PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — More than 100 women from Aroostook County filled the University of Maine at Presque Isle’s Campus Center on Friday, hearing stories and gaining wisdom from women who have overcome personal and professional challenges to make a difference in their communities.
The eighth annual ALL for Women Conference, hosted by New Ventures Maine, centered on the theme of women’s wisdom. The daylong conference began with a leadership panel facilitated by WAGM-TV News Anchor and Reporter Shawn Cunningham and featuring Lynn Lombard, former vice president and director of human resources at MMG Insurance; Darylen Cote, director of TRiO College Access Services at UMPI; Rosalind Morgan, owner of RosWerks Design and Photography in Linneus; and Katie Zarrilli, WAGM reporter.
All four panelists spoke about how they have overcome challenges and adversity and gave advice for other women who might find themselves in similar situations. When asked about a particular challenge that helped shape them, Morgan spoke about the time she decided to shut down her former business, Fox Hollow Photography, after realizing she could not keep up with technological changes required to maintain a good income level.
“I had to ask myself, ‘What’s next?’ And then I got an offer to be a part-time designer for a printing firm. I spent 11 years doing the work I loved and building upon my skills. When I decided to open my own business again, I knew it was the right time,” Morgan said. “I would say, always be open to what might be coming next and don’t be afraid to take chances.”
Resiliency became a common theme of the panel, as all women spoke about the qualities that they believe make women resilient and how they’ve learned to trust their own instincts. Zarrilli reflected on the first times she heard negative comments from WAGM viewers aimed at herself and the struggles she has had to remain self-confident.
“In the earlier days at the station, those type of comments would ruin my whole day and even today they can still bother me,” Zarrilli said. “But I remind myself that in my job I get to tell stories about all these cool things people are doing in their communities and that outweighs any comment from someone who didn’t like my dress or how I had my nails done that day.”
Lombard told the audience that in the early 90s she lost her position as underwriting manager at MMG after being hospitalized for six months due to complications from disease. But through her newfound love of human resources she became more determined to do work at the company that would matter to herself and help her make an impact.
“For me, resiliency has been about picking up the pieces and learning lessons from what I’ve experienced,” Lombard said. “You have to take those lessons, put them in your toolbox and move on to the next challenge in your life.”
Cote added, “I don’t think any individual can just ‘pick themselves up by the bootstraps’ Sometimes it takes a whole community to build resilience. The women I’ve come to know in my career have helped me realize that I am good enough to achieve the goals I set for myself.”
Throughout the rest of the day, breakout sessions featured individuals from Aroostook County speaking on topics related to assets, business, career and empowerment, four areas that New Ventures focuses on in their work with local entrepreneurs and professionals. Attendees got to choose between four sessions both in the morning and afternoon.
During the morning session, around 20 people gathered in Room 118 of the Campus Center to hear the stories, as told by Presque Isle Historical Society Board Member Kim Smith, of three County women who defied gender and social expectations to become important figures in Presque Isle history. Those women were Mary Oak, Vera Estey and Alice Kimball.
All three women never married or had children, choices that would have caused many people to condemn them as “old maids” or “spinsters” during their lifetimes, Smith said. Oaks was known as an “unusual character” because she prefered dressing in “male” clothes such as pants and shirts as opposed to the dresses of “ladies,” often traveled to Florida alone, and maintained successful careers in photography and hospitality for most of her life.
Oaks opened Mary Oak Photography Studio on State Street in Presque Isle in 1920. She later lost the studio in a fire and purchased land in hopes of building a motel and apartment buildings based on similar buildings she saw in her travels. In the 1930s, she sold that land to local Masons and instead bought what she viewed as better property on State Street, where The Oak Hotel and apartments were built.
“At the time The Oak Hotel competed with The Northeastland Hotel on Main Street, which charged $8 per night. Mary charged $4 per night,’” Smith said. “She relocated her photography studio there and had her office by the front desk. It’s been said that she ran the place ‘with an iron fist,’” Smith said. Oak died in 1982 of unknown causes.
Unlike Oak, Estey embraced the Victorian era dress code and mannerisms of her childhood, but still had successful business ventures in her own right. Every year she would raise thousands of flowers at her family’s Presque Isle home on Third Street and sell them at the Boston Fresh Flower Market.
Kimball, who lived from 1878 to 1961, inherited her family’s farm on Parsons Road from her father, George Parsons, and was known as a great music teacher, singer and instrumentalist during her life. In 1959, she provided a tree from her farm as the National Christmas Tree, lit by President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the White House.
“This is the one of the few photos we have of Alice,” Smith said, pointing to a 1959 photo of Kimball standing on her property as cranes lifted the Christmas tree. “It was only two years before her death and there she is supervising the workers, telling them what they’re doing right and wrong.”
Smith then showed a list from the British newspaper “Daily Mail” of the top 40 women who have changed the world, which included Nobel Peace Prize-winning scientist Marie Curie, Queen Victoria, poet Maya Angelou and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. She asked the audience to choose Aroostook County and Maine women that they believed should be on a similar list and name qualities that allow women to overcome adversity.
Among the women suggested were U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, Cary Medical Center CEO Kris Doody, NASA astronaut and former Caribou resident Jessica Meir, and ALL for Women panelist Darylen Cote. They listed “courage,” “out-of-the-box thinking,” “persistence” “ability to compromise” and “speaking out” as some of the many qualities that have allowed all those women to get where they are today.
Many individuals who attended the conference noted how inspired they felt to apply the lessons learned from successful women into their own careers and personal goals.
“I think the biggest thing I’ll leave with is being proud that I’m a woman and knowing that it’s OK not to measure up to everyone else’s standards,” said Kim Embleton, a 10-year Katahdin Trust Company employee.
“The conference is very insightful and shows that women are never alone in their insecurities,” said Pamela Shaw-Sweetser of Raymond Brook Farm. “It keeps women motivated to follow through on their goals and make a difference.”
New Ventures Maine offers tuition-free online and in-person classes across Maine on business, financial literacy and leadership to both women and men seeking greater knowledge and skills in their professional lives. For more information on services in Aroostook County go to http://newventuresmaine.org/find-a-center-2/northern/.
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- Kim Smith points to a photograph of State Street in Presque Isle where Mary Oak opened her own photography studio in 1920, a rare accomplishment for a woman in that era. Smith told attendees at Friday’s All for Women Conference at UMPI about three women who shaped Presque Isle history: Oak, Vera Estey and Alice Kimball. (Melissa Lizotte)
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- Kim Smith stands next to projected photos of Vera Estey during her presentation, “Shaping Communities: Women’s Role in Rural Community Building,” during Friday’s All for Women Conference at UMPI. Estey lived in Presque Isle during and after the Victorian era and gained a reputation as an entrepreneur who sold flowers at the Boston Fresh Flower Market annually throughout her life. (Melissa Lizotte)
