Transcription of Making Peace, #113
Male: You’re listening to the Dr. Lisa radio hour and podcast recorded in the studio of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland, Maine. Download past shows and become a podcast subscriber of Dr. Lisa Belisle on iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details. Here are some highlights from this week’s program.
George: In America, no one should be guaranteed success but everyone should have a fair chance to succeed. Everyone should have a chance to go as high and as far in life as their willingness to work, their dedication, and their talent will take them and that means they get every chance and right through good education, good nutrition, good care, all other things that we want for my kids. If we set a standard that said every other kid should have in life what we want for our kids, we couldn’t have a better public policy from that.
Meg: I think the senator’s vision has grown. One of the sayings that I learned working closely with the senator is he continues to learn all the time. He wanted us to have a program that was going to support Maine students to achieve and to aspire, and at the same point, understand what the opportunities are for them to come back to Maine.
Ethan: I started this program last January. I went up to my high school and I spoke in small groups to over 400 students and kind of gave them a chance to ask me questions one on one and explained what different opportunities there are out there that they, as Gardiner area high school students, are perfectly capable of achieving. It’s really about aspiration.
Male: The Dr. Lisa radio hour and podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors: Maine Magazine, Marci Booth of Booth Maine, Apothecary By Design, Premiere Sports Health a division of Black Bear Medical, Sea Bags, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage, Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes, and Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial.
Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa radio hour and podcast, show #113 airing for the first time on Sunday November 10, 2013. Today’s show is called Making Peace. The Dalai Lama once said the only true guardian of peace lies within a sense of concern and responsibility for your own future and optimistic concern for the wellbeing of others. Guests on today’s show include individuals who fulfill these criteria and are true guardians of peace. Maine’s former senator George Mitchell, Meg Baxter, President and CEO of Mitchell Institute, and Ethan Pierce, Mitchell Institute scholar. We hope you enjoy our conversations with them and are inspired to reflect upon the ways in which you may be a guardian of peace in your own life. Thank you for joining us.
It’s not often that I get to sit across the microphone from someone who has had such an interesting part in the making of history over the last several decades. Today is one of those days. I feel really fortunate to be in the studio with Senator George Mitchell, who is like me, a Bowdoin College graduate and also like me in Mainer, born and raised initially in Waterville. I’m really, I don’t know, very honored that you took time out of your extremely busy schedule and came in here to talk to us today.
George: Well thank you. It’s a pleasure for me. I appreciate you having me on your show.
Lisa: I feel like I have some of a kindredness to you and your family because I’m the oldest of 10 children. I know that you come from a relatively large full time family, also catholic family in Waterville. You have, let’s see, four siblings, is that right? You have four siblings, one has passed away?
George: I’ve three older brothers, one of whom passed away and a younger sister, five in all.
Lisa: I’m wondering how that worked into this life that you’ve made for yourself of sort of being in the middle of conflict.
George: It was a very important and formative part of my life. I tell the story often humorously, but with serious intent that I owe everything to my brothers because growing up in Waterville, my three older brothers were very prominent athletes, very good athletes. My brother, Johnny, led Waterville High School to the New England High School basketball championships in 1944. One that turned him in when all six New England states were participating. My two other brothers are Paul, the oldest and Robbie after Johnny, who are also very prominent athletes, and I came along and I was not as good as my brothers. In fact, I was not as good as anybody else’s brother. I became known around town as the Johnny Mitchell’s kid brother, the one who is isn’t any good.
As you might expect, I developed a massive inferiority complex and highly competitive attitude toward my brothers, which continues to this day. We have a great family, loving relationship, but it’s competitive. I’m driving to Waterville later and going to see my brothers and talk with them about our past exploits. Theirs mostly in sports and they put with me for being such a lousy athlete.
From that competition, developed a determination. From the inferiority complex, developed a desire to succeed and move forward. I was very lucky. I don’t know about your family background, but my mother was an immigrant to the United States from Lebanon. She came here when she was 18 years old. My father was the orphaned son of Irish immigrants. His parents had been born in Ireland, came here, but he never knew his parents. He was raised in an orphanage in Boston. After several years in the orphanage, he was adopted by an elderly couple from Maine who ended up settling in Waterville, and they found themselves next door to my mother, whose sister had preceded her as an immigrant and who had also settled in Waterville. My mother couldn’t read or write. She worked nights in textile mills in Central Maine for all of her adult life, 11 o’clock at night to 7 o’clock in the morning. My father left school after the third or fourth grade, we’re not quite sure, and worked a lifetime of hard labor and he ended up as a janitor at Colby College.
From my parents, I learned that hard work is necessary and pays off. From my earliest days, I worked at a variety of jobs. I worked my way through Bowdoin. My parents had no money to afford my going to Bowdoin, but Bowdoin helped me out by arranging for me to have several jobs. I worked pretty much full time while I was at Bowdoin, a variety of jobs and then after service in the army, overseas, I returned and went to Law school in Washington at Georgetown University, and they had a night school, so I worked full time during the day.
