name tag for the child’s name, containing a pair of pajamas, an age-appropriate book, a security blanket and a “huggable” stuffed animal, and sometimes other useful items, like a hygiene pack.

The purpose is to help children in the unfamiliar environment of a homeless shelter get the good night’s sleep needed for physical and emotional well-being.

In 2012, as Bourque realized that Grace Academy’s school was floundering financially, she talked again with her Palermo friend, Dennis Keller. He encouraged her not to abandon the non-profit, and to go ahead with her Sweet Dreams Bags.

Recently, Bourque described the program to Rachel Kilbride and the Sew for a Cause group Kilbride organized years ago at St. Bridget Center, in North Vassalboro. By the time she was ready to leave, she said, the group had one bag ready; they’ve been supporters ever since.

Sweet Dreams Bags was based in the former Grace Academy school building. Now that the building is gone, Bourque has rented storage space.

She and the rest of the board hope to expand the program to other children facing adversity – those staying at a cancer center, or facing nights in a hospital, for example.

Sweet Dreams Bags, the Pajama Program and the McKinney-Vento Act all have websites for those seeking more information.