Maine fisherman who thrived on humor, service, and friendly argument dies of cancer

Andy Mays poses with a day's haul of scallops on his boat, Lost Airmen, on Jan. 15, 2015. (Jason Clark photo)

Andy Mays called me the afternoon of March 5, 2017, a few minutes after he found an abandoned car on the Penobscot Narrows Bridge.

He didn't call me first -- he saw a body in the water below and knew to report it immediately to the Marine Patrol -- but he called me soon after. He was driving back to MDI from the Fishermen's Forum, which had been held that weekend in Rockport, when he found the car pulled over by the railing and a note on the dashboard.

The older man who had decided to end his life wrote down his name and a contact number for his relatives, whom he asked to be notified. Andy called them, too, to offer whatever comforting information he could. I am not sure why he called me.

"He looks as calm as can be," Andy said, referring to the unconscious man floating face up in the water more than 100 feet below the bridge.

The moment got to him. For two years, Andy had been wrestling with his own mortality as he fought against colorectal cancer that had metastasized and was slowly eating away at his body and his strength.

"This is the last thing I need right now," he said, briefly choking back the emotion of having to bear witness for another person who also was in failing health and had decided he had enough.

Andy, who died Thursday from the disease at age 53, never quit. He embraced life and had a knack for getting involved in other people's lives, either on purpose or by accident. As long as he was physically able, he couldn't help but to try and help out, either as a group effort or directly with someone in need.

A married Catholic fisherman and father to three young sons, he was compelled to engage, participate and interact. A former member of the Coast Guard, Andy continued working part-time as a civilian for the station in Southwest Harbor while he fished for lobster and dove for scallops. He served on Maine Department of Marine Resources' Scallop Advisory Council. He took jobs as a commercial diver and volunteered to take part in scallop field research projects. He was a member of the Southwest Harbor Harbor Committee and a shellfish warden for the town.

He was not shy and, because of his varied roles in the fishing community, got quoted in newspapers from time to time.

Sometimes the news articles were about him. There were stories, both before and after his cancer diagnosis, about his work as a scallop diver. There were stories about him feuding with the Coast Guard and others about daring rescue attempts at sea. Stories about him 'assisting' men from Massachusetts hunt (or, according to state game wardens, poach) hares on Great Duck Island. And others about him receiving the first-ever DMR Excellence Award.

"I'm speechless," Andy told the Mount Desert Islander in March 2016, when he was surprised with the award at the Fishermen's Forum. "I think this is the first time I've ever been speechless."

For many who knew Andy, that claim was entirely credible. He knew a lot of people and made a point about sharing his opinions with most of them. If you asked his opinion, he'd give it to you in plain and direct language, often sprinkled with profanity, and if he wasn't sure how he ought to feel about something he'd think it over out loud and then tell you he didn't know.

When he was sure of something, he was particularly skilled at sharing that opinion on Facebook. He had a knack for getting reactions out of people, usually agreement from his fellow conservatives and spirited debate from his more liberal friends, but it came across more as entertainment than as scorn. The exchanges never included photos of the participants smiling and shaking their heads, but you could picture it all the same.

It helped that, on top of being earnest and forthright, Andy could be (and often was) funny as hell. Anyone who met him knew in about 15 minutes how sharp and self-deprecating his humor could be.

And on March 4, 2013, a whole lot of people found out just how funny he was. That is when the Colbert Report comedy TV show aired a sketch called "The Enemy Within," about a mishap the previous fall involving a misplaced bucket of scallop gonads on MDI.

True to form, Andy had been right in the middle of it. He had placed a bucket of scallop gonads he was donating to a UMaine research project in the wrong car, which the unsuspecting owner then drove away, prompting a call out to local police to find out where it went. Subsequent local newspaper articles based on the police inquiries got picked up by national news wires, which then drew the attention of the Comedy Central program.

Months later, when the Colbert Report film crew showed up to interview him and others, Andy went along with the joke, ad-libbing wisecracks and gulping down a raw gonad for the camera. His lines got the most laughs of anyone else who appeared in the segment (embedded below).

"If you crashed your car drunk and need someone to help you hide it and everything, I can do that on a minute's notice," Andy told the show's producer. Toward the end of the segment, he explained: "I was able to give Skylar [Bayer, pictured above] the balls, and I was able to take the meat and give it to my friends, and they gave me liquor."

After the episode aired, Andy said he thought it would be fun to to reprise his role in the mixup, even though he had never watched the Colbert Report. He told the BDN he didn't even own a television because he didn't have time for one.

"I was the class clown in high school, in the yearbook," Mays told the newspaper, adding that part of the fun was the reaction he got from friends and family when he told them he was going to be on the show. "I'm more amused by my friends' amusement and excitement about it."

