USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 58
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But these men had a leader - a man of executive force, ex- perience, and vision. There follows a brief outline of his career. John H. Foster was born at Butler, Pennsylvania, in 1893. He received his education in the Butler schools and thereafter by taking special courses at La Salle University and the Pace Insti- tute of Accounting. He began his business career in the Forged Steel Wheel Company and moved on, assuming larger responsi- bilities in various corporations. In 1924 he joined the Florence Stove Company of Gardner, Massachusetts, in which he served as corporation clerk, treasurer, vice president and director. He saw service in the A.E.F. in France in 1918-1919.
In 1946 he came to Waldoboro. After his return from a trip in the East Indies in quest of some word of his only son, shot down in an areoplane, he devoted his energy and experience whole- heartedly to the advancement of the town's economic well-being. Under the new manager form of social control he served as Chair- man of the Board of Selectmen up to the time of his resignation in 1954. In this period the community experienced a sound business administration of its affairs; its outlook widened and its services expanded. It was during his period of leadership that the Locker
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Plant came into being, that a factory was built, and largely through his personal effort and influence that the Sylvania Electric Prod- ucts Corporation located in the town. Certainly throughout its entire history there has never been any single individual to whom the community is more heavily indebted. In February 1954 and amid general regret John Foster left the town to become the financial analyst for the Perfection Stove Company in Cleveland, Ohio. Though the absence be relatively temporary, still it will be too long for a community that has gained so much from his business wisdom and his virile direction.
WOMEN IN PUBLIC LIFE
It was in the present century that women were finally ac- corded political equality with men. In the relatively short time since the ratification of the nineteenth amendment of the Federal Constitution (1920) women in the nation and state and in this town have moved rapidly forward into positions of leadership in both the political and economic spheres, until in the present they are touching our common life creatively at many points. Within thirty years they have taken on a considerable share of the male burden. In this town's political, civic, educational, and cultural life their activities and influences have contributed to a marked enrichment, for in these areas their participation has been wide and fruitful. It is indeed a hazardous task to point out all those individuals whose services have been most constructive in the local sphere. The responsibility for essaying such a feat can only be approached with a sense of apprehension and inadequacy. In con- sequence the following is offered apologetically. Rena Crowell, Mildred Damon, Katherine Dow, Maude C. Gay, Fanny Gray, Elizabeth Hilton, Faye Keene, Jessie Keene, Viola Kuhn, Sarah Lash, Marion MacRae, Elsa Mank, Gladys Patrick, Theresa Chute, Ida Stahl, Frances Storer, Betty Thomas, Mary Weston, and Dora Howard York.
Of these women Maude Clark Gay has clearly been the out- standing figure as a local and a state leader. She was born in Waldo- boro in 1876, the daughter of Webster C. Mayo and Annie Ather- ton Clark Mayo. Her ancestry was excellent. She was the grand- daughter of Colonel Atherton and Mary D. Clark and the great granddaughter of Joseph W. Clark, one of the great shipbuilders of Maine. She received her education at public and private schools in Waldoboro and at Lincoln Academy in Newcastle. At the age of eighteen she joined the local Woman's Club and in the course of time became its president. From this office her rise was rapid. She served as President of the Lincoln County Union of Woman's Clubs, also of the Lincoln County Home Association for the Aged.
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During the First World War she was a leader in the Red Cross and County Chairman of the Woman's Branch of the National Defense Committee.
In 1927 Maude Gay entered politics and served in the Maine House of Representatives from 1927 to 1930. In 1933-1934 she was a member of the Maine Senate and Chairman of its Committee on Education. In her later years she served on the State Board of Education. Her activities in club work continued to the end of her days, and she served effectively in the Maine Federation of Women's Clubs as chairman of its endowment fund, district direc- tor, recording secretary, vice president and president. During this period she represented the General Federation as a director and travelled widely, speaking in many states in the interests of the organization.
