Guests

Speaker 1: You’re listening to Love Maine Radio with Dr. Lisa Belisle, recorded in the studio of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland, Maine.

Dr. Liza Belisle is a physician trained in family and preventative medicine, acupuncture, and public health. She offers medical care and acupuncture at Brunswick Family Medicine. Read more about her intergrative approach to wellness in Maine Magazine.

Love Maine Radio is available for download free on iTunes. See the Love Maine Radio Facebook page or www.lovemaineradio.com for details.

Here are a few highlights from this week’s program.

Scott: I’m leaning against the wall looking at Scotty hooked up to all these equipment and I looked over to my right and there’s a donor plaque for a capital campaign that it happened when they built the hospital, built that part of the hospital, and it said “All the equipment in this room provided by Jimmy and Barbara Flint,” and those were my grandparents, so they’re Scotty’s great grand parents.

I’m getting sort of emotional as I’m talking about her right now and it kind of told me right from the start that everything’s going to be okay.

Dervilla: Young heart attack victims would often have a whole lot of risk factors. They would have diabetes or they would smoke, or they would have high cholesterol, or high blood pressure, many different risk factors, but what I kept finding was very young people with very high cholesterols and I started looking into this sub-type of patient, people with familial hypercholesterolemia.

Julia: You have to be ready for challenges and life is a roller coaster sometimes, and you have to have plans in place so that when things do get a little rough or you find yourself facing a tragic situation that you have a good support system and you have a good plan to allow yourself to heal whether it’s mentally, physically, or what not, and move forward from that positively.

Christina: As anybody who writes fiction knows, you often don’t know why you’re writing a story until you’re telling it. The writing begets the revelations. It’s usually not the other way around that you calculate it, they kind of figure out what the elements are and put them into a story. You often have to follow your instinct and trust that you’re being led somewhere that will be fruitful, and that’s what happened to me in this book.

Speaker 1: Love Maine Radio is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors: Maine Magazine, Marci Booth of Booth Maine, Apothecary By Design, Mike Le Page and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage, Tom Shepherd of Shepherd Financial, Harding Lee Smith of The Rooms, and Bangor Savings Bank.

Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine Radio. Show number 172, Love Maine review 2014, airing for the first time on Sunday December 28th, 2014.

This year, we have the good fortune to interview many intriguing individuals who clearly have a passion for the state in which we live.

We were inspired by the love of Scott Winsel for his son Scotty, the cutting edge work being done by cardiologist, Dr. Dervilla McCann, the drive and dedication of Olympian Julia Clukey, and a story of America’s Orphan Train as written by Christina Baker Kline. Each of our guest represents why we do the work we do with Love Maine Radio.

Thank you so much for listening and being part of our Love Maine Community in 2014. Happy New Year and we’ll see you in 2015.

Lisa: Each of us has access to a different set of attributes, skills, talents, and physical characteristics. For some of us, the attributes are more readily apparent than for others. This is especially true of individuals who were, in the past, referred to as handicapped. We now understand these individuals to be differently abled and often capable of accessing attributes that many of us never even considered largely as a result of learning to work with the world.

I’m at our next guest at an art opening for Art Collector Maine through Thomas Moser which, I think, a lot of people will recognize as being one of Maine’s top furniture makers in the state, and actually, it’s national now. This individual, Scott Wentzell, is actually in Marketing with Thomas Moser, but perhaps, equally important is also on the board of directors with the Morrison Center, and probably more importantly, is father to Scotty Wentzell who has celebrated his 13th birthday?

Scott: That’s correct.

Lisa: Brings a really interesting sort of story into the world, so we thought we’d have Scott Wentzell come on and talk about Scotty Wentzell and his adventures with Scotty and with his wife, Lisa. Thanks for being with us today.

Scott: My pleasure.

Lisa: Scott, you didn’t really … you weren’t really thinking that your life was going to kind of turn out the way that it did when it came to having a child who has a syndrome, Dubowitz syndrome, which is very rare and not a lot known about it. Tell me a little bit about that, about the beginnings of this.

Scott: Sure. My wife and I actually went to high school together, didn’t date until after college, but we’re familiar to each other, so we go back long ways. When we got married in the ’90s, we’re living up at Sugarloaf and thought that was going to be great place to start and raise a family.

When Scotty came along, we were surprised to learn, at first, it was a cardiac issue. They [inaudible 00:05:34] with an issue called tetralogy of fallot which means, essentially, he had four things wrong with his heart.

He was born in Farmington. Immediately, we were transported down to Maine Med which has one of the most amazing cardiac units in the country, and specifically, pediatric cardiac professionals in the country are based there.

He had heart surgery at five days old and another full, bigger surgery at about six months old. We were immediately put on this sort of path of the unknown with Scotty and immediately felt like we were … We couldn’t be in a better place.

It did mean that we left Sugarloaf and moved down closer to the Portland area to be a little bit closer to the services that he needed then and that we came to realized he need long term, but there’s so much here in this community that we never knew about because we never had reason to access the different programs and organizations that are here.

