Residents recall boy lost on a mountain
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.
Olivia Sherwood of Presque Isle also recalled Thursday being in “awe” of the way that Fendler survived his time in the wild after having read ‘Lost on a Mountain in Maine,’ which was required reading for many Mainers in the fourth-grade Maine Studies curriculum. Sherwood believes that she was living in Sherman at the time.
She said that she was a Girl Scout during her youth, had been to Baxter State Park and had climbed Mount Katahdin a few times during her childhood, and could not believe that he had “gotten lost and had been able to survive the way that he did.”
Mark Hanning, 23, of Presque Isle also read the book during his sixth grade year at Presque Isle Middle School.
“I was also a Boy Scout like Donn Fendler,” he recalled Thursday. “I am a person who is very religious just like Mr. Fendler was, so my favorite part of the book was how he spent every night praying to God and thanking him for helping him to survive. Besides being a story of survival, I really like how it also is a story of faith.”
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.”
