Caribou-based Echoes magazine has launched the celebration of its 25th year of continuous publication with the release of Issue 100, dedicated to Glenna Johnson Smith, longtime contributor and associate editor of Presque Isle.
Founded in 1988 by Gordon Hammond and Kathryn Olmstead, the quarterly publication operated from Bridgewater and Westfield before moving to its current office in Caribou. Smith joined the publication in 1991, initially with poetry and subsequently with the popular column “Old County Woman,” selections from which became the equally popular book “Old Maine Woman,” published by Islandport Press in Yarmouth in 2010.
“Glenna Johnson Smith has been the backbone of Echoes for most of its 25 years, and we continue to rely on her wisdom, honesty and ability to detect words that would be hurtful to any reader,” writes Editor Olmstead in her dedicatory column. “Her personality is embedded in this magazine and it is fitting to honor her with the publication of Issue 100.”
The new edition contains an invitation to a July 21 celebration at the University of Maine in Presque Isle, the culmination of Echoes’ 25th anniversary. Scheduled for 3 p.m. in the Campus Center, the event will include readings by Echoes writers, sale of artistic and literary work by Echoes contributors, music, back issue sales, a raffle, refreshments and a visual retrospective of the magazine’s 25 years. Issue 100 also announces that eight of the 100 covers have been reproduced as postcards, two for each of the four seasons.
The centerpiece of the new edition is a 1940 travelogue written by Stella Anderson Frost of Caribou. Jane Frost, Stella’s granddaughter and the daughter of Royal Henry and Elizabeth Frost, found her grandmother’s diary of the cross-country road trip to California and back in the garage when she was preparing to sell her family’s home on Coolidge Avenue in Caribou in 2008.
“A typed manuscript of her 1940 cross-country trip spent 68 years in a cardboard box containing postcards and mementos Stella collected on route,” writes Lloyd Ferriss, Jane Frost’s husband, in a biographical introduction to the Echoes feature. Ferriss notes that travel was one way Stella and Aubrey Frost coped with the loss of their son, Robert, in a car accident in 1937. They also founded the Robert A. Frost Library in Limestone in his memory.
“Stella’s Road Trip” is illustrated with 28 photographs, postcards and other mementos from the 1940 adventure.
Other features in the new Echoes include “Beyond Washburn Street” by Houlton native John Dombek, in which he recalls his first wine tasting, and “Old County Woman” in which Glenna Smith reflects on the sequence of life’s aspirations. She also pays tribute to her friend Louise Findlen, who died in December, in a personal essay.
With a moving story titled “Resurrection,” Echoes 100 introduces a new fiction writer, Melissa Jenks of Bridgewater. Houlton native Bob Fields captures the wonders of a mayfly hatch in an essay titled “Party Time on Chase Brook,” and Roger Parent of Lille concludes his series about his Peace Corps service in Thailand with a chapter detailing his return to the U.S. with engagement and wedding rings for the love of his life.
Other life stories in this edition include a memory of Blaine elementary school by Susan Daigneault of North Berwick, a recollection of the thrill of climbing trees by Alice True Larkin of Skowhegan, and an account by Paul A. Lucey of Orono of a summer job at a Cape Cod hotel in the 1940s.
Dedicated to “rediscovering community,” Echoes is published quarterly from offices in Caribou, and is printed at Print Works in Presque Isle. www.echoesofmaine.com.
