Interviewer

Mike Hastings

Date

1-10-2009

ID Number

GMOH 057

Document Type

Interview

Subject Headings

Bowdoin College, Mitchell Institute

Abstract

Biographical Note
Scott Logan was born on February 17, 1977, in Exeter, New Hampshire. His father, Terence Logan, held a Ph.D. from Harvard University and taught English at the University of New Hampshire. Scott’s mother was from rural southern Maryland, and they met at Newton College of the Sacred Heart, in Newton, Massachusetts, where Terence was a professor and Scott’s mother was a student. Scott grew up in Kennebunk, Maine, and was interested in collecting and selling antiques, and in local history. For this business, he received a scholarship from the National Association of the Self-Employed. He was also one of the first Mitchell Scholars, in 1995, attending Bowdoin College and graduating in 1999. He first met his future wife, Carrie, at Bowdoin through their mutual membership in Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. He worked at Christie’s Auction Company and then the auctioneering firm Skinner, Inc. He then attended law school at Boston College, and at the time of this interview, he was an attorney specializing in consumer bankruptcy.

Carrie Logan was born on December 24, 1977, in Portland, Maine, to Donald McGilvery and Cheryl Poulin McGilvery. Her parents, both from Maine, met at Cony High School, and both were graduated from the University of Maine, Orono. Her father worked in architecture and construction management for the Maine State Housing Authority, and her mother worked in education and at the time of this interview was the secretary at William H. Rowe School in Yarmouth. Carrie grew up in Yarmouth, Maine, attended Yarmouth public schools, and was selected as a Mitchell Scholar. She attended Bowdoin College, where she met Scott, and was graduated with the class of 2000. Through the Teach For America program, she taught in Opelousas, Louisiana, for two years and then became an English-as-a-Second-Language teacher in Houston, Texas, before returning to Maine to study at the University of Maine School of Law. She took her law degree in 2007 and was practicing business and real estate law at Preti Flaherty in Portland, Maine, at the time of this interview.

Summary
Interview includes discussion of: Scott’s family and educational background in Kennebunk; Scott’s antique bottle interest; Scott’s education; Carrie’s family and educational background in Yarmouth; the decision to go to Bowdoin College; paying for college; the Mitchell Institute and Mitchell Scholarship; life at Bowdoin and Alpha Delta Phi; Carrie’s work teaching in the South with Teach for America; coming back to Maine; Scott dealing antiques; and more recent involvement with the Mitchell Institute.

Restrictions

This recording and transcription are © 2011 Bowdoin College and are presented for private study, scholarship, or research only. For all other uses, including publication, reproduction, and quotation beyond “fair use” (Title 17, United States Code) permission must be obtained in writing from the George J. Mitchell Dept. of Special Collections & Archives, Bowdoin College Library, 3000 College Station, Brunswick, Maine 04011-8421, USA.

TEXT

Mike Hastings: The following is a recorded interview of the George J. Mitchell Oral History Project. I’m Michael Hastings, the interviewer, the date is January 10, 2009, and the interview is being conducted in Portland, Maine, at 2066 Washington Avenue, right near the Falmouth line, and we have Scott Logan and Carrie Logan. I’d like to begin by asking you, Scott, to state your full name and spell your last name.

Scott Logan: Okay, my full name is John Scott Logan, last name L-O-G-A-N.

MH: And your date of birth?

SL: Date of birth is February 17, 1977.

MH: Where were you born?

SL: I was born in Exeter, New Hampshire.

MH: Okay, and - ?

Carrie Logan: I’m Carrie Logan, that’s C-A-R-R-I-E, and Logan is the same, and my birthday is December 24, 1977, in Portland, Maine.

MH: I’d like to ask you about your parents, and where did they begin their lives, and tell me a little bit about your mother and father.

SL: Sure, my father grew up outside of Boston. He went to Boston College and got his Ph.D. from Harvard University, and he was an English professor at University of New Hampshire for a number of years.