Out of that, as you know, from even larger family out of that competition comes a drive and the desire to excel and to do the best you can at whatever you do. I’ve to say you’ve said very kind things about me, but you’ve been remarkably successful in your life coming from a large family camped here in Southern Maine, and congratulations to you for all of that. It’s, you mentioned you’re honored to have me on, well, I wanted to be on your show.
Lisa: Oh well, we have this mutual admiration beside it going on. That’s why we’re talking. The story that you gave about Robbie during the book that you wrote Making Peace, which was regarding the Northern Island Peace Accord. It really, it was kind of at the same time touching but also very telling. You mentioned that of course, his wife Janet had called by you were in sort of the thick of things and then it looked like things were going poorly. His health was bad. You remembered a time that he had gotten the concession to work as a janitor or cleaning in a couple of different locations, and what he would do was sit and talk on the phone for an hour or two hours and you would be the one cleaning the classrooms or the office space. He said to you, “Well I’m management. This is why I’m making more money and this is why you’re doing what you’re doing.” You said, “Well someday I want to be management though.”
George: My brother Robbie was a great guy, a real entrepreneur. He died in his 60s from leukemia and we all miss him very, very much. I still see his family quite often. I yesterday had lunch with one of his daughters and her husband, but I learned a lot from him. Very early in life, he became an entrepreneur, almost incredibly when you think about it. He had a variety of businesses while in high school. One of them was the jobs you talked about. He got what he called the concessions.
There’s a contract to do the janitorial work at first the Waterville Boys Club and then a state agency office which was next door to the boys club in Waterville. He said to me if you’ll help out, I‘ll split the proceeds with you. I said “That’s great.” I already had a number of jobs and this would mean a lot. I did all of the cleaning, everything, the one thing you didn’t mention was the toughest part cleaning all of the latrines in the boys club. That’s when I knew I wanted to get an education and to not to have to spend the rest of my life cleaning the bathrooms in the boys club. Then I would get down next door to clean the state agency office.
Meantime, Robbie the entrepreneur, would sit at the Director’s desk at the boys club, call his girlfriend who later became his wife and talk on the phone for couple of hours. The first week he gave me $2 and 50 cents each for the two cleaning jobs I’d do and I thought that was terrific. Months later, I found out inadvertently, completely inadvertently that he was being paid $15 a week for each so he was getting 30, giving me 5 and keeping 25, and I did all the work. When I confronted him with it, he said which you said quoted, he said “Look, I’m management, you’re labor. I got the concession. Without me you wouldn’t have a job, so be thankful for what you got.”
He did a number of other things. For example, while he was still in high school, he bought a cotton candy machine and in the summers, one of the jobs I had, he hired me through a friend of mine. He would take cotton candy machine on a pickup truck. He’d rent a pickup truck, have someone drive it with cotton candy machine and the two of us boys to a fair. We would go to all the … in Maine, in the summer there is a fair almost all every week, and in the area of Central Maine, we went to Winthrop Fair, to the Skowhegan Fair, to the fairs all around.
He would find and rent a space somewhere on the fair grounds and this friend of mine, his name was Ronnie Stevens and I would be there all day selling cotton candy. It’s a very profitable business. He paid us $2 a day. One time after particularly a long hard day which we took him a lot of cash, when we were picked up, my friend Ronnie said to Robbie, he said, “Robbie we’re doing all the work, look at all this money we’re giving you. Don’t you think you should pay us more than $2 a day?” Robbie said, “Well, you know now that you got me thinking about it. He said I’ve got to pay for the pickup truck. I’ve got a mortgage on the cotton candy machine.” We didn’t know what a mortgage was. It sounded impressive. He said, “Well I’ve to pay for that.” He said “I’ve to pay a lot of taxes.” He said, “I don’t think I can afford to give you guys $2 a day, how about $1 a day?” Well I pulled Ronnie back. I said, “No, no, no Robbie, we’ll take 2, we’ll take 2.”
He started another job. He opened a golf driving range just outside Waterville. All of this while in high school. He promoted sports events. He promoted entertainment events. He brought to Waterville then one of the most famous circus, Clown Acts in the country a guy named Henry Kelly long since passed on. He was a great guy. A real entrepreneur, someone I learned a lot from and someone I truly loved. We shared a bedroom together for most of our growing up with seven people in a pretty small house in Waterville. I spent many an hour listening to Robbie at night. He would lull to me sleep not with lullabies but with stories.
Lisa: You’re on the Dr. Lisa radio hour and podcast. We’ve long recognized the link between health and wealth. Here to speak more on the topic is Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial.
Tom: Making peace with your finances is easier said than done. We spend a lifetime being programmed by our beliefs and behaviors interacting with our inherited nature. Making peace with all of that is one of the biggest steps forward you can take. It’s a step that can certainly remove a lot of anxiety from your life.
