Faith — the sUbstance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not\u00a0seen faith is reputed to be not such a common thing today as once it was.<\/p>\n
Whether that is true or not, it is worthy of note that there is taking place\u00a0in waterville right now a tribute to a man of unrelenting faith. The citizens’\u00a0committee in charge of the local campaign to complete the ~oving of Colby College\u00a0to its Mayflower Hill site is making that campaign a personal tribute to\u00a0Franklin W. Johnson.<\/p>\n
Frank Johnson describes himself as an unrepentent optimist. He is more\u00a0than that; he is a man of deep, persistent faith. The optimist may sometimes\u00a0be like the postman on the old Jack Benny program, who used to reiterate in\u00a0mournful tones, “Keep smiling”. But the man of faith knows there are plenty of\u00a0times when he can’t smile, when optimism is not enough, when even grim determination\u00a0and downright hard work seem fruitless. It is then that persistent,\u00a0abiding faith sees its most effective hour. Without it defeat is sure.<\/p>\n
Frank Johnson means a lot to waterville besides giving it the new Colby.<\/p>\n
Nearly half a century ago he was principal of Coburn, and he has maintained\u00a0active interest in that fine old school through all the years. Only a few days\u00a0ago he attended a meeting of the school’s executive committee and helped lay\u00a0plans for Coburn’s 1951 summer school and the ensuing school year.<\/p>\n
He has had a prominent part in many community enterprises: the Boy Scouts,\u00a0the Boys’ Club, the YMCA, the Thayer Hospital. He has probably served actively\u00a0and ardently on the boards of more educational, religious and charitable institutions\u00a0than has any other citizen of Waterville.<\/p>\n
He was the first president of the Maine Teachers Association today the\u00a0most powerful educational group in the state. He is a life member of the National\u00a0Educational Association. Most of you know Frank Johnson as a planner of\u00a0buildings and a raiser of funds, and he is that indeed. But I don’t want you\u00a0to forget that he is also a teacher — one of Maine’s really great teachers.<\/p>\n
And it is because he is a great teacher that he would never for a moment relinquish\u00a0his determination and zeal for the new Colby. That beautiful site,\u00a0those fine buildings, the increased endowment are all for one purpose — that\u00a0boys and girls for generations to come may have the right kind of log for future\u00a0Mark Hopkinses to sit on.<\/p>\n
I want to congratulate the people of Getchell’s Corner on the restoration\u00a0of the village church. Perhaps some of my listeners Who do not live in Vassalboro\u00a0fail to recognize the name Getchell’s Corner. Well, that is What some of\u00a0us have known only as Vassalboro Village, and in fact its post office name has\u00a0long been Vassalboro. It is the original Vassalboro settlement on the banks of\u00a0the Kennebec, between Winslow and Augusta, as distinguished from the later settlements\u00a0of North and East Vassalboro in the same town.<\/p>\n
The village church has long been falling into decay, and services in it became\u00a0less and less frequent. A group of citizens decided that the community\u00a0must not be without religious services. They have repaired th~ building, getting\u00a0generous support not only from local people, but from many former residents now\u00a0far away. And on the last Sunday in October, two weeks ago, they made fitting\u00a0celebration of their success. More than two hundred people crowded into the little\u00a0chapel to worship under the leadership of a man Who had been their minister\u00a0thirty years ago. Rev. Arthur MacDougal, the noted fisherman pastor at Bingham,\u00a0came back to Vassalboro for this occasion. In simple, appealing words he talked\u00a0to them about the love of God, which, working through the lives of devoted people,\u00a0assured just such results as the restoration of the chapel and the continuance of\u00a0worship in the village.<\/p>\n
If you think religious interest is dead, that the church has no message for\u00a0our modern day, you should have been, as I was, at Vassalboro on the evening of\u00a0October 29.<\/p>\n
Our elder statesman, Hon. Harvey Eaton, quite rightly called me to task for\u00a0not mentioning the pumpkin freshet on last week’s broadcast. Now the truth is I\u00a0had heard of the pumpkin freshet but could not date it. My recorded information\u00a0did not say which one of the many fall freshets was given that name.<\/p>\n
Mr. Eaton assures me it was the fall freshet of 1869. He remembers it well\u00a0because he was 7 years old at the time. The waters, not only of the Kennebec,\u00a0but also of the Sandy River and the Carrabassett, rose suddenly to freshet height\u00a0that autumn, while the pumpkins still lay unharvested in the fields. The waters\u00a0swept through many a corn field, ripped the pumpkins from the vines, and sent\u00a0them tossing down the swollen streams. Hence the name pumpkin freshet.<\/p>\n
It seems that when I mentioned my possession of the saddle bags belonging to\u00a0the murderer Coolidge, I had nothing to brag about. For in the home of Howard\u00a0Simpson of Winslow is the very desk used by Coolidge in the office Where the\u00a0murder took place. That desk stood in the second floor room over Shorey’s Tailor\u00a0Shop at No. 27 Main Street on the evening when Ed Mathews drank the brandy\u00a0containing the fatal dose of prussic acid. At that same desk the next mo:r::ning\u00a0young Flint, Coolidge’s apprentice, whose testimony later convicted the doctor,\u00a0saw Coolidge writing the item that he had loaned Mathews $200 the previous evening.<\/p>\n
For nearly a century the desk has now been in the possession of the Simpson\u00a0family.<\/p>\n
