Remembering two 9/11 victims from Lubec, Maine

25 years later, I still think about the Nortons from Lubec, as I do every year when Sept. 11 arrives on the calendar. Here's a report written by Mary Anne Clancy that the BDN published two days after the Nortons and thousands of others died in the terrorist attacks:

LUBEC - The tragedy of Tuesday's terrorist attack turned personal here Wednesday when American Airlines confirmed that Robert and Jacqueline Norton were passengers on Flight 11.

The Lubec couple flew out of Boston on Tuesday morning en route to Los Angeles to attend the wedding of Jackie Norton's son, Jason Seymour.

Flight 11 was the first of the two hijacked planes that slammed into the towers at New York's World Trade Center.

"I knew they were leaving Boston on Tuesday, but I kept telling myself there were lots of flights from Boston to Los Angeles," said the Rev. Edward Randall. "This was to be such a joyous occasion for them."

Randall is the pastor of Lubec Congregational Christian Church, where 85-year-old Robert Norton was a deacon and Jackie, who was 61, was the church clerk.

The couple left Lubec on Monday to spend the night in Bangor. They had an early morning flight from Bangor to connect with their Boston flight.

In California, Jason Seymour, 38, stressed that the tragedy affects everyone, not just his family. "This is not about me and my mom. This is about a terrorist attack that affected all of us."

At least one other Mainer was known to have been aboard the aircraft used in Tuesday's terror attacks.

James Roux, 43, was aboard United Airlines Flight 175 and was planning to go to Thailand, said Liana Brewer, executive assistant to Roux's brother, David Roux, at Silver Lake Partners in Menlo Park, Calif.

Russ Riseman, owner of The Alehouse in Portland, said James Roux was a friend and client who had recently had a change in outlook on life. Roux was planning to leave his job and work for his brother, Riseman said.

In Lubec on Sunday, Jackie Norton had given three or four bouquets from her garden to the church and told people to pick whatever flowers they wanted while the couple were gone, Randall said.

"She was just a precious lady," he said. "It's so hard to believe the innocence that's involved with this ruthless act."

Lucy Burgess, who lived next door to the couple, also is struggling to comprehend the loss.

"They were the best neighbors you could hope to have and they showed it in so many ways," she said, pausing to regain her composure. "There are probably hundreds of people who could tell you nice things about them."

Burgess said the couple were a great comfort to her when she was caring for her father, who had Alzheimer's disease.

"Robert had experience with the disease in his family, and he and Jackie always made certain to stop to see how things were going," she said. "They were always available if you needed anything."

Jackie Carter said her husband, Lawton, is Robert Norton's cousin. The two men were raised together on Lubec's Herring Cove.

"They called each other brothers and they'd talk every night - just a lot about how their day had gone and what they'd done," she said. "Robert was a very kind-hearted man."

Norton's first wife was a Lubec schoolteacher, and he spent his engineering career in Massachusetts. He moved back to Lubec to the home where he grew up when he retired, Carter said.

Jackie was from Santa Barbara, Calif., and had bought a home in Lubec after seeing the town on a trip years ago, she said.

The couple, who lived two doors apart, became acquainted through the church and had been married for nine years, Carter said.

"They were a happy couple," she said. "I don't know when this is going to hit me."

On Wednesday afternoon, Linda Moores and Sharon McGonigle were part of a crew mounting hundreds of yellow bows and American flags on telephone poles and trees throughout town.

The signs of remembrance were the idea of former Selectman Joanne Case, they said. The American Legion donated the flags, and the schools and Farrell's Craft Store donated the ribbons.

"Robert was a gentleman," Moores said. "He and I shared a love of raspberries and I used to meet him and his dog, Sam, at the raspberry patch down below his place. I loved to talk to him."

On Wednesday, a couple driving by stopped to ask the women the significance of the bows.

"We lost a couple from Lubec yesterday," explained Moores. "They were on one of those planes."

As the woman began to cry, Moores reached through the window and gave her a hug.

