At a recent town meeting, Loretta Severson arrived dressed as a fireman. She was there to offer support for an upcoming ordinance that if passed, will lift the ban on fireworks. Loretta had wanted fireworks for her oldest son’s homecoming from four years of service in the Marines. Her son has always loved fireworks, but ban was still in place. So, instead of fireworks, they celebrated with a big turkey dinner and lots of hugs. And he loved that, too. Loretta is not a fireman (yet). She was going to be a neurosurgeon on graduation from Medomak High, so she enrolled in pre-med. But on her first term’s break, she had a head-on car accident up by the Maritime Store on Christmas day. She woke up in the hospital with her memory erased. Doctors told her parents that her memory wouldn’t recover. But it did. Loretta recovered. And after nine months, she returned to college, this time, pointing herself towards psychology. She went on to earn a PsyD. These days she counsels in town. Her clients are mostly adults with a smattering of children. Her life is full. She is the single mother of her own two sons plus two step-children. And she backs up her mother in the house chores because her mother helps with her own mom, every day, while holding down a job at Hannaford’s, something she’s done for nearly fifty years. Loretta herself also volunteers. She works alongside a retired Army doctor up in Lincoln who treats veterans. Loretta is the person who evaluates them for PTSD. It’s a service she does it with a glad heart because service is what she’s about.
We’ve always been a patriotic family. My father’s father, Lesley Staley (though people called him Les) was a veteran. He served in three foreign wars: WWII, the Korean War and Vietnam. He has a Bronze Star of Valor.
And my mother’s father, Guy Donald Benner (Donnie), was with the police department for 25 years in Waldoboro, and, for the majority of those years, a sergeant. Growing up, everyone thought that Donnie was top notch, because he was so good at handling situations like disturbances at homes. And on top of being a police officer, he had a farm.
So, it kind of runs in our family. My dad joined the Airforce when my mom was pregnant with me. But because of really bad asthma issues, he got honorable discharge. my younger brother just retired from the Air National Guard from flying re-fueling planes. He did that for 26 years with multiple tours all over the world.
I think the idea of serving and dedicating yourself to service is deep in our family. It’s true for me, and it’s true for my oldest, even though he never got to know his grandfather, the war veteran. He got his sense of service from my mom’s dad, the police officer and that same patriotism, too.
And so did I. Service is in my heart and soul, and it doesn’t necessarily mean serving in the military. It’s serving your neighbor. Serving your community. Serving your state, and serving your country. It is about coming together for the greater good of people. Humankind.
We all want to have a joyful life. In the Declaration of Independence it says, “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is being inalienable rights. Happiness is what everyone in the world wants. That’s why so many people want to be a part of the United States. They want to have the opportunity for striving for the American Dream.
But at the end of the day, nobody can do it alone. We need each other. And we need to serve to help each other.
A couple of weeks ago, we had a family get-together picnicking with lobster and corn to celebrate my younger brother’s retirement. It was me, my brother, his son and my younger son (the other one hadn’t returned home yet). And across the street we saw an old fella who was driving his truck slowly by, and baling. Then he went back and returned with a big empty truck and drove out into the field. I could see him in the distance gathering the bales of hay, and he looked like he was struggling a little. Some of the bales had fallen apart. I stood up and said, “Come on, everyone, let’s go ask if he wants some help.”
We walked across the road and into the field. Bales were everywhere. And in the middle, there were two of them out there, him and a woman. She might have been his daughter, I don’t know. She said she’d just come from work – she’s custodian at the school — to help with the hay. I said, “You gotta a lot of hay to load. Could you use an extra hand?”
After they said great, I had to tell them that we’d never ever loaded hay before. “But if you tell us how to do it, we’ll get it done.”
And she directed us and helped us decide who was doing what. I got up on the back of the truck to stack the bales, and the two boys did the lifting and loading of them on the truck. My brother helped the old guy and sometimes helped the boys. It was the older fellas directing the younger people how to get the farmwork done. It was great.
It probably took us an hour. The older guy said afterward, “We would have been out here with nothing more than the lights on our truck trying to get this all in by ourselves if you hadn’t been here.” He couldn’t stop thanking us.
For me, though, it was incredible watch my son and nephew work together, and how they embraced serving a neighbor. My son still talks about it and at the end they took a photo of themselves standing at the back of the truck filled to the top with hay.
My father’s father always had a flag flying on the property. Just a few weeks ago I went out and stapled one to the front of our building. I wanted the flag to be present. And maybe I was thinking about my older son who was about to return home. To me, the flag is a symbol of the patriotism that runs deep in our family. And of their service. I know that with the country and everyone being divided, Republican and Democrat, some people think the flag is a symbol of the Republican side. But the flag is for everyone.
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