HOULTON, Maine — Brian Crane, 48, of Houlton, vividly remembers the day approximately 38 years ago that author Donn Fendler came to his school after his class had read and extensively studied his book, “Lost on A Mountain In Maine.”
Crane was in the sixth grade at the former Lambert School, which is now Greater Houlton Christian Academy in Houlton. After one of his classmates had written and asked Fendler to come and speak to the class, the author obliged.
“As a Boy Scout like Donn Fendler was, I was very excited,” Crane recalled Thursday. “I had never heard of that book until my teacher introduced it to us, and I remember just being riveted by it. It was the first book that I can honestly say I devoured and I was sad when I read the last page.”
Fendler, 90, died Oct. 10 at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. The Rye, New York native was 12 years old when he famously survived more than a week while lost hiking Mount Katahdin in 1939 after he became separated from his family near the summit during a storm. He was the subject of hundreds of searches over the next week and became national news until he was found nine days later at a hunting camp 35 miles from where he was last seen.
Crane said that his favorite part of the book was when Fendler encountered a bear.
“As a sixth-grader, I couldn’t imagine how scary that was,” he said.
He said that he has a nephew living in Colorado for whom he has purchased both the book and the graphic novel, “Lost Trail”.
“He absolutely loved it,” he said. “Several of his friends purchased the graphic novel after seeing he had a copy. I was glad to hear it.”