I’d love talking about his story in the sort of world that opened up to us in having to understand how we could help them reach his full potential as our son and as going through childhood. He’s 13 now, so we just entered the teenage years, which is a little daunting for I think any parent, but we got great support system.

Lisa: Do you know that Scotty had issues before he was born?

Scott: We didn’t. My wife’s pregnancy was completely normal which is fairly typical for Dubowitz-involved children. The first sign that we had that anything was wrong was when she was about a week overdue and went to have a stress test administered, just what they would normally do for any woman who’s past her due date and they wanted to make sure everything was okay.

One of the things they realized when they do this test is they’re looking for the baby to react in a certain way and one of those reactions is seeing the heart rate go up. His heart rate was going down, which is the opposite of what they’d like to see, so they decided pretty much on the spot that they need to do a C-section and get him born, and figure out what was going on.

They knew pretty much right away that he had a pretty serious heart issue at play, called an ambulance to come up, a pediatric ambulance to come up from Portland to Farmington and pick him up.

It was interesting. We’re standing in the neonatal unit which some odd reason was just us there that night, which I think was fairly unusual and he had pretty much every piece of equipment in the room hooked up to him.

Farmington is where my family is from. My mom grew up there and her parents grew up there, and their parents grew up there, so I go way back in the community there. I’m leaning against the wall, looking at Scotty hooked up to all these equipment, and I look over to my right and there’s a donor plaque for a capital campaign that it happened when they built the hospital, built that part of the hospital, and it said “All the equipment in this room provided by Jimmy and Barbara Flint,” and those were my grandparents, so they were Scotty’s great grand parents.

I’m getting sort of emotional as I’m talking about it right now and it kind of told me right from the start that everything’s going to be okay. It was just one of those moments where it’s like you look around and know there is something bigger at play here, but it did have a calming effect.

We found out the next morning that tetralogy was the diagnosis and the cardiologist said “It’s a serious condition, but we know how to correct it, we know what to do, and we’re going to do everything we can to make sure he’s okay,” and they did. The heart issue, right now, is kind of in the background. It’s a yearly check up, but that’s on our mind on a regular basis.

Lisa: Scott, Thank you for the work you do at the Morrison Center and for bringing Scotty onto the world. Thank you, and Lisa, because obviously, he is, I would say, an ambassador, an ambassador of life perhaps.

Scott: Yeah, that’s kind of the way we look at it, I think.

Lisa: I encourage people who are listening who would like to find out more about the Morisson Center to google the website and learn more, and perhaps donate and somehow contribute to the efforts because this … It may seem as though this is something that impacts a small number of people, but as you’ve shown even through your experience with Scotty, it usually has a much broader reach than we realize. Thanks for being with us today.

Scott: It’s my pleasure [inaudible 00:10:12] me.

Lisa: We all know that Maine is a small state and especially when it comes to things like public health. I was privileged to work with Dr. Dervilla McCann on a public health project through Maine Health several years ago, and today, we have her with us again.

Dr. McCann is formerly the director of the cardiology division at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center and is on the medical staff, and is a full time cardiologist with Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. Thanks for coming in.

Dervilla: Thank you for having me, Lisa.

Lisa: Dr. McCann, you have a very interesting background. You spent some time out of the state before you chose to come to Maine. Tell me a little bit about what brought you here and your background.

Dervilla: My first real full time exposure to Maine was when I came here as a freshman at Bates College and I fell in love with the city at that time. I left after graduation, but I had planted a little seed. I talked my parents into moving to Portland.

The moved while I was still in college and I left and went to medical school, joined the navy, I got married, and came back eventually to the state in ’96 drawn both by the fact that my parents were still here and I wanted my kids to get to know them a little bit.

I had a job, so that was another pull, but basically, I’d always loved the state and had always been looking for a way to get back here.

Lisa: Your family is originally from?

Dervilla: Ireland. My parent are both Irish. They met in medical school and emigrated initially to New Finland, Canada, and then, [inaudible 00:11:40] to New England, eventually settling in Portland.

Lisa: What type of physicians are they?

Dervilla: Both my parents are physiatrist which is a specialty focused on rehabilitation medicine. My dad was really one of the founding members of the Wheelchair Sports Association and was real pioneer as was my mom, really. They both were very interested with sports for the disabled and were part of that [inaudible 00:12:09] movement have remained very active in that element of sports ever since they started.

Lisa: Was the fact that your parents were physicians, and basically, what is a public health related field, did that influence your decision to go into cardiology?

Dervilla: I think I decided to be a doctor when I was about seven and I really feel that you select your profession in part because you’re selecting a peer group. You want to continue to grow intellectually, you want to be challenged, and you want to help people. Medicine was a really great way to do that.

I was an internist for a number of years, but I found that my personality really matched better with cardiology. There was pretty immediate return on an intervention with cardiology.

