Transcription of Robin Zinchuk for the show Beautiful Bethel #268
Dr. Lisa: As a long time lover of the Bethel area and skier and I guess enjoyer of foods in that area and the lovely landscape, I can’t really say more to help people want to enjoy this except I think our next guest can probably do an even better job than me. This is Robin Zinchuk who’s the Executive Director of the Bethel Area Chamber of Commerce, a position she has held since March of 1986. In her professional career, Robin has brought the Chamber from a tiny non-profit organization with a post office box and a telephone answering machine to one with more than 225 business members, three full-time staff and a budget of more than $350,000. Amazing. You’re doing great stuff out there in Bethel.
Robin: It’s been a wonderful journey, incredible groups of people have helped along the way, pretty much worked with all volunteers, the board members, the volunteers that come and help at projects and events and we’ve altogether made it really great organization and have really I think helped to put the Bethel area on the map in all four seasons. I mean, one of the very first things you said was that you’re a lover of skiing and I think that’s what a lot of people think about when they think about Bethel and the Bethel area.
Obviously Sunday River and Mount Abram as ski destinations but it’s so much more than that and I think that we’ve really helped to bring people forward that can help to tell the story of why it’s such an incredible place to visit. We’ve seen a steady string of people who have maybe originally been visitors there. Maybe they were skiers or they came and hiked or whatnot but they really love the vibe of the place. They’ve come and brought now their talents from wherever it is they came from and really have enriched the community in so many ways.
The Bethel area is really becoming a terrific place for young retirees to come because they really value that community life that maybe the small town that they were from at one point in one of the Southern new England states or mid Atlantic states. They’ve seen so much change and growth that they are yearning for the more simpler community centered existence. Those folks obviously coming with almost a whole lifetime of experiences and perspectives have really enriched the areas so I’ve really enjoyed leading in a way that helps to facilitate people to come forward. That’s what I think my biggest gifts to the community has been.
Dr. Lisa: You began doing this back in 1986.
Robin: I was just a very, very young girl I guess, young woman, 29 years old.
Dr. Lisa: That was a long time ago.
Robin: That was a long time ago.
Dr. Lisa: You’ve made an incredible commitment to this area.
Robin: You know and I don’t think that when I started. I foresaw doing it for my life’s ambition. I don’t think I got into it thinking of that that way. I was a business owner. I owned a bed and breakfast. My husband and I bought a big old home right on the Bethel common and we didn’t really know what we were going to do with it. Somebody suggested a bed and breakfast because Sunday River was starting to grow and there wasn’t enough room base for the skiers. It was and being a business owner first that I got interested in the Chamber of Commerce.
I really didn’t even know what a Chamber of Commerce was when I first moved to the community but it was just a group of volunteers. At the time that I came on to the scene the group that was very involved was starting to get tired and a little burnt out. A few other young business owners and myself got together and we started dreaming about what the community could use and that the business community needed. As Sunday River was starting to grow and more people were coming to open small business, it was a very, very part time back then because I had little kids when I first started with the Chamber. I had two small children under the age of two and a half.
Then I quickly got pregnant with my third and it was oh my. Then the fourth came and it was oh, oh my. I did the burnt Chamber as I could with lots of other helpers. It’s just really grown. I didn’t really do the work full time until all of my children were in school. I had lots of people helping me. My husband’s always been self-employed so we did our kids as a team. They are all active little boys involved in lots of different things. The Chamber work just happened as we could make it happen and I learned from so many other people who are in the work, other community leaders around the state of what they were doing in their organizations and that really helped to inform what we could do. Yeah, it’s just been a journey.
I think one of the biggest turning points in the work was the year that I spent at Leadership Maine. The intention of that program is to take 40 some different individuals from all over the state and help us to understand about the Maine economy, all the different facets of the Maine economy. One of the very first trips that we took was up to Aroostook County after Loring Air Force Base had closed. We heard the story of the people of Aroostook County determined not to all have to leave because there was a big majority of people who had somehow been employed by the base or in conjunction with the prosperity that the base brought to Aroostook County.
That was really inspiring but there were lots of other stories that came here to Portland and we learned about Congress Street and the rebirth of Congress Street and how non-profits and the municipal government and private businesses worked together to ensure that Congress Street could prosper and they brought the Maine College of Art downtown and they re-invigorated Merrill Auditorium and they rebuilt the organ and the multicultural center up at the other end of the Congress Street. It was just those were each month’s topics and went around and learned about these incredible entrepreneurs in different corners of the state who are really making things happen.