The many faceted activities of this woman included also the field of letters. She was a member of the American League of Pen Women, the Pemaquid Chapter of the D.A.R., Daughters of Colonial Wars, and the Maine Writers' Research Club. Her writ- ings included newspaper and magazine articles and two novels: The Knitting of the Souls and Paths Crossing. In 1896 she be- came the wife of John T. Gay, Jr. (dec. 1937). One daughter was born to this union, Anne Gracia Gay Bailey of Evanston, Illinois. Mrs. Gay's death took place in the Eastland Hotel in Portland in September, 1952. The passing of this woman - civic leader, stateswoman and author - left a gaping void in the life of the town. She and Harriet Haskell were clearly the two greatest women in its history.
EDUCATION
In the field of education the town has done well by the schools of the nation and in this generation it has at long last set its own house in order. Among those who have been active and successful on distant scenes are Allen Rogers Benner, the dearly beloved Professor of Greek at Phillips Academy in Andover for the greater part of his life; William Daggett, teacher and librarian at the Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, and his son, Athearn, Professor of Government at Bowdoin College; Faye M. Keene, teacher at the Ethical Culture High School, Fieldston, New York; Jessie L. Keene, one time Dean of Women at the Gorham State Teachers College; Charles C. Lilly, teacher of English in Osaka, Japan; Harvey Lovell, Professor of Biology at the University of Louisville; Susan Ludwig, a landmark at the elementary level in Waldoboro schools and the gracious preceptress of generations of local villagers; Gladys Patrick, Supervisor of Elementary Educa- tion in the State Department of Education; Stephen Patrick, Direc- tor of Vocational Education in the same department; Jasper J.
JASPER JACOB STAHL
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Stahl, Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Reed College in Portland, Oregon; and Ada Winchenbaugh, a teacher in the public schools of Massachusetts through the active years of her life.
Locally the Waldoboro school system has in our day been brought to the high point of its excellence under the resourceful supervisorship of Alvra D. Gray and Earle W. Spear, supported by lay and professional members of the Board of Education in- cluding John Burgess, Elizabeth Hilton, Jessie Keene, Ida Stahl, Philip Weston, and Jasper J. Stahl. Local folk active on the state scene in recent years have been Maude Clark Gay, a member of the State Board of Education, and Jasper J. Stahl appointed by Governor Payne to the five-year term on the Maine School Build- ing Authority.
The most scholarly, vibrant, and picturesque of these per- sonalities has been Allen Rogers Benner (1870-1940), affection- ately known as "Zeus" to generations of American boys at An- dover. Mr. Benner was born at Waldoboro in the year 1870, the eldest son of Edward Randall and Sarah Allen Benner. He re- ceived his early education in the local schools and in 1886 entered Andover where he was graduated as class valedictorian in 1888. Continuing his education at Harvard he was graduated in 1892, summa cum laude, with highest honors in the classics, and here again he stood first in his class, a striking index of the man's in- tellectual powers.
In the autumn following his graduation he accepted the invitation of Dr. C. F. P. Bancroft, Headmaster of Andover, to become an instructor in his old school. There he remained, in spite of many offers from other quarters, throughout his active career. When the "new foundations" were established there in 1927 by Thomas Cochran, Allen Benner became the first holder of the Professorship of Greek on the Jonathan French Founda- tion and for forty-six years at the Academy he "did a strong man's work," to keep burning the flame of classical learning. In 1938 he was retired from his long and faithful career and returned to his native town. Here he was vouchsafed but two years before the sudden ebbing of the tide. His editions of the Anabasis and of Homer have been for decades standard texts in the nation, and at the time of his death he was working on a translation of the letters of Alciphron for the Loeb Classical Library.
The influence of this man on generations of the élite of American youth has been simply incalculable, for he had the true genius of a great teacher - the spirit's quickening breath. During his years at the Academy a continuous stream of "old boys" were ever dropping in at Andover Cottage to pay their
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tribute of affectionate veneration. "They came singly, in groups, often fathers and sons, both of whom had benefited from his tutelage." Nor was his reputation and prestige limited to the boys of Andover. President Pease of Amherst, on awarding Allen Ben- ner an honorary degree in 1928, made use of the following citation:
For nearly four decades at Andover a Kindler of interest in Greek language and life among the pupils of Phillip's Academy, and knowledge far outside its limits to many a student of Homer; amid your daily du- ties of precision at no moment deaf to the "surge and thunder of the Odyssey"; in placing your name upon its roll Amherst College honors not itself alone, but also the distinguished school which for one hundred and fifty years has based its training on solid classical foundations.