Of course, when I became a cardiologist, cardiac catheterization was relatively new and intervention was in its infancy. Many technologies have advanced dramatically since I started. It’s been really challenging to stay current and to stay as well informed as you can be for your patients, but that’s part of the beauty of it, I suppose.

Lisa: Do you ever speak with your parents about the Irish medical school system or the Irish medical system and how it differs from the American system and where we are today?

Dervilla: We talked about it a lot especially at the beginning of my American Medical training. Actually, I went to Ireland to experience it with my husband. I was married at the time and we did a rotation in Dublin, and it … That was really an interesting experience.

The focus was quite different. The Irish medical students relied far less on labs and technology. They really focused on physical diagnosis in the history, the bedside examination. I couldn’t believe the stuff they memorized. It was really impressive, very, very bright.

Also, when I was there and this was in years ago, but the medical system was also very informed by religion, Catholic Ireland, so there were some social differences that we observed, my husband and I observed, when we were there regarding the communication with the patient, the communication with the family, but it was a really good thing to experience and see up close and personally, so that I understood much better how my parents have been trained in what their focus have been.

Lisa: Why did you choose to go into the Navy and how did that shape your-

Dervilla: Money. I had none, was married, wanted to be independent, seemed like a good idea at the time. The uniforms were definitely a pull because they look great. Seriously, medical school at the time that I entered was … It was during the Reagan administration.

I went to Tufts. The tuition doubled the year before I got there because federal subsidies were removed, so private medical schools around the country were suddenly seeing a very dramatic acceleration in cost.

My husband and I both had to find a way to get through this and so, we applied for a Navy scholarship. He got his the very first year. I got mine our second year, so I worked as an audio-visual tech during my whole first year of medical school to pay the bills.

I have no regrets about his at all. It really turned out to be a fantastic experience, a great adventure, and believe it or not, it turns out that after Tufts medical school, I applied to Bellevue Hospital and was accepted there for my residency at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

We had no idea what was in store for us during those three very difficult years. Fifty percent of my patients had AIDS or AIDS-related illness and 50% of the ones with AIDS died while I was caring for them. It was an inundation with one type of disease and it was a very sad time with very little that I could do.

After I got done with my residency, that was the time that I started my Navy payback and I learned more internal medicine in the Navy because they specifically excluded HIV positivity.

It was really helpful for me to have had those two experiences, one very much based in a public health crisis with intensive care medicine emphasis and very poor outcome, so I became really … I really understood the critical care elements of medical care.

The Navy thought me a completely different side, the outpatient side, taking care of people who are essentially well, but who have chronic medical problems as they age, so it was a really terrific double teaching track, so to speak.

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If you find yourself looking forward to good things to come, open your heart and take a brave step toward the future. If you’re interested in evolving your relationship with your money, get in touch with us. I’m here to help at [email protected]. We’ll help you evolve with your money.

Speaker 1: Securities offered through 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.

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Lisa: You’ve had to be somewhat nimble as you’ve gone through because you’ve dealt with different demographic groups, you’ve been to different places, and now you find yourself in Lewiston, and you have this interest in what’s going on with the Franco-American, the formerly French-Canadian population. Tell me about that.

Dervilla: There’s no question. My life has zigged and zagged. I have not been sort of shooting star with a linear arc. That has not happened, but that’s the great thing about America, I suppose, and about the opportunities that we can all take if we want to.

I’d been exposed to a lot of different ethnic groups on the West Coast. I met a lot of Pacific islanders in the Navy. I met a number of Cuban refugees. In Boston, I met the Irish-Americans that … It sort of certainly informed my understanding of that group, but definitely in Lewiston, we have a high population of Franco-Americans. I believe it’s 29% of the city which is more than the state as a whole, and the state has a very high percentage of Franco-American.

That is fine with me. I find my patients of Franco descent, particularly the ones who speak French as a first language, to be a really interesting and wonderful group of people to take care of. I really enjoy them.

I speak a little bit of French which is helpful. When you go to, for example, the emergency room sometimes, especially at the beginning when I first got there, I can recall the French-speaking nuns would be behind the curtain speaking French to the patients.

Those are lovely things, sort of a spiritual thing, that it continues to inform the community although Lewiston’s rapidly changing and becoming far more cosmopolitan, and unfortunately, that French culture is not completely sustainable although some wonderful leaders in the community are really trying to hang on to the history and the culture, and the language.

Lisa: As you have been taking care of this particular population, you’ve noticed some things about medically that have been noticed before, but it just has — it’s caught your interest as a cardiologist?

Dervilla: When I first arrived in Lewiston and started seeing really young people with heart attacks, it was a bit of a surprise. Often, these folks, young heart attack victims would often have a whole lot of risk factors.

They would have diabetes or they would smoke, or they would have high cholesterol or high blood pressure, many different risk factors, but what I kept finding was very young people with very high cholesterols and I started looking into this sub-type of patient called people with familial hypercholesterolemia.

When you look at cholesterol, we divide it up in all sorts of subgroups and there was this one genetic tenancy that it gives people very high LDL cholesterol. That’s what we use to call the bad cholesterol.

