It was the late 1960s and New York native Rick Asam had finally conjured up the courage to tell his parents of his dream to pursue a career in theater. They were skeptical, to say the least.
“What are you going to do with that?” they questioned. He replied with a shrug, “Teach,” as if he himself wasn’t certain but thought it could be a promising direction.
Asam wouldn’t describe his performance as a student in primary school as stellar or exceptional, but he loved to learn. Despite his parents’ uncertainties with him entering a competitive field such as theater, he received his undergraduate degree, and after a couple of brief stints in theater work, he went back to school.
And then he kept going back. Now, Asam has a master’s and a doctoral degree in television, film and theatre.
Though not originally from The County, Asam has integrated himself into the Presque Isle community through the very thing he set out to do so many years ago. A few small theater gigs originally brought him to Maine from Athens, Georgia, but it was one special job offer that prompted his move to The County in 1986.
He began a career teaching communications at the University of Maine at Presque Isle until 2002, when the university underwent departmental changes and Asam was laid off. Nevertheless, he speaks fondly of his time as a professor and living in The County. It was a joyful time for Asam, who liked to share his passion of communications and theater with his students.
MAGICAL STORYTIME — Rick Asam, reading, and Melissa St. Pierre, in character as a witch, both from the Mark and Emily Turner Memorial Library, present the story “Room on the Broom” during Mapleton Elementary School’s recent “Fall Into Reading” night.
(Courtesy of Jennifer Buzza)
Today, Asam still shares his love for theater with the community, but for a very different audience. A couple of times a month, Asam, who works in the children’s department of the Mark and Emily Turner Memorial Library in Presque Isle, reads to the local children for storytime. He finds fun in reading to the children; it allows him to engage with the kids and tap into his theatrical side. In between the tactical work like cataloguing and stacking books, Asam quickly grew to love his storytime sessions and now it’s his favorite part of the job.
But Asam also has another passion unknown to many: Chinese history. When one of his colleagues passed away some years ago, he left behind a Chinese stamp collection. At first, Asam was unsure why his friend had left the collection for him. Asam wasn’t particularly passionate about Chinese history.
“I was as uninterested as anyone else in Chinese culture,” he said, but he felt it was ‘disrespectful’ to his friend’s memory to throw away a collection he had spent years creating.
Ever since, Asam has dedicated himself to studying the depths of Chinese culture, which he said dates back thousands of years. Today, two-thirds of his regular readings are on Chinese history and he even has a small home library to store his collections.
Some of his favorite parts of history to read about are the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. In a global sense, Asam said that learning about other cultures is one way to learn and think about our own.
“Different cultures see time differently,” he said.
Asam hopes “to intensify the study of Chinese culture” through more extensive reading of Chinese history during his upcoming retirement.
A lifelong learner, he wants to honor his late friend’s memory by preserving his stamp collection and continuing to expand his understanding about a world that seems far from our own. In that way, he said, long-past and even forgotten memories may live on forever.
