June 20, 1975
Page 20065
CAMPOBELLO ISLAND
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I have had the privilege and great pleasure of serving on the Roosevelt-Campobello International Park Commission since its formation in 1964.
My love for Franklin Roosevelt's beautiful, peaceful island grows with each succeeding visit. In its June 1, 1975, issue, the New York Times printed an article on Campobello by Lois Lowry, a freelance writer from Maine, who I suspect was touched by this idyllic and peaceful land.
To share her reflections with my colleagues, I ask unanimous consent that her article be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[From the New York Times, June 1, 1975]
WHERE F. D. R. SUNNED
(By Lois Lowry)
He never visited Campobello after 1939; and he has been dead, now, for 30 years. Yet the island off the Maine coast is as permeated with memories of Franklin Roosevelt as it is with the scent of salt and of pine. The people who live there and who knew him as a young and vigorous man, hiking the dirt roads and sailing in the windy coves, still talk of him as if he'd been gone just a short while. And those who never knew him at all, except through history books, come here in increasing numbers every summer to see his home and to explore the landscape that he loved.
It hasn't changed very much since the summers of the Roosevelts. The charm of Campobello Island relies on the kinds of natural phenomena that need neither maintenance, updating nor embellishment: the caves are still there, and the rugged pinnacles, and the peat bogs, and the wind torn hilltop trees. MacDonald's hasn't arrived yet. You can stand on the craggy peak at Friar's Head and look out through the fog to Thrumbcap Island, and if you're barefoot your feet will be stained blue from berries, and there won't be a plastic souvenir stand in sight.
Campobello Island, New Brunswick, lies just off the northernmost coastal point of Maine, joined to the United States by a bridge at the tiny Maine town of Lubec. From Gooseberry Point to the East Quoddy Head Lighthouse the island is about 12 miles long, and at its broadest part, from Snug Cove to Ragged Cove, only three miles wide. Shaped by the sea, shrouded in morning by fog that softens into afternoon sunshine, tangy with the scent of salt and herring, unrelentingly battered by the swirling tide of the Bay of Fundy (famous for the greatest known rise and fall of tides in the world — 50 feet at the head of the bay), Campobello has undergone little visible change since it was settled by the English in mid-18th century. The only thing that changes here is the shape of the shore, which erodes and adjusts to the icy; unending movement of the ocean.
At the Campobello Gift House, gray-haired proprietor Gilmore (Giddy) Calder is accustomed to giving out free maps of the island, along with a few Campobello stories if he's not too busy. Behind him at the counter hangs a linen dish towel printed with a picture of the Roosevelt cottage.
"I've got 2,400 towels with the Roosevelt cottage on them," Giddy told me. "On Saturday a couple of years ago, we were busier than a dog with fleas. Everyone that came in I just gave them a map and started the spiel and ended up pointing to the towel. 'And this is the Roosevelt cottage," I say. "Finally one man said, 'Why would you tell me that? I was born there.' It was young Franklin Roosevelt, of course."
Although Calder is a name that one sees frequently on island mailboxes, for the small population has intermarried over the years and everyone seems to be someone's cousin or uncle or in-law, Roosevelt is the name that brought Campobello to the public attention. The play and movie "Sunrise at Campobello" depicted F.D.R.’s bout with polio that began here in 1921, one evening after he had joined other island residents in fighting a forest fire and then cooled off with a dip in the cold Atlantic at Herring Cove. He complained of chills and went to bed; after days of critical illness, he was carried from the island on a stretcher handmade by his friends, the fishermen of Campobello, and he never walked again.
Campobello people, though they speak with fondness and protective discretion about the Roosevelts, chuckle heartily about "Sunrise at Campobello." The "movie people" took Hollywood liberties with scenes and landscapes that could have made it on their own.
Dissatisfied with the arrangement of the staircase in the Roosevelt cottage, they simply moved their cameras into a neighboring house for staircase scenes. Dissatisfied with the arrangement of Roosevelt's dock, they simply built a new one in a more picturesque setting. And finally; dissatisfied with the pattern of the universe, they simply rearranged the sun, and made it rise in front of the Roosevelt home, which faces west. The islanders, who have watched the sun set there all their lives, and seen it rise every morning on the opposite side of the island, still shake their heads in disbelief over that example of cinema verité.
Today the 34-room estate – visitors greet references to the "cottage" with a certain raise of the eyebrow – is open to the public, at no charge, as part of the international park now maintained jointly by the Canadian and United States Governments. Built of that comfortably uncertain architectural style common to another era when people had money, sought room to spread out and eschewed formality (at least for the summer), it sprawls amid flower-gardened grounds, overlooking a lawn that descends to the bay. Sightseers wrinkle their noses a little at the carefully-restored wallpapers in large floral prints no longer stylish — huge bouquets of violets in Eleanor's bedroom — but it is obvious that this is a home that combined a little elegance with a lot of casual comfort. Surely there must have been times when Eleanor sighed, "I do wish you kids wouldn't track sand in on the carpets."
