University of Virginia Library

Rob Buford

Seeking Reassurances
At Quiet Casco Bay

NORTH YARMOUTH, Maine -
This coastal village has no population
explosion. Quaint in ways
known only to New England the
town and its surrounding districts
suffer no apparent ecological distress.
And the swarms of vacationers,
often creating precisely the
din they race to escape, have largely
bypassed the area in favor of points
to the north. The townspeople
seem appropriately grateful.

Casco Bay, Icewardly tracing
within the line of outer islands, a
graceful irregularity of the Atlantic's
edge, glitters as water only
does beneath a northland summer
sun. Its surface is interrupted -
adorned perhaps - by thousands of
igneous projections.

Some are large, inhabited,
glowing richly with evergreen and
undergrowth. Others are equally
formidable but more modest rock
pillars ringed in seaweed, their tops
rising above all but the stormiest of
tides. There is the impression here
of things remaining longer than
they do in other places.

One of the summer islanders -
there are many in the bay, where
seasonal changes are radical shifts -
is Jack Needham. Robustly
mid-fortyish, he takes his family
every June to seek whatever it is
the bay has to offer. They desert
the car at a mainland pier and
approach their retreat by water.

Mr. Needham is headmaster at
North Yarmouth Academy. There,
in four classes, are 200 students.
The number is growing steadily but
not rapidly. Communications is a
key word with the headmaster, who
locates it somewhere near the base
of his administrator's constitution.
Policy is made only when the head
is content that ideas have crossed
precious channels.

Problems, Problems

Problem: drugs. Not so, says Mr.
Needham, who explains the rule:
"Any student discovered involved
in the use of drugs will be expelled
without appeal." Hard line perhaps,
but he says it works, in spite of the
reality that drugs have indeed
reached the town. The long-haired
kids who hang out along Main
Street, when they are not off on a
trip to High Street in Portland,
maintain sources other than the
subdued prescription counter at
Vaughan's Pharmacy. The outsider
cannot be certain any of them are
North Yarmouth Academy students.
If none are, here is cause for
separate wonder.

Problem: protest. No again,
assures the headmaster, recounting
in humored tones a recent hunger
strike arising from inconsistent
treatment of several students
caught drinking - some were
booted, some were kept. The strike,
it seems, collapsed quickly when
new-fashioned activism gave way to
old-fashioned hunger. The only disruption
occurred in the stampede
back to the dining room lest lunch
be missed. The "cause" went back
to the closet.

There must be a good sign in it
for Mr. Needham, who looks to-contrast
for evidence of successful
handling. Look at Deerfield, held
together for most of a century by
the mystic force of The Old Man,
Frank Boyden, golf cart wizard.
Since his retirement the so-called
progressive approach has flopped to
the mind of one who still trusts the
patrician ethic of Latin curriculum
and coats and ties for young
gentlemen.

It was at Deerfield not long ago
that a town parade, in which students
were annually required to
participate, was halted while a livid
chief of police entered school dormitories
to rip off NLF flags raised
by the kids. Drugs, too, are a big
part of Deerfield's scene.

But not at North Yarmouth,
says Mr. Needham, who was Jack
Kennedy follower from the early
days after the war. During the JFK
reign, he went down to Washington
to help his friend with Latin
American problems. It then
becomes understandable why,
about six years back, Mr. Needham
was a Boston man looking for a job.
The school in North Yarmouth was
it.

Faith In Future

Now, with things so changed,
the headmaster is a man seeking
reassurances. A near bitterness enters
his tone in considering the state
of things today. He detests Nixon
ambiguity politics and resents the
growing weight of problems unsolved.
Overriding it all is what he
calls great faith in the future.

Such men are worrying more
than they normally admit, and a
handful of preppies going Ho Ho
Ho down in Massachusetts is easy
to handle faced with heavier facts:
that Columbia is on the verge of
massive financial breakdown; that
Boston University may be shut
down by October; and that Berkeley
is surrounded by frenzied
Yippies, like drunken Sioux circling
a wagon train at dusk.

Reassurances being hard to
come by of late, Casco Bay may be
as good a place as any to seek them.

Several of the outer islands contain
ruins. They bear witness to an
earlier struggle, one unique to Mr.
Needham's generation. Like deserted
temples, concrete citadels,
stand massive lookout towers. As a
major harbor for the North Atlantic
Fleet during World War II, Portland
demanded tight security against
Hitler's submarines. Channels were
blocked, netted and mined to stop
the U-boats. Men stood guard for
years in wait of an enemy who
never came.