CL: His name?

SL: His name was Terence Logan.

MH: Terence?

SL: Terence, yes. My mother grew up in southern Maryland. She was the daughter of a country doctor in rural, rural southern Maryland, where my grandfather was the doctor to the Amish people, and she went to a little school called Newton College of the Sacred Heart where my father was a professor -

MH: In Newton, Massachusetts.

SL: Newton, Massachusetts, and she started dating her English professor her freshman year, and shortly afterward the nuns at Newton College asked my father to leave. They left and went down to the University of Maryland where my mother graduated, and then they moved up to Maine when my father got his job at the University of New Hampshire.

MH: Where in Maine did they -?

SL: They purchased right on Kennebunk Beach, in the 1970s, so that’s where my sister was living when I was born in Exeter Hospital in New Hampshire, so I’m sort of a Mainer but not quite a true Mainer because I was born in New Hampshire. My parents already lived in Maine.

CL: And, let’s see, my father is Donald McGilvery, M-c-G-I-L-V-E-R-Y, and my mother is Cheryl, C-H-E-R-Y-L, Poulin, P-O-U-L-I-N McGilvery. My mom grew up in South China, Maine, and my father grew up in Augusta, Maine, and they met at Cony High School when they were probably freshmen and ended up together after a while. My dad has had a couple of careers. He went to the University of Maine in Orono, as did my mother. She started at Farmington and then transferred to Orono. [My dad] has been an architect, and in construction—the management side of construction—and [he] currently works for the Maine State Housing Authority. My mother was a teacher—a preschool teacher for a while—and is currently the secretary at William H. Rowe School in Yarmouth. I grew up in Yarmouth, and I have one sister who’s younger than I.

MH: Do you have any brothers, sisters?

SL: I do have a sister who lives in Boston; she’s a clinical psychologist. I grew up in Kennebunk as well.

MH: Okay, so tell me what it was like to grow up in Kennebunk.

SL: Well, it was a very different lifestyle. I actually grew up right on the ocean, and growing up, we were the only year round family within about a mile and a half, so [I] didn’t have a whole lot of friends growing up, and I spent just about all my time running out over the rocks. I used to go out probably half a mile off the coast, clambering over the seaweed and the barnacle-covered rocks and finding all kinds of things. By the time I was ten I could reach into the water and pick up lobsters, which are actually very hard to pick up because they can move really quickly. And you know, just be able to go pick up the foot-long starfish and all the things that you used to hear about existing on the beach in Maine, which doesn’t really probably exist quite so much anymore.

MH: Did you go to local schools?

SL: I went to Kennebunk all the way through high school.

MH: Kennebunk and Kennebunkport are separate, is that right?

SL: Sort of. They have separate grade schools, and then they join for middle school and the high school is only in Kennebunk.

MH: And tell me about high school life in Kennebunk.

SL: Well, yes, I wasn’t the most popular person. I became an antique dealer when I was about thirteen years old, and being an antique dealer who grew up not very close to many people my age really probably didn’t make me the most popular -

CL: He was really popular with the ladies.

SL: Yeah, they liked antique dealers.

CL: They do now.

SL: They do now, yes.

CL: Also you were very academically oriented.

SL: I was, yes, very much.

MH: In what areas were you most interested?

SL: I was most interested actually in local history. I used to work at the local historical society.

MH: Have you ever done oral histories?

SL: I have done oral histories, I did -

MH: I feel like I might be graded.

SL: No, no, it’s been a long time. My senior year in college, I did a history of the interaction between ante-modernist vacationers and the Penobscot Indians in Kennebunkport at the turn of the century, so I did a lot of oral histories with people who at that point were in their mid-eighties, in the Kennebunk area.

MH: About the Canuck Club, I’m sure.

SL: Yeah, and all that, and so yeah, I’ve done some oral histories with that.

MH: Very good. How did you end up becoming an antique dealer at age thirteen?