Consider this scenario that a lot of us have gone through or that you maybe going through right now. You’ve money to support yourself and your family, but it’s not always there at the right time or you don’t believe that you can access it. That happened to me recently and also in a big way in 2008. Like you, I’ve experienced these financial highs and lows. It feels as though you’re on some kind of a strange roller coaster and then you’re constantly wrestling with what you want versus what you need. If you got bills and really want to pay them off, you start to living in the past so you can move forward.
Finding peace in the middle of our culture can make it difficult to make good financial decisions especially if you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. The first step is to stop and breathe. Look around. Walk around. Talk to people. Trade and commerce are going to happen. Money is what makes it easier.
Like Shepard Financial on Facebook and we’ll help you evolve with your money peacefully.
Male: Securities offered through LPL financial member of FINRA SIPC investment advice offered through Flagship Harbor Advisors, a registered investment advisor. Flagship Harbor Advisors and Shepard Financial are separate entities from LPL financial.
There was a time when the apothecary was the place where you could get safe reliable medicines, carefully prepared by experienced professionals, coupled with care and attention, focused on you and your unique health concerns. Apothecary By Design is built around the forgotten notion that you don’t just need your prescriptions filled. You need attention, advice, and individual care. Visit their website apothecarybydesign.com or drop by the store at 84 Marginal Way in Portland and experience pharmacy care the way it was meant to be.
Lisa: I’m going to read something from your book, Senator Mitchell. It really is, I think, good background for people who don’t know that much about Northern Ireland and I must admit I have Irish in my background, but I don’t know as much about Northern Ireland as I probably should.
Northern Ireland is an advanced modern society. Its people are productive, literate, and articulate, but for all its modernity and literacy, Northern Ireland has been divided by a deep and increased hatred into two hostile communities by centuries of conflict. They’ve often inflicted physical and psychological hurt on members of the other community, and they have been quick to take offense at real or perceived lies. They have a highly developed sense of grievance. As one of the participants in the talk later said to me, “To understand our Senator, you must realize that we in Northern Ireland will drive 100 miles out of our way to receive an insult.” Each is a minority. Catholics in Northern Ireland, Protestants on the island of Ireland, each sees itself as the victim community constantly under siege, the recipient of a long litany of violent blows from the other.
This seems to be a scene like you’ve encountered in lots of different places, also when you were the envoy to the Middle East. This deep-seated pain that just goes back generations and generations, and is this listening that you’ve described that enables you to sort of at least hear the pain from the people so they know that you have an idea of where they’re coming from?
George: Yes a root cause of human conflict in different parts of the world and different areas of history has a profound sense of victimization on the part of people. They believe they have been victimized by the other side. We humans are so capable of rationalization that once your persuade yourself that you are a victim, you are then able to take actions that you otherwise might not take. It justifies things that you wouldn’t otherwise do, this sense of victimization. That is a very important key to unlocking any conflict to understanding the origins, sources, and continuing reasons for that sense of victimization.
Here’s a good example of it. When President Clinton made his first trip to Northern Ireland, I arranged the visit for him. On the first night after a long day of travel, late at night, we met with the leaders of the two opposing factions, Jerry Adams representing the Nationalist or Catholic side and Dr. Ian Paisely representing the Protestant Union side. The President was tired. I was tired. We said, “Hello” and the first one was Paisely. He launched in with a 30-minute statement. Literally, 30 minutes he spoke uninterrupted and it was entirely a history of North Ireland as seen through the eyes of a Protestant, and it was 100% a recitation of the bad things that Catholics had done to Protestants. There was not a glimmer of recognition that there might have been something going the other way.
Then when he left, Jerry Adams came in and delivered the mirror image of that from the Catholic side, an uninterrupted 30-minute statement of the grievances, the terrible things that had happened to Catholics at the hands of Protestants, and again, no recognition whatsoever. No acknowledgment that it might have been two ways. It’s a clear indication, evidence where none is needed that victimization is a driving force in conflict and you have to understand it, you have to address it, and you have to figure out where to deal with it if you have any hope of resolving these conflicts.
The reality again in human affairs is, while it’s not always 50-50, it’s very rare that it’s all one way. That is, most times people have there are some bases for grievance, but you’ve got to open them up to is the reality that the other side has grievances too. You have to find a way ultimately, and this is the most difficult task to have not just individuals but the society as a whole, put the past behind and look to the future. The truth is you can’t resolve or satisfy every grievance. You can’t bring comfort to every person who suffered. What you must try to do is to learn from those tragic experiences and develop a way to avoid repetition of them among others in the future. It’s a very, very hard thing to do and many people can’t do it.
After we got the peace agreement in Northern Ireland, the Government asked me to come back to participate in border approval. The agreement was subject to a referendum in both Ireland and Northern Ireland. It would take effect only if approved by majority of voters in a free open democratic election. Both ultimately did approve it.