Other restored homes in what was once an enclave of wealthy summer people are now preserved as guesthouses for dignitaries on vacations and conferences. Islanders have attended church with Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson, have made patchwork quilts to order for the Muskies, have exchanged nods with Elizabeth the Queen Mother and have waved at Pierre Trudeau, with a baby on his back, wandering through their woods.
Linnea Calder's mother cooked for the Roosevelts in the days when the Roosevelt children used to hide in the front hall woodbox during games of hide and seek. Today, Linnea is the supervisor of the houses that comprise the estate. She knows the cottage from pantry to attic, and watches with interest and amusement the tourists who prowl the many rooms that she remembers noisy with the scampering, arguments and laughter of little Roosevelts.
In a sunny corner of the large kitchen, a pine table and chairs are arranged by a window.
"Tourists," says Linnea, "look in here and say they can imagine the Roosevelts eating their breakfast. I don't say anything; but the Roosevelts were not ones to eat in the kitchen."
Though they knew the Roosevelts intimately, and though John Calder, a close friend of F.D.R:, was invited to the White House as his guest, there is an aura of respect and distance about the relationship between the "island people" and "the others." What was Eleanor like? I addressed my question. to one island woman, who smiled enigmatically in reply. "Well," she said finally, "I guess we're all just people, under the skin." But I sensed that among Campobello residents, Eleanor's skin was considered a little more inviolate than that of most folk.
Even in midsummer, Campobello breezes, directly from the Atlantic, can be chilly and damp. "If I were living here," I told Linnea Calder as we wandered through the Roosevelt living room, "I'd be standing in front of this fireplace all the time."
"The Roosevelts," she replied affably putting me in my place, "weren't ones to stand around,"
And one senses vitality, even now. Huge megaphones still standing in the living and dining rooms were used to summon children in from their sailboats and from the surrounding woods. Bedrooms are spartan and small, not conducive to curling up with a book; Campobello is a place where one does things: walks, bicycles, swims, rides horseback, picks berries, sails. Even the old gramophone that is still on the sunporch of the cottage ("Where's the volume control?" tourists ask Linnea) looks more utilitarian than suited to relaxed enjoyment.
In one of Eleanor Roosevelt's letters to a friend, she announced that she was going to learn Spanish that summer from recordings, if she could figure out how to use the machine.
The summer people who built their homes at Campobello in the early part of the century chose the place because of its isolated beauty and unspoiled serenity; and those who visit the island today go there for the same rewards. Night life on Campobello consists of glorious sunsets and the lonely cry of gulls. The International Park Commission that has purchased land covering the entire southern end of the island intends to keep things just that way.
Mudflats, tidal marshes, beaver dams, the sea caves at Whiterock Cliffs, the jagged and desolate pinnacles at Friar's Head, and the fragile ecology where sea and land meet are to be protected and preserved by the Park Commission. Changes brought by civilization consist mainly of trails for cross-country skiers and summer hikers, carefully primitive access routes to the rocky beaches and well-planned camping areas that preserve the isolated and roughhewn ambience that is enhanced by the mist and the calls of birds.
Spruce-fir forests that cover part of the uninhabited area of Campobello share the soil with wild roses, trembling aspen, white and yellow birches, mountain ash. Closer to the sea, marsh aster, seaside goldenrod, dune grass, beach peas and mountain cranberry dot the edges of the beaches. Marine moisture makes it possible for the lichen known as "old man's beard" to hang from the branches of trees, as if nature purposefully ornamented this place with eerie and tenuous brush strokes. Underfoot, wild strawberries, blueberries, huckleberries, raspberries, blackberries and bog cranberries keep the island jam jars filled all winter.
Campobello's year-round population, under 1,500 and not increasing, is centered in its two villages, seven miles apart. Welchpool, on the southern end of the island near the Roosevelt cottage and the International Park, is where fishermen's families live in flower-gardened, picket-fenced, weather-scarred homes reminiscent of their English heritage. They are clustered around their church, their post office, and the Campobello Public Library, which has a wood stove, a grand assortment of books ranging from new novels to "Sexual Politics" to "Making Money in the Stock Market," and which permits tourists to check out books during their stay.
On the north side of the island lies the village of Wilson's Beach. This is where the fishing boats come in, and the visitor with a camera will find the vessels tying up at sunset, and the gulls fighting for leftover bait. One may go inside the sardine factory, and watch the workers packing delicacies tightly into tins.
The camper looking for groceries at Keith's grocery store in Wilson's Beach will find them bilingually labeled, and though Remplissage Sanitaire pour Boite a Chat may sound if it should be on the menu at Maxim's, this is, after all, not a gourmet hideaway; and Remplissage Sanitaire pour Boite a Chat is, after all, only Kitty Litter. By such things one is reminded that Campobello is Canada – and by the fact that gasoline costs 74 cents a gallon (though Canadian gallons are slightly larger than American), and by the fact that one goes through customs to arrive on the island.
