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Marckoon’s Got That Familiar
Face—and Voice
Stu Marckoon has
the longest list of titles in town: administrative assistant, deputy
clerk, treasurer, road commissioner and deputy tax collector.
Stu Marckoon works as Lamoine’s administrative assistant. |
He also is the
town’s assistant volunteer fire chief and, for the Ellsworth Concert
Band, chief tuba player.
“All those little
jobs I hold are positions that the town needs,” he said from the
town office the other day. “But none of them alone require anything
close to a full- or even part-time person.”
His full-time
duties include husband to Bonnie, in her fourth year on the Lamoine
School Board, and dad to Sarah, 11, and Rebecca, 9. Both are
students at Lamoine Consolidated School.
Marckoon, 43, is
simply the one face best known to everyone else in town.
He works out of the
town office, where everyone has to stop in at least once in a while.
“I tell people that
usually when they see me, it’s because they owe money for
something,” said Marckoon, whose day is filled collecting for
everything from taxes to dog permits and hunting licenses.
He also has a
familiar voice. Before starting in on town business, he spends the
early hours of each morning in Ellsworth at Clear Channel Radio.
There, he prepares newscasts that go throughout the state.
Radio is Marckoon’s
first love: During his years at Husson College, where he graduated
in accounting, he worked with the campus radio station. He fell into
television, too. By age 22, he was the news director for the local
ABC Network Channel 7 in Bangor.
Town administration
is just something else he also is good at. He actually landed his
administrative job because he asked the town’s previous
administrator about a special town meeting as one of his news
inquiries. Learning that the position would soon be open, Marckoon
made himself available. That was back in 1993.
“Not much throws me
for a curve these days,” he said. “Not that I know everything, but I
have a feeling now that I know what I’m doing.
“The worst part,
though, is that I didn’t know before what I didn’t know.”
The Marckoons have
lived in Lamoine for 18 years. Stu spent his school years in
Rockland, but has made a quick study of his adopted hometown and all
1,495 of its residents.
People change, he
said, but the town doesn’t.
“New people are
moving in all the time; it’s not a static population,” he said.
“On the other hand,
people who have been here, tend to stay here. It is not a highly
transient town.”
Marckoon is
generally the first to know when newcomers relocate in Lamoine. And
after they stop in for business two or three times, Marckoon quickly
can put names, faces and details together.
“I love to see
younger people moving in here,” he said. “A good example is the lady
who bought a place here last month and moved up from Virginia,” he
said. “She was just hired by Mount Desert Island Bio Lab and was
bubbling over with excitement. It’s nice to know that your town is
highly desirable.”
As a parent and
resident, Marckoon particularly likes Lamoine for its involved
people for both town and school reasons.
“There is a real
good sense of community here,” he said.
The best days in
Lamoine, he said, are when Marckoon gets that “humming” feeling.
“It’s a great day
when everything is busy,” he said. “I like it when the assessors and
the CEO [code enforcement officer] are doing their thing, the
transfer station is open, the phone is ringing.
“I like that, when
everything in town is just humming at once.” |