I’ve always taken those lessons back to my own community and said, “Wow, if the people can do what they have done despite all kinds of difficult circumstances working against them, we can work with our assets to make this community and this region great.” That was a gift, the Leadership Maine year was a real gift.
Dr. Lisa: It is interesting to think about Maine because we are a state that’s been in transition really from the very beginning. I mean, we’ve had paper mills and other sorts of mills come and go. Sometimes they linger a little bit longer, sometimes they don’t. At one point, Bethel was considered a great farm land and was supplying fruits and vegetables to people I think really in this part of the world somewhere around the civil war if I’m remembering correctly. We’ve been lots of things to lots of people for hundreds, thousands of years if you consider the native Americans who lived here. If we decide that we’re going to be whatever it was that we are now and we need to stick with that identity then we’re probably not going to be successful. We probably do need to be able to transition as you’ve described.
Robin: Yeah, when I first moved to Bethel in 1984, there were seven working mills and right now we’re down to Hancock Lumber which is a fantastic employer. When you think about how many people those mills employed and then suppliers to those mills, it’s pretty incredible the transition that just our little community has gone through. Sunday River as Sunday River grew became a real impetus for the hospitality industry to which has Bethel has long had a history of hospitality for a couple of hundred years. A couple hundred years ago the trains came and brought people from Boston and New York and we had this incredible, beautiful homes that were built in what’s now the National Historic District.
These statesmen and stateswomen and whatnot and composers and conductors and people that came to Bethel to rest. They actually came to seek a rest from the city life and that’s been part of Bethel’s story as well. We’ve had this spirit of hospitality for a long time but you know, when we were really relying on the mil economy it was not the focus and really it has become the focus I think of our community. The hospitality story and the hospitality assets that we can market have brought all these interesting people. We’ve got this huge wellness movement that is really very alive and well.
Lots of people that have brought their interesting talents and so there’s a real vibe around wellness. Then we’ve got the incredible Maine Mineral And Gem Museum that is soon to open in 2017. That has amplified the gem and mineral story. That has again been very, very much a part of Maine’s story in general especially Oxford County which has this incredible repository of natural gem stones. There’s a circle of people that have known that but the Maine Mineral And Gem Museum will be able to tell the story to a much broader audience and it’s going to be an incredible attractor of individuals that will each I think …
Oftentimes and I think we all experience this when we travel, we don’t necessarily know how the experience of going to a place is going to impact us and we hear the story time and time again. I came to Bethel 15 years ago for a season and the story has now … I mean, it just lives on. People I think feel very blessed to be in a place that is where folks know one another, they see each other, they greet one another, they are looking out for one another. It’s a really pretty special place.
Dr. Lisa: You know all about coming somewhere and staying because you actually came to Maine to visit your sister. Then you stayed. We gave you a questionnaire to fill out and we asked what kept you here, the landscape, the people, the promise of a fulfilling life in a more rural place but you came from New Jersey.
Robin: I did.
Dr. Lisa: Tell me about that. Tell me about that contrast or maybe comparison. Maybe there’s some similarities between where you came from and where you have lived now.
Robin: I was born and raised in the suburbs of New Jersey so about 35 miles outside of New York City and I went to college in New Jersey. My degree was in teaching. When I graduated in 1978 I was one of those cycles where there weren’t a lot of teaching jobs. There was an overage of teachers and not enough jobs and so I took stock of that. I actually traveled for a few months with a girlfriend out west and I was blessed actually to have a father who was a teacher and my parents met on the west coast although they are both from the east coast and so he had a lot of friends out west. We traveled back and forth across the country a lot.
Every opportunity that my parents could throw us in the back of the van and or the station wagon and take us traveling and so I saw a lot of places. When I came to this realization that I don’t think, I didn’t think that I was destined to stay in New Jersey. It happened that my sister and her husband came to West Paris, Maine and they were doing the Back-to-the-land movement. They had saved up money and they bought a 100 and somewhat acres in West Paris. I came to visit them and actually ironically I met my husband who was the store keeper down at the end of the road and he and I were raised about a mile and a half from one another in East Brunswick, New Jersey. I never knew him there.
He was just enough ahead of me in school that I didn’t meet him. We had that common bond I guess and after a few months I decided to move in and help him work in his little general store. You know those stores, if people remember the old TV show Petticoat Junction it was like that little store where everybody came and sat on the milk crates next to the potbelly stove and exchange stories about their gardens or hunting or the weather or the neighbors or whatever the topic of the day was. I saw the beautiful simplicity in people and I had seen that in my travels but I was not experiencing that in my home town.
