Adversity and its close cousin, calamity, are a part of life. I am mindful to avoid them when backpacking, or paddling a canoe, or heading into the high peaks on crampons in winter. More commonly, each day, wherever I am, driving around, felling trees for firewood, tending to our bees, moving heavy rock to build an outdoor fire ring, painting off a ladder, or whatever else I may be doing, I think of the safe way to proceed.
But adversity – or calamity – do come knocking. In April 1987, what geology experts termed quite possibly the “500 year flood” raised the Sandy, Carrabassett, Webb, and Androscoggin Rivers, and hundreds of tributary streams, to levels never seen before. The raging waters cut off sections of county towns, flipped the Fairbanks Bridge, which had stood for 50 years, upside down, and isolated the town of Strong where every single road into (and out off) town, was destroyed in some fashion. In 1998 the ice storm arrived, with the startling and eerie sound of ice-laden tree branches, and even entire trees, cracking throughout the day and all night long, severing power lines, smashing roofs, blocking roads. In 2011 Hurricane Irene swept away bridge after bridge in northern Franklin County, turning back roads into stream channels.
In 2013 there came calamity of a different sort, when a string of runaway railroad tank cars leapt the tracks in Farmington’s sister community of Lac Megantic, Quebec, claiming 49 lives. In 2019 we of Franklin County experienced the horror of the gas explosion at LEAP headquarters, which took the life of Captain Michael Bell of the Farmington Fire Department, inflicted grievous injury to Larry Lord, LEAP employee who cleared the building of occupants moments before the explosion, and five other brave fire fighters. The explosion destroyed homes in in the nearby neighborhood, leaving residents homeless.
There have been sad and shocking events of a different nature, but surely calamitous. On one summer evening, while a local African-American family was outside their home, from one vehicle passing by came the shout of a racial epithet. On another occasion, during the Jewish holidays of Chanukkah, someone threw a rock through the window of the home of a Jewish family in Farmington, where a menorah was on display.
We can add to these most difficult of times, the many occasions when a family is burned out; a child, or adult is diagnosed with cancer or other life-threatening condition, and requires specialized care at, say, a hospital in Boston, or beyond; a firearms accident; a horrific traffic accident. Adversity, indeed.
Then, what happens? As for the flood and the ice storm and the hurricane winds and high waters, to the scene hurry our fire fighters, our Emergency Medical Technicians, our County Sheriff officers and town police, and state police, and game wardens. Our Emergency Management personnel open shelters. Dozens – better, hundreds – of local citizens step up, and show up.
“How can I help?” is the common question. People donate clothing, make food for others, start fund-raising campaigns, open their homes to people without power, drive people where they need to go. In the case of the racial epithets, people went to the family to affirm their support, and assure them that they are welcome and embraced. For the menorah incident, here too, people affirmed their welcome and support, sent cards and flowers, and the choir of a local church went to the home to sing songs of hope and fellowship. Some people made menorah symbols and attached them to their vehicles and to the doors of their homes as an expression of their loving concern.
As for the Lac Megantic fires, as soon as the word reached Franklin County, many a local Fire Department mustered and sped their way through the night, where Canadian border officials waved them straight through. Altogether 30 firefighters, every one of them a volunteer, from the Fire Departments of Chesterville, Farmington, New Sharon, Phillips, Rangeley, and Strong, answered the call. Language barrier, even differences in fire hose diameters, did not phase the fire fighters of Franklin County. In those hours they knew simply that their neighbors to the north needed help, and they were on their way. In the days that followed Franklin County conducted a major fund-raising to help our northern neighbors. Lac Megantic Mayor, Claudette Roy-Laroche, and City Engineer Conrad LeBrun, came to Farmington in person to thank us.
In response to the LEAP explosion, local people – joined by people from across the country, and even elsewhere in the world – donated funds for all those affected, sent food and thank you cards to the fire station, and helped displaced residents move to new living quarters. As is now well known, fire departments from across Maine took turns staffing our Fire Department for weeks following the explosion, in one of the most gracious expressions of support I have ever witnessed, anywhere.
What runs true in these extraordinarily difficult times, moments and hours of great suffering, is the spirit of neighborliness among the people of Franklin County, the commitment to reach out, to offer help, unselfishly thinking of the needs of others. We do not need to know personally those affected by flood or fire, ice or illness or epithet. We act as neighbors, as people of the same community – or in some cases, we regard people as of our community even if that is not precisely the case. I think of Kevin Zebrowksi, a UMF student from New Jersey, who became lost on a winter night in 1998. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of local people joined in searches, made posters, and provided food and support to his parents who relocated to Farmington during the months of that search. Too, I think of the travelers trapped in Farmington motels during the flood of 1987. They, too, became recipients of food and offers of logistical help from Franklin County people.
Neighborliness. It is our way of responding to adversity and calamity, thinking and acting to care for others, help others, unselfishly. It is what has seen us through extraordinarily difficult times. In my 40 years of living in Franklin County, I regard neighborliness as a quality defines us – this is who we are.
Now, in these times, there is adversity and calamity aplenty from the pandemic. Our Fire Fighters and Law Enforcement and Emergency Medical Technicians – and our nurses and physicians, and our teachers, and indeed everyone who serves the public, place themselves at risk every day, in their commitment to serve others. The very nature of a pandemic is that it is so elusive – not a flood over which a fire department may send a boat to rescue a resident isolated by the rising river; or a fire upon which one may pour water or foam. We can’t see it. It is not something tangible.
So it is that there is the risk, the very real danger, that we, as might people anywhere and everywhere in the world, mistakenly see other people as the adversary – when it is the virus that is the adversary, not one another. How might we bring that spirit of neighborliness to bear, here and now? How might we think in terms of how to protect our emergency personnel – and their families, and all with whom they come in contact. How might we think of protecting our children – by which I mean the children throughout our community, all the children, when transmission of the virus can occur through any encounter between any two people, anywhere? How might we protect our parents, our grandparents, or anyone of frail health, not only in our own families, but in all families?
We have a set of tools to do that: effective vaccines; masking, distancing, thorough hand-washing, among them. May we think of others, particularly the most exposed and the most vulnerable among us. In all things may we be gracious and kind to one another, for, again, the adversary is the virus, and not one another. As we make our way through this difficult time, may we draw deeply upon our well-established tradition of neighborliness.
When we do so, when we act in a neighborly way, we are at our best.
Doug Dunlap
Farmington
Doug writes the Daily Bulldog column Foot and Paddle and is a Registered Maine Guide. He volunteers in many capacities in Franklin County, and lives with his family in Farmington.