Individuals with familial hypercholesterolemia inherit this from their parents. If they get both genes, one from the dad, one from the mom, they’re called homozygotes. Those types are very sick at a very early age. They typically have strokes or heart attacks sometimes in their teens and they often don’t survive past the age of 30.

If you get just one copy of the gene from either one of your parents, you’re called a heterozygoate. Heterozygoates do have very high LDL cholesterols, but they’re less likely to have that very early childhood form of heart disease, but they sucomb to coronary artery problems, that’s arteries of the heart, in their 30s and 40s much, much earlier than normal.

Lisa: Dr. McCann, how do people find out about the work that you’re doing, the programming that you’re offering the people in Lewiston?

Dervilla: You’re a big part of it, so thank you very much. It’s really fantastic that we had the chance to talk about this today. I’m personally going to be talking to all of my primary care providers.

I’ve already done that once. I’ve talked to the leadership in the primary care community and I’m planning on spreading the word almost one-to-one, giving every primary care provider a list of the patients that we’ve screened that have their high cholesterol.

That’s how we’re going to start, but by starting with the small pilot project, we’re also going to be looking at a small group of these individuals really providing intensive support and seeing what works and what doesn’t, and tweaking our systems so that what we do is the most effective, highest quality program we can build.

I’m more than happy to share that with anybody who wants to duplicate this because I think this is the way to go. This is the future of medicine in my opinion.

Lisa: Thank you for the work that you continue to do for patients in Lewiston area in the state of Maine and thank you for really making an effort to embrace medicine where it is right now, because it is an exciting time to [inaudible 00:24:36] medicine and there are a lot of things we can offer patients now that we weren’t able to offer them 10, 15 years ago, before the age of electronic medical records.

We’ve been speaking with Dr. Dervilla McCann who’s a cardiologist with Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. Thanks for coming in.

Dervilla: Thanks so much for having me, Lisa, I really appreciate you giving me this time.

Lisa: Today, we have Olympian Julia Clukey who was a member of the US Luge Team. Julia competed in the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. She is also a spokesperson for the Maine Beer and Wine Distributors Association. Each summer, she hosts Julia Clukey’s Camp for Girls on Maranacook Lake in Readfield, Maine.

Julia, thanks for coming in and bringing your presence into our studio.

Julia: Thank you. I’m very happy to be here.

Lisa: You’re doing something that’s important to you and it came out of I think an earlier … an experience in your life that maybe didn’t have as much to do with the Olympics. As a spokesperson for the Maine Beer and Wine Distributors Association, it seems like it’s not something that every Olympian would choose.

Julia: Yeah, after the 2010 Olympics, the president of the Maine Beer and Wine Distributors Association approached me about their responsibility campaign that they were looking to grow in reaching young people and in trying to keep them away from their products and make them be responsible for themselves and make their decisions because that’s what we all want. We want kids to be healthy and safe, and it really was perfect timing.

I was just moving back to the state of Maine from living in Lake Placid New York for almost a decade and I was looking for way to reconnect with my community and give back in the way that I felt I had been given over the course of my career. That’s really where the partnership started and it’s just growing every year since then.

I’m very passionate about connecting with Maine youth and sharing my story athletically and personally with them so that they go home realizing that, one, you can do anything. It doesn’t matter where you come from. Two, that they own their own potential and they decide how hard they’re going to work, where they’re going to work with, whatever activity their passionate about, and then, also to stay healthy and to make decisions for themselves because if you make bad decisions, those are going to follow you down the road, so it’s important to be thinking about where you want to go and how you want to get there.

Lisa: Tell us about your story.

Julia: I got involved in this sport of luge very randomly. The US Luge Team came to Portland, Maine in 1997 and a friend and I write about it in the paper. In the very bottom part of the ad was that we get a free t-shirt if we came out for the day, so being 11-year old, that was all it took for us to go out for the day to try the sport of luge.

From them, I got invited to go to Lake Placid, New York and try the sport in the winter time, and that’s when I got hooked to the sport and made the US Development Team which is the lowest level.

I was on the team for many years and 12 years later, I made my first Olympic through lots of ups and downs in my career.

Lisa: For people who don’t watch the Olympics, which sport is the luge?

Julia: Luge is a sliding sport and it’s the one where the individuals are lying on their back going feet first. It’s the fastest of the three sports.

Lisa: That sounds a little crazy.

Julia: It’s a little bit. We do have quite a bit of control with our slides. We spend a lot of time with our equipment fine tuning them. When you first in this sport, you start really low down on the track and you work your way up until you’re comfortable with the higher speeds and the equipment.

I do have quite a bit of control and it certainly isn’t a sport for everyone, but I enjoy it very much.

Lisa: As a physician and a small business owner, I rely on Marci Booth from Booth Maine to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marci.

Marci: Take care of yourself. How many times have you heard that simple sentence, but too often, we never take the time to do just that. When you take the time to care for yourself and commit to your long term expectations, something astonishing happens. Success becomes inevitable.

