Magazine focuses on southern Aroostook citizens and scenery

    With a cover photo of Island Falls, a lead essay by a Dyer Brook native, a feature on a 95-year-old Houlton businessman and a World War II letter by a Houlton veteran, the new edition of Echoes magazine shines a light on southern Aroostook County.
COUNTY CROPS — Island Falls native Jane Miller shot this cover photograph for the latest edition of Echoes magazine during one of her trips between Orono and her hometown.
    Even though Jane Miller lives in Orono, she still returns to her native Island Falls where last July she was dazzled by a brilliant field of canola stretched between the sky and a field of potato blossoms. She is waiting to see if anyone recognizes the place she stopped on the road to Sherman to take the picture that appears on the cover of Echoes No. 82.
    Dyer Brook native Jennifer Heresy Cleveland is a newspaper editor in Vermont, but she still returns to her family’s camp on Skitacook Lake in Oakfield. In words and photos, her essay beginning on page 2 of the magazine portrays the way she and her family connect with nature at the camp – an experience she hopes will last for generations.
    Barbara McGillicuddy Bolton lives in New York, but when she returned to native Houlton in 2005, she sat down with her uncle Paul A. McGillicuddy to talk about his boyhood in Littleton and his long career as a businessman in the Shiretown. Fortunately, she had a tape recorder running and captured the flavor and wit of her uncle’s recollections. The first of a two-part feature titled “Just Good Common Sense” appears in the current Echoes.
    Hal Bossie has lived in Houlton since he was 10 years old except for the years he was in the military service. A slice of those years is presented in excerpts from a letter he wrote to his parents in 1943 as he traveled from Florida to California by train. His observations typify those of a curious young man away from home for the first time and awed by the sights he sees through the train window — from the Grand Canyon to the majestic Rocky Mountains. The publication of his letter is a 90th birthday present from his wife, Shirley.
    In honor of Echoes’ 20th anniversary, Editor Kathryn Olmstead contacted a few of the people who appeared as children in early editions of the magazine for an article tittled “Where are they now?” which will continue in Echoes 83. The current issues also contains photos and a recap of the 20th anniversary celebration in July 2008.
    Published quarterly in Caribou and printed at Northeast Publishing Co. in Presque Isle, Echoes is dedicated to rediscovering community and preserving qualities of life at risk today. For more information, conntact Olmstead by mail at PO Box 626, Caribou ME 04736 or by phone at 498-8564.