"Everyone's been like that," Moores said as the couple drove away. "We're a real close community. We can fight among each other - like brothers and sisters - but when something happens, we all pull together."

May in Maine

 Spring often feels like it takes forever to arrive here, compared to the rest of the lower 48.

Rains first appear in late February but, as if someone were aggressively cranking the faucets in a shower back and forth, it snows again, then kind of melts, then rains, then snows..... it goes on for weeks. In March, the snowdrops sprout, the snowpack mostly melts away with a couple of rains, but then it snows a little and then rains again, and with the last fleeting sleeting of frozen precip falling in early-to-mid April. Anyone here who puts their snow shovels away into storage before Tax Day is a fool.

Daffodils sprout up. Crocuses too. But where are the buds on the trees? Not here yet. Temperatures rise to the mid-40s during the day, then back toward freezing at night. It's April still, and people are still lighting their stoves at night to take the edge off. I keep light gloves in the pockets of my fleece, and a tuque within easy grasp in case I need it when I head out the door. The days are chilly. 

But as April shifts to May the dial noticeably starts to turn. The evening sunlight stretches past dinnertime now, and I can put away my thick winter-gauge pants in the back of the closet. The grass is getting fairly green but still the leaves on the trees have yet to flesh out. As the sun sets, I can see the glow through the woods on the west side of my house more easily than I will in the summer and early fall.

Then, finally, the peepers announce themselves. As twilight fades into night, their chirpy whistles pierce through the dark from the ponds and marshy wetlands of my neighbors. The rains are more frequent and heavy now, and the frogs and salamanders love it. I walk down the road in the murky mist, headlamp beaming from my forehead, and find them crossing the black asphalt like jumping leaves or waddling short sticks. If they have not already been flattened, I help them across, the whistles a few yards away almost deafening as the call of timeless amphibious migration propels them forward, out of my hands into the watery reeds. 

The days get warmer. I open the windows of my car more as I glide down the road, gleefully and finally free of the wintery slush that forced me to slow down. The temperatures climb above 60 and, if the sun is out for the day, it almost feels like summer's glory has fully returned, bringing with it some out-of-state plates and reopening roadside lunch takeout stands. And I already have seen some fog out in the cove.

I get out my flip flops and keep them by the door, though I can go outside barefoot if I want to. I test out the lawnmower to make sure it still works, and in my eagerness I clean up the gas grill, even if I won't use either for another week. Forsythia is blooming and plants are coming up in the garden now. We'll have to get on that pretty soon.

But no lilacs yet, and we'll have to fight our way through 3 weeks of biting black flies before the spring flowers arrive in full force. And still no leaves, though the green buds on the branches are visible now. And the peepers are still chiming at night. 

As much as I wanted February to fly by, now that we're here I want May to slow down. It's not too hot to need the shade of the trees just yet, and I'm good with the flowers we have so far. It's a sweet spot where winter is once again a memory but the heat of summer's creep from further south has yet to drive throngs of tourists and short-timers into our midst; the worst of those seasons are not upon us, for the time being.  

My window is open, yet I see nothing in the dark of night outside. The birds have gone to sleep, but the frogs not yet. I want to be awake, to feel the cool breeze through the screen and smell the hint of ocean and evergreens. Still, I am tired, and also feel the temptation to close my eyes and nod off by the window. And if I do it soon and get enough rest, I might wake with the dawn and the birds looking for their breakfast in my yard.

Orphan piano poses transport problem on remote Maine Island

NOTE: This story was originally published in 2002.

FRENCHBORO, Maine - In the film "The Piano" a 19th century Scottish woman, played by actress Holly Hunter, arrives by ship in New Zealand on an isolated beach and is left there with her belongings and her daughter. Her most prized possession, a piano, is left on the shore as her new husband insists it is too cumbersome to carry to their home through the forested, hilly terrain.

Technology has improved since the period portrayed in the film, but a similar problem exists today on Great Duck Island, a 262-acre piece of land located seven miles out to sea off Mount Desert Island.