The same can be said for setting proper, long-range expectations for your business. If you plan properly and take care of your business and its systems, business success becomes a reality.

I’m Marci Booth. Let’s talk about the changes you need, boothmaine.com.

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Lisa: What was it like being part of a sport that didn’t have as much understanding as sports like hockey or in the winter time, or figure skating?

Julia: It certainly made it difficult starting out as far as fund raising, trying to cover my expenses, my equipment needs in ’98, ’99. This was before the internet was really very popular, and so, I spent a lot of time just explaining what the sport was.

Now, it’s a little different because everything is so accessible. It was tough at the beginning, but year after year, I kept doing it. I kept doing it. I kept improving in the sport and then, got more fans, more followers, and my community got behind me.

Lisa: Tell me about your family and their impact on what you’ve managed to accomplish.

Julia: My family has been a huge influence. First off, my parents for allowing me to do this sport of luge is a great sacrifice and by the time I was 13, I was travelling to Europe with the Junior World Cup team and I was gone six or seven months a year, and that’s a big sacrifice for a parent to let their kid go off into the world, so I owe a big, big thank you to them for selflessly allowing me to go after my dreams.

My sisters, they all … They’re both athletic growing up and I think there were certainly times when they didn’t understand why I was gone for so long and it got frustrating, coordinating all my travel and what not, but, they too have been very supportive of me and nothing’s better than me than having my family watching me compete.

Lake Placid, New York is the closest track, so every winter, they try to get out there and watch me do my thing.

Lisa: Where did you grow up and go to school?

Julia: I grew up in Augusta, Maine. I graduated from Cony High School in 2003.

Lisa: This must be one of the reasons why you’ve chosen to have a camp in Readfield?

Julia: Yeah, so I moved back to the US area in 2010, lived there ever since my off seasons and yeah, I wanted to give back to the community where … My childhood was so important to me. I feel like I had a great childhood. I was exposed to so much being growing up. I guess is a relatively small town, but there are so many great [inaudible 00:31:42] programs and art programs. My parents just did a great job of exposing us to a lot and I want to do the same to kids coming behind me to make sure I can give back and give them opportunities to try new things.

Lisa: You’ve also had some real tragedies in your life. Your father passed away when you were only 19 of a heart attack. That’s a very young age to lose your father.

Julia: Yeah, it was just after his 51st birthday and it was really tough to deal with especially mentally. He was kind of my person always. He was a big sports guy, so we had a similar mindset and it’s very easy to talk to him about my career, about problems I was facing on the track or what not. To lose him so suddenly, it took me awhile to adapt to that, a couple of years to really get over not having him to talk to everyday about what was going on especially as an athlete.

Lisa: And you also lost your sister, Olivia, in 2010.

Julia: Yeah, that was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever … Or it is the hardest thing I’ve ever dealt with. My sister passed away from mental illness about six weeks after I competed in the Vancouver Olympics.

I went from the highest moment of my life quickly to the saddest moment of my life and there’s not a day I don’t think of her and think of the struggles she faced and that’s another part of my summer camp, it’s giving back to young girls to ensure that they never feel poorly about themselves and if I can give them skills as they enter middle and high school so they’re finding activities that they’re passionate about and they’re comfortable in their skin and they have a positive self-message for themselves, then hopefully, that will carry with them through life.

Lisa: Tell me about some of the things that you do with the camper so that this type of message is put out there.

Julia: Half the day is spent with me doing different activities around setting goals, [inaudible 00:33:39] we talk about why we set goals for ourselves, how we set goals for ourselves, and then, understanding the difference between a big goal and then small daily goals that you can do for yourself whether it’s improving your school grades or a sport. It’s really the little goals you set that are going to carry you through to reaching that final goal.

Some of the other things we do is we look at magazines and advertisements in the way they’re targeting girls and the message that the media is sending out there and trying to understand that, one, you can’t avoid it. It’s going to be there.

Two, you don’t have to not read magazines, but make sure you’re making opinions for yourself and you’re not allowing this outside force to decide how you feel about yourself.

Then, a lot of the other activities we do is just understanding how important it is to love yourself and to be who you are and to be proud of that person.

We do arts and crafts projects and discussions again, and then, focus on positive body image, how to build a positive body image, how to take care of yourself mentally and physically.

Lisa: You also impacted 10,000 high school students as of May. You presented it more than 30 high schools across the state and part of this is your association with the Maine Beer and Wine Distributors Association and responsibility. What are some of your major themes?

Julia: My high school presentations, there’s really three things that I hit versus how important it is to try a lot of new things especially when you’re young because I got involved in this sport of luge so randomly like I said, and when you find things that you’re passionate about, it makes it so much easier to live a healthy life, I think, because you love what you’re doing and you want to pour all your energy into that.

Second is how important … How much hard work goes in the things that you can’t just rely on your talent or skill, that you have to be ready to work hard day in day out and it can take 12 years to reach a big goal like it did me to make the Olympics.