In the course of the campaign, the Governments asked me to meet with the families and survivors of victims of the conflict. These were women whose husbands and sons had been murdered. People whose families had been killed by bombs, lot of assassination and gruesome killing had occurred, and they thought that the men, mostly men, few women who had perpetrated these acts were criminals, but the men and women who had perpetrated the acts thought of themselves as freedom fighters. They constantly compared themselves to George Washington’s army at Valley Forge. One man’s freedom fighter was another man’s murderer.
I met with the families and tried to explain to them that the peace agreement included provisions for the early release of some of the prisoners, not immediate, but they had a process by which they could get out before the full term of their sentences. Families found that hard to accept. They still do. I don’t think I ever persuaded anyone of them to support the agreement, but I think I was able to get them to understand why it was important to move forward for the society as a whole so that other women in the future would not be sitting where they were sitting, having watched their husbands or their sons or their daughters die.
You are absolutely correct to identify that as one of the key elements of conflict and one that must be addressed. First by understanding and that means sympathetic listening, genuinely hearing what they have to say. I sat for hours and listened to these families describe the incidents that led to the death of their loved ones. Being sympathetic to it, at the same time, trying to make the case that you simply cannot expect that a conflict will go on and somehow bring relief to everyone. What it will do, will be to bring more grief to others. That’s the way it ended.
Lisa: It was interesting to notice that instead of setting deadlines that ended up being kind of, it seems that ended up being fairly effective. Either we are going to do this by the state or we are not going to do this by the state. It is from my understanding it worked in the Northern Ireland case. It didn’t work as well with the Middle East.
George: That’s right. It’s a risk. There’s no doubt about it. In Northern Ireland, it was an act of desperation. The process was failing. We had been at it for nearly two years. The murder of a Protestant paramilitary leader in prison by a group of Catholic prisoners two days after Christmas in 1997 had touched off a retaliatory series of assassinations. Bombings and conflict were accelerating. The ceasefires had been shredded, and I felt that the process was in a state of terminal decline and would be overwhelmed by the violence unless we did something dramatic.
I was on a flight from Dublin, Ireland back to The United States in mid February 1998 that I devised a plan for an early unbreakable deadline. It was hard to do. I had to convince all of the parties, the 10 political parties and the two Governments who agreed because I had no power to impose anything upon them, but I made the case that you have to act. It is a risk and they were several quite articulate opponents to my plan. Primarily government officials who had lived with this conflict for years, and who were desperately afraid that that was zooming again. What’s called as troubles actually was a series of periodic outbreaks of violence. We don’t like to acknowledge this, but in human affairs, technology has advanced more rapidly in the ability of people to kill each other than in almost any other area.
Each time violence broke out it was at a higher level, more people being killed. Today, one person with very little resources can manufacture a bomb that can kill dozens, hundreds of people. You don’t need large numbers, you don’t need large amounts of money, and it’s become really very difficult to control as you can see from the news around the world today.
In the end, you have to try to work it out and you have to adapt to the circumstances. After we got the peace agreement, many reporters said to me, “Senator, this took nearly two years. You ended it when you called the deadline. Why didn’t you establish a deadline 12 months ago, 18 months ago?” I said, “I had it wouldn’t have worked.” I said, “Just the timing was an act of desperation.” As I described in my book down to almost the last minute, it was right on the edge and it could just as easily have failed as succeeded.
The credit really goes to the political leaders of Northern Island, men and women of enormous courage who had spent their lifetimes in conflict, ordinary people just like us, but rose to the occasion, partially out of fear. They were very, very frightened because they knew that if they failed, the conflict would resume immediately with deadly consequences for both sides. They knew that the amount of killing would increase significantly and that the violence would be far more savage than it had been in the past and so they did it.
It’s fashionable in our county, in most countries, particularly in democracies to ridicule politicians, to make fun of them, to insult them, to assume the worst of them and some of it’s deserved, but there are many people in public life who are there for the right reasons and when they meet at the intersection of history and conflict are able to do the right thing, for the right reasons, and get the right results and those were the political leaders of Northern Ireland at the time.
Lisa: As a physician and a small business owner, I rely on Marci Booth from Booth Maine to help you with my own business and to help me with my own life fully. Here are few thoughts from Marci.
Marci When asked, most of my clients say the same thing about what keeps them up at night. Money. Making certain cash flow is there to meet day to day operational needs. Oh my gosh, is payroll going to be able to make it? When we dig deeper, we understand that those sleepless nights are symptoms of poor planning and forecasting. More often than not, the reasons for not doing it are lack of time and a lack of resources. Here’s a suggestion. Instead of living in fear of the numbers and losing sleep over them, make peace with them by paying closer attention to the financials and creating positive cash wealth. I’m Marci Booth. Let’s talk about the changes you need boothmaine.com.
