2010 kris kringle koffee

Vol. 1 No. 8 Copyright 2010 Sunbury Exchange, LLC Special Coverage

Review PENQUIS

2010 DFCC Kris Kringle Koffee PENQUIS Review

PENQUIS Review P.O. Box 396

Dover-Foxcro , ME 04426 [email protected]

(207) 949-2247 PENQUIS Review is a special issue published by Sunbury Exchange, LLC. Copies are available to be viewed, downloaded and printed at www.penquisreview.com. Individual photographs and graphics contained within the document, however, are the property of Sunbury Exchange, LLC and may include material subject to copyright. Permission of the publisher must be ob-tained before reproducing any of the material from this issue. Correc ons and sugges ons are welcome. Photographs were taken by Sunbury Exchange, LLC. PENQUIS (pen’kwis), adj., a blend of the Penobscot and Piscataquis county names.

A note Hearing the an cipa on in a person’s voice when they

speak highly of an upcoming event has a twofold effect on a listener: ignore it and regret missing it; or respond to the enthusiasm and go on an adventure.

The Kris Kringle Koffee at the Dover-Foxcro Congrega-onal Church is such an adventure: a feast of cookies, a

tea server’s smile as bright as the silver, no shortage of evergreen swags for sale, and table a er table of familiar faces sharing a holiday tradi on.

No quick stop this. There are real treasures here, like the purse made from a man’s e. (And the purse maker is a treasure, too.)

There is something very special about se ngs like this, especially when it’s for a good cause.

Most of our shopping a en on in the weeks before Christmas is on Gewgaws in glistening boxes that trav-eled 10,000 miles to shed the wrapping paper and tarry at the house before being carted away. Don’t let that be the only holiday sound that rings in your head.

Listen to the enthusiasm in your neighbor’s voice. En-joy a teacake with a friend, and feast on the hospitality of the Dover-Foxcro Congrega onal Church. Now that is an tradi on worth keeping.

—Emily Adams

Above is a replica of the Congrega onal Church made by Neil C. Johnston.

PENQUIS Review 2010 DFCC Kris Kringle Koffee


Dot Gray (le ) is welcomed at the door by Lori Whitney (right), the greeter for the event.

Jane Annis (right) accepts a dona on from Eliza-beth Donaghy (le ). Annis also helped the day be-

fore to arrange the tables and fix the bouquets.

Joyce Cross (le ) rests for a moment on a new countertop which was part of a recent kitchen renova on. “I’m the gofer and I’ve been washing dishes” and other tasks. “Just run around when they want me.” She helped make swags Dec. 1 and other prepara ons Dec. 2.


Jan Barton (le ), Jean Hitchcock (above le ) and Phyl-lis Moore (above right) shu le between the kitchen

and the tables, supplying food made by the Women’s Fellowship and other members of the church.

Jean: “Whoever wanted to donate has donated. It’s

wonderful.” There was and event similar to this at the Blethen House hosted by the Percolator Club. Wilma

Andrews asked Jean whether Women’s Fellowship needed something like it and so they started it. “It’s

been going ever since. And it gets bigger every year.”

Phyllis Moore: “I am a waitress. I get to make sure everyone gets their second or third cup of coffee. We

have cakes and cookies and pastries—all home-made—cheese, fruit, crackers, nuts. Just a nice

selec on of very fancy, delectable yummies.”

Jean Hitchcock and Phyllis Moore

Jan Barton


Barbara Glover had to wait un l the Koffee on Saturday to buy a swag that caught her eye when it was made earlier that week. “I looked at all they had, and this is the one I picked. Three days ago.”

Sylvia Dean serves punch with an ice ring of strawberries. The punch recipe is a combina on of three Nestlé® Juicy Juice® punch and fruit drinks and Ginger Ale. The collec on of cups is carefully washed and stored each year and used primarily for this occasion and also recep-

ons, but not used in the general coffee that usually follows each church service.


Kimber Hoyt serves coffee and tea. “I love being here because it allows me to greet people and say good morning and

see what their plans are for the rest of the day. This is my favorite place to be.”

Parts of the tea set have come from members of the church and therefore get

carried forward from genera on to gen-era on. “This is one of my favorite spots to be because I like to greet people and

see their Christmas colors and see if they got their shopping done. And while

they’re fixing their tea, they have no choice but to visit with me,” she laughs.

“I have them trapped.”

Cheryl Fairbrother, le , is served. Above is her plate of treats.


Marilyn Young replenishes the beverages. She made the fruit punch and also made li le gingerbread men that were offered for sale.

Pictured here are Eleanor Godreau, Toni Cunningham and Priscilla Tucker. Eleanor and Priscilla are sisters. “I’m their sister in Christ,” adds Toni.


Linda Howard announces a door prize winner.

Two angels (right), Olivia and Ka e, arrive with Jim Cur s, his wife, Erica,

and his cousin, Shirley.

Below, Cindy Freeman Cyr is in the foreground.


Linda Howard rings a bell and announc-es another door-prize winner. Elizabeth “Bithy” Donaghy (pictured on page four), a nurse, uses the bell in the bell choir (it is the key of E).

Velma Johnston, who had belonged to the Wom-en’s Fellowship for a long me and whose hus-band, Neil, built the replica of the church and also did carpentry work for the church, had a number of crochet squares. Members of the Women’s Fellow-ship, including Trelba Rollins and Jan Barton, as-sembled the squares into afghans.

Women’s Fellowship tries to offer inexpensive items for children to buy for $1.

Some of homemade runners are more expensive. Any of the unsold gingerbread cookies will be

bought by Bill Bisbee. “He loves those and he takes them to the hospital and shares them,” says Linda Howard.