And lastly … Or actually, I guess four things. My most important thing is understanding that you own your own potential, yourself. You have to set goals for yourself. You have to set big goals fro yourself if you want to go far in sports in school, and that you get to decide your future in those things.

Lastly is you have to be ready for challenges and life is a roller coaster sometimes and you have to have plans in place so that when things do get a little rough or you find yourself facing a tragic situation, that you have a good support system and you have a good plan to allow yourself to heal whether it’s mentally, physically, or what not, and move forward from that positively.

Lisa: I have children who have gone through the school system and as athletes, I know that the athletic code is a big part of what keeps them from drinking. I would love to believe it’s because they’re just really great kids and they would never want a drink, but that code kind of keeps them on track, but there have to be bigger messages that we’re giving to our kids about that.

Julia: Yeah, and certainly, the Maine Beer and Wine Distributors Association, they’re eight family owned businesses in the state of Maine, so they’re very passionate about their communities. They all have kids and families and mostly, most school age, and so, they care very much about keeping kids safe and keeping them away from their product.

They understand that their product comes with a responsibility and they want to be out in front of that. With our partnership, the message that I’m giving to kids is bad decisions can follow you and you’re not invisible as well.

No one wants to read in the paper about a fatal accident or injury, or sickness from over drinking, so trying to get kids to realize that they’re not invisible, that it can happen to them, and we live in a great state, there’s so many things you can do to fill your time, just to focus on those and wait until you’re older and able to make those decisions for yourself.

Lisa: There is also a role modeling aspect to being an athlete and really it, at any level, I know that in our town in Yarmouth. If you’re a high school athlete who’s been going up through the system, you’ve been athlete, but you’ve also coached the younger kids, you’re recognizable on the playing fields.

To act responsibly in whatever area, whether it’s not drinking or whether it’s living a goal or [inaudible 00:38:12] that’s something that you’re not just putting out there for yourself. You’re putting that out there for people around you.

Julia: Yeah, certainly. I specially think so many high schools are the community if you … The high schools, everyone in the town reads about them and they want to read good things about their kids in the community.

I feel the same way and that’s another thing in my summer camp we talk about like it’s okay to stand out for good things. I think sometimes at middle school and high school level, kids don’t want that positive recognition. They feel uncomfortable with it and that’s kind of a sad thing when you think about it, that kids feel bad about getting good recognition because they’re worried about what their peers are going to think.

Lisa: This past season, you did very well on the world cup scene. You missed qualifying for the 2014 Olympics by 13,000ths of a second?

Julia: Yes.

Lisa: That must have been pretty devastating?

Julia: It was. It was very much so. I came in to the season one of the strongest athletes and early in the season, I had a couple small problems with the equipment, a couple of bad races, and then, finally got things back where they needed to be, but came out just a hair short literally in that quest for the Olympics, but really, I’m able to sit here today not looking back with a list of what ifs.

I really feel that I gave it everything I had to make it back to the Olympics and I came up short and that’s another important message, that sometimes, you’re going to set goals and you’re not going to make those goals on that day and it’s okay to reset, refocus, and make new goals for yourself and not allow yourself to be defined by that failure.

Lisa: You also had to work your way through an injury that could have been career ending really, that you had a knee injury.

Julia: Yeah, I tore my knee in 2009, just a couple of weeks before the season started, my meniscus and MCL, and fortunately, I was in my class in New York. We have a great medical staff there and we ran into surgery, and nine days later, I was competing again.

I wasn’t off my crutches yet, but I was very determined to not let anything get in my way of making that Olympic team. Everything I’d gone through to that point of my career had prepared me for that moment.

Lisa: You have a lot of grit.

Julia: I’m stubborn, but in a good way, I think.

Lisa: No, it’s a good thing. I say this in a … I’m very admiring of your grit because it’s not everybody that could have that significant knee injury go for and compete, deal with the loss of a father at a young age, deal with the loss of a sister at a young age, finishing 13,000ths of a second away from making it to the Olympics, and you’re still sitting in front of me and you seem like a genuinely happy individual in your life.

Julia: I am. I don’t have a lot to complain about really. Athletically, when I do come up short in races, 13000ths of a second short, honestly, my life experiences made have made that easier to handle with because that’s not the bigger picture of what matters to me and through losing my father and my sister. I learned those lessons the hard of way what really matters to me in the core of myself.

My sister had a son, Lucas, who’s my nephew. He’s five and we’re very fortunate to have a big involvement in his life. That’s really where most of my energy goes to is raisng him and being there for him and being a person in his life.

Luge is what I do, but it’s not who I am as a person. I think that’s what allows me to not shrug it off. Of course, I care very deeply. It hurt a lot to not make the Olympic team, but it doesn’t define me at the end of the day and I’m okay with that.

Lisa: Julia, how do people find out about your Julia Clukey’s Camp for Girls or the work that you’re doing as a spokesperson?

