By Paul Mills
Every year thousands of Maine children and adults endure nighttime fires in their homes or apartments. Nearly 100 percent of them live to tell about it.
Not so before 1982. For just thirty years ago at this time in the spring of 1981, a spunky Portland State Representative originally from Aroostook County named Edie Beaulieu waged a hard fought crusade to win approval of the smoke detector law. For Beaulieu, it was her third attempt in three terms to pass a law that mandated smoke detectors in apartments and new homes. The law, one we now take for granted, was not an easy sell. But Beaulieu persisted against powerful forces among landlord and libertarian interests. Through her persistence the bill finally became law.
Beaulieu, also the first female House Chair of the Labor Committee, left the legislature after her fifth term just five years later. Curious as to how she had fared in the years since her departure, this columnist caught up with the now 74-year old Beaulieu just a few days ago at her present home in South Portland.
Even the flight of a quarter century since leaving office has not dimmed the charm and charisma that once made her one of Portland’s most visible public figures. Nor has several heart surgeries and a bout with cancer blunted either her opinions or her conversational stamina. For nearly two hours she spoke energetically about a wide range of public and personal subjects.
Beaulieu recalled for this columnist how one of her earliest instances of citizen activism came in response to a proposed elimination of crossing guards in the Portland school system in the early 1970’s. Her concern provoked this mother of four to lead opposition to the proposal.
“How much is a child’s life worth?” she asked. As part of the nighttime janitorial staff at a local daily newspaper, Beaulieu had been around media types and was not in any event intimidated by them or other authority figures. Thus, as she recalled last week for this columnist, “I was the first woman ever on Channel 13 to say ‘call ’em all up and give ’em hell!’ ”
The outcome: crossing guards were retained. Children’s lives were saved.
Beaulieu’s vigorous and successful advocacy of causes in which she believed would become a trademark of her career.
About the same time as her bid to save the school crossing guards, Beaulieu became a spokesperson for the school system’s safety committee in prevailing upon the city council to give higher priority to clearing the ice and snow from school yards. At the time, plowing out parks and cemeteries seemed to get done earlier in the day than snow removal at schools.
Beaulieu’s first elective office eventually followed. It was a term on the Portland School Committee. This came in a city wide election she won in order to help further her concerns about the system. As longtime Channel 13 political reporter Bill Johnson told this columnist last week, Beaulieu “did not seek public office for self aggrandizement but out of a desire to do something she thought would help people.”
A leading accomplishment in this era was allying herself with others in advancing the cause of vocational education, including development of the city’s newly built regional vocational center on Allen Avenue. For this, she was the only woman on the school’s building committee.
Part of her drive to improve city schools stemmed not only from her interest as a parent but also from her personal background. She was born Edith Saucier and reared in a French speaking household in Northern Maine. Through the sixth grade her own education had been confined to a one room school house in the Aroostook County village of Plaisted. Her consciousness about access to public education had thus been aroused by the mile and a half trek through the most turbulent weather in Maine she and her brothers had to walk to school each day.
The desire on her mother’s part to be closer to a deaf younger brother who had been sent to the Baxter School in Falmouth led to the family’s move to Portland. This was in time for Beaulieu to start Cathedral High, one of the city’s Catholic female secondary schools, from which she graduated in the mid-l950’s. She took a classical or college bound course but missed out on her aim to become a nurse because of a lack of interest in math.
Marriage to an air force medic who later went to work as a driver for Deering Ice Cream, Edgar Beaulieu, followed instead. The couple, who remained married until Edgar’s death from cancer in 2009, had four children in the space of five years. Not long after the youngest had learned to walk, Beaulieu was on her way from the family’s Munjoy Hill apartment to a job cleaning offices at the Press Herald and at the same time was off to the battlefields of public service.
Winning election to the school board in a city dominated by Brahmins of the Yankee, Irish and Jewish communities was no shoo-in for this take-on-the-establishment Franco American. But on her second try, in 1974, Beaulieu prevailed.
As her three year term on the committee neared completion Beaulieu sought and won a seat in the Maine legislature. There, she would follow her own Portland footsteps by both challenging and at the same time becoming a key player in the state’s power structure.
How the cleaning ‘lady’ from Munjoy Hill would leave a big imprint on many pages of Maine law over the ensuing decade is a subject for a future column. Stay tuned.
Paul H. Mills is a Farmington attorney well known for his analyses and historical understanding of Maine’s political scene.
I’m sorry but smoke detectors, like seat belts, are just common sense. When we have to legislate common sense, we’ve already lost.
Seat belt’s yes, for if you do not buckle then your the only one who pays the ultimate price, smoke detectors are a different breed, for if you lack the common sense and I go to your home to visit or stay the night and there is a fire well then I’m paying the price for your lack of common sense, see what I’m getting at?
Will:
If you lived in a large apartment building would you rather rely on a requirement of smoke detectors or the common sense of your neighbors or landlord to install their own. The benefit of modest safety legislation here is intended to make up for the large cost of this possible lack of common sense.
Fred:
If you don’t buckle up, you may pay the ultimate price all by yourself, but those left in your wake of wreckage and destruction get to pay the non-ultimate price in the form of medical bills and ever higher insurance rates, medical and property.
How do you buckle up on a motorcycle?
Working in the State House during the time Edie was there I always felt energized by her presence. She had energy to share and her opinions were free for the asking yet; when it came time to listen she did that too. I was in the unique position of “a fly on the wall”, in a place where many people spoke plainly and the respect engendered by this woman and her work was tremendous among legislators. Glad to know she’s still hail and hardy; special thanks for writing this profile to Mr. Mills; special thanks to The Daily Bulldog for publishing it.