Finding family has made all the difference for one graduate - By Elizabeth Richards

Mukesh Wassick, 18, graduated from Windham High School last Sunday, an event that is one of his proudest moments, he said. His life could have turned out much differently, but the support of a loving family brought him to where he is now.

Wassick, who was born with spina bifida, is paralyzed from the waist down. He had been in an orphanage in Calcutta, India since birth when the Wassick family adopted him in 2003. He was eight years old.

According to Wassick, the orphanage, which served children with a variety of physical and intellectual disabilities, did not anticipate that he would be adopted. “When I heard I was being adopted, I was excited, but kind of scared at the same time,” he said. The nervousness came from not knowing how life would be in a new place. It was a tremendous shift in culture, which took a lot of getting used to, said Wassick. 

Some of the big differences were related to no longer being in the poverty level conditions that existed where he was in India. Here, there was medical care that wasn’t available in India, and better sanitation. Going from being surrounded by many kids, all of whom had different disabilities, to having just a few siblings was also a big difference, said Wassick. “It was nice. There’s not a lot of people around you, but you still have a family that’s there for you, and siblings you can look up to,” he said.

While Wassick has not returned to India since his adoption, he said he would like to in the future.

Wassick had not had much schooling before coming to live in Windham. Because of that, they didn’t know which grade to place him in, so he began in the first grade. Finding that too easy, he skipped ahead to second grade. After third grade, he skipped once more and ended up in the fifth grade with kids his own age, including his sister Kelley Wassick, who also graduated last week. 

Some of the highlights of his high school years, said Wassick, included participating in theater, being on the swim team, and making the Windham Chamber Singers his senior year after auditioning each year.

Wassick said his physical limitations don’t really slow him down. “There are always some challenges, but it doesn’t stop me. I find a way to get around them, or get some help with it,” he said. He has a good group of friends, his family and a lot of support from the community, which helps him keep a positive focus. 

Wassick is humble and quiet, sometimes at a loss for words. He doesn’t see himself as different, but instead just an average kid who just graduated from high school and is looking to find his direction in life. Though people are interested in his story, Wassick said, “I’m just like everybody else.” When asked about specific challenges he faces, he couldn’t name any, and added, “Other people have challenges too.”

Wassick said he wants to go to college, but is still trying to figure out what his next steps are. “I haven’t really made plans set in stone yet,” he said. He wants to find a job first, and if he does head to college he will do so without declaring a major. “I have a bunch of different things I want to do. I haven’t really thought about it, so I thought maybe I’d just go as undecided,” he said.

His priority right now is to find a job so he can make some money and have something to do over the summer. He also plans to visit family in Vermont, spend time with friends, go to the beach, and just have fun.

Wassick said that what he likes about Windham is that it’s a small town where everybody knows everybody. “The best part of being here is I get to have a family and friends,” he said. “I have a connection with people.”

Pizza fans tickle their taste buds at the fourth annual Pizza Challenge - By Michelle Libby

From breakfast pizzas to a mac and cheese and chili pizza, from cheese to hamburger with French fried onions and barbeque sauce, this year’s pizza challenge competitors held nothing back in the creativity department. 

The 4^th Annual Pizza Challenge took place Thursday, May 29 in the old Fashion Bug location. The event, sponsored by The Sebago Lake Rotary Club, was well attended with hundreds of people stopping by to sample the various pizzas and vote for their favorite. Small pizza shops and national chains put their pizzas to the test, a taste test, where the public was the judge. 

DJ Brian Zutter set the mood with fun music to eat by. There was also a silent auction and a bake sale for dessert after the pizza. 

The fundraiser made approximately $4,000 to support the charities that the Rotary club supports.

The overall winner voted on by the public was The Crazy Stallion Pizza Pie Factory (The Umbrella Factory) from Naples. 

 

Secret judges circulated the room taking notes and judging in four categories. The winner for best crust was Maine Street Grill (for all of their crusts). The best veggie pizza was given to Portland Pie Company for their Bradbury Mountain Pizza. Best meat pizza was awarded to Corsetti’s for their cheese steak pizza. The most creative pizza was Crazy Stallion Pizza Pie Factory (The Umbrella Factory) for its General Tso’s and Cookout pizzas. The General Tso’s is orange chicken, white sauce, broccoli and sesame seeds. The Cookout features any one of the burger pizzas with a hotdog stuffed crust.