SL: Well, the story goes that my grandfather, as I said, he was a country doctor and he used to do a lot of gardening and he dug up a couple of old medicine bottles when he was gardening and gave them to me, and I got interested in collecting antique bottles, and there was actually, the local New England Association of Antique Bottle Collectors had its meetings in Kennebunk so I used to go their meetings and we used to go bottle digging – still try to go bottle digging when I can, it’s harder to find the bottle dumps – and got into that and then inevitably ended up with fifty of the same bottle and started selling the bottles at local antique stores, and just sort of branched out from there.

MH: It is an interesting sideline for a teenager.

SL: Yes.

CL: But you did, you had the National Association of the Self-Employed.

SL: Yeah, that’s true, I got a big scholarship from them my senior [year] because I had my own business.

MH: What does that group do?

SL: It’s a small business—really lobbyists. They lobby for small business people, and give a scholarship for people who have their own businesses. And you know, that sort of thing helped me out through college—certainly the scholarships I got helped me a lot—but I also used to go to auctions in Topsham and drive over there every week and buy things -

MH: Can we just get for the record where you went to college?

SL: Yes, I went to Bowdoin College.

MH: I see, and you studied history there.

SL: I studied history and art history.

MH: So that’s one thing you have in common with Senator Mitchell.

SL: And we both ended up being lawyers.

MH: And where did you go to law school?

SL: I actually went to Boston College Law School, which interestingly, it’s located on the campus of Newton College of the Sacred Heart, so it was ironic that I went to the law school that took over the buildings after my mother’s college became defunct.

MH: And after law school?

SL: After law school I moved to Maine, I started dating Carrie again. [We] dated a little bit in college and then started dating again I guess it was towards the end of my first year of law school, so started coming up every week. And she moved – she was living in Texas at the time – she moved up here after my second year, and [I]’d drive up every weekend and stay at her parents’ house my third year in law school. So I did my best to get a job up here in Maine and moved to Maine right after graduation. We bought this house a week before I took my bar exam.

MH: Optimism. Why don’t you catch me up through, at least up through Bowdoin, Carrie.

CL: So, let’s see, through Bowdoin, okay.

MH: You’re growing up in Yarmouth.

CL: I’m like, wait, I skipped all the Yarmouth stuff, so yeah.

MH: You’re growing up in Yarmouth?

CL: I did. I grew up in Yarmouth. I went to the Yarmouth public schools throughout my time there, and in high school was heavily involved in athletics and drama and other kind of clubs and really enjoyed school; I always enjoyed school. [I] ended up going to Bowdoin College, early decision. I knew it was where I wanted to go, and that was [in] 1996 [when] I graduated from college [sic: high school], which would be the year that I was a Mitchell Scholar.

SL: High school.

CL: I mean, I’m sorry, high school, yes, strike that from the transcript. I feel like I’m in a deposition.

MH: Graduated from high school in 1996.

CL: 1996, and Scott was 1995, which I believe was the first year of the Mitchell Scholarships, and it was run differently; I’m sure we’ll talk about that a little bit later - And at Bowdoin I was a psychology major and -

MH: Cycle back to Yarmouth, tell me a little bit about growing up in Yarmouth.

CL: Sure, oh, more about Yarmouth. Okay. Small town; it’s a very just kind of idealistic place to grow up. It was a great place to grow up. I grew up in a neighborhood of kids and everyone could run around the neighborhood all the time safely and just play – played a lot in the woods, played a lot in the streams and the ponds and things like that, and played football and kickball and basketball; I was just a good, solid Maine kid. And I had several really close friends, and really enjoyed growing up in Yarmouth.

MH: What did you do in the summers?

CL: Oh, summers were great. Played outside. I mean I was a kid that slept in really late, and my friend David would come over and knock on the door and get me out of – my mom would get me out of bed – and we would just play all day long. And like I said, you could play anywhere in the neighborhood and be safe. And it was a nice leisurely way to grow up. And then of course as I got older, I had [a summer job] in Freeport, in retail – yay. But that was useful for needing a car and wanting a car, and that accomplished its purpose.