Sue Parker planned to take the table arrange-ments to East Corinth to be used there.

A sec on devoted to dinnerware was new last year and expanded in 2010. Joyce Cross priced them. Some included an ques.

The kni ng group did children’s sweaters. Pictured here is the afghan of crochet squares of the late Velma Johnston.


Bob Hamlin eyes a pie for sale.

Bonnie Guyo e (right) holds her brown bag of purchases containing three candle holders

that she is going to use and three different kinds of fudge that she is going to give away. “I always come here. It’s a special place.” Her husband, Joe Guyo e, has been the town fire chief for nearly 50 years. His father was a fire-

fighter in New Hampshire. Bonnie met Joe while he was sta oned at what was then

Charleston Air Force Base.

Cliff Wiley: “I’m one of the few re-maining of the old members. My wife and I joined the church in 1945.” Wanda (1922-2002) was from North Li le Rock, Arkansas, but Cliff was born in 1922, the year Dover and Foxcro married.


“Everybody has given me es. I have es galore. It’s wonderful,” says Trelba Rollins, who fashions them into purses., one purse per e. Madeline Acker in 2009 contributed four purses to the church fair and three sold so she gave the unsold purse to Trelba along with the instruc ons on how to make them. People would bring her es and Trel-ba would make them into purses for them. Before Christmas 2009 she made 56. She has made too many in 2010 to keep track. She can made one in a day. She usually makes three at a me.

About her name she says, “I hadn’t real-ized that Trelba was an unusual name. And when I got my birth cer ficate, Trelba was not on it. My middle name, Nadine, was on it. But I was always called something else, a nickname.” Her mother, who died when Trelba was nine, was an avid reader and Trelba theorizes that her name possibly came from a book. Trelba’s maiden name was Vaught. Trelba was added to her birth cer ficate a er the fact.

She married Ken Rollins, whose great-grandfather, George Rollins, received a land grant along the Sebec River. They cleared it and built a house in 1830 on a knoll at the head of a rapid that drops 25 feet over half a mile. The money crop for George Rollins, his son, Joel, and to some extent his son, Will, was the wood on the land. Will’s son, Ken, never worked in the woods. He was a 1935 graduate of Milo High School.

At the foot of the rapids in the early 1900s

families from Milo leased small plots of land on which they built eight camps, which could not be sold and belonged to the farm. They are leased by the year. “Families don’t want to give them up because they go from one genera on to another. I mean, a couple of them have been in the families for over 35 years.”

Trelba was from Kentucky, had finished school, was working in Nashville, Tenn. and also involved in the USO (United Service Organiza ons) when she met Ken, whose right arm had been injured overseas, includ-ing a crushed elbow, and was in a convales-cent hospital, but also instruc ng classes. He was moved from Nashville to Pla s-burgh, NY and, a er being discharged, re-turned to Maine and he and his aunt drove to Nashville where he married Trelba Nov. 2, 1945. Trelba turns 90 in late April 2011.

Ken ended up with a doctorate in guid-ance and counseling from Harvard, which “had one of the earliest programs” in that field. “When he came out of the service he

(Con nued on page 13)

Tea with Trelba

Trelba Rollins


Donna Kousaie

Hal Young

knew exactly what he wanted to do.” He had had three years of college at Farming-ton and then taught in Milo, Brownville Jct. and Millinocket before being dra ed into WWII. So, a er the war, he obtained his bachelor’s degree from George Peabody College and was accepted into Harvard’s School of Educa on. His first job was in Concord, Mass. then Plainfield, NJ. “This was se ng up guidance programs in high schools. This was back in the late ’40s.” He then went into the elementary level supply-ing counselors. From NJ they went to Jack-son, MI then Ohio and Maryland and spent the last 17 years in Montgomery County, Md.

Trelba worked un l Ken got his master’s degree and became a homemaker to two children. Kenny just turned 61. He studied architecture at the Univ. of Maryland. He has been in northern California for a num-

ber of years. Her daughter lives in the Dallas, TX area

and has three children: Tyler, who s ll lives at home; Shelby, who graduated from George Washington Univ. and obtained a master’s degree from American Univ. and will probably never leave Washington, DC (she loves it); and Cameron who is a junior at UMaine at Machias. “I don’t think he’ll ever leave Maine.”

At the moment, Trelba is reading Growing up by Pulitzer Prize winner Russell Baker whose depic ons include the rural Virginia of his youth and living on a farm. “I can re-late to it, so beau fully, a number of things he talked about.”

(Con nued from page 12)


December 4 was also a day of holiday ac vi es in Dover-Foxcro . At two o’clock A Christ-mas Carol was performed at the Center Theatre. At three o’clock the Dover-Foxcro Con-grega onal Church Intergenera onal Chimes Choir played. There was Christmas caroling for children led by Lauralyn Buie in the fire sta on at 3:30. Mrs. Claus received le ers on behalf of Santa un l 4:30 at WDME-FM. Also un l 4:30 was a book reading by Patrick My-ers, one of the characters in A Christmas Carol, at Mr. Paperback. Concurrently, was carol-ing in front of the Dover-Foxcro Historical Society where there was also an explora on tour for children where they could win a prize. There were horse-drawn carriage rides on Lincoln Street. At five o’clock a parade le Foxcro Academy and proceeded down West Main Street featuring lighted floats and Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus, followed by an oppor-tunity to visit with San-ta. The evening con-cluded with the final showing of A Christmas Carol at seven o’clock.

Deb Boyd (le ) and Alyssa Boyd (above)


Ann Stevens sells an arrange-ment to Barbara Herrick, who will give it to her sister-in-law, Marilyn Carr of Hartland, for her birthday.

2010 kris kringle koffee

Documents

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