Andy's willingness to poke fun at himself for a laugh was not unique, but not many people are willing to do it (and do it well) on national television.

Andy Mays hold up a scallop gonad for a Colbert Report camera crew (Comedy Central image)

I didn't know Andy that well, but I will miss talking to him, both for his humor and his insight. He knew a lot -- about fishing, electronics, the Coast Guard, the state ferry service (for which he frequently did diving work), etc. -- and often knew who was involved in what.

He was genuinely interested in everyone he met. He knew who meant well, who was struggling, and who the troublemakers were. I am grateful to have known him for a little while, and that he was willing to share some of his knowledge, observations, jokes and opinions with me.

And I am sad -- both for Andy's immediate and extended family and friends, and for the wider community that Andy was part of and did his best to help along. Coastal Maine undoubtedly will be a less interesting, vibrant, helpful and entertaining place without Andy Mays.

Andy Mays talks on his boat, Lost Airmen, in Southwest Harbor on March 7, 2017.

The Maine Mansions Map, explained

Shown above is an online, interactive map I created more than four years ago while researching mansions on Mount Desert Island, and have been curating (i.e., updating) consistently ever since.

Now that it has gotten a relatively large number of views (large to me, anyway - more than 165,000) I figured it would be worth posting an explanation of how I go about updating the map, and what sort of issues, impressions, or information I’ve come across while doing so.

But first I want to explain my motivation in making the map, which essentially is a geographical list. It is not intended to be a “lifestyles of the rich & famous” sort of thing, even though that is one inescapable aspect of it.

Maine predominantly is a rural state with a low ratio of wealthy residents but its scenery attracts many very wealthy people from out of state who, either simply by paying property taxes or by also employing local people and helping to fund local institutions, have a significant impact on the communities where they spend their vacation time. Mainers cherish their privacy and afford these seasonal residents a lot of it, which is fair and appropriate, but given the impact these mansion owners can have on these small towns, there is legitimate public interest in knowing, to an extent, who they are and what kind of backgrounds they have.

I’m also motivated by my enjoyment of maps and of zooming in and exploring places with Google’s satellite imagery.

Plus, some of the houses themselves I find to be appealing, though I don’t know much about architecture. Some of them, on the other hand, are ugly (imho). Others are notable for their size or location, and others still have modern and daring designs that make them stand out in stark contrast to their neighbors or surrounding landscape. Some of the houses themselves have histories that are worth noting.

Some of them are quite visible from public vantage points, and others are tucked away and difficult to get a first-hand glimpse of unless you saunter up the driveway (something I won’t do and don’t recommend) or, in many cases, have the use of a boat. Google’s satellite imagery, obviously, has made getting an aerial view of these mansions a lot easier than it used to be.

What’s more, there are a lot of them, especially along the coast -- too many, frankly, to tag and identify them all. There has to be criteria for which properties get listed, lest the map turn into heaping pile of overlapping colored stars and pop-up windows, many of which may contain very little worthwhile information.

Not all “mansions” are created equal, however -- a fact that has been helpful in determining which to identify and which to not. To reflect the different estimated value, I've used a color-coded scheme of stars to tag the properties:

• White stars = properties with estimated values of less than $1 million.
• Yellow stars = from $1 million up to $3 million.
• Orange stars = from $3 million up to $5 million
• Red stars = from $5 million up to $10 million.
• Purple stars = $10 million and above. 

Some of the mansions are big and expensive by anyone’s standard -- Robert Greenhill’s mansion overlooking northern Moosehead Lake and Dick Wolf’s mansion in Seal Harbor on MDI come to mind -- while others might stand out in their local communities but don’t come close to rivaling large, luxury homes elsewhere in the state. 

This is why I have tagged so few properties in Washington County, in far eastern coastal Maine, which is considered one of the state’s poorest counties even though it has some of its most beautiful coastal scenery. Simply put, there almost aren’t any big, luxury houses down there (which I am sure many local residents would say is a good thing).

Usually I can find the estimated value of a house by looking up municipal (or state) property tax assessments online or, if they are for sale, by finding the list price on real estate websites. Size I don’t really consider, though frequently there is close correlation between how big a house is and how much it is worth. But if I found a really small house worth, say, $2 million, I would probably tag it because it would be pretty unusual.

The extent of assessing information available online varies greatly from town to town, which is why details provided on the map can be inconsistent from one town to the next. Some towns provide only acreage and land and building values, while others also provide the year the house was built, square footage, the number of bedrooms and bathroom and even exterior photographs. All online assessing information includes the name of the owner, be it the name of a person or a private LLC.