Did you know that Vassalboro once had a newspaper?<\/p>\n
Next week I intend to tell you about it.<\/p>\n
More than a year has passed since I last saw one of those weekly newspapers\u00a0from rural Scotland, and I feared I was not going to see any more of them. But\u00a0a few days ago my friend John Burgess again handed me three issues of the good,\u00a0old Peebleshire News for August 11, 18 and 25 of this year.<\/p>\n
It is evident that the Peebleshire folk, good Scots that they are, don’t\u00a0like the ways of the Labor government of Britain. They are especially irked by\u00a0the delay, red tape, and non-performance that follow the fine promises from\u00a0London.<\/p>\n
It seems Peebles folk have long been promised a new bridge over the Tweed.<\/p>\n
The government hemmed and hawed about the national share in this project. So a\u00a0native of Peebles, now resident in South Africa, came forward with an offer of\u00a0five thousand pounds toward the cost of the structure. Then the government wanted\u00a0to know whether the bridge would be used primarily for business or pleasure, and\u00a0decided that it ranked a low priority on steel. Finally London said they would\u00a0allow a pre-stressed concrete bridge, but it would cost 20% more than steel and\u00a0the town would have to pay the difference. Peebles had been promised the bridge\u00a0to be completed in 1949. In August, 1950 the editor of the News was still calling\u00a0the government to task for its continuous hedging. The editor commented ruefully,\u00a0“We still hope the bridge will be built while the present generation is still\u00a0alive.”<\/p>\n
We’ve been talking about many old things on this program — things that happened\u00a0a hundred, or, as in the building of Fort Halifax, even two hundred years\u00a0ago. The events we’ve talked about — the Coolidge murder trial, the founding of\u00a0Ten Lots, the incorporation of Winslow — seem a long; long time ago. But they\u00a0were recent compared with something that made contemporary news in that Scottish\u00a0newspaper last August.<\/p>\n
At Broughton, near Peebles — and Peebles, by the way, is just about as far\u00a0from Edinborough as Waterville is from Augusta — at nearby Broughton restoration\u00a0has just been completed of a building that dates back not 100 or 200 years, but\u00a01,400 years.<\/p>\n
The restored building is called a cell, for it was first used as the home\u00a0of a hermit monk of the fifth century — a time when very few Christians had\u00a0come to Scotland. It is a small structure, 14 by 8i feet and 8 feet high. It had\u00a0of course fallen into ruin with the years. In the fifteenth century, when its\u00a0walls were already a thousand years old, it was made part of a Norman church. By\u00a0the time of the Reformation in 1560 this church was already badly in need of repair.<\/p>\n
In 1805 it was abandoned entirely. So when Scottish antiquarians carefully\u00a0examined the ruins and dug down to the original foundations, they found one\u00a0end of the building much older than anyone had suspected. Experts identified it\u00a0as a monk’s cell of the fifth century, and it has now been carefully restored.<\/p>\n
The editor of the Peebleshire News is a good friend of the United States. In\u00a0all three of those August issu.es he was carrying on a hot debate with one John\u00a0MacKay. MacKay began it by writing to the editor, protesting against the united\u00a0Kingdom’s expenditures for armament and defense. When he got on the subject of\u00a0the United States, MacKay really let loose. He wrote: “Why is this country hitched\u00a0to Wall Street, that great American institution of money-lenders and war-mongers?<\/p>\n
Are the youths of Scotland to be sacrificed for American dollars? America seeks\u00a0world domination, and our government is prepared to help.”<\/p>\n
The editor replied rather mildly by saying: “Mr. MacKay deplores aggression,\u00a0but he shuts his eyes totally and completely to the major cause, not the American\u00a0dollar but the attack on South Korea by North Korea. Mr. MacKay is perfectly aware\u00a0Which is the mightiest armed force in the world today, and until that country will\u00a0cooperate, we must keep our powder dry.”<\/p>\n
MacKay came back the next week with more than a column of print, revealing\u00a0at last What he had had in mind all the time: –“HOW can Russia be looked upon as\u00a0the enemy prepared for war against this or any other nation?” That question was\u00a0the burden of his song. “The North Korean Army”, he wrote, “crossed the border\u00a0in self defense, because the South Koreans were all ready to cross in the other\u00a0direction. ”<\/p>\n
When ~tr. MacKay had thus revealed himself as a Scottish spokesman for the\u00a0Kremlin, the Peebleshire editor felt called upon to speak more sharply than he\u00a0had done the week before. He wrote: “Mr. MacKay indulges liberally in quotations\u00a0from the pro-Soviet press. That does not make the quotations true. Take Mr.\u00a0MacKay’s own closing statement, ‘The enemy of mankind is not Soviet Russia but\u00a0American \u00b1mperialism’. Any person similarly minded could quote that statement;\u00a0thousands even might quote it. But the statement would still remain just what it\u00a0is, an unsupported opinion, the invention of Mr. MacKay.”<\/p>\n
It is heartening to all of us, and especially to the many loyal Americans of\u00a0Scotch ancestry in this vicinity, to know that across the seas by the banks of\u00a0the River Tweed in bonnie Scotland, are men who can still rise to the defense of\u00a0America when she is scurrilously attacked.<\/p>\n
Year: 1950<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #83, broadcast on November 12, 1950<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1153,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}