MH: Now, did you go to Yarmouth High School?

CL: I did – graduated from Yarmouth High School.

MH: There is a private school in Yarmouth.

CL: North Yarmouth Academy. Yup, public schools all the way, for both of us.

MH: And you both ended up at Bowdoin, okay. Was Bowdoin, she said it was her first choice and early decision, was it the same with you?

SL: In Maine they had a thing where they invited one or two kids from every high school to visit Bowdoin the spring of their junior years. At that time, I was ultimately the valedictorian in my class, but at that point I was third in my class and they invited the first two, and one of them really didn’t want to go, so I got the default position to go. So I went there and actually felt really comfortable walking around the campus and got to attend a class. And of course the class I got to attend was Professor Nyhus, who had courses in Hubbard Hall, and so you would go in there and you’d be in a, I think it was a western wing or something, but one of those big rooms and all old gothic granite and everybody’s in this huge classroom and these towering cathedral ceilings and it just – for a history buff it was the perfect experience. So I went there, and really had my heart set on Bowdoin at that point, but I didn’t really end up applying early decision. I kind of shopped around and thought about going to other schools in Pennsylvania and Maryland, but ultimately got into Bowdoin and so decided to go there.

MH: The price tags didn’t scare you?

SL: The price tags definitely scared me, and that was a big part of it. And my mother—my parents divorced when I was young – and my mother really didn’t have the strongest work ethic and she didn’t really like to work, so we kind of grew up really in poverty. It was poverty by choice on her part, and it was poverty by choice for the house directly across the street from the ocean, which is always – if you got to grow up in poverty, that’s the way to do it. And so I was sort of encouraged to think about going. Gettysburg offered me a full scholarship, and a little college in Baltimore called Goucher offered me a full scholarship, and I was very tempted by those but really didn’t – Bowdoin, while it didn’t offer a full scholarship, it was definitely the best school that I got into, so -

CL: For me it was that my parents just never – I mean I knew it would cost a lot of money, but they just said, “Go where you want to go and we’ll figure it out.” [ ] Fortunately Bowdoin made it happen

MH: So tell me how each of you came upon the Mitchell Scholarship. I know nothing about the Mitchell Scholarship program, I don’t, I have no connections at all, except I may have given something at some point in the past I think, but tell me about it.

SL: Well, as I sort of indicated, it was brand new my senior year, so I think it was just something where we got lists from the high school guidance counselor of scholarships that were available. My sister had graduated from high school seven years before me and she went off to Amherst and actually got very close to a full scholarship between the local scholarships and Amherst’s scholarships. I applied for all of the local ones. I was valedictorian of my class but for whatever reason, my year, the local scholarships decided that they weren’t going to give the scholarship to the valedictorian, because the valedictorian always got all the scholarships. So I didn’t get any of the local ones, and I went more for regional, statewide and national ones and was lucky enough to get the Mitchell one.

At that point, the Mitchell Scholarship was only given to one high school student, one person -

CL: The goal was for, over the course of several years, the Mitchell Institute to provide one scholarship to every high school in the state of Maine, meaning one year Scott will get it from Kennebunk and maybe – how many were there, even? Probably ten or twelve a year, that was it.

SL: About twelve a year, and Kennebunk wouldn’t be eligible to get another one until all the other high schools in Maine had gotten one.

CL: Right, and now, I mean the program – [p/o] because I still have involvement with the Mitchell Institute so I can kind of speak to what it’s like now. At that time, I was the Yarmouth recipient, and I just recall that it was, I think it was a $2500, one time scholarship. And you know, it involved the funding, and then we had a reception with the Senator and his wife. I think it was in Bangor, Maine.

SL: It was in Bangor.