There, a piano sits unplayed and nearly forgotten in a dilapidated building whose owner wants the structure torn down. A man who owns a seasonal home on Great Duck wants to have the piano but, with no roads connecting the properties and no boat dock on the island, there is no easy way to transport the instrument to his home.

No one lives year round on Great Duck, the vast majority of which is a nature preserve owned by The Nature Conservancy. The island is more than a mile long, about half a mile wide, and has few buildings on it. At the southern tip is a lighthouse owned by College of the Atlantic but operated by the Coast Guard. At the northern end, in an old log cabin built from trees on the island, sits the upright piano.

The conservancy, which owns the building, would like to demolish the structure to make sure it does not pose a threat to the safety of incidental visitors, according to Doug Radziewicz, the conservancy's Down East preserves steward.

"It's a beautiful building," Radziewicz said last week. "It was well put together, but it has deteriorated so much that repairs would be astronomical. It is a hazard right now."

The cabin, and a few smaller ones on the property, were built by George Cloutier, a psychologist who bought the island in 1963, Radziewicz said. Cloutier opened a Gestalt therapy clinic on the island in 1975 and had the piano brought out to Great Duck for the enjoyment of the clinic's visitors. The piano was left behind when Cloutier sold his property to the conservancy in 1985, according to Radziewicz.

Most of the contents of the cabin have been removed but because of its size the piano remains in the building. The conservancy does not want to destroy the piano with the building, Radziewicz said, nor does it want to keep the instrument, he said.

"We have no use for the piano," Radziewicz said. A piano tuner has inspected the instrument and determined that it is in "OK shape," he said, though it could stand to have its finish restored. He added that he does not know who manufactured it or how much it is worth.

A Massachusetts doctor who knew Cloutier and owns 5 acres on Great Duck would like to have the piano, Radziewicz said. Dr. Rich Borofsky declined to be interviewed, but according to Radziewicz the summer resident has the right of first refusal to the instrument.

"We're happy to let him have it," Radziewicz said, "but there's a lot involved in getting the piano from one point to another."

Andrew Peterson, COA's marine superintendent, said dense forest separates Borofsky's house, which is also near the island's northern tip, from the conservancy cabin. The college keeps a tractor with a trailer in tow on the island to help maintain the lighthouse and the other buildings on the 12 acres it owns, Peterson said. Though there are some paths wide enough for the tractor between the conservancy buildings and the college property, no such paths lead to Borofsky's place, he said.

Carrying the piano there by hand would be a formidable task, he added.

"The thing must weigh 600 pounds or so," Peterson said.

Radziewicz said that Leach's storm petrel, one of the protected species of birds that summer on the island, burrows underground to build its nests. Carrying a 600-pound instrument across anything but a well-established path could pose a crushing threat to the birds and cause the people carrying it to trip, he said.

"We would not alter the landscape in order to get the piano from our property to [Borofsky's] property," Radziewicz said. Because of the seasonal presence on the island of the petrels, black guillemots, bald eagles and other birds, the nature preserve on the island is closed to visitors each year from Feb. 15 to Oct. 15, he said.

Peterson, who travels to the island by boat in the summer and hitches rides on a Coast Guard helicopter in the winter, said there is no good place to land a boat on Great Duck.

"The island is too exposed to build those kind of facilities," Peterson said. It might be possible to get the piano onto a barge beach near the conservancy cabin, but there is no place by Borofsky's house where the barge could safely unload the piano, he said.

"You'd have to pick optimal weather [to even try a barge landing on the island]," Peterson said. "There aren't too many days where you could get a wheeled vehicle ashore."

It is more feasible to transport the piano by barge to the mainland than it is to take it to the doctor's house by water, he said. A cargo-capable helicopter is another option, but they tend to be expensive, he added.

Because of the lack of activity on Great Duck in the winter, the piano does not have to be moved anywhere within the next couple of months. One option is for the college to transport the piano in the spring to one of its buildings at the southern tip of the island so that the conservancy can dispose of the cabin, Peterson said.

In the meantime, the parties will continue to work together to determine the piano's fate.

"We shall see," Radziewicz said.