Male: This segment of the Dr. Lisa radio hour is brought you by the following generous sponsors: Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage in Yarmouth, Maine. Honesty and integrity can take you home. With RE/MAX Heritage it’s your move. Learn more at ourheritage.com. Using recycled sails collected from sailors and sailing communities around the world, Sea Bags designs and manufactures bags, totes and accessories in Maine on Portland’s working waterfront. From the best-selling classic navy anchor tote to fresh new designs Sea Bags offers retired sails another life by turning them into handmade one‑of‑a-kind nautical-inspired pieces. Please visit the Sea Bags store in Portland or Freeport or go to www.seabags.com to browse their unique collection.
Lisa: Somebody who is born in 1933, which was the last entry and in between two wars and at a very different time, what types of things have you learned over the course of your life that you would like your kids to take away as your legacy?
George: There’re pretty much the things we’ve talked about up to now. First patience, be patient with people. I myself was for a long time an impatient person, young, ambitious, aggressive, not paying enough attention, not listening carefully enough to what others were saying, not just through their words, but through their actions. We’re all human, we all make mistakes. Not one of us achieves our aspirations every day. We all fail.
The important thing is to try and when you do fail, to resolve to do better the next time, even knowing that perfection is limited to the Lord above and doesn’t exist in any human being, so be patient with others. Be understanding of someone who has difficulties. In the case of my children, they lead a life vastly different from mine, and the real challenge is how do you not do everything for them so that they develop a sense of self-reliance, a sense of independence, a sense of worth, what are things worth. That’s a hard challenge, I think in many respects tougher than the opposite.
When I was a kid growing up, nobody ever said we all have to work. It was part of life. Everybody understood it. My parents were very poor. As I said earlier, my mother couldn’t read or write. My father had a very limited education, but they had a very firm belief that in this country if their kids had a decent education they could get ahead. Though my parents died without wealth, they had succeeded. They were wealthy in the sense of success in accomplishing their objective of having all of their children go on go to college and do much better in life than anyone could have imagined at the time, myself included, and my brothers and my sisters.
How do you instill in children a sense of a commitment to hard work, to dedication, not just in studies but also in work and in life generally, and at the same time a sense of compassion and empathy for those who don’t have it. One of the most formative periods of my life was my senior year in high school. I was 16 years old. I graduated from high school when I was 16, very insecure. My parents didn’t own a car, I really had never accomplished anything. Younger and smaller than most of my classmates and in that year my father lost his job. It was a disaster like nothing I’d ever experienced before since.
My father was not educated, but he was intelligent and he was a very proud man. It had a devastating effect upon his self-esteem, and it had a devastating effect on me. My three older brothers were gone at college. There was no talk on my going to college because seeing I would have been completely out of range given my father’s circumstances. That year nearly destroyed him. It had a tremendously profound effect on me. I was very lucky I ended up going to Bowdoin and getting all the help there and thank God my father got a job.
After a year, he got a job as a janitor at Colby College. Now people would say that being a janitor is no big deal, but I have to tell you that job saved his life. it saved his self-esteem. He finally was a productive member of society. One of the problems in our country now, in my judgment, is that there is not enough attention paid in public policy in trying to generate economic growth and job creation and employment for our citizens. Too much attention paid to a lot of other things that I think, while they may be important, aren’t as important as that.
There also has to be an understanding, and I used to really bristle with anger and had to control myself, contain myself, and I’d hear people ridicule, insult, make fun of people who’re unemployed. Some of who may have been cheats, that’s true in every society. You’re a doctor, there are doctors who cheat. I’m a lawyer, there are lawyers who cheat. Yes there are people who cheat on unemployment, but the vast majority are men and women just like my father desperate for work, desperate to do something to regain their self-esteem, their sense of self-worth, to be able to look at themselves in the mirror and look in their children’s eyes.
My father couldn’t look into my eyes during that year. He always looked away. I don’t think I heard him laugh for 9 or 10 months. It was just tough, and it’s tough on people now. If I have a message or a lesson, it’s to those who are young and healthy, the best source of satisfaction in life is work. Do something meaningful and be good at it and work hard at it and good things will happen to you. To those who are successful, you have to remember where you came from and remember we’re all one family, we’re one community, and we have to be understanding and sympathetic to those who are less fortunate than we are and do our best to help them, not through a handout, but making it possible for them to have the same opportunities they want. I’ll close with these words.
In America, no one should be guaranteed success but everyone should have a fair chance to succeed. Everyone should have a chance to go as high and as far in life as their willingness to work, their dedication and their talent will take them and that means they get every chance in life through good education, good nutrition, good care, all of the things that we want for my kids. If we set a standard that said that every other kid should have in life what we want for our kids, we couldn’t have a better public policy than that. Well, thank you for having me.
Lisa: Well thank you Senator Mitchell. It’s really been a privilege and I can say that Bowdoin has done well by making sure that you got your early education and your family has done well by making sure that you were raised with a sense of competition that has brought you as far as it has. I appreciate you being with us today.