No one went away hungry and if they did, there’s always next year. 

REAL School students give back on inspiring trip to Dominican Republic - By Elizabeth Richards

In mid-March a group of seven students and four staff from the REAL School took a life changing trip to the Dominican Republic. The trip was the culmination of months of service learning, planning and fundraising, and taught the students inspiring life lessons that no textbook could teach.
 

Staff members Marie Reidman, Max Brandstadt, Paul Field and Page Nichols traveled with students Brian Parent, Jamee Fillmore, Ernie L'Orange, Jurnee Larson, Emily Denbow, Aiden Conway-Stuart, and Julia Kaserman. The REAL School has been taking students to the Dominican Republic for five years, said Reidman, but never on such a large scale. Previously, they have traveled with the non-profit organization Seeds of Independence, with one staff member taking one or two students. This year, a whole class made the trip.

One of the major tasks for the group was to install water filters in homes on the bateyes, which are villages in the middle of sugar cane fields where Haitian refugees work and live. Field said these refugees are recruited at the border of Haiti, and often have very little opportunity to ever leave the batey. When they aren’t working the fields, they build up debt to the company, which keeps them there, essentially as indentured servants. 

The workers are paid very little, have no medical care and their education, if they get one, stops at seventh grade, said Reidman. Often, education and medical care are not accessible due to transportation issues.

In addition to installing water filters, the students set up a medical clinic for a day, and distributed educational supplies. Reidman said they were also able to provide a scholarship for a young woman finishing her last year of school. 

Brandstadt, an Americorp member working at the REAL School, said that organizing and raising money for the trip seemed like an impossible task at times.“It took a lot of effort and an incredible amount of perseverance on the part of staff members,” he said. The students raised $15,000 through various efforts that included a letter writing campaign, a walk, a flatbread pizza fundraiser, private donations, and a video appeal to local water companies asking for help. The Falmouth and Sebago Lake Rotary clubs also gave donations for the trip after seeing Brandstadt and students present to the clubs. 

Reidman said that the service learning that is part of every REAL School day was dedicated to preparing for the trip this year. Students learned about the Dominican Republic, the people on the bateys, what their needs were, and how the group might be able to fill those needs, in addition to planning and carrying out fundraising efforts.

Because staff had been to the Dominican Republic previously, they could prepare the students for what they would encounter. Students spent months learning about the history of both the Dominican Republic and Haiti, why Haitians are in the Dominican, the racism that exists and the history behind that racism.

The trip really opened up the eyes of the students, said Brandstadt. Some of the students come from very difficult, impoverished situations and have never met anyone with more difficult life circumstances than they have, he said. This trip allowed the students to see that they have more opportunities than they realized. “Even though some of our students have tough lives, I think that this trip really helped expand their horizons and realize that they aren’t as tough as they thought they were,” said Brandstadt. 

Reidman added, “On the other side of that a lot of our kids don’t look at themselves in a really positive light. It was a way for them to be on the giving side of aid, and they felt so good about that. It made them see themselves in a different way.” Reidman hopes the trip will have a long term impact on the students. “It opened up their world to what they might be able to do in the future,” she said.

The work was hard, but the kids rose to the challenge. One of the interpreters commented that their group worked harder than any group they had seen, aside from themselves, Reidman said. “They were really proud of that,” she said. “They were proud of how much they could give to someone else.” The group installed 30 water filters in homes while they were there, 20 of them in one day.

The trip touched students in ways they’d never experienced before, offering valuable lessons on compassion, gratitude and accomplishment. “Compassion blossomed in the students,” said Brandstadt. He illustrated this with a story about a severely disabled man they encountered on the betay. Placed in a broken down wheelchair, the man was left to sit under a palm tree in the heat all day, without much interaction. On their second visit to the batey, one of the students approached the man and talked with him, then gave the man his hat. “He was just overjoyed to receive this hat and get some attention from someone,” said Brandstadt. The man’s happiness touched the student so much that he was filled with emotion and began to cry. Brandstadt said the incident brought about a huge and important shift in the student’s concept of what being a good person means, as well as what it means to be a man. In a reflection, the student wrote, “I have a bigger heart than I thought. Real men cry!” 

