Saving an Island School

TIME Boston Correspondent Philip Taubman took a trip down East recently to explore a special kind of depopulation problem. His report:

Trouble came to tiny Cliff Island, Me., on the second Tuesday in September last year. Residents of the wooded rock in Casco Bay were saddened but not surprised to hear what happened when Johanna von Tiling took attendance in the one-room schoolhouse that has nestled in the thick maples and spruce for 100 years. She counted seven students. A Maine law designed to discourage inefficient small schools requires a minimum of eight for a school to stay open.

The 60 year-round islanders, and some of the 250 summer regulars, saw the imminent demise of the school leading to the end of their island. The nearest mainland classes, where island teen-agers already go, are a 90-minute ferry ride to Portland. "We couldn't put our young ones on the 6:15 morning ferry and ask them to make that trip," says Lobsterman Jim Seymour, father of two grade school kids.

Killina Blow. Cliff Island could not afford to lose Seymour, or Ben O'Reilly Jr., who plows the heavy winter snows, or Bunk MacVane, Bub Anderson and Bruce Dyer, lobstermen all. Four hundred winter people lived on the island 70 years ago, but residents have been moving to the mainland and its more varied jobs for years. An exodus of the remaining young families would be the killing blow. The post office, the general store, the snow plow and even the daily ferry would stop. The island, still populated by descendants of its 17th century settlers, would become a ghost town.

With a year's grace granted by the Portland school committee, the tenacious lobstermen decided to try catching new children on the mainland for their school. O'Reilly's father-in-law found a family with six children willing to make the move. Trouble was, O'Reilly's father-in-law is head of the Portland welfare office, and the family he wanted to import was among his clients. In Maine, a lot of people still believe a man should always earn his own way. The islanders talked and debated and finally made a choice. The family of Carroll Wilcox, a former construction worker, was invited. "They are the right kind of welfare family," one lobsterman remarked at the time. "The father is sick. He can't work."

Good Fortune. In Maine, people have another powerful belief: when you do something, do it right. The island men, after a full day's work, labored together each evening to renovate and winterize a vacant house for the Wilcoxes. On June 17 the family moved in with three children of primary school age. Carroll Wilcox, the ailing father, told his new neighbors he would be willing to do part-time work.

Last month more good fortune came when Gordon Griffin, a 23-year Navy veteran, retired back to the island with his two school-age kids. "I like it here," he says. "I can live at my own pace. I'll be lobstering again pretty soon." So the school is safe. Enrollment may even reach 16 this September. The men keep working every evening on two more empty homes. When school opens this fall, they predict that Johanna von Tiling will have children from two or three more families to teach.

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