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A Faithful Correspondent—For 50
Years
For years Ted
Blaisdell just couldn’t keep his name out of Ivy Young’s
correspondent’s column in The Ellsworth American. Each time
someone came to visit, Young phoned to ask who was there. Each time
he left his garage open with his car gone, she phoned to ask where
he had been.
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Ivy Young |
With their homes
within sight of one another along Route 186, Young had an easy lead
on Blaisdell’s comings and goings.
That was just the
thing for her column, which she kept up for close to 50 years.
But now Blaisdell
gets a break, because Ivy Young gave up her West Gouldsboro column
very quietly earlier this spring. With not even a mention of the
pending change, she handed it over to Mary Lou Hodge—another
neighbor whose name also cropped up by the week.
“You have to be a
little nosy to keep the column filled,” Young said, explaining her
methods.
At 94 (as of last
week), Ivy Young can’t keep up the pace she had maintained for so
long. The column was one of those tasks that had to be handed on.
In the last few
years, most of her column-filling took place by calls via her old
rotary-dial phone. She also always had no shortage of visitors.
These days, Young
stays close to home. It’s the place where she first lived in 1938,
just after marrying. Her husband, Ellis Young, passed away in 1986.
She still takes
pride in knowing all things about her neighbors. But everyone knows
her in return, too: She is recognized across all of the villages.
She grew up in
Birch Harbor as the
former Ivy Rice. She enjoyed a long teaching career, which stretched
between 1927 and 1972 at each of the town’s small schools, coming to
the consolidated Gouldsboro Grammar School when it was built in
1956. She notes that she took some years out for raising her two
sons.
She was actually
the valedictorian of the Class of 1925 at Winter Harbor High
School—but was not allowed, by doctor’s orders, to deliver her
valedictorian’s address.
“I was just
recovering from pneumonia,” she said, “and at that time, pneumonia
was quite serious.
“They allowed me to
go over to the school that afternoon to see how the place was
decorated, so I could picture it in my mind.”
Young has special
status as the oldest living alumnae of Winter Harbor High School,
which closed in 1953. The alumni association holds a special “50
years since the closing” reunion this coming Saturday in
Winter
Harbor,
but Young won’t be attending.
“I will be taking
it easy and staying home,” she said.
She is spending her
days this summer in the company of her son, Philip, who is on an
extended visit from
Texas.
They like to play word games and cribbage.
She also looks
forward to the weekly delivery by mail of the American. She
likes how it arrives, addressed: “Young Ivy.” |