George: Thank you.
Lisa: The goal of the Dr. Lisa radio hour is to help make connections between the health of the individual and the health of the community. The goal of Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes is to deepen our appreciation for the natural world. Here to speak with us today is Ted Carter.
Ted: One of the things that I’ve found particularly interesting about this season that’s just passing now is that people are dealing with end of life issues with their parents and with loved ones, in a way that I’ve not seen before in this number. What I’m finding is that people want to create a beautiful space for themselves to sort of reflect, remember, share their life experiences, and so do some deep introspective work because we start to realize as we age that we only have so much time left, and we want to really enjoy that time in a place that we deem to be sacred and special for us and our family and our loved ones.
That’s really what I find myself doing most often is working with people to try to create these spaces that really start to get them to think deeper about what their calling is in life. I’m Ted Carter and if you’d like to contact me, I can be reached at tedcarterdesign.com.
Lisa: We at the Dr. Lisa radio hour know that our listeners understand the importance of helping the mind, body and spirit. Here to talk about the health of the body is Travis Beaulieu of Premiere Sports Health a division of Black Bear Medical.
Travis: Making peace with your body. How is it done? We start by getting more rest, eating right and exercising. When those things do not end the war, we must look for a little help. Black Bear Medical wants to be the United Nations for your body. Our home medical equipment, medical supplies, daily living aids and sports health products provide that added security to help you be a better you. Let us empower your body to make peace with itself and work as one unit so you can live your life the way you want to.
Visit us at blackbearmedical.com, like us on Facebook and see what products and advice we can offer you or someone you care about. Black Bear Medical, it’s your life, define it your way.
Lisa: Not only are we fortunate to have Maine’s former Senator George Mitchell joining us today, but we also have with us Meg Baxter, President and CEO of the Mitchell Institute and Ethan Pierce, Mitchell Institute scholar. Meg Baxter’s non‑profit career has been four decades, the majority of her work conducted in Maine. She’s a passionate advocate for the non-profit sector and the people in community served by it. In 2001, Meg was named President and CEO of the Mitchell Institute, Senator George Mitchell’s scholarship and research institute.
In that role, she oversees the distribution of four-year scholarships to a senior at everyone at Maine’s 129 public high schools. At any one time, there are over 500 Mitchell scholars in post-secondary institutions. The institute provides mentoring, fellowships, and leadership development to its scholars and alumni. Ethan Pierce is a 2009 Mitchell scholar from Gardiner, Maine and a Maine 2014 degree candidate in Harvard University’s visual and environmental studies department, studying studio art and art history. Thank you for coming in and talking to us today.
Meg: Thanks for having us.
Ethan: Our pleasure.
Lisa: Ethan, we were lucky too to have you because you’re pretty busy these days studying at Harvard and getting your life on the right track. So tell me what’s been going on for you?
Ethan: I’m in my senior year at Harvard, which involves a lot of applications and I just recently got back from my second summer in Berlin, Germany. I was working over there as an intern at a contemporary art gallery. A lot of their applications are hopefully, well hopefully one of them will get me back to Germany next year. It’s pretty exciting.
Lisa: Well that is exciting because you’ve gone from Gardiner, Maine to Berlin, Germany and all I think helped or at least in part helped by your scholarship through the Mitchell Institute.
Ethan: The Mitchell Institute has been an absolutely incredible support all along my path. I first became aware of them in my senior year of high school. I kind of looked at it as a part of potential scholarship money because I really didn’t know how I was going to pay for one of these $50,000 a year college education. I was just so blessed to find out that it was so much more than that. They really provide an absolutely incredible network of support and resources that goes far beyond that pool of money.
Lisa: Well Meg, tell me about that. You’ve been with the Mitchell Institute for a year a year and a half now.
Meg: That’s right.
Lisa: You’ve been working on all these scholarships for our Maine students. What is that all about?
Meg: Well it’s all thanks to Senator Mitchell’s vision. When he left the senate, he had a pot of campaign money that he wanted to use to do something good, and several years before he had attended a conference in Orono on the lack of aspirations of Maine high school students. That troubled him, as many of us know his own story is just remarkable in terms of how he ended up at Bowdoin and how he ended up such a wonderful national and international treasure.
He used the money to start a scholarship program and over time that scholarship endowment has grown to a point where we now are able to name a Mitchell scholar at every one of the 129 public high schools in Maine, and as Ethan mentioned, it only starts with the scholarship. Now I’m happy to say the scholarship is $1500 a year for four years, but we do so much more than the money. Thanks to the growth of our endowment and our fundraising, we’re able to provide so many more supports to our scholars including the fact that we have a fellowship program that we’re able to give to both our scholars and alumni that helps support their personal and professional growth. I think Ethan would be happy to tell you about the fellowship he received that enabled him to go to Germany.