Crossing from Lubec, Me,, by the F.D.R. Memorial Bridge, the traveler who drives past the little building without stopping, thinking it a gas station or hot dog stand, will find himself overtaken and greeted farther down the road by a uniformed officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Customs officers are looking for drugs, pistols or other concealed weapons, and an inordinate amount of liquor. The tourist who is willing to state his place of birth and his citizenship, who can produce a recent rabbies vaccination certificate for his dog and who can say that he has only one bottle of wine in his camping gear without blushing red to his roots will get through customs in less than a minute and with a cheerful "Have a nice stay" from the official.
Crossing back, the visitor will go through United States Customs on the American side of the bridge, and declare and pay duty on anything over $10, for each day of stay, that he has purchased on the island. (For the traveler who has stayed more than 48 hours, $100 is duty-free.)
Motels on the island tend to be in keeping with the less than pretentious atmosphere that attracts tourists to begin with. Don't expect vibrating beds, room service or swimming pools. Don't expect haute cuisine in the island restaurants. But do expect lobster. This is an island of fishermen, and the bay here is filled with lobster, mackerel, sole, haddock, flounder, cod and herring.
William Owen was the original owner of the island, which was granted to him in 1767, and the Admiral Owen House, now owned by the Morrell family, stands grandly at Deer Point in Welchpool, overlooking the bay. Although they don't serve meals, a restaurant is within walking distance. Maintained by young artist Joyce Morrell, the Owen House is furnished elegantly in antiques, and. if you should be assigned the little bedroom with the yellow patchwork quilt on the bed, you'll have a fireplace – though no electricity – in your bathroom.
During the filming of "Sunrise at Campobello," Greer Garson stayed at the Admiral Owen House, and somehow one can visualize her there, though perhaps more as Mrs. Miniver than as Eleanor Roosevelt. At the Roosevelt cottage, furniture is sturdy wicker and practical chintz; at the Admiral Owen House, waxed mahogany, polished brass, and Chippendale, livened by hanging plants and gossamer curtains filtering sunlight.
On Wednesday afternoons all year, some of the women of the village of Welchpool gather at St. Anne's Anglican Church to make quilts. Under a wall hanging that proclaims "Among God's Best Gifts to Us are the People Who Love Us," thimbled fingers fly and create intricate patterns .and designs that haven't changed for centuries. In mid-August, the quilts are displayed and sold to visitors.
During the summer, as many as 125,000 tourists pass over the bridge and through customs onto Campobello Island. Perhaps some of them are disappointed. Perhaps some shiver in the damp and the fog and are kept awake by the sound of the buoy bells in the night and wish there were a movie theater or a bowling alley.
Not me. I think back to the years when, as a teen-ager, I read my way through gothic novels and kept turning the pages back to follow the heroine along the rocky coastline on the inside cover map. I look at the map of Campobello Island and find Raccoon Beach, Whale Beach, Abraham's Plain, Brickkiln Cove, Bulldog Beach, Cranberry Point, Lost Pond and Skillet Cove. I look around me and see the fishermen mending their nets at Wilson's Beach, and the gulls diving for handouts when the boats come in. I listen to the island legends of shipwrecks, whirlpools and widows, and I feel as if I've had a brief vacation from the present, a trip somewhat back into time. Now and again, that's not a bad trip.
If you go to Campobello, remember that in summer Canadian time is one hour ahead of American. If you cross the bridge at 3 P.M., set your watch ahead to 4. Travelers reach Lubec and the F.D.R. Memorial Bridge to Campobello by going north on U.S. 1 to Whiting, Me., and turning east on State Route 189. Among places to stay on the island are the Friar's Bay Motor Lodge ($16-$20 a double room) and the Admiral Owen House ($8 a person) in Welchpool, and the Ponderosa Motel ($10-$20) and the Quoddy View Cabins ($12-$20) in Wilson's Beach.
There are camping facilities at the Provincial Campground at Herring Cove. Places to eat are the Friar's Bay Restaurant for steak or lobster ($6-$10 a person for dinner) and the Ponderosa ($4-87).
The Roosevelt Cottage is open from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M., Canadian time; no charge for admission. Guides are available for information but tours are not organized. The International Park Reception Center on the cottage grounds shows two free films to visitors. If you want to fish, ask around. Island folk are friendly, and although there is no regular charter boat service, chances are good that a fisherman taking a day off would arrange to take you out in. his boat. Bicycles are a great way to get around on the island, but there are none for rent. A. car ferry makes seven trips a day from Deer Point in Welchpool to Deer Island, New Brunswick, a 25-minute trip and a pleasant jaunt for a picnic. For information about Campobello, write New Brunswick Tourist Information, International Park Reception Center; Welchpool, Campobello, New Brunswick, Canada.L.L.