People were in a rush. There was constantly traffic. It just wasn’t fitting me. I was fine as a kid there. I feel blessed that I was raised there. I love New York City. I’m very comfortable with going there but I just yearned for more, a slower lifestyle I guess. That’s what I found. My journey from West Paris lead to Bethel when the state bought our store, our little general store to relocate the road. We were looking for a place where we could live and operate a business. That’s when we bought the big old house on the Bethel common and opened what’s now The Chapman Inn Bed and Breakfast. That’s the beginning of my Maine journey.
Dr. Lisa: You also seem to get around a lot. I see you at a lot of events in other parts of the state so as much as you love Bethel you also love the connections that you’ve made to people in other places.
Robin: Yeah, I think that I’ve been very, very blessed through my career that my board of directors whoever is my media bosses have really encouraged me to be active and to be active in tourism related things in Augusta. I was appointed by Governor Baldacci at the time to the Maine Quality of Place Council and they were yearning for someone from a more rural area of the state to be on the council to help to enrich the learning and the discussions. I’ve been really fortunate. I’ve traveled through my chamber work. We have organization in Maine called the Maine Association of Chamber Executives and it’s a professional development learning opportunity and so we get together two or three times a year in different areas of the state.
I really have enjoyed my travels. My work has taken me to all corners of the state from Aroostook County to Washington County to Southern Maine and every place in between and I’ve made friends. I think it’s easier here in Maine and maybe some might debate this but it’s easy to know people because we’re only 1.3 million people here in the state. If you’re a community advocate it’s really easy to get to know people. Now that I’ve been in the work for a long time, there are folks who want me to be on their advisory committee I’m finding that sometimes I have to turn down invitations because there’s just so much of me to go around and I want to do a good job when I agree to do something.
I just love it. I love the coast. My husband and I just bought a home on Orr’s Island in Harpswell. We’re active and very avid sea kayakers and so we’ve been up and down the coast. It’s not until you really get out into the water and look back that you realize how beautiful the coast line is. I mean, you certainly experience the wonderful little sea side towns and whatnot and the economy that they have but man, you get out in the water it’s like being on top of a mountain and looking out at this incredible landscape that you can really fully appreciate it.
It’s like you have to be up or out to really, sometimes when you’re in the middle of it you don’t necessarily see it but being out in the water and it doesn’t … I mean, we’ve been out here in Casco Bay and we just are blessed to live in such an incredible state. The communities, the people are just fantastic and I’ve also just realized that the collaborative spirit is alive and well here. People do really want to work together and help one another to be better. The more we realize that we don’t have all the answers that there’s a different perspective, a different way of doing things the better we all are and that’s been great.
Dr. Lisa: What do you see in the future for Bethel?
Robin: I see us becoming more and more aware of climate and I mean last winter was a real lesson and how dependent we are on our snowy winters. I think it makes us more when we realized the dependency is not a good thing that we realized that we have all the tools in our tool boxes to prosper no matter what. I think we can be sensitive and make decisions that are going to be better for our environment. I think our businesses are doing those good things. I mean, Hancock Lumber does incredible job. Sunday River and Mount Abram are doing incredible things to really be good stewards of our environment.
I see us becoming more diversified and the Mineral and Gem Museum I mean there’s been a lot of anticipation about that facility opening and what it may help to create on Main Street, Bethel. All the major highways bypass the village of Bethel and in some ways that’s a blessing and in some ways it’s not because a lot of people miss the village and as they think the town of Bethel is the blinking light where the intersection of Route 2 and Parkway is because they just miss it. Despite we put up signs that say historic village and straight ahead but there are people that miss it. I think that the intentionality of the visitation to the Mineral and Gem Museum is going to be have spectacular lasting effects.
It will help to inspire the small business owners on Main Street that sometimes they get discouraged because they again this feeling of over-dependency on Sunday River, on the snow, or on something that is outside of our control. This makes us more resourceful. We have this wonderful edible Bethel initiative going on that involved everything from the youngest student lead initiatives to our active senior community all working together to bring attention to being closer to the earth, raising vegetables and our food. There’s a lot of really positive things happening there that I feel very proud to be a part of.
Dr. Lisa: I appreciate you coming in and talking to us about what’s going on in Bethel and also I appreciate the work that you’ve been doing as the Executive Director. We’ve been speaking with Robin Zinchuk who is the Executive Director of the Bethel Area Chamber of Commerce. Absolutely, a friend of Maine Magazine and I appreciate you just in general and I think about people who are cheerleaders for our place and our state and you are definitely one of them. You are doing a really, really good job so thank you.
Robin: Thank you very much.