By Bruce Dent
One resident describes how her brother, after his high school graduation, pulled a number out of a hat to apply for a job at the mill. Another tells the story of going to a nearby wilderness camp to go hunting. Others tell tales of working to restore the downtown area after years of economic devastation.
These are some of the stories captured by the Katahdin Story Booth Project, the creation of the town’s new library director, Matt DeLaney, who is working to preserve the history of the Katahdin region through storytelling.
“We see this project as a bridge between this glorious past, this really unique rise and decline, to something uncertain,” DeLaney said during a recent interview. ” To make that transition easier or better, let’s celebrate all the things that were great,” DeLaney said.
Like the town, which suffered greatly after its mill closed in 2008, the Millinocket Memorial Library also fell on hard times.
In 2015, it was shut for 11 weeks after its annual budget, which once stood at $175,000, dwindled to nothing. The library had been a department in the town’s government for nearly 100 years, ever since it opened in 1919, but it lost most of its municipal support as the town’s tax base shrank.
In response to the library’s closure, an organization called Friends of the Library, made up of residents, worked with the town to find a different funding plan. At the end of negotiations, the town agreed to fund utilities for three years while Friends of the Library would fill positions in the library on a volunteer basis, excluding the director.
In late 2016, Matt DeLaney joined the library as the new director. He started his career working as a public librarian throughout New York state, most recently serving as the chief financial officer of the Syracuse public library system.
When DeLaney took over, he began seeking state, federal, and non-profit grants to keep the library running and to find funds to upgrade the facility. In the end, DeLaney and Friends of the Library raised more than $1 million.
Part of the funding has been used to develop and grow the Katahdin Story Booth Project. Some of the organizations involved in this project are the National Park Service, the East Millinocket Library, the Maine Folklife Center, GrowSmart Maine, and Designlab, a web design firm
Story Booth interviews are collected by high school students who act as audio technicians. The interviewer starts with general questions that then get more personal. Who has been the most important person in their lives? Do they have any regrets and what were the happiest moments of their life? How would they like to be remembered? The last portion of the interview is about the storyteller’s vision for the future of the Katahdin region.
“The idea is to … start a storytelling movement,” DeLaney said. He has been developing kits with mobile recording devices, microphones, consent forms, and interview scripts. He said the goal is to be able to hand off the kit to residents and have them do the project on their own.
“These are stories that would be lost forever, and every one that we capture is captured forever,” DeLaney said. “Everyday a person passes away and we lose that story.”
To learn more about this project or to hear snippets of interviews, visit here.