CL: There had to have been fewer than a dozen people that received it my year, in 1996. And then that was it, really. We didn’t hear anything else from the Mitchell Foundation – I think it was run by the Maine Community Foundation back at the time; it’s run differently now. Now the way it works, it’s just such a far more comprehensive program. I got back in touch with the Mitchell Institute when I finished law school, because I thought it was a really great way to be involved in the community, and I was so thankful for the money that I received at the time. I thought I could give back, and I’m a member of the Mitchell Institute Alumni Council now, which helps in a variety of ways with the institute. One of our most recent projects was to select recipients of scholarship money who are – they are currently Mitchell Scholars and they applied for funding to do various programs or study abroad or things of that sort. They’re in college, and actually alums are also eligible for it, so we went through that selection process and gave out scholarships for that.

So now the way the Mitchell Scholarship works, it’s, I think (the numbers may not be right for what I’m saying), but it’s about $5000 or something like that, but I think it’s spread out over the course of four years. And they provide heavy services to the students who are recipients of the scholarship. Now they give one scholarship to every high school every year, I think is the way it is. So however many high schools there are in the state of Maine, they predominantly give the scholarships to students who are going to college in Maine. When Scott and I received it, you had to be going to college in Maine, so somebody who was going down to Massachusetts couldn’t receive it. Now I believe they’ve extended it a bit so that other folks can receive it as well.

And the services that they provide throughout the four years are just really incredible. They have mentoring programs, professionally. I’m a member, Scott and I, I think, are both signed up for that, to answer questions about law. We’re both in law. I’m a lawyer as well, and so students can contact us if they have questions. They provide advice on how to get summer jobs, they provide advice on resume writing, cover letter writing, all kinds of confidence building, all kinds of things. There’s one event coming up next month called the MILE II event, which is held at UNUM. UNUM provides the facility at no cost I believe to the Mitchell Institute, which is great, and it’s just - They have a panel of speakers that are just giving the kids – ‘the kids,’ I sound like I’m four thousand years old – the current scholars who are in college, and some alums as well, ideas of different careers that you can enter, and different workshops on – I think this year we’re having one on how to manage your finances.

So it’s just, the program has come a long, long way. And then on top of that they have a – I think they have an outing, some sort of a – like rafting or something outdoors that they do with the scholars. And again, it’s just this kind of team building and kind of confidence building and support. I know that a lot of the scholars feel very comfortable contacting the institute – Patty Higgins and the other folks there, Lisa Veleff – about, if they have questions, if they have concerns, if they’re confused about something that’s going on at college. I know that they feel very comfortable talking to those folks, which is great. I’ve been contacted by one scholar, for example, who [ ] needed some legal advice. He’s from an immigrant family and his family speaks very little English and he just didn’t really know who to turn to, and he turned to the Mitchell Institute and they referred him to me and I think I was able to help him out. So it’s just a far more comprehensive program than it was originally.

MH: $5000, though, in this, particularly with a school like Bowdoin, isn’t a great deal, given how much -

CL: Well, and don’t quote me on the number – I could be wrong on the number – but if you think about the broad impact that that’s having…. It’s $5000 times however many kids they’re giving it to every year. I mean that is an incredible amount of money. And to manage that endowment and manage however – I don’t even know how – what all the financial aspects are of it, but to manage all that and provide so many scholarships to so many Maine students is incredible.

SL: And also it’s very substantial for people who are going to the state schools.

CL: Right, and a lot of kids do.

SL: It’s a good chunk of your tuition.

CL: Yeah, a lot of kids go to the UMaine schools and, you know, Husson College and SMTC and everything, so it’s significant. It really is.

MH: When you were, the two of you were at Bowdoin, were there many Mitchell Scholars?

SL: No, I think I was probably – my year – I think I was the only one who went to Bowdoin. There might have been maybe five or so by the time I graduated.

CL: I recall one kid with red hair, if I remember his name, his name was Tom. I think there were one, maybe one or two others [from] my year. Since you had to be going to a Maine school it was possible to have several at Bowdoin at the time.

