Dana Dow stands in the showroom of Dow Furniture, one of the most successful and long-lasting of Waldoboro's businesses. Eons ago this showroom was where Dana's home used to be. It was the home his father built, and the place where Dana was born and where he grew up. You could say that Dana is Waldoboro through and through. He's also a living testament that you don’t need to move away to have a big life. You can have that right here, too.
I was born here in 1951. Where I’m standing in what used to be our old house, and opposite was a small building. That was my father’s chicken hatchery where he would hatch over 400,000 chickens each year which he sold to all the local farmers, for their laying hens.
When the chicken business ended, my father switched to selling used furniture. I was probably four or five at the time. Mind you — this wasn’t his real job, either. He was teaching at the high school – drivers’ ed and current events — and was assistant principal for a while. He was also in the State Senate.
Around 1960 or 1961, he started selling new furniture, and soon after when I was in high school, I started there, too, selling and delivering furniture and mattresses.
But I come from a long line of schoolteachers, and that’s not just my father. My sister taught. My cousins and my aunts, too — and my grandmother started the music program at Waldoboro High School.
So, after finishing at Medomak High, I went away to be a schoolteacher. When I came back, my father retired to run the store full time. And I took the Chemistry-Physics position at the high school. Ronnie Dolloff, who’d taught me mathematics, was the principal. Like my father, I also taught drivers’ ed.
I loved teaching. I look back on those years as some of the best of my life. I coached cross-country, and I tagged along with the basketball team. In the years I was there, we had two state championships. It was glorious.
But everybody gets into a slump or valley sometime in their life. A couple of years in, I did, too. I remember being in my principal’s office to talk about teaching and some of the problems I was having at the time. Those courses weren’t the easiest to teach. And they don’t tell you in college that it takes about three years to be a good teacher. Teaching is also completely different from selling a sofa or a mattress. Teaching, I learned, is all about making relationships, and it’s a lot of relationships.
Ronnie didn’t preach the Gospel to me. But when I came out, I felt I was not alone. It was as if a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I don’t think it was his words either. It was simply the overall feeling of acceptance. I came out realizing that God was on my side. And on everybody’s side. And that’s what started it.
Three years later, I left Medomak for seminary school. I thought I wanted to be a preacher. But in the process, I found I wasn’t cut out for that. I don’t have what it takes to be a good counselor. I am a teacher. So, I left and went into the store full-time and teaching a Bible class at Nobleboro Baptist Church.
We’re studying Deuteronomy now, and then I’m going to tie it into Romans, starting with chapter 7 (which is the bad news), and then with chapter 8 (which is the good news and what everyone wants to hear).
And that is the same type of thinking I applied when I was in Augusta in the State Senate. Before I come to a decision, I want to hear the good and bad news. I want to see all the cards on the table, not just the select ones I care about – which means hearing from all sides. And guess what? My opponent has some good ideas, too, and I need to incorporate them. That leads to a discussion, which leads to a compromise.
And always in the back of mind is what I used to teach in drivers’ ed: “It doesn’t matter if you’re in the right. If you can stop an accident, it’s your responsibility to do it.” It meant a lot to me, to represent this district.
My father served in the Senate for eight years. I think growing up, somewhere in the back of mind, I always knew I’d run for it, too. Then, all of a sudden, it was like a light switch turned, and suddenly, I was. That was in 2004. I won the primary by two votes and the final Senate race easily.
I ran on the issue of business because I feel Maine discourages business development. Some of that is due to regulations, but some of it is because of taxes. Maine, being way up in the north corner of the country, has to work harder to compete. If f we’re to do that, we need to have a better business climate.
Having been a schoolteacher, I watch school populations. And they’ve declined with each year, so much that makes you ask, “Where did everybody go?”
The answer is, “Parents moved their families out of state because they needed to earn a living.” This is especially true in the northern part of the state. I’ll give you an example:
My father grew up in Presque Isle, so as a family, we watched high school basketball with the antenna facing north. Back then, we would watch Class A Millinocket, Brewer, Caribou, Houlton, Presque Isle, Fort Fairfield, and Fort Kent. All Class A.
Today, there isn’t a Class A school north of Bangor. That’s because there’s been such a decline in population. And that has to do with the business climate in Maine. Even Massachusetts, which we used to call ‘Taxachusetts,’ has smartened up.
I left the Legislature in 2020. I always enjoyed, though, serving the people in my district. I was fortunate, too, because two thirds of the drive to Augusta took me through my district. Sometimes I’d drive to Wiscasset and up; or through Jefferson and Sommerville; or just up 32 to 17. My drives always reminded me of the people I was serving.
I got out of politics because I don’t believe in being a career politician. And, I was 68, and the job as Senate Minority Leader, my last position, was running me ragged. That’s a young person’s job, for someone in their 30s or early 40s. It was a lot, and I had a business, plus my family and my church teaching.
They used to call Waldoboro “Dodge City on the Medomak,” but Waldoboro has been good to me. My goal has always been to run a business Waldoboro would be proud of. I loved growing up here; I want to be worthy of living here.
My father sold the business to me when I was 26 years old, when I’d only been teaching for three years. And now my son Wilmot will take it over.
Wilmot and my wife Lisa are very good at details. I am better at seeing the overall picture. I’m the one who thinks about when and where we build the warehouse, or when we buy the property across the road. And between us all, we’ve built this business to what it is today.
If you watch me walk, that’s the pace I go, steady. I’m also like the turtle that sticks its head out of the shell, looks around, and if he doesn’t like what he sees, he can pull his head back in.
But that doesn’t mean I close my eyes to things. I’m sad my own church, the Methodist Church in town, closed. I see half-empty churches and wish they were fuller. Maybe if they were, there would be less anger, less of the attitude, “I’m right, and you’re wrong – and I’m not going to listen to a single word you’re saying.” Because that’s not right. That’s not Christian.
What we need is a climate of positivity. And that means knowing that a solution is out there, and that together, we can find our way to it. I keep hearing my old professor’s raspy rough voice in my ear, and he’s saying, “Let’s loooove one another!”
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