Ethan: Yes, so two years ago, I was a Mitchell fellow and that support helped me to work with a contemporary painter in Germany for the summer. Before that I had an interest in Germany and studied about it, but it really was a life changing moment for me to be immersed in that culture and sort of the art scene and to see all of the things that I was reading and studying about. I couldn’t have done that without the support of the Mitchell Institute.
Lisa: Both of you are interesting in that you’re both first generation soon to be graduates. What does that mean within your families and for you personally?
Meg: For me it meant that my mother’s dreams were fulfilled because she had emigrated from Canada, and it was really important to her that of her seven children, some of us would go on to obtain a college degree. I think her pride has lasted. She is 92 years old. I think it’s a source of pride for her that four of her children are now college graduates.
Ethan: For me and for my family, I think … my sister is also a college graduate and just to see all of us kind of using all of the available resources out there and not only making our own way but helping to support our families, our cousins, my younger brothers and showing them a path to achieve whatever aspirations they might have. I think that’s been really powerful.
Lisa: Obviously, you’ve agreed to come here to talk about your experiences with the Mitchell Institute even though I know that you’re very busy at Harvard, I assume you’re doing some things within your community as well to promote the education that you’ve received and promote sort of higher learning.
Ethan: It’s really important to me having been given so much to find a way to give that out and so actually this past year, I started the Aspiration Maine program. The vision really came in so many ways from the Mitchell institute and what they provided to all of these scholars over the years, and I wanted to find a way that I, as a college student, as a young person without any financial means, I can’t give out a $6000 scholarship to every to 129 high school students every year, but what I can do is provide them with all of the information that I wish I knew when I was in high school.
There’s so much that I’ve learned, so many resources that I’ve learned about to bring funding opportunities, to go spend the summer or a few weeks at a college when you’re in high school abroad. There are these international internship programs for high school students. I really think that Mainer’s can be competitive for those things and even beyond that, just to know about the financially opportunities at these different colleges, like Harvard for example is almost $60,000 a year now.
If your parents make less than $60,000 a year, there’s a full financial aid coverage of your parents portion of that bill which is truly, truly incredible. There are a number of institutions out there like that. To be able to pass information like that on to these students, it’s really powerful. I started this program last January. I went up to my high school and I spoke in small groups to over 400 students and kind of gave them a chance to ask me questions one on one and explained what different opportunities there are out there that they as Gardiner area high school students are perfectly capable of achieving. It’s really about aspiration.
Lisa: Is it the type of thing that you think Senator George Mitchell wanted to do when he set up this program, Meg?
Meg: I think the Senator’s vision has grown. One of the things I’ve learned working closely with the Senator is that he’s amazing in so many ways, but he continues to learn all the time, and I think that he has learned that the programs that we are providing to support our scholars and alumni are as important as the scholarship. In fact, he came last March to one of our leadership days that was held out at Unum, where we do a lot of work around resume building and interviewing skills for the scholars we’re getting ready to move out of school. He came and spoke to the students about leadership.
He sees that importance of the connection and we’re blessed to have a research director on staff. She has been doing longitudinal studies of our scholars since we began, and she’s able to track how they’re doing, where they are. We know that because of the programs that we provide to our scholars, we have a much higher persistence rate to graduation than the Maine average. Our scholars persist to graduation at a rate of about 85% where the Maine average is about 54%.
I think the Senator as well as the rest of us understand that the importance of the check is quite frankly the hook that we get the kids with, and then we do a variety of programs and mentoring and support to make sure that we’re keeping them on the path. I think an important thing that I’ve learnt since I’ve been a part of the institute is well often times that our students can patch together the money, there are unintended or unexpected costs that crop up and that we want to make sure that they can be helped with that.
An example is a young woman who is in nursing school like UMO, she based a very tight budget on the information that was in the college booklet and she had no margin for error. When she got into her nursing program, the nursing books for 50% more. We want to be able to help the students as they hit those bumps because we have learned and national studies have shown it can be a simple bump like that, that is simply enough to bump a student out of school. We’re constantly in touch with our students and we’re so proud that 90% of them are at schools like Bowdoin.
We have 10% that go to great places like Harvard, but they come back and I think that was the part of the Senator’s vision that he wanted us to have a program that was going to support Maine students to achieve and to aspire and at the same point understand what the opportunities are for them to come back to Maine.
Lisa: At the same time, the Mitchell Institute also works for students who are going to school right here in Maine in our public university systems such as University of Maine.
Meg: Absolutel,y and the University of Maine at Orono has one of our highest cohorts of scholars and they have been amazing as all of our scholars are. I think part of what has been such a learning experience for me is, as we go through the application process, how I get a view of Maine I haven’t seen before. I read all of the applications from schools in Lincoln County and the differences that you learn about lifestyles, about career choices are just amazing. The choices that the students make are often times based on who has come before them just as Ethan had said.