When they left, many students left their shoes behind. “They felt like they had so much…too much. They were moved by that,” Reidman said. Reflection statements written by the students showed just how much students learned about themselves on this trip, with comments like “Happiness can be so simple,” “I learned to think of others before myself,” “I understand better what true need looks like,” and “I have so much compared to the people in the bateyes.”

Jamee Fillmore, a junior, said that the trip opened her eyes up about a lot of things, and inspired her to continue doing this kind of work. It was hard, she said, to be in an entirely new culture. “It was crazy to see how everything was so different from our part of the world,” she said. Another struggle was working out the dynamics with the other students she was rooming with, but she said they worked through it and all had a really good time together. When asked what she learned most from the trip, Fillmore said, “I learned that I take everything for granted – like clean water, and hot showers.” Seeing people who had so little made a big impact on her. She also said she learned a lot about herself. “It made me feel really good about myself, knowing that I helped someone,” she said.

Raymond officials think green with new electric car - By Michelle Libby

This past week the Town of Raymond had use of a Nissan Leaf, a completely electric car. The car was loaned to the town by Greater Portland Council of Governments (GPCOG) to see if there might be a way to use an electric car in the town to save money on gas costs. According to the Nissan Leaf website, one of these cars can save over $13,000 over the life of the car in gas charges alone. 

“I had it all weekend,” said Raymond selectman Mike Reynolds, who is also on the board of GPCOG as the representative from Raymond. “I was pleasantly surprised. I drive electric golf carts so my thoughts were not as favorable.” He was however impressed with the space, the highway speeds and the lack of noise at stop lights. “You can’t fill it up with gas and keep going,” he said. 

“You have to plan your trips,” said Town Manager Don Willard, who drove the car to Oxford on Monday. Other departments and employees in the town tried the car out, including public safety, the assessor, Nancy Yates and more. Willard said that Yates told him, she loved the car and didn’t see that there was a power issue, which she had expected. 

“What a great possibility for a municipality to save money,” said Reynolds. “The cost of electricity to charge it is equal to three-tenths of a gallon of gas for the same amount of miles.”

The most talked about part of the car, besides how many miles are left on the charge, is how quiet the car runs. When a driver presses the button to turn the car on and when they shift, it’s silent. The car has a battery that collects solar energy from a solar panel in the rear of the roof top that provides some extra energy to run the heat and air conditioning. It also creates energy when the brakes are applied if in the proper drive mode for that. 

The Leaf charges at a 110 volt outlet (a regular outlet) from empty in 24 hours. If using a 220 outlet, the car will charge from empty in eight hours. 

In the future there will have to be public charging stations if cars like this are going to catch on, said Willard. Having people pay a $1 or $5 to charge their car could be worth it.

“The cost savings is huge. The cost to charge it versus gas is just phenomenal,” said Keith Palmer, a sales professional at Nissan in Topsham. He added that there are no moving parts in the engine and service costs are incredibly low. He has sold Nissan Leafs to Revision Energy, Portland House of Pizza and Wicked Joe’s to name a few. He also sold the car Raymond used to GPCOG for them to loan to municipalities to see if there is an opportunity to save money. 

The car costs between $28,000 up to $36,000 to purchase depending on features, but can be leased for between $250 and $300 a month with free roadside assistance. The cost varies depending on credit. People who lease the Leaf are given a $7,500 rebate from Nissan. Owners who buy the car outright also receive a $7,500 federal tax credit for purchasing an electric car on their taxes. 

Standish has ordered a hybrid- plug-in car, similar to the Leaf, said Reynolds. He said that this test drive is only step one for Raymond. Willard will do an official evaluation and then perhaps the town will get the lease into the next budget year, said Reynolds. 

“It’s extremely friendly and safe to the environment,” added Palmer.