Julia: My website is clukeyluge.com. There’s a lot of information there about both the camp, my high school presentations. High schools can sign up there. It’s a very easy, one form, and then we look at dates, and figure out something that works.

As well, I’m on Facebook and Twitter, the social media avenues, so very accessible and I like it that way because I love when I visit a school.

Then, six months down the road, I get a Facebook message from a student telling me they decided to go to this college or they tried softball and they’re now in the softball team, and things like that. I try to make myself very accessible.

Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Olympian Julia Clukey who is a member of the US Luge Team and a competitor in the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. I’m so impressed with your great … your determination and the foresight that you have and the work that you’re doing to connect with the kids in Maine, so thank you.

Julia: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

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Lisa: Anybody who listens to the radio show on a regular basis knows what a big reader I am and one of my favorite things to do is to pick up a book, read it, find myself completely engaged, and then, get the chance to meet the person who wrote the book that had me spellbound for hours at a time.

Today, we have that individual with us today. This is Christina Baker Kline. She is a novelist, non-fiction writer and editor, who wrote the number one New York Times bestseller Orphan Train, as well as Bird in Hand, The Way Life Should Be, Desire Lines, and Sweet Water.

Christina lives with her family in Mont Clair new Jersey and spends summers on Mount Desert Island. Thanks so much for coming in and talking with us today.

Christina: Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.

Lisa: This book is truly a great book. I really enjoyed it in part because of the writing. Obviously, the writing is great, but also, it’s such an interesting story, the Orphan Train. Tell people who are listening who may not have read before what this book is about.

Christina: My novel is about a 91-year old woman who lives in the coast of Maine. She’s a wealthy widow in a big old house and the 17-year-old girl who comes into her life who is a troubled goth part Penobscot Indian foster kid who’s had a really hard time a bit, steals a book from the library and has to do community service.

She comes to work for this old woman and her job is to help clean up the attic. Her attitude is that she just wants to get it over with because she thinks they have nothing in common and it’s just this old woman who has a lot of money and really doesn’t look anything like here, act anything like her either.

Over the course of the novel however, as she begins to unpack the boxes, she realized that this woman has a hidden past as an orphan train rider. Not only that, which I’ll explain in just a second, but they also come to understand that they have a lot more in common than they ever would have imagined in terms of the kind of childhood that they both share, so through their friendship, they discovered things about themselves that they never would have known.

The Orphan Trains are just kind of incredible piece for American history that’s been hidden in plain sight. Two hundred and fifty thousand children, perhaps more even, were sent from the East Coast to the Midwest. Over 75 years, it was the largest migration of children in our nation’s history from 1854 to 1929, and very few people know about it.

It was a labor program. The children were between the ages of 2 and 14 years old, and they were sent to the Midwest specifically indentured and contracted to work for farmers and other people who chose them.

Randomly, there was no screening process. They were just given to whoever showed up. They had to line up by height and they stood on platforms and people tested their muscles and their teeth, and made them run in place, and it really was, in some ways, resembled a slave auction. The children aged out at 18, but until then, they were sort of the property of the people who took them.

It’s a sort of chilling and surprising, I think, bit of our own past again that we don’t tend to know much about.

Lisa: The main character or one of the main characters in the book is actually a modern child who is being taking out of a family situation and put into a different family situation, so there is a parallel there with the older woman that she meets that is a train rider.

Christina: That’s right. I work with a lot of foster care organizations now since the book came out and there’s a foster child in it, but I also did a lot of research and I have friends who’ve taken in foster children, and I know that even though … Actually, I did a benefit the other night and a former foster child spoke.

He was so amazing and he was about 21. He came up to me at the end because I spoke as well and he said “The feeling … The situation of the train riders is a unique thing, but I have to tell you, reading your book, the feelings I had as a foster child are the same. The circumstances are different, but the feelings you have being displaced, being unwanted and unloved, and that you don’t have a home is exactly the same way it felt to me.”

When I wrote the book, I actually wasn’t calculated about the connections. I stumbled into their relationship having this residences. Instinctively, I felt that having this 91-year old woman, like many train riders, had never told her story, and I didn’t think that she would tell it to just anyone. I thought it would have to be someone who’s sort of on the social fringes maybe who wouldn’t be asking the normal questions or just politely wanting to know, but instead we’d have a motivation for asking.

That’s how I came up with the idea of Molly, this character, and there were many other reasons that I chose this, the Penobscot Indian angle and all of that stuff.

My mother was very involved with [inaudible 00:50:10]. She was a state legislator in Maine. I grew up in Maine. I was drawn to her, I think, unconsciously, understanding that there were connections, but as anybody who writes fiction knows, you often don’t know why you’re writing a story until you’re telling it.

The writing begets the revelations. It’s usually not the other way around that you calculate it, kind of figure out what the elements are and put them into a story. You often have to follow your instinct and trust that you’re being led somewhere that will be fruitful, and that’s what happened to me in this book. The connections between them only became obvious as I wrote my way into the story.