One of the things that we’ve been doing is trying to connect our students across the state so that they understand what’s happening to other students. We just had a fabulous leadership weekend up in Millinocket two weekends ago. We’re very thrilled that over the years we’ve been running this weekend we’ve had 55 scholars from across state that came. We actually had three students from outside the state but the bulk of them were at UMO, University of Maine at Farmington. We had one of University of Maine at Presque Isle which I have now learned is referred to as UMPI and every place else.
It was a wonderful weekend and it gets back to Ethan’s comment a little earlier. We had a great consultant who, Friday night, talked to the students about asking for what you need or what you want. That really resonated with our students because so many of them, they are typical Mainers. They are humble; they are hardworking, and often times the hardest thing for us is to get them to ask. Our scholarship Director Derrick Cash will always say to the student’s, call us up and ask for coffee with an agenda. We try to get the students in and there’s always an agenda, but it’s great to get them in to talk us because we can’t assist them and support them and mentor them if we don’t know them.
This weekend was wonderful in terms of getting great cross-section of students who now will support one and other.
Ethan: Support one other, it’s really one of the fundamental things that Mitchell Institute provides. I think this past weekend actually one of my friends Stephanie at the Mitchell Institute sent me a request on Facebook to join this new Mitchell Institute Out Of Stater’s group. Everyone has been chatting away on that and saying where they’re at and what they’re doing and trying to connect and that’s sort of branch off of the Mitchell Institute Scholars’ page which has been very, very alive since it was started last year with people offering out different opportunities that are available or congratulating one another on getting into XYZ program.
That support and getting to meet these other scholars at these different events like the Unum event or the Gala or really any of these amazing sort of networking opportunities that the Mitchell Institute provides that’s been a fantastic resource as well.
Lisa: Meg, I’m certain that although there was already money and there is money now I’m certain that you’re always trying to enlist the support, financial support and other support of people in the community. So how can people find out more about that or if you’re a high school student looking to apply to be a Mitchell scholar, how do you find out about that?
Meg: They can go to our website which is mitchellinstitute.org and in every high school, we’re actually doing outreach to about 20 different high schools this year,ß and that’s our plan is to get to all the high schools over the next few years to make sure that as much as we hope that the institute is well known, we want to take it to the ground. The same kind of thing that Ethan was saying get in where the kids our and help them do that. They can find out our application which would be on, it will be live on January 1 and the students have to apply by April 1.
One thing I just want to say to students who are listening, pay really close attention to your essay because so many of our students are so close in terms of academic achievements and community impact that sometimes their personal essay is the definer in terms of really helping us understand who you are. People can go to our website. We certainly would love financial support and that’s available through the website. I just want to make sure that everybody understands that Senator Mitchell is deeply involved.
He may have said this and people may have heard him say that next to his family, this is the proudest thing he has ever accomplished which to me is exceptionally humbling to be leading the organization when you think about all of the things that Senator Mitchell has done for this country and internationally.
Lisa: Well I feel very humbled myself having had the chance to sit with both of you here today and I’m just thrilled that Ethan you’ve taken the time to come up here from Harvard. I wish you all the best and I’m certain that you will end up in the program of your choice. I know that I’ll probably hear about you from Berlin as you’re studying for your masters and doing what you end up doing next. Thank you for coming and speaking with us today. We’ve been talking with Ethan Pierce, a 2009 Mitchell scholar from Gardiner Maine and a 2014 degree candidate in Harvard University’s visual and environmental studies department.
Also thank you Meg for all the work that you’re doing with the Mitchell Institute. All the work you’ve done, I know over your life with all the boards and United Way but I wish you all the best for the fundraising and the outreach you’re doing. We’ve been talking with Meg Baxter the President and CEO of the Mitchell Institute. Thanks for coming in.
Meg: Thanks for letting us tell our story.
Ethan: Thank you.
Lisa: You’ve been listening to the Dr. Lisa radio hour and podcast show #113 Making Peace. Our guests have included Senator George Mitchell, Meg Baxter and Ethan Pierce. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit doctorlisa.org. The Dr. Lisa radio hour and podcast is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show, signup for our E-newsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter and Pinterest and read my take on health and well being on the bountiful blog.
We’d love to hear from you so please let us know what you think of the Dr. Lisa radio hour. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let your sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring the Dr. Lisa radio hour to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you’ve enjoyed our Making Peace show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a peaceful and bountiful life.
Male: The Dr. Lisa radio hour and podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors: Maine Magazine, Marci Booth of Booth, Maine, Apothecary by Design, Premiere Sports Health a division of Black Bear Medical, Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists, Sea Bags, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of ReMax Heritage, Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes, and Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial.
The Dr. Lisa radio hour is recorded in the studio of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland, Maine. Our executive producers are Kevin Thomas and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Audio production and original music by John C. McCain. Our assistant producer is Leanne Ouimet. Our online producer is Katy Kelleher. Become a subscriber of Dr. Lisa Belisle on iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details. Summaries of all our past shows can be found at doctorlisa.org.