Special to The Star-Herald
For a small potato growing community, Fort Fairfield has certainly been in the headlines more than once. And, now the town is celebrating its 150th anniversary. Wow! Congratulations town. In the next several newspaper inches, I would like to mention some of the things that have stood out in my mind with the people I have met in Fort Fairfield and the various newsworthy events that have happened in town.
I was at Fisher Street in Fort Fairfield early the morning of Dec. 30,1959 when John H. Reed suddenly became our 62nd governor. I had received an early phone call from the State Editor of the Bangor Daily News after the then Gov. Clinton A. Clauson died in his sleep that night. John, being Senate president and only 38 at the time, greeted me and the NEWS Aroostook Bureau Chief Jim Barrows, wearing bedroom slippers and a plaid shirt. He immediately set about getting us all breakfast, answering the phone and greeting drop in neighbors, while his wife, Cora, was packing for his quick trip to Augusta for the swearing in ceremonies.
I was able to get a few photos of John, Cora and their two daughters, Cheryl and Rudy. Some of them formal and a few as John bade his family goodbye before piling into a black state trooper’s car for the trip south.
I had known John earlier when he was president of the Northern Maine Fair Association and spent some time in Quebec City with him during one of the early Maine Quebec City winter carnival trips. He always greeted me with a loud shout: “Hiya Vos, how are you?”
Of course you couldn’t think of Fort Fairfield without mentioning Kingdon Harvey, the publisher and editor of the very small, but powerful, Fort Fairfield Review. It was small in circulation and number of pages, which might have been six or eight. King even ran off one full page with only, “It is Quiet, Isn’t It?” printed in the center of the page.
Any politician during a swing through “The County” who didn’t visit King’s office, with its old roll top desk that you could barely make out in the dim light and cigar smoke, got an eyeful from King in his next column, “Tommy Rot.”
Various clubs and organizations, including the Fort Fairfield Chamber of Commerce and the Town Office, didn’t release their news announcements until King had printed them first.
He was a quiet, commanding figure, standing six feet tall with his ever-present cigar and bald pate.
Looking back over 30 years, King had taken a look into the future of Aroostook when he made a statement concerning local government. He said there would be a continued erosion of local control. “This has occurred for the past 50 years,” he said, “primarily because local people holding office did not meet the demands of the people.”
King died a number of years ago and it wasn’t many years afterward that King’s son, Tom, published the final edition of the Fort Fairfield Review.
An event that put Fort Fairfield into the national headlines was the two murders there in 1964 and in 1965. They were officially solved in 1984 when Philip Adams was convicted of killing Donna Mauch. It all began the day after Christmas in 1964 when Cyrus Everett, a 14-year-old newspaper carrier, disappeared. He had left home to mail Christmas cards and never returned. It was Mother’s Day in May 1965 when his body was discovered under a 600-pound log near his home. Officials from the County Attorney’s office later stated that the boy’s death was accidental.
Donna Mauch was found dead in her Fort Fairfield apartment Feb. 24, 1965 with a crushed skull. She had been a waitress at the Plymouth Hotel in Fort. The murders baffled police for years. An Air Force lieutenant was tried and acquitted of Donna’s death.
Retired State Police Det. Otis LaBrie got on the case. He finally arrested and charged Philip Adams with Donna’s death. I covered the trial photographically for UPI and the Hartford Courant, and caught up with Phil as he was being escorted from the courtroom by a deputy sheriff. We talked for a short time and he posed in a joking manner while I made some photos. He acted as though he was going on vacation instead of to jail.
Two Fort Fairfield women who made impressions on the town were Betty Bubar Johnston and Elizabeth “Betty” Ann Nightingale.
Betty Bubar was a great horse lover and won numerous ribbons with her dark horse, Charcoal. She was involved in the trotting races at the Northern Maine Fair in Presque Isle and was herself a potato blossom queen. In 1972, Betty was also part of the new, at the time, cable television industry. Working with Caribou Television, she recorded interviews that were later replayed over cable television. This was the beginning of cable television for Aroostook.
Betty Ann was working as a waitress in a Presque Isle restaurant, The Potato House, when it was suggested that she contact me as a potential model. At that time, I was publishing a magazine, The Mainstreeter, and we used models for our advertisers. She was photogenic, fun to work with and appeared in a number of ads for us.
Betty entered an essay-writing contest using the title “What’s Right About America?” She won the state contest at Portland and was crowned Miss Maine Teen-Ager. Then it was on to Atlanta for the Miss National Teen-Ager pageant, which she also won. The town was rather excited when Betty arrived home, coming down the aircraft stairs crying and laughing both at the same time.
Fort Fairfield often was the victim of spring flooding when ice jams forced Aroostook River waters to overflow onto Main Street, into stores and homes and causing considerable damage year after year. I was present the night a huge cake of ice ripped part of the old metal bridge away and I was lucky to be on the town side of the river. The current dike was finally built and has prevented much of Main Street from water damage.
Night fires along Main Street (in the late 60s) changed the town completely: wiping out stores, homes and a lumber mill. The frequency of the fires was predictable. A standard greeting among news people, when asked if they had been to the fire the previous night, was “No, I’m going tonight.”
Cyrus Everett
Donna Mauch
Photo courtesy of Voscar
PHILIP ADAMS, right, pauses to talk with reporters after being found guilty in the 1965 death of Donna Mauch.
Photo courtesy of Voscar
BETTY ANN NIGHTINGALE, formerly of Fort Fairfield, Miss National Teen-Ager.
Photo courtesy of Voscar
KING HARVEY, editor/publisher of The Fort Fairfield Review.
Photo courtesy of Voscar
CRUISING DOWN MAIN STREET after a flood in the late 1960s.