MH: I’m judging from all the Bowdoin memorabilia that I see around, or that’s probably not the right term for it, but items that you see on the walls, that you’re, you have good feelings about Bowdoin, and maybe that’s an extrapolation that is not accurate, but can you tell me a little bit about your, I mean this is, obviously this oral history project is housed at Bowdoin, they have a particular interest in people that have a Bowdoin connection as well as a Mitchell connection, and talk a little bit about Bowdoin and your experience there and reflect on it, now that you’ve been out a while.

SL: I can say I had a great time at Bowdoin. I think our life now is much better and going to be getting more interesting and better in the near future when our son is born. But certainly up to that point in my life, it was definitely the best – the best time of life. I had a wonderful time there, and when I got there, went on a pre-orientation trip and instantly had friends, and it was the first time in my life that I had friends. Now, I spent probably more time in the library while I was there than quite possibly any other person in the history of the school.

CL: Than has ever gone to Bowdoin.

SL: But you know, I still had friends and still hung out with them on weekend nights maybe, after the library closed, and it closed at like ten o’clock on Saturday so you had plenty of free time to hang out with friends. And actually, I had a really good time because my sophomore year I became involved in a fraternity and that’s actually how we met. We were both members of Alpha Delta Phi, which at the time provided a really strong sense of community for us. [ ] We had our friends but the house kind of acted as a family and it was a place to live and everybody hung out. We all had our meals together. And so that really strengthened my good feelings towards Bowdoin, definitely, and hey, it resulted in my marriage.

MH: So you were an AD as well?

CL: I was. I had a decent experience at Bowdoin. I think I made some social decisions that were just - I got a boyfriend immediately, and he took up way too much of my time. But I also joined Alpha Delta Phi the same year Scott did. Rright?

SL: Yeah, you were a freshman, I was a sophomore.

CL: Yeah, I was freshman, he was a sophomore, and then ended up moving into the house. He lived in the house as well, so it’s kind of funny. We lived together a long time ago and now live together as well. But I have come to appreciate Bowdoin even more since I graduated. It’s incredible to move back to Maine. Just, I think a little gap in what I said about myself was that when I graduated from Bowdoin I moved down South and joined the Teach For America program and lived in rural Louisiana for two years, and then Houston, Texas, for two years after that, and was a third grade English-as-a-Second-Language teacher.

MH: Well, stop; tell me more about that.

CL: I didn’t study away when I was at Bowdoin, on a study abroad trip. Scott studied in Scotland for a year, or for a half year, and I didn’t have that study-away experience – so I feel like my Louisiana experience more than made up for that, culturally, and just seeing a different part of the country. I grew up in Maine, went to Bowdoin College. That’s about as sheltered as you can be, and that was a huge, huge eye opener to move down there and just see the way that other parts of the country still work. It’s a very backwards area in a lot of ways. There’s still a lot of racism and -

MH: What part, was it northern or southern Illinois?

CL: It was Louisiana. I lived in a town called Opelousas, which is O-P-E-L-O-U-S-A-S, and taught in Sunset, Louisiana, which the entire town had a population of two thousand people. It was kind of south central Louisiana. If you know where Baton Rouge is, it’s about an hour and a half west of Baton Rouge on, I guess I-10 – I-10 was the highway, I think. And so that was just an incredible experience. It’s a place where there are a lot of festivals and parades and, you know -

MH: It’s strawberry country, isn’t it, don’t they grow a lot of strawberries down -

CL: Well, I think that there may have been a strawberry festival – I identify everything by a festival. There was a frog festival, a shrimp and petroleum festival, together, a yam festival. Opelousas was yam capital of somewhere – probably be U.S., or the world; I don’t know. But I went to my first debutante ball, and I was really good friends actually with some of the African American community members, and it was an all African American debutante ball, and I and my colleague were the two white people there with about five hundred non-white people there, and it was quite an experience. Very welcoming and very fun. So it’s a town that loves its football team and that kind of place, so it was -

MH: When you went into the Teach [For] America program, did you plan to go to two places, Louisiana and Texas, or was that kind of a something that you did after you re-upped?

