A remembrance of Rodney Morgan

By George ‘Gig’ Kerivan
    One of the first people I met when I came to Benedicta, Maine to build my cabin on Lawlor Ridge was Rodney Morgan. Having breakfast at the local Mobile Station, I thought, would be a fine way to get an introduction to folks hereabouts. I saddled up to the counter beside an elderly gent with white hair, a trim build, and a face that reflected many years in the outdoors. He immediately sized me up as “from away” and we began talking about the history of the territory southeast of Mount Katahdin.
    Rod grew up and lived his whole life on Siberia Road in Stacyville in the house his grandfather built 100 years and more ago. He regaled me with stories of life lived in the backwoods of Sherman, Patten and environs. He spoke of life in the 1920s and ‘30s, potato farming and woodcutting with exactness of detail that rivaled the best of the old Maine raconteurs.
Pioneer Times 1939 file photo
MEMBERS of the Senior Staff of the 1939 Ricker Aquilo yearbook were, from left, front row: Ruth Watson, literary editor; Marjorie White, assistant editor; Austin Freeley, editor-in-chief; and Priscilla Packard, assistant editor. Second row: Virginia Crawford, literary editor; Pauline Pipes, news editor; Madeline Barker, class reporter; and Shirley Carmichael, art editor. Back row: Albert Perkins, art editor; Rellon Cole, exchange editor; and Rodney Morgan, feature editor.
    From youth into old age he remembered riding the backcountry with a life-long friend Bonita. His love of horses carried with it a commitment to teach young people who were interested. All were invited to share his bliss. They could choose to ride Western or English; it didn’t matter to Rodney as long as they helped with keeping the giant barn out back clean and the horses well fed.
    Lord knows how many adults today remember those special times of youth. Maria, his niece, recalled how she, her brother Johnny and sister Charmaine would look forward to their annual summer trips back to the farm with great relish. With their grandmother GiGi and mother Molly, both accomplished riders, they would travel from southern Maine or Florida or California where Molly was a nurse to this busy working potato farm for renewed vitality in this blessed place.
    Everybody I have met here thought the world of Rod. They respected his keen intelligence, Maine work ethic and his always striving to do the right thing. In his boyhood days, he and his twin brother Robert attended the little one-room schoolhouse at the end of Siberia Road. He recalled once that his mother saw he and Robert in a tussle on the playground. When they got home she admonished them for roughhousing. They rarely did this again.
    That did not prevent them from taking their considerable boxing skills on the road however. Rod became State of Maine champ in his division in 1939 even though he had broken his back as a youngster falling off a hay wagon. Brother Robert went on to become an outstanding pugilist. During WWII, Robert boxed in the service to entertain the troops in the South Pacific before they went off to the jungle to win the war.
    Molly and her younger siblings were simpatico all their lives. No doubt they got it from their mother who was a force of nature and was also an accomplished equestrian. GiGi was widowed and brought her son Ben Daisey with her to the Morgan home. She was midwife to many women in the area who lived too far from doctors and hospitals. From all reports, she never lost a child in birth.
    Rodney would marvel at the fact that Ben Daisey could learn in school in Sherman at 12 p.m. and then hike 14 miles to Little Spring Brook, a hunting lodge that was famous for its prime hunting and fishing. The Morgan family valued highly the education of their kids. Their father was a teacher and their mother a person of sophistication and learning. They sent Rod, Robert and Muriel (Molly) to Ricker Classical Institute in Houlton where they graduated from high school; Molly received a nursing degree.
    As the war came on in 1942, Molly and Rod went to work for Pratt and Whitney in Hartford, Conn., building airplanes to help with the four-year struggle ahead. Rod was not able to enter the service with his serious back condition. In the ‘50s he married Norma Lane whom he said he fell in love with in grammar school. They went on to cultivate seed potatoes and moved back to the farm. When the potato business started to decline in the 1960s, he went to work for the Great Northern in East Millinocket.
    Rodney took his civic responsibility seriously. He was a town selectman when Katahdin High School was built and he represented his district in the state legislature. His politics were practical and always in the best interest of his constituency. Some of the politicians today could take a page from his book.
    On occasion Rod would invite me for a ride in his old green pick-up truck. We traveled the logging road into the site of Hunts old lodge on the East Branch, the quickest way into the Wassataquit Wilderness where the logging harvest thrived in the first part of the 20th century.
    In his later years he was sometimes forgetful. After traveling down some rutted single-lane logging roads – unmarked – he asked me where we were. I said – no clue. He shot back, “I don’t know where the hell I came from and I don’t know where the hell I’m going.” Pretty quick some hunters were coming toward us in a pickup. They knew Rod and told us to follow them out.
    Other memorable times were visits to the Patten Lumbermen’s Museum where he could identify and probably used many of the farm implements. The pictures and memorabilia triggered some fascinating stories. The guide there loved to see him coming and would pepper him with questions about life hereabouts over the past 75 years.
    I consider myself extraordinarily fortunate to have made his acquaintance. Having spent summers and school vacations in northern Maine over the past 50 years I have known three wise, decent and exceptional men who have given me a lifetime of vicarious pleasure. Rod was one of them. As a youth I met Junior York, a guide on the West Branch and what is now Baxter State Park, whose family operated a set of sporting camps on Daisey Pond for 100 years. When I came to Benedicta to set roots it was Richard Rush, dairy farmer, whose love of history and knowledge was the perfect compliment to Rodney’s experiences in this special place. All three are perfect examples of “The Greatest Generation.”
    True to form Rod had dinner with Maria and Molly in their home down Siberia Road and then walked home the night before he passed. He did it the way he said he wanted – as independent to the last; his grandfather and father had done before him in the old homestead. A true son of Maine.
    Editor’s note: George “Gig” Kerivan lives in Harvard, Mass. His subject, Mr. Morgan, died June 12, 2012 at the age of 90 in the house he was born in.