Lisa: As a result of the success of Orphan Train, you’re being asked to do many events, lots of community reads, and it seems as though this has really touched people in a big way. Why do you think that that’s true?

Christina: I thought about that a lot because this is my fifth novel and honestly, I like them all. The other ones have done pretty well, but nothing on the scale of this novel which will soon have sold a million copies.

It’s a completely different experience and honestly, it feels like a fluke to me and I feel above lucky to experience it and a little overwhelmed. I do think that … Believe me, I’ve thought about this a lot because when I was writing the book and I and my publisher had no idea.

In fact, I remember at one point they said, “Well, we’re not sure that you’re going to” … After I’d finished it, “that you’re going to hit the demographics because you’ve got this odd 17 year old and then this cranky to 91 year olds and who’s going to read about those people? We don’t know.”

It kind of unfolded slowly, and in fact, the book has been out for over a year and it climbed the bestseller list slowly and then it just hung on, so it’s been a kind of slow built.

I think the truth is that a lot of people are interested in this story about America that they didn’t know. I’ve a lot of men who come to events and write me who say they never have read any of my books and thought that they were women’s books, and that now, with this historical angle, they’re interested in it. There’s that aspect.

I think a lot of people are wondering how to handle displaced children in our society. There’s a lot of talk about the foster care system and how to improve it and make it better. I think there’s that part of the story.

I also think probably that the connection between generations is something that a lot of people are interested and then thinking about as people live longer. I have a lot of mother and daughter book clubs who come up to me every events. I have grandmothers and granddaughters reading the story together. There is something too about that connection between these unlikely friends that have, as I believe, struck a cord.

I’m not sure. Do you have any other thoughts on that? Those are the ones that come to mind for me.

Lisa: I think that you probably have hit it. I mean, when I read this book, after I was done with it, I gave it to my 18-year-old and I also have a 13-year old daughter, and I said, “You really need to read this book,” because there was something about it. I think I felt the same thing.

I’m not in a mother-daughter book club and she and I don’t always read the same books, but there was something about it, I think, that the bond between the two women in the book and it was sort of a family bond even though the 91-year old and the 17-year old weren’t actually related.

Christina: Yeah, exactly. I think I’ve heard that a lot. A lot of parents say it was so wonderful to talk to my girl or boy or children about what it really was like to be a child in that period because they have no idea, and we … They said, these people come up to me at readings often say we have a sort of fairly comfortable life and they just didn’t know that children have not always lived this way.

The idea that children were considered labor and that there was no such thing as childhood is shocking to people especially children who have never really heard about that before. By children, I mean, teens really. I would say 13 … I have a number of 13-year olds who have communicated with me who read the book, I would say most readers started around 14 it seems, 14, 15, because there are a few scenes in the book that are a little disturbing although not particularly graphic.

Lisa: Christina, what can we look forward to from you in the future?

Christina: My next novel is inspired by the painting “Christina’s World” by Andrew Wyeth and it’s actually her story, certain in the first person and she tells the story of what she’s doing in that field and what she’s looking at, and what has to do with her very interesting real life story.

I’ve been working with several tour guides at the White House in Cushing, Maine. I’ve been reading everything I can get my hands on, and I’ve discovered that her story, her ancestry, how they got to Cushing and how she ended up there, and what her passions were and how they manifested themselves is so interesting that you almost don’t need to write a novel about it, but I am, but I am writing a novel. I’m using as much as I can from her real life.

Lisa: I look forward to that and I know that people who are listening also will look forward to it. Also, anybody who has not yet read Orphan Train, I highly recommend it. How do people find out about your work, Christina?

Christina: Actually, on my website which is just my name dot com, christinabakerkline.com, or my Facebook author page which is my public page, I have events. If people want to catch up with me in the summer, I will be doing some events with Ayelet Waldman who has a new novel called Love and Treasure in Maine. I’ll be doing that.

Also, on my website, I have a tab called “Book Clubs” and it has tons of information about the non-fiction aspect of Orphan Train and I also answered the top 10 questions that people tend to ask.

Lisa: We are so pleased that you were able to come into our studio, talk with us today. For people who know the show, we … You may know that we schedule people far in advance and we actually just accidentally called you up and got you to come in at the last minute, so we’re really privileged to have you here.

We’ve been speaking with Christina Baker Kline, novelist, nonfiction writer and editor, and author of the No.1 New York Time’s Bestseller, Orphan Train. Thanks so much for coming in.

Christina: Thank you for having me.

Lisa: You have been listening to Love Maine Radio, show number 172, Love Maine Review 2014. Our guest have included Scott Wentzel, Dr. Dervilla McCann, Julia Clukey, and Christina Baker Kline.

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This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our Love Maine Review 2014. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life and a bountiful new year.

Love Maine Radio with Liza Belisle is recorded in the studio of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland, Maine. Our executive producers are Susan Grisanti, Kevin Thomas, and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Audio production and original music by John C. McCain. Content producer is Kelly Clinton. Our online producer is Ezra Wolfinger.

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Transcription of Love Maine Review 2014 #172