CL: I actually did not plan on going to two places. It’s a two-year program and I was assigned to go to Louisiana – I picked Louisiana – I wanted to go someplace completely different and that was one of the completely different places that was offered. And so I did two years there, and [ ] the Teach [For] America program had its training institute in Houston, Texas, and so before the program even started I had gone to Houston to train there and met some really great people and met some great friends and really loved Houston, so after my two years was up in Louisiana I decided to continue teaching. It wasn’t officially still with Teach For America, although I was at a school that had Teach For America teachers, so it was still an underserved population. That’s the whole mission of the Teach For America program, is to bring quality education to all parts of the country, and particularly to schools that are failing or schools that are under-resourced, underfunded. So my second two years [were] in Texas.

And then I got back in touch with Scott and realized that, for one, teaching wasn’t for me. I knew that – I definitely was not – it was not for me, and he was going into law school and I had a friend down in Houston who was an attorney and just kind of got interested and looking into that, and I came up and went to the University of Maine School of Law, which is where I graduated from in 2007.

MH: Very good. So tell me where you work now.

SL: I actually do just consumer bankruptcy work at a small firm, and probably have my own practice in the not too, too distant future, just because the economy is booming for consumer bankruptcy right now.

MH: I was going to say -

SL: So it’s a good time to be doing that.

CL: And I work at Preti Flaherty, P-R-E-T-I Flaherty, downtown in Portland, and I do business law and real estate law as well.

MH: Have you had much interaction with the Senator [Mitchell] since you graduated from college?

SL: I really haven’t had a tremendous amount; I have through Carrie recently. At one time in college I did get invited to a luncheon in which I got to sit between Senator Mitchell and Leon Gorman, because I was a Mitchell Scholar, that was probably the high point of my -

CL: And you owned L.L. Bean boots.

SL: That’s right. Shopped at L.L. Bean and so that was a pretty exciting little time, though, because there weren’t very many Mitchell Scholars and so I—I think I was the only one invited—and it was very nice to sit between two dignitaries like that at a luncheon. But I really didn’t have too much experience with the Mitchell Institute after college. Actually, after college I went down and worked at Christie’s Auction Company, because I always wanted to [ ] work at an auction company or a museum, and there really weren’t that many options for that in Maine. And so I worked there for a while and then I came back -

MH: For how long did you do that?

SL: Worked there actually only about six months. From there I went up to Skinner, which is the New England equivalent of Christie’s, if there is such a thing, and worked there for about two years as a silver specialist, and so I catalogued all of the silver and -

MH: Not glass?

SL: No, not glass.

MH: Not bottles.

SL: Couldn’t. They didn’t have a bottle department at the time, so I learned silver and sort of just got the job on a whim and figured out how to identify silver and, you know, go out to people’s houses and get the consignments in and organize the sales and -

MH: So it was a lot of house calls.

SL: It was actually a lot of house calls. It was very nice, very rewarding.

MH: People don’t bring their silver in for appraisal.

SL: Sometimes they do bring their silver in for appraisal, but usually it’s, people don’t have a collection of silver, typically. I had a few house calls where they actually had collections of silver, but it’s pretty much just getting a piece here and a piece there and sometimes people would bring in questions and sometimes I would go out on house calls -

MH: Was the Antiques Road Show phenomenon begun by then?

SL: That was interesting because I was sort of the junior member of my department. There were four of us, and actually all of the specialists at Skinner all sat in one big room, and there were like twelve specialists. Two of us were not on the Road Show; everybody else did the Road Show. And actually at the time the president’s husband was the host of the Road Show, so it was just everybody. It was pretty much just the Skinner Road Show and everybody was on television except for me.

CL: And we still watch it, and he knows everybody [ ] from Skinner that was on that show. It’s pretty funny.

