My dad told me in high school that he didn’t care what I did for the rest of my life, I could pick apples if that’s what I wanted to do, just as long as I could support myself and my family. He wasn’t crazy about me going to college, and he surprised me one day during my college years when he asked me if I had ever thought about going into politics. He had never before suggested a career to me. I was on my way out the door so I didn’t then and never did ask him why, what made him ask me that.
But it stuck with me.
Perhaps his question came from my having been active in high school. Though I never pursued or ran for any office or position, my senior year I was president of the student council, president of my class, president of the National Honor Society, president of the Key Club, captain of the football team, and artist of the year.
The eighth of nine children, the seventh of eight boys, I was born and raised in Barnesville, Ohio, population 4500, on the western edge of Appalachia. My father worked for 32 years as a central office repairman for Ohio Bell. My mother was a quintessential homemaker, known by many and loved by all. My family taught me how to be frugal, practical, and welcoming.
In 1974, after my junior year in high school, I made my first trip to Maine, hitchhiking to Limestone to visit my brother, a serviceman at Loring Air Force Base. I knew I wanted to come back.
Eight years later I did return to Maine to visit Kelly Cunnane in South Portland, Maine. We had met in Kenya, East Africa as Peace Corps volunteers while working as teachers of English and science. We would marry a few years later while I was a medical student at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. After medical school graduation we moved to Greene, Maine where we bought and renovated a 200-year old house while I worked as a resident doctor at Central Maine Medical Center Family Medicine Residency in Lewiston for three years.
Because I was a National Health Service Corps scholar during medical school, after residency I served my 3-year payback commitment in the Indian Health Service in Metlakatla, Alaska, on the Annette Island Reserve, home of the Tsimpsian people. For the majority of my stay, I was the only physician on the island of 1500 persons.
We then returned to Maine with our pair of daughters and sons and built our home in Beals while I worked as an emergency room doctor in Blue Hill, Ellsworth, and Machias for a few years before returning to family medicine. Over my 38-year medical career, I worked in eight Maine communities, several states, and three countries. I retired from the medical system in 2021 though I continue to maintain a limited private practice in Beals.
Three of our four children have settled within 45 minutes of Beals, and are building their lives downeast, happy to be here. Their parents are happy as well.
Original source can be found here.
