Showing 11 - 20 of 28 Items
Date: 2011-05-10
Creator: George J Mitchell
Access: Open access
Biographial Note
George J. Mitchell was born on August 20, 1933, in Waterville, Maine, to Mary Saad, a factory worker, and George Mitchell, a laborer. Senator Mitchell spent his youth in Waterville. After receiving his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College in 1954, he served as an officer in the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps until 1956. In 1960 he earned a law degree from Georgetown University. Mitchell worked for Senator Edmund S. Muskie as executive assistant and as deputy campaign manager during Muskie's 1972 presidential campaign. He later became U.S. senator (D-Maine) 1980-1995, Senate majority leader 1989-1995, and, upon his retirement from the Senate, special advisor on Northern Ireland 1995-1998. Since 1998, Senator Mitchell has served on many boards and committees and has received high profile appointments including: chairman of the Sharm el-Sheikh International Fact-Finding Committee on the crisis between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (2000); overseer of the Red Cross Liberty Fund (2001); lead investigator into the illegal use of performance enhancing substances in Major League Baseball (2006); and special envoy for Palestinian-Israeli affairs (2009-2011).
Summary
Interview includes discussion of: motives for founding the Mitchell Institute; traveling around Maine as senator to visit high school assemblies and graduations; Mitchell’s perceived disparity in higher education opportunities among various Maine schools and school districts; the value and importance of a college education; raising funds to endow the Mitchell Institute and formulating plans to develop a scholarship program; Senate campaign fund-raising prior to Mitchell’s decision in 1994 not to seek reelection; Bill Hiss’s and Colleen Quint’s role in forming the Institute; the value and number of scholarships awarded; educational research conducted by the Institute; childhood reminiscences of playing sports in Waterville, Maine, especially baseball; involvement in professional baseball, meeting Bud Selig, and Mitchell’s being considered for the position of Major League Baseball commissioner; Baseball’s Blue Ribbon Commission on competitive team balance; involvement with the Red Sox baseball team; business consequences of accepting the post of special envoy to the Middle East peace process; investigating steroid use in Major League Baseball, the public’s intense interest in the report, and resistance to the investigation by the Players Association; friendship and playing tennis with Red Auerbach; impoverishment and jobs held while a student at Bowdoin College; working a summer job at Colby College after Mitchell’s senior year at Bowdoin; ROTC and subsequent Army service in Berlin in Counter-Intelligence; decision to enroll at Georgetown Law after military service.
Date: 2014-05-01
Creator: Alexander J. Tougas
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 1988-01-01
Creator: Patricia McGraw Anderson
Access: Open access
- The Architecture of Bowdoin College (1988), by Patricia McGraw Anderson, is the best single resource for the architectural history of Bowdoin’s campus buildings, gates, and memorials.
Date: 2008-11-08
Creator: Thomas 'Tom' A Bertocci
Access: Open access
Biographial Note
Tom Bertocci was born in Lewiston, Maine, on February 17, 1945. His father was Salvatore Theodore “Ted” Bertocci, the son of Italian immigrants who came to the United States in 1912. Two of Tom’s uncles became professors at Bates College, where they met Ed Muskie. Tom’s father worked at Bath Iron Works, and met Tom’s mother, Margaret True Allen of Auburn, Maine, through his brothers. Tom was graduated from Morse High School and Wesleyan University. He became involved with the Chewonki Foundation during his college years, when he worked there as a camp counselor. He taught history at the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, then earned a masters degree in education at the University of Wisconsin while becoming increasing interested in activism and politics. He became the first director of the Chewonki Foundation’s Maine Reach School, where he led a citizen action project with students to help on George Mitchell’s 1974 campaign for governor. He returned to Wisconsin as a full-time graduate assistant and co-authored Skills in Citizen Action with Fred Newman. In 1979, he returned to Maine to work for the Maine Audubon Society’s campaign opposing repeal of Maine’s bottle bill. In the spring of 1980, he was hired as a field representative and driver in Mitchell’s Rockland, Maine, field office, where he remained until Mitchell retired in 1995. He married his wife, Portland native Cindy Stanhope, in 1981. He died on April 4, 2010, at his home after a prolonged illness.