Some towns don’t provide any assessing information online at all. Friendship, Deer Isle, Sorrento and Islesboro are examples of towns that do not. All four of these coastal towns have expensive, seasonal waterfront homes, however, and in the case of Islesboro some of them clearly are qualified to be listed among the most exclusive summer estates in Maine. For Islesboro (which I hope to visit at some point so I can look though the town’s public paper assessing records), I’ve made rough guesses based on local real estate listings or by doing quick comparisons with other similar oceanfront homes elsewhere in the state.

I try not to tag houses with an estimated value less than $1 million, though I do make some exceptions. Private ocean islands have unusual appeal, so I might identify some that have houses, especially if the islands are for sale, even though they might be listed for less than $1 million. I also make exceptions for well-known Mainers such as former Gov. John McKernan, who co-owns a summer house at Hancock Point near Ellsworth, and for UFC founder Dana White, who grew up in Hermon and owns a modest property in Levant.

I also take into consideration where in Maine the property is located. It seems every other shorefront home in Northeast Harbor and neighboring Seal Harbor on MDI is worth at least $2 million, so I try to list only the more expensive ones or those with interesting information about them or their owners that I can find online. This same higher standard applies to the high-end communities of Prouts Neck in Scarborough, Biddeford Pool, Camden and Rockport, and maybe one or two other coastal towns.  

Conversely, inland towns have much fewer mansions, so any big house away from the coast that is worth $1 million or more is much more likely to get tagged than a house of the same value on the coast. The exception to that rule would be Washington County, where I have yet to find any luxury oceanfront house worth more than $1 million.

If the house (not just the land) seems valuable enough to tag on the map, I’ll try to find out who the owner is. Often it is easy – sometimes surprisingly so – but often it is not. In the case of properties with an LLC as the listed owner, it can take a lot of effort to try to track down other verifying information online, usually in the form of news reports, court filings, or business information. Sometimes those efforts come up empty.

My strong preference is to find out the name of the person or persons who actually own the mansion and to find basic information about how they came by their wealth. If I can find these things, I’ll include links in the pop-up window for that property to news reports or web pages that have information about the owners.

Sometimes I will tag a luxury home even if I cannot find out or verify who the owners are, but the house itself has to be striking or interesting enough on its own merits without having to know to whom it belongs. In these cases, I make sure to provide links to information about the actual house, such as real estate listings, photos and descriptions on architect websites, or articles from architecture or home and lifestyle-focused publications.

One such example of this is modern house in Camden owned by Toriko LLC which features a highly unusual design in which two parts of the house are connected by a long indoor, single-lane-width swimming pool. Evergreen Estate in Greenville, which comes with a surrounding private 9-hole golf course, is another.

One last thing: I want to stress that all the information posted about properties identified on the map is readily and legally available to the public, either from the government entities that assess property taxes or from media reports, public real estate listings, court documents, and the like. I have found some things online about people or properties that I do not fully trust to be accurate or appropriate and which, as a result, I will not provide links to, on the map or anywhere else. All of the information posted with the map, including links, is provided with the intent of being objective, fair and impartial.

This man who rolls a large globe along roads is worth your attention

This is Erik Bendl, also known as World Guy. I saw him in Bar Harbor, where I took this photo a couple of weeks ago. He is from Kentucky and takes his inflatable globe on walking excursions to raise awareness about diabetes, a disease that killed his mother 30 years ago. The Ellsworth American newspaper recently published an article about his walk last month from from Lubec to Mount Desert Island.

I am posting his picture now (not sure why I waited) because I thought his efforts might help undercut some of the widespread mounting misery brought on by recent awful events.

I admit that I do not know how effective Erik's treks are, and acknowledge there is sadness in his message, borne out of the loss of a parent when she was only 54 years old. But his walks are whimsical and positive and help demonstrate that the world is not completely comprised of controversy, discord and destruction.

His walks are not bitter arguments over how racial injustice should be protested at nationally televised sporting events that now are known to cause severe long-term damage to the mental and physical health of the men who compete. His walks are not massive weather disasters followed by name-calling and arguing among those in charge. And they certainly are not senseless shooting massacres of dozens of people and the inevitable finger-pointing blame games that result.

His walks are reminders that creative and constructive efforts can be hatched from sorrow and pain. That tragedies don't have to sow social divisions or be used to try to score some sort of short-term political gain over neighbors or fellow citizens whose opinions might differ from our own. That persuasion, education, compromise and cooperation - instead of insults and accusations - are what build and sustain communities and societies, even if they don't do much to enrich campaign war chests.

Whether or not Bendl has any sort of impact on the spread of diabetes, the world in its current state would benefit from the company of more people like him. People who want to change the world for the better should emulate his approach and spend less time spreading fear and anger in an attempt to raise money to promote their projects and, too often, themselves.