SL: So I lived in Waltham, Massachusetts, for two years and then continued to live there while I went to law school, and I really only became involved with the Mitchell Institute again – actually Carrie’s firm has a, it’s sort of connected with the Mitchell Institute. And so we’ve gotten to go to some events for that group since she started.

CL: Yeah, [ ] I’ve met the Senator a couple of times. He was actually the keynote speaker at my law school graduation, which was kind of cool, and a good friend of mine was the student speaker and they had in common Ireland, and so my friend spoke a lot about Ireland and the Senator was quite impressed with his speech. He’s a funny guy, my friend. The Senator seems pretty funny, too, sometimes. But I met him at that and pointed out that, that we have kind of interesting parallels with both having gone to Bowdoin and both being attorneys, and I think Scott and I may be the first Mitchell Scholars to get married, which was kind of fun, and we’re both attorneys. It was just kind of neat. And then we attended the gala this last year, which is a fund-raising event for the Mitchell Institute, which was great. We were invited by the Mitchell Institute to kind of just sit at one of their tables, which was a lot of fun. I feel like I’ve met him before. We always go to Maine Day at [Fenway Park]; the Mitchell Institute gives Red Sox tickets, and we always go – we always hit that – which is great. And then I have spent a little time talking with Patty Higgins and the other folks at the Mitchell Institute as well.

MH: How many employees does the institute [employ], I mean roughly?

CL: Well, I think that they probably have five or six full timers, probably, and then the board of directors has got to be—I don’t—I can’t think of how many.

SL: There’s twelve.

CL: There are a lot of people on that list, probably more than – more like twenty. One of the attorneys at my firm, Estelle Lavoie, L-A-V-O-I-E, is a board member and she kind of got me back in touch with the Mitchell Institute, or helped me get back in touch. I would love to sit on the board someday. Scott and I have had an interesting time with the institute actually, kind of transitioning from being a scholar alum to being kind of a professional member of the community. It’s been a little bizarre, the -

SL: It’s hard, because we were year one and two, so most of the people who are - And of course at that time there were like eight or nine people, so most of the people who are Mitchell, even the alumni, are graduates in the past two or three years, and so I think that it’s a little bit difficult to recognize that there are people who are into their professional careers and ready to give back.

CL: In that capacity, yeah.

SL: Rather than people who need guidance still, so.

MH: I want to ask you, is there anything you’d like to say about Mitchell or about the Mitchell Institute, or about your experiences that I haven’t asked a question about?

CL: I actually thought of the other time that I - I went to an event last year where the Senator was acknowledged by – and I can’t think of the name of the group, it was an international kind of group -

MH: World Affairs Council.

CL: Yes, that was what it was; thank you.

MH: I was there, actually.

CL: Oh, were you? Okay, I was too.

MH: That’s the only reason I know it.

CL: Yup, and that was an -

MH: At the Portland Country Club, yes.

CL: Yes, yes, exactly. But I just can’t imagine being as accomplished – I can’t. Personally I can’t imagine being as accomplished as he has been. It’s incredible, the breadth of experience he has, from politics to everything with baseball, and sticking with his Maine roots and wanting to help kids in Maine become educated. I mean I’m really on the same page as he is when it comes to that – that portion – especially with public education and getting kids to realize that you really have got to receive the education, you’ve got to earn it, you’ve got to stick with it in order to achieve. And I think he also has an extreme concern with the number of talented Mainers who leave Maine and do not come back, unfortunately. I mean Scott and I left Maine, and I think it was probably us as a couple that caused us to come back and realize that we wanted to raise a family here, but it’s hard to find jobs in Maine, and I know the Senator has talked about that on a number of occasions, particularly for professionals. So that’s certainly a goal I think of the Mitchell Institute, is to teach kids that this is a great place to live, and give them the tools to have marketable skills.

MH: We’ll end there. Thank you very much; I appreciate your taking time on a Saturday afternoon.

CL: Of course. It’s the only time we have.

MH: Very good.

End of Interview

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