Summary
Interview includes discussions of: family background and education; growing up in Bath, Maine; the basketball team at Morse High School and the New England Championships; association with the Chewonki Foundation as a counselor and academic director; summer jobs; attending Wesleyan College and teaching at the Hotchkiss School; his political philosophy (transitioning from the Republican to the Democratic Party), and views on politics and education; graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; working on McCarthy’s campaign in 1968; co-authored Skills in Citizen Action; involvement in Wisconsin politics; working for the Maine Audubon Society; getting the job as Mitchell’s field representative in Rockland; the offices in Rockland and Waterville; helping with the Midcoast counties’ issues such as Bath Iron Works, fishing, the Windjammers, and Martin Marietta’s Thomaston kiln and solvent incineration controversy; involvement in Mitchell’s Maine gubernatorial campaign (1974); Mitchell’s Maine visits as senator; travel, especially driving Mitchell around the state; Mitchell’s geographic knowledge; Mitchell’s personality and leadership qualities; Mitchell’s interactions with his administrative staff and his relationship with Bertocci; Mitchell’s retirement from the U.S. Senate; and an anecdote about Senator John Glenn’s visit to Maine relating to Cindy Bertocci’s father, Joe Stanhope.
Date: 2011-03-21
Creator: George J Mitchell
Access: Open access
Biographial Note
George J. Mitchell was born on August 20, 1933, in Waterville, Maine, to Mary Saad, a factory worker, and George Mitchell, a laborer. Senator Mitchell spent his youth in Waterville. After receiving his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College in 1954, he served as an officer in the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps until 1956. In 1960 he earned a law degree from Georgetown University. Mitchell worked for Senator Edmund S. Muskie as executive assistant and as deputy campaign manager during Muskie's 1972 presidential campaign. He later became U.S. senator (D-Maine) 1980-1995, Senate majority leader 1989-1995, and, upon his retirement from the Senate, special advisor on Northern Ireland 1995-1998. Since 1998, Senator Mitchell has served on many boards and committees and has received high profile appointments including: chairman of the Sharm el-Sheikh International Fact-Finding Committee on the crisis between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (2000); overseer of the Red Cross Liberty Fund (2001); lead investigator into the illegal use of performance enhancing substances in Major League Baseball (2006); and special envoy for Palestinian-Israeli affairs (2009-2011).
Summary
Interview includes discussion of: health care issues, beginning with the Clinton administration in 1992; legislative battles relating to the economy during the Clinton administration; contacts with Senator John Chaffee while Mitchell was a federal prosecutor in Maine during the ‘70s, and their subsequent friendship and common interests in health care legislation; industry opposition to proposed health care legislation, and increasing Republican distaste even for their own health care bill; parallels between the Clinton health care legislative process and that of the Obama administration; speculation on the future of health care reform; Hillary Clinton’s involvement in and efforts on behalf of the failed health care legislation in the early ‘90s; environmental issues and how those relate to health care; legislative efforts in the Senate relating to Clean Water and Clean Air; the substantial improvements to waterways as a result of the Clean Water acts, citing Maine as an example; the history of federal legislative and executive influences on Clean Water, and the staying power of that legislation; Mitchell’s affection for Senator Muskie; Acadia National Park boundary issues, and how dealing with those sharpened his negotiating skills; transitioning to fill Senator Muskie’s Senate seat; affection for Mt. Desert Island as a summer getaway locale; administrative staff, particularly Mainers, and their importance in Senate affairs; immigrant family history, growing up in Waterville, Maine, and how those experiences influenced his career; his father’s adoption; the role of the Maronite rite of the Catholic Church in family life; Mitchell’s inferiority in athletics compared to his brothers’ abilities; detailed recollections of his parents, their personalities, and their interests; food, cooking, and hospitality in the Waterville Mitchell household; reestablishing train service between Boston and Portland, Maine.