Perhaps the crowning moment in Allen Benner's career was a dinner given in his honor by some of the Harvard faculty, on which occasion he was presented a copy of Aristotle's Poetics, once the property of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 1 believe that the truest suggestion of Allen Benner's personal phi- losophy is to be found in his contribution to his Class Report on the occasion of its fortieth anniversary at Harvard, from which a brief excerpt follows:
For me, however, life has pursued an even tenor; it has been my happy experience to spend my days with youth, and to read the ancient classics with eager and willing boys. One can always turn to the Greeks for cheerfulness and recreation, and reread with comfort the books of a gifted race who never heard of Bolshevism, the income tax, the Eight- eenth Amendment, and other delectable conceits of the Twentieth Cen- tury.
On reading these words all who knew Allen Benner will fondly recall the picturesque and stubborn quality of his indi- vidualism. Of him history will record that he was the great teacher - the most gifted of the many fine teachers which this little town has given to the larger world.
ART, LETTERS, MUSIC, SCHOLARSHIP
The economic is the constant and universal obsession of the present day, while the spiritual remains an area of scant attention and thought. This perversion of values leads straight in a causal sequence to the decadence and degeneration of our times. Such a consequence has been ordained from the beginning. That man shall not live by bread alone is a law of nature, an integral of human life, vainly enunciated, to be sure, by those great spirits who have most clearly discerned that which alone gives significance to life itself. Hence to turn to the spiritual aspects of the local scene is a welcome task. It is quite true that Waldoboro is not now
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nor ever has been a town where the arts have flourished richly. This is perhaps just as true of any little center which might be compelled to rely on its own productive genius for the enrich- ment of its cultural life. But a study of its past and a survey of its present do reveal an increased interest in the arts and a vitality accruing to them stronger than in any previous period. This con- dition applies to painting, letters, music, and scholarship.
In the area of drawing and design Barbara Cooney Porter, until recently a familiar figure in the town, has achieved nation- wide recognition as an illustrator of children's books. This is per- haps an inherited talent, for her mother, Mae B. Cooney, is a painter of recognized excellence whose first public exhibition of work in this vicinity was held at the Farnsworth Museum in the summer of 1953. Best known, perhaps, is Bruno Risannen, a Fin- nish resident of the town and a person of professional crafts- manship, who participated in the restoration of Colonial Williams- burg. He is no less distinguished as a painter, and his exhibit at the Farnsworth Museum in the summer of 1952 revealed a skill of pro- fessional distinction.
A bit away from established convention is Earl Jackson Russell, something of a deviationist in the practice of his art - holding that it is a legitimate function of painting to reveal the impact of nature on the person of the painter without literal ref- erence to specific subject matter. His exhibit at the University of Maine in the summer of 1953, revealing as it did this aesthetic philosophy, was a matter of wide public interest. Mr. and Mrs. William A. B. Kirpatrick in their younger days were both painters of distinction, and Martha Cobb ably represents a more recent tradition in her commercial art. Amateurs, if there be enough of them, do much to popularize art in a community, and this town has a few excellent ones. Outstanding among them are Caroline Abbott, Hazel Blaney, Katherine Mayo, Betty Thompson, Don- ald Flagg, and Dr. Stanley Lenfest. Over the years their interest and skill have served to stimulate other undeveloped talent in the practice of this art.
A half century ago Waldoboro was a singing town. In the present it may be said to have touched in interest and practice the nadir of this art. Despite the lack of a supporting milieu locally it furnishes a few good amateurs to the Lincoln County Orchestra. But this art falters in our midst for lack of any widely diffused public interest, and seldom does it create anything of note from home talent. This is not to say that there are no good performers in the town. Among the latter are Arthur Bacon, now a music director in the Navy; Harold Sprague, a violinist, skilled in the field of popular music and leader of a dance orchestra; Elsa and Philip
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Lee, violinist and trombone players; and Gabriel Winchenbaugh, a violinist of near professional excellence. Mrs. Katherine Dow is a Boston Conservatory graduate and has in many ways gen- erously supported the art in community life. Floyd O. Benner, organist at the Village Baptist Church, is locally notable for his fine programs of Christmas and Easter music. Seasonal visitors and recent residents, too, have given something of their talent. Note- worthy in this group are the Princess Evelyn Shahnazaroff with a glorious soprano voice, and Leonard Marks with an excellent tenor - a rarity in the town.
By far the largest contribution, however, has been the work of Marion Waltz MacRae, who in a few short years here has effected a renascence of musical interest and skill in the younger generation. Her influence has been incalculable. She has aided with professional zeal and skill in all musical undertakings in the town, has rekindled an enthusiasm for vocal music in the local high school, and most important, has trained between thirty and forty boys and girls in piano, thus providing a musical basis for the community of the future.
In the field of letters the community, while apathetic as a whole, has effected a contribution considerably greater than normal for small towns. Mention has been made elsewhere of the popular writings and the two novels of Maude Clark Gay. Barbara Cooney Porter, apart from her illustrating, has written one child's book with a local background, The King of Wreck Island, and two additional works, The Kellyhorns and Captain Pottle's House. Carroll T. Cooney, Jr., during his residence in Waldoboro pub- lished his Green Field for Courage (1942) and David (1943). Mrs. Truman Thomas is a writer and occasional publisher of poetry, and Mrs. Otis Benner, one of the more unusual women of the town, is possessed of both literary taste and talent. Such ac- tivities, while limited, give to the town a position comparable to that reached only by a few small communities.
The town, too, has not been without its scholars. Promi- nence has already been given to the work of Allen Benner in the area of humanities, and John Lovell, who will be accorded more detailed recognition in this chapter, has achieved an international reputation in the field of science. Jasper J. Stahl has published historical articles in learned journals and done other work in the field of history. Since his two-volume study in local history is the most ambitious project ever undertaken by any local scholar, it is believed fitting to include a brief autobiographical sketch at this point.
The author of this history has seldom pored over old books without having his curiosity awakened concerning the author -
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where he lived, what was his scholarly competence, and how did he look. In the fullness of time this will probably be a part of the destiny of this work. The following narrative is modestly de- signed to satisfy this reasonable curiosity.
Jasper Jacob Stahl was born November 14, 1886, at Waldo- boro, Maine, the son of Captain Albion Francis Stahl and Lucy Heyer Keene. His first paternal ancestor in this country was John Stahl, a glass-blower, who came from the Rhine Country to old Braintree in Massachusetts in 1752 and who (circa 1760) mi- grated to Broad Bay in Maine. Other German antecedents in his ancestral line were the Hilts, the Winchenbaches, and the Heav- eners. On the maternal side his earliest ancestors in America were Richard Warren, one of the Mayflower passengers of 1620, Josiah Keene (b. London, "on London Bridge") who came to Hingham in the 1630's, and Martin and Conrad Heyer (Broad Bay, 1748).
The author attended the village schools and after one year in the high school transferred to Lincoln Academy in order to prepare for college. After graduating from the Academy in 1904 he taught the high school in Friendship Village for one year be- fore entering Bowdoin College. He completed work at Bowdoin in 1909 - graduating summa cum laude with the top scholastic standing in his class - and was awarded the Henry W. Longfel- low Fellowship for European study. His graduate work was done at the Universities of Munich and Berlin in Germany and at Harvard University in the United States. From 1911 to 1919 he was Assistant Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
Following the First World War, in which he served as an officer in the United States Navy, he became Director of Studies at The Hill in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. In 1931 he acquired the old Isaiah Cole Homestead in Waldoboro in which he took up residence in 1947. The two volumes of this history are a product of his intermittent research from 1937 to 1953. In the town the writer has served as a trustee of the Waldoboro Public Library, as Chairman of the Board of Education, and as a founder and President of the Waldoboro Historical Society. He has been active on civic committees and as a lecturer around the state. In 1952 he was appointed by Governor Payne to a five-year term on the Maine School Building Authority. He is a member of the Zeta Psi and Phi Beta Kappa Fraternities.
POLITICS
The rebirth of economic activity in the town has also brought a renewed invigoration of its political life. During the quiet decades it abdicated its old primacy in the county and state to other towns
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in the area, but in the last ten years it has entered on the most brilliant era in its history and is again playing a conspicuous role in the county, state, and nation. Among local leaders are Alton G. Winchenbach,* who as chairman presides over the destiny in the county of the once locally powerful Democratic Party.
On the Republican side of the party line Rena Crowell, Elsa Mank, and Maude Gay have served their time on the State Com- mittee. Among those descended from Waldoboro stock who have achieved distinction at the state and national levels are Raymond Fogler, assistant Secretary of the Navy in the Eisenhower ad- ministration, and Judge F. Roger Miller, born, reared, and edu- cated in the town, who in his later years has had a distinguished career in the Berwicks, where he has been prominent in the law, a leader in civic enterprises, and an influential force in the political life of western Maine. Forrest Bond, while a native of Jefferson, has been in business in town for the past thirty-six years and in this time has served as representative, senator and member of the Governor's Council. He enjoys the distinction of being one of the most astute political geniuses in the state. Mr. Wilmot S. Dow is the present senator from the county; E. Ashley Walter, Jr., has been on the Board of County Commissioners for successive terms; Maude Clark Gay we have already covered; Colonel Stanley G. Waltz is the present High Sheriff of Lincoln County; and Jasper J. Stahl is on the Maine School Building Authority. But pre-eminent among these local figures is Colonel Frederick G. Payne, Governor of Maine, 1949 to 1953, and the present junior United States Senator from the state.
"Fred" Payne, as he is known locally, was born in Lewiston, Maine, July 24, 1900. He was educated in the schools of that city and at the Bentley School of Accounting and Finance in Boston. His first major step up the political ladder came with his election for three successive terms (1935-1941) as Mayor of Augusta. The second step was his appointment by Governor Burrows to serve as Commissioner of Finance and Director of the Budget for the State of Maine (1940-1942).
Then the scene shifted for the future statesman, and he found himself Squadron Commander of the 66th Headquarters and Headquarters Squadron at Gunter Field, Alabama, with rank of captain. The next step in the service was to become Air Inspector and Administrative Inspector at Nashville Army Air Field and Aviation Cadet Classification Center, Nashville, Tennessee, with rank of major. But Mr. Payne's experience in the field of finance was such as to place on him heavier responsibilities, and shortly he was serving as Chief of the Budget and Fiscal Division, Army
*Deceased 1954.
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Air Force Training Command, at Forth Worth, Texas. His last assignment was to Headquarters Army Air Force, Washington, D. C., to establish budget and fiscal procedures for all installations of the Army Air Forces.
In 1944 he was married to Ella Marshall of Waldoboro, and following his release from service with the rank of lieutenant colonel, he took up residence here in the home of a former gov- ernor, the Honorable S. S. Marble, and entered business with his brother-in-law, John H. Miller. In 1949 he became Governor of Maine for two terms. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1952 - becoming the first governor to go directly from the Blaine Mansion to the Senate.
SCIENCE
The arts and sciences flourish best in this modern age in larger communities where men and women in considerable num- bers are engaged in such activities and live under the constant stimulus of their associates. Those are rare individuals indeed, who, relatively isolated from such centers, carry on their work without the supporting interest of colleagues, and without the aid arising from contact with minds as fertile as their own. Such men carry on buoyed up only by their own passion for knowing and by the love for their own labors. Two Waldoboro scientists of the present era are men who have labored under such condi- tions and the fruits of their disciplined labor has reached to all parts of the earth. These men are John Russell Cooney in the field of applied science and John Lovell in botany and plant biology. "Jack" Cooney was born in Brooklyn, New York. From early childhood when not at school his life was spent in this town. After the completion of his education at Exeter, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a world was open to him where there was plenty of room for his brilliant mind and high inventive skill. Instead of entering this larger arena he elected to return to this town where he could live the kind of life he loved. Here in recent years has been erected the laboratory of the Voca- line Corporation of America, in which Jack Cooney is the Direc- tor of Research. He has already five inventions to his credit which are protected by patent. Three of these, having to do with motion picture sound reproduction, have been sold to the Radio Corpora- tion of America. Another invention is the vocatron which is an intercommunication apparatus transmitting sound effects over ex- isting power lines. To date 50,000 such sets have been manufac- tured and are in use in all parts of the world. In the present, work on other devices is in progress in the monastic seclusion of the laboratory on Friendship Road.
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