USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 57
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There are in every one of the older churches in the town, as in all the older denominations in the nation, those members who are orthodox, and members, friends, and occasional worshippers who are more liberal in their religious beliefs and behavior patterns. Herein are buried the seeds of latent controversy. Such a condition, however, should never be construed by the Church as a challenge to combat within itself. What is needed is rather a breadth of view, a Christian tolerance, and that deep and abiding good will which readily unifies differences in order to serve better the larger aims of righteousness. T. S. Eliot has judged this cleavage pertinently and wisely in pointing out that "the Faith can, and must find room for many degrees of intellectual, imaginative and emotional recep- tivity to the same doctrines."13
In such an outlook there could be for the Church light, vigor, and life and within such a gentle tolerance the spiritually lethargic, the exponents of an ethical practice, the Deists, and conceivably even the agnostics might find an area for making the good life more attractive to themselves and for building out of the Church a power leading to a richer and more spiritual community experi- ence. But such a vision calls for high leadership - men in our com- munity pulpits possessed of the education, the wisdom, the per- sonal magnetism, and the persuasive power to save the Church from its own blindness, and to make it again a center of local life radiating spiritual power and hope.
V
There is no task more difficult than to evaluate the culture of a community; for either local or personal culture is a most
13T. S. Eliot, Notes Towards a Definition of Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co .. 1949), p. 27.
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complex, subtle and elusive essence, so much so that man can merely talk and write about it and around it, but none has ever penetrated to its core. As in poetry it is an essence which can be felt but never entirely defined. Hence only this or that can be said of it. Contrary to general opinion, personal culture is in no sense snobbishness, for it is possessed by a whole society, and like the Christian faith is free to anyone who appropriates and indi- vidualizes it. Those, however, who do appropriate it become essen- tially different, and by reason of this fact become a class, which gives ground to the general feeling that culture means snob- bishness.
At the national level culture is closely synonymous with civilization; at the local level it consists of a sub-layer of national traits plus certain quaint overtones which give it its peculiar local savor. In the past, in areas where population was spread thin and much of life was lived in semi-isolation, human beings tended to develop personalities with flavor and crust. That, too, is passing. In the last half century our local culture has lost much of the uniqueness, the color, and the raciness which once gave to our life an original and eccentric charm. With the automobile, the hard surface roads, the comics, and the radios, a great levelling process has been going on. We have become more and more like Americans everywhere else. Over myriad lines of contact the national culture has moved in, displacing and obliterating much of that which was unique, flavorful, and attractive in our local life. The rural seers, soothsayers, statesmen, weather prophets, oracles, and philosophers are gone. With their disappearance the unique- ness which they imparted to our local culture has become a tradi- tion of the town that used to be, leaving our peculiar cultural essence preserved only in the poetic works and sketches of writers such as Robert Coffin and John Gould.
The fountainhead of any cultured society is the individual. The character of his creative contribution and its diffusion through the common life forms the basis of group culture. Hence the cul- tural level in any community is a measure of the impact of its more gifted individuals on its mass. This is not an aristocratic concept but a verifiably historical fact. In this personal sense we shall define individual culture as the integration within the human spirit of its knowledge and experience into an artistic oneness. The significant thing is probably not the amount of knowledge and experience which an individual may possess, but rather the degree to which he is able to integrate them within himself into an harmo- nious unit. Hence it follows that personal culture is not exclu- sively a matter of education. The farmer or the artisan possessed of a sense of aesthetic form, natural or acquired, has the main inte- grating factor in the assimilation of his knowledge or experience.
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He is cultured - perhaps not as profoundly as the scholar, but just as pleasantly and agreeably, so, even more, naïvely and pic- turesquely so.
It cannot be gainsaid that there are marked lacks in our midst of those influences which make for a heightened awareness of the values of which a full and rounded personal experience must con- sist. There is, for example, little aesthetic education in our schools: no training in the arts or art appreciation; musical education at the high school level only, and here in a very limited degree; the arts of the stage are little cultivated, and literature as studied and understood falls far short of its possibilities as a cultivating agent. What is true in the schools has a close parallel in the town. Here there is little musical life and little community development of this great art; among adults small interest in an expanding intel- lectual experience either through adult study or purposeful read- ing; little dignity or beauty in our worship and too little of the cultivation of grace and charm in our social life.
As a community we give little heed to our common natural legacy, to the care, increase, or preservation of the trees along our streets and highways which are the glory of so many New Eng- land towns; we do not hesitate to gash into lovely hillsides for gravel or to leave our unsightly debris behind us once Nature has been scarred to serve commercial ends. It is also true that as a town we are not disposed to mark appropriately our historical sites, to preserve quaint and lovely landmarks, to eradicate ugliness or to create beauty, even though we clearly recognize the mere eco- nomic advantage of so doing as we have seen clearly exemplified in some of our neighboring towns.
On the other hand, there are counter-trends which betoken a deeper and richer appreciation of the value of the beautiful in our common life. A comparison with the town of a half century ago reveals a vast improvement in the care of property. The houses in all sections are painted, yards are clean, and lawns are closely mown, with flowers and shrubs in appropriate places. In the interior of homes there has also been a marked change, and today many of them, instead of presenting the garish clashings of color and design of an older period, offer the more completely balanced harmonies of pleasing aesthetic effect. These are unques- tionable gains. Accruing over a number of decades they represent a sharpened aesthetic perception and appreciation which point to a more advanced cultural experience.
These gains suggest that we give further consideration to the sources in our community life which are furnishing the stand- ards, the norms, the insights, and the heightened appreciations which are ever awakening within us a growing recepitivity to the beautiful, and leading to rich integrations of it in our experience.
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First and least important, perhaps, is the influence of what might somewhat ironically be called our intellectual class - the seventy- odd men and women in the town who hold college degrees. While many of these live exclusively to and for themselves in their sun- set years, yet there are exceptions who have given to the commu- nity stimulus and guidance in dramatic art, increased purposeful- ness and power in its educational program, technical expertness in phases of its economic life, leadership in adult education, and constructive effort and guidance in strengthening agencies making for a richer common life, and have also brought an added refine- ment to our social leisure.
Lest the latter seem a snobbish concept, it should be recalled as pointed out by T. S. Eliot, that "the emergence of more highly cultivated groups does not leave the rest of a society unaffected, for it is itself a part of a process in which the whole society changes." George Santayana further clarifies this process by stress- ing the historical fact that "culture has hitherto consisted in the diffusion and dilution of habits arising in privileged centers," or, we might add, in privileged groups.
A more vigorous culturizing influence is that of the local library, recently built up and supported at a level comparable to that in neighboring towns. The moral, intellectual, and aesthetic power of books and reading simply cannot be overestimated. In themselves they constitute potent forces of both good and evil, of growth and decadence. At their worst their influence is not one of unmitigated evil, for along with their sins there is always the beauty of language, the grace and charm of good manners, and many of the finer and nobler dignities inherent in human life. At their best they represent the strongest intellectual and cul- turizing force in man's experience. Herein there is growth in the beauty and mastery of language, an experiencing vicariously of that which is most noble and heroic in human life, a plumbing to the very outer periphery of man's knowledge, a penetration to those areas where man's poetic insights and intuitions have reached beyond his knowledge and where goodness, truth, and beauty fuse into the loveliest realizations and perceptions of human imagi- native powers. Those who read discriminatingly and purposefully cannot escape the higher human destiny of becoming educated men and women. As André Maurois has pointed out, "most of the greatness in man comes from the imitation of great lives."
There are in the town about four hundred occasional and regular patrons of the library, a figure representing a very definite increase of the town's reading public, and while the reading done is by no means of the most rewarding character, nevertheless, it represents a most potent asset of community development in the higher areas of the intellectual, the moral, and the aesthetic. It may
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be likened to the little leaven which a good woman placed in four measures of meal and left there until the whole was leavened.
Another strong cultural influence in the town is the Waldo Theater, one of the fine small amusement centers in New England. Its effect on local good taste, while unmeasurably mixed, is, none the less, both deep and constant. Here the individual is lifted vividly out of his own humdrum routine and projected pano- ramically into a world, which, while beyond the range of his con- tact and observation, is, nevertheless, a portion of the great life scene. Conceded that the "movies" are ofttimes drab, muddy, cheap, and overdrawn, nevertheless, there is to be found in them the varied experience of every area of man's life - rich and har- monious interiors of fine homes, palaces, public and state dining and reception rooms, lovely designs in furniture and dress, grace and courtliness of manners, pictures of gorgeous color harmonies, vistas of nature's majesty and loveliness, historical scenes from the past and the great events of the present, and in the best of the screen dramas, man, struggling in the entanglements of his destiny and giving expression to his joy, his sufferings, his bewilderment, and his pain.
In short, here are to be found all the arts focusing their rich harmonies as background and part of great, human experi- ences. Even the most limited among us cannot sit in silent wit- ness of such scenes without unconsciously undergoing slow and subtle transformation of their feeling for the tragic and the beau- tiful, and without emerging with a more acute appreciation of the higher human values. Happily we do grow, develop, and change with no realization of the source or potency of the forces constantly working on us and within us. It is only needful that they be good.
There is in all men to some degree, greater or less, a love and appreciation of the values of beauty. They are not born with it, though they may be born with a disposition thereto. It is borne in on them from infancy from one source, the world of Nature; for here is beauty in ever changing variety, grand and unparalleled - the great panorama of the heavens with the sharp, metallic glitter of the stars on a winter night; the march of the constellations; clouds, hazy and fierce; the fast shifting glories of sunsets; the ominous onrushing of the summer storms; the endless variety of the seasons as the earth turns; the lovely colorations on hill and mountains under ever varying intensities of light; the crystal pal- aces and spires of the evergreens under the weight of winter snow, and the cold diamond glitter of a world encased in ice - no heart is impervious to such beauty and therein is laid the groundwork of an universal aesthetic experience. The degree to which it is nourished and fostered by the other human agencies, the extent to
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which man transmutes it into the environment of home and town, into his personality and into his attitudes and modes of feeling, is one of the central values of human society, an experience which lends to individual and collective life its final significance.
With this essay the history of a centuries-old Maine town comes to its close. The writing of its final chapter has been both a pleasurable and a painful task - pleasurable, because the prob- lems of social analysis are always challenging and intriguing ones; painful, because when the life of the present-day town is weighed in the balance of critical judgment it has, in some significant re- spects, been found wanting. The reader in charity should remem- ber that charity is not a virtue of the historian, and that his evalua- tions of the human scene and state are made without respect for desire or sentiment. Furthermore, lest he should regard this chapter as superfluous, he should realize that states of being, states of feel- ing, and states of mind are in themselves as much a part of human history as when they are objectified in events and facts.
I am concluding this long task with the same conviction as at the beginning, that Waldoboro has the most unique and inter- esting history of any town in Maine. It came into being as a small feudal state immunized against alien influences by its well-nigh complete isolation in a wilderness accessible to the world only by water - a feudal community with a culture entirely continental European in character, reaching back in its essence to the very beginnings of medievalism. Truly it may be said that this little town's mother was Feudalism, its father the Protestant Reforma- tion; in childhood it both clashed and played with the nonconform- ist breed of old England; in youth it became an apostate, renounc- ing the cultural creed of its forebears and accepting that of its early Puritan playmate; in its young manhood it retained only the in- visible heritage of its Germanic ancestry - the mysticism, the sentimentalism, the poetic dreaminess, and the folklore; in its ex- ternals it had become English.
In its present it is decidedly of the hybrid strain of our com- mon American culture. Of its future - who can say? But here, too, we may have our beliefs and convictions. Mine are that here in this western world the long period of our urbanized culture has passed its peak, and that today the human tide is moving toward the more rational and satisfying modes of life and work in the smaller country communities. The past has been elsewhere, and, if we read the portents of the present aright, the future is ours.
THE END
SUPPLEMENT
THE MAKERS OF THE PRESENT
There is in America need for big men in little places.
ANONYMOUS
IT T IS A SIGNIFICANT FACT in human history that the standards, spiritual insights, enthusiasms, and creative powers of Western civilization have in the past originated in, and radiated outward as constructive forces from very small centers. The Jerusalem of some of the major Prophets, the Athens of Pericles, the Florence of the Medici, the London of Elizabeth I, and the Weimar of Goethe were, compared with modern city populations, little places. Yet their creative achievement and the influence emanating from them account for much of what is richest and most enduring in the texture of our modern life.
In no sense is it suggested here that the Waldoboro of the present is a cultural center. We wish to point merely to the simple psychological law that wherever a group of talented and thought- ful men live closely associated, as is possible in a small community, their energies, enthusiasms, interests, and visions set up a strong mutual interaction which ofttimes in a given direction eventuates in amazing results. This was true of the Great Days in the town. At that time there was a large group of able, bold, and energetic men in the community who stimulated one another strongly in the direction of individual and collective action. This process invariably repeats itself when the conditions necessary to it are met. The present in the life of the town corresponds to such a period and in consequence the community seems economically to be in the second great creative period of its history. The makers of this economic strength are a group of men of energy, cour- age, and civic vision, whose boldness and initiative have built the foundation of the structure of our local life in the present day. Hence passing comment will be made on those who largely, through individual and concerted action, have added signally not only to the town's wealth and prosperity but also to that wide
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diversity of achievement which goes to make up a richer life in a small community.
BUSINESS
In this area of activity the town owes much to a few indi- viduals of the more recent past who in its years of uncertainty expressed their confidence and interest by starting and stimulating new enterprises. Notable among these pioneers were Carroll Coo- ney, his brother, Russell Cooney, and Mr. Stuart Hemingway. Following these earlier beginnings a period of steady expansion has set in leading up to a reasonably assured permanence in the present. Today the well-being of the town rests on a few large businesses and a considerable number of widely diversified smaller enterprises. Most of the larger undertakings are contemporary in their origins and the outgrowth of the drive and initiative of re- sourceful individuals. The wide range of their activities add, of course, to the economic stability of the community. It is not, like other towns in the county, a single-industry town.
Figuring prominently in the tourist business is the vacation resort of Frances B. Quiner on Dutch Neck, and in the center of the town what is probably the largest single enterprise of this character in the county, founded and expanded into one of the community's major economic units by the executive drive of Percy B. Moody. Other enterprises of note are the grain busi- ness of Victor Burnheimer, Sr., the mill business of Ellard Mank, and the heavy building and contracting enterprises of Alton B. Prock. A whole new section is growing up - an upper village - on lower Jefferson Street and along the Atlantic Highway, where much of this new life is localizing.
From sheer volume of business the town owes much to its becoming a distributing center in the automotive trade. The fine blocks erected on the Atlantic Highway by John H. Miller and Harold Ralph are active foci of this new automotive business which meets the demands and needs of a wide area. The significant fact relative to these businesses is that they are all recent and were all started from small beginnings by the same men who now administer them. To these makers of the town's economy in the present should be added the names of some of the more successful agriculturists - Ernest Black, Foster Jameson, Russell McLeod, Ivan Scott, Melville Davis, John Burgess, Philip Lee, John Rines, Frank Salmi, and others, who through their industry and skill have added materially to the town's economic activity and wealth.
If a selection were to be made of an individual who has been the most successful in business among these makers of the town's present economy the choice by common agreement would undoubtedly be John H. Miller. In recognition of a fine achieve-
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The Makers of the Present
ment there follows here a brief narrative of his life and labors. Mr. Miller, a son of William and Ida Gross Miller, first saw the light of day on July 25, 1895, in the house on Friendship Road now the home of Ralph Dean. The whole of his education was received in the town schools, and on graduation his start in life was his good health and his willingness to work. His first job was in resort hotels in Michigan and Southern Pines and this furthered his education by way of being an introduction to the big world. After a period of service in the First World War he entered the automobile business in his home town by forming a partnership in 1918 with John T. Gay, Jr.
His start was on two thousand of his own dollars and four thousand of borrowed capital. These were hard years, but the business prospered, and in 1937 he bought his partner's interest. More hard years followed and success came as the result of long hours. Mr. Miller personally supervised all garage activities, and his wife, Marian, handled the office detail. The Ford proved itself a good seller, business expanded rapidly, and in 1947 the large garage and salesroom was erected on the Atlantic Highway. In 1952-1953 a second large shop and sales center was built in the Rockland area. Over these later years the volume of business has increased to a point where Mr. Miller now has an annual payroll close to $200,000 in the two centers.
After he had secured himself in business, John Miller bought the old Bulfinch Mansion and without sparing costs has done a beautiful job of restoration. Here in this home, the finest in the town, is housed a collection of Amberina glass, which Faunce Pendexter has called "one of the best of its kind in the entire country." Apart from this restoration and preservation of an old landmark in the town, Mr. Miller's civic interest has touched the developing community at every vital point. He has aided in all new enterprises, both with his experience and his capital. Without notoriety or ostentation, he is probably the most generous patron of institutions promoting the town's cultural and spiritual life. Looking backward over the town's past it may be said that from the standpoint of capital involved in his enterprises he is clearly the most successful businessman in our history.
INDUSTRIAL PROMOTION
The major impetus in the town's present industrial life has not come from accident or chance but rather through concerted action on the part of determined and public-spirited men. Realiz- ing that the pulsing life of economic America did not always reach to the outer periphery of the nation's boundaries, a group of local men banded together and brought into being the Waldoboro
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Lockers, Inc., and the Waldoboro Industrial Realty Corporation. Backed by their energy, courage, and foresight a locker plant - the only one between the Kennebec and Penobscot - has become firmly established, and following it, the factory of the Sylvania Electric Products, Inc., has proven itself an invaluable adjunct to the local economy.
Both structures were conceived in the determination of local men, and both were born of local capital widely subscribed - and both ventures have met with high success. In the fullest sense both enterprises are the outcome of a widely ramified cooperative effort and both provide a conspicuous example of what civic- minded men can accomplish when their wills are set on raising themselves literally by their own boot-straps. The indebtedness of local people to these leaders is indeed a heavy one, as is that of those over a wide area ranging north and south from Whitefield to Friendship and Bristol, and east and west from Camden to Bath, for drawn from this area are the two hundred hands now employed at the Sylvania Plant. The names of those who have made these additions to the town's economic life follow as a kind of local industrial honor roll: Leonard Bidwell, John Burgess, Victor Burn- heimer, Sr., Merle Castner, Forrest Eaton, John Foster, Maynard Genthner, Roland Genthner, Harold Gross, Foster Jameson, Ray- mond Jones, Arnold Levensaler, John H. Miller, Percy Moody, Harold Ralph, Frank Salmi, Ivan Scott, Stanley Waltz, Kenneth Weston, and Laurence Weston.
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