Date: 1927-01-01
Creator: Louis Clinton Hatch
Access: Open access
- The History of Bowdoin College (1927), by Louis Clinton Hatch, is the most detailed history of the College for the period from the College’s founding in 1794 until 1927. It is especially useful in documenting College traditions and curricular developments, and tangentially in recording social life in Brunswick.
Date: 2009-10-26
Creator: Carole S Cory
Access: Open access
Biographial Note
Carole Cory was born September 14, 1970, in Nashua, New Hampshire, to Mitchell staffer Gayle (Fitzgerald) Cory and Donald Bruce Cory. Buzz Fitzgerald was her uncle and Gayle Cory’s brother. She worked for Senator Paul Wellstone between 1997-2002. At the time of this interview, she was systems administrator for U.S. Senator Patty Murray.
Summary
Interview includes discussion of: family background and connection to Maine; extensive discussion of her mother’s (Gayle Cory’s) family, childhood and positions with Senators Muskie and Mitchell in the U.S. Senate and her time as postmaster of the Senate Post Office; Gayle Cory’s illness and funeral; descriptions of the Hart and Russell Senate buildings; and changes in Senate security post-9/11.
Date: 2008-11-26
Creator: Joan S Pedersen
Access: Open access
Biographial Note
Joan (Speed) Pedersen was born on February 11, 1940, in Boston, Massachusetts. Her mother was a legal secretary for an attorney’s office and her father worked in distribution for Firestone Tire. She grew up in West Roxbury, a heavily Irish Catholic part of Boston. She married and moved to Cape Cod, and later to Maine. From 1982-1984, she worked in Senator Mitchell’s field office in Lewiston, Maine, serving constituents. She later worked for Senator William S. Cohen and Representative John E. Baldacci.
Summary
Interview includes discussion of: growing up in Boston in the 1940s and 1950s; work as a caseworker in Senator Mitchell’s field office; heart transplant case for a veteran; gun control and abortion issues dealt with in the office; the relationships among Mitchell’s staff; Senator Mitchell’s reputation; Pedersen’s interactions with the Senator Mitchell; anecdote about her teenage daughter answering her phone when the Mitchell called; interaction between the Washington, D.C. staff and the Maine staff; daughter’s work in Northern Ireland; increased workload for caseworkers when Mitchell became majority leader; arrival of computers in the office; roles of the press secretary and the scheduler; state staff’s serving as the Mitchell’s eyes and ears; office security; transition to working for Senator Cohen after Mitchell left the Senate; Mitchell’s and Cohen’s working relationship; Mitchell’s qualifications for playing a role in the new administration; the value of bipartisanship and how Maine politicians have exemplified it; Mitchell’s confidence in his staff; and Pedersen’s feelings about having worked for Mitchell.
Date: 2009-11-24
Creator: Brett O'Brien
Access: Open access
Biographial Note
Brett O’Brien was born on January 27, 1963, in Inglewood, California, to William and Rosalie O’Brien. He spent most of his youth in San Diego and attended Harvard, graduating in 1985. He worked for the American University in Cairo, Egypt, completed a master’s program at the London School of Economics, and then worked at the Congressional Research Service in foreign affairs and national defense. He worked for Congressman Jim Bates from San Diego, California, as a legislative assistant in foreign affairs. He began working for George Mitchell on the Democratic Policy Committee as a researcher and writer, which also included being an assistant to the Senate majority leader’s aides.
Summary
Interview includes discussion of: O’Brien’s educational background; his interest in international relations; working at the Congressional Research Service; working on the Senate Democratic Policy Committee and meeting Mitchell; Defense Authorization Bill; