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A Note from the President of the Board

As we head into the fall and begin to wind down our season at the Fifth Maine Museum, there is much to celebrate! This has been an especially strong year, with an increased number of museum visitors, exciting new programming, tremendous volunteer support, and important improvements to our historic building.

We welcomed significantly more visitors to the Museum this year and launched a new self-guided audio tour of Memorial Hall authored by museum Trustee, Curtis Mildner. We also opened Abandon Ship!: Mishaps and Maydays on Casco Bay, a fantastic new exhibit curated by Susan Hanley with Holly Hurd-Forsyth as project manager, Eric Eaton as exhibit designer, and Danny Hanley as carpenter extraordinaire.

We are thrilled that our membership campaign reached its goal. A heartfelt thank-you to our members for your generous support! And thank you to this season’s sponsors of our events, programs, and exhibits: JDGlenn and Associates, Peaks Island Fuel Co, Mike’s Carts, Island Lobster Company, Baba’s Café, and Peaks Island Golf Carts.

Thanks also to Lauren Tosswill, Spencer Robinson, and Steven Fox who did an outstanding job keeping the Museum running smoothly and supporting our wonderful docents.

Behind the scenes, we made important investments in the Museum’s future, including ten new porch rail sections, deck boards, a new rubber roof membrane over the dining room, and freshly painted porch deck and front stairs.

None of this would be possible without our extraordinary community. To our members, docents, volunteers, staff, sponsors, donors, and visitors: thank you for making this such a memorable season!

Mike Langella, President of the Board of Directors

Thank you to everyone who lent a hand this season!

This season at the Fifth Maine was only possible because of our incredible team of volunteers, staff, and community. From flipping pancakes and watering flowers to painting the porch, snapping photos, giving tours, printing t-shirts, and so much more! Thank you to everyone listed below for generously giving your time to support the Fifth Maine:

THANK YOU!

Book Talk with author Martin Dobrow this Saturday, September 26, at 6PM

Join us at the Fifth Maine Museum this Saturday, September 26, from 6PM-7PM for an evening with author Martin Dobrow who will share on his soon-to-be-released book, Original City, Original Sin, which explores one of the great under-told stories in American history, namely the bloody civil rights campaign in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1963 and 1964.

This event is free and open to the public. We look forward to seeing you there!

From the Collection – The STAR Center, Survivalists, and the Early Internet on Peaks Island

Holly Hurd-Forsyth, Curator

Battery Steele was built in 1942. By 1945 it was obsolete technology.

There were many opinions about how to utilize the former Peaks Island Military Reservation in the decades following World War II. Battery Steele was at the center of these redevelopment efforts. Some of the ideas on how to reuse the structure are surprising.

In 1980 Peter Weyland, a pioneer in the survivalist movement, began his involvement in the effort to “begin the long and difficult job of transforming Battery Steele into a multi-purpose facility that can sustain a self-sufficient community.” (Lewiston Daily Sun, 3/10/1981) Weyland, secretary of The STAR Foundation which purchased the 12-acre site in 1980 for $25,000, owned a self-sufficiency consultancy firm in Virginia. He was part of a growing movement to teach people how to defend themselves and survive if American society collapsed. 

STAR stood for “Solar Technology and Applied Research” and the original plans for the Center are very different from what eventually transpired. In an 1981 article titled “Armed and Angry,” Weyland is quoted saying “Survivalism is one of the great growth industries of the 1980s.” (Kennebec Journal, 3/2/1981) One of Weyland’s projects was to create a “computer information clearinghouse” of survivalist resources that could be accessed “from any video computer terminal connected with the central computer center.”  (LDS, 3/10/1981). Battery Steele would serve as one of those “computer centers.” 

Hello early internet!

It seems like Weyland’s association with The STAR Center was short-lived, and his name is not associated with the effort after 1981. A group of islanders ran the center throughout the 1980s with an emphasis on clean energy generation, greenhouse food production, aquaculture, and education. The Center sold Battery Steele to the newly formed Peaks Island Land Preserve in 1995 for $70,000.

Researching Peaks Island history? Set up a research appointment! 

Contact Holly Hurd-Forsyth at [email protected]

Architecture of Healing

C. Ian Stevenson, PhD, Fifth Maine Museum Trustee

When it was built in 1888, the Fifth Maine Regimental summer cottage belonged to a larger impulse to use architecture and landscape to help Union veterans recover from a variety of lingering physical and psychological ailments of the Civil War. Just the year before, the Pension Building, designed by U.S. Army Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs, was completed in Washington, DC. It featured an ingenious system of windows, vents, and archways to fill the Great Hall with light and air. Similarly, the Fifth Maine’s designers, Frederic Tompson and Francis Fassett, incorporated the wide, wrap-around porch and open turret for the same effect to capture cooling ocean breezes to provide tonic to the vacationing veterans on Peaks. Where Meigs incorporated wide and low stairs to accommodate wounded veterans who might arrive on crutches, the Fifth Maine moved its original first floor kitchen and dining spaces (now the flag room and restrooms) to the basement extension in 1898 to create bedrooms that did not require stairs. Both contemporary buildings utilized the concepts of restoration pioneered by the federal government here in Maine at the Eastern Branch of the National Asylum For Disabled Volunteer Soldiers (Togus, outside Augusta), a defunct resort hotel converted in 1866, as a model for Union veteran care facilities. The Fifth operated outside the federal government’s purview, as a site of mutual aid for the former soldiers, but nonetheless borrowed prevailing concepts instituted in official capacities.

Ian Stevenson was interviewed this year on the Disabled American Veterans podcast regarding the subject of architecture designed for disabled veterans such as the Fifth Maine Museum. Click here to listen to the interview.

Guest Contribution from American Legion Post 142

Honor Flight Maine: A Long-Overdue Thank You

By Michael DiLorenzo and Stephen Kuzirian

For generations, Peaks Island has honored the men and women who served our country. Randall-MacVane American Legion Post 142 was established in 1931 to support local veterans, preserve their stories, and ensure their sacrifices would not be forgotten. Honor Flight Maine carries that same spirit of remembrance across the state.

Established in 2014, Honor Flight Maine provides veterans with free trips to Washington, D.C., to visit the memorials created in their honor. Veterans travel together, often accompanied by volunteer guardians, visiting sites including the World War II Memorial, the Korean War Veterans Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial.

For many participants, the journey is deeply personal. Veterans reconnect with others who served, share memories that may have gone unspoken for decades, and receive the public recognition that some never experienced when they returned home. Each trip concludes with a celebratory welcome home in Maine.

The connection to the American Legion is a natural one. Honor Flight Maine reports that local Legion posts, along with other veterans’ organizations and individual donors, have been important supporters of its work.

For Peaks Island veterans, Honor Flight represents an extension of the values that have guided Randall-MacVane Post 142 for nearly a century: fellowship, remembrance, community service, and gratitude. It offers veterans an opportunity to stand before the memorials built in their honor and reminds all of us of a simple responsibility: to listen to their stories, recognize their service, and make certain they know they have not been forgotten.

Post 142 donates $500 annually to this incredible program. If you would like to donate, please go to https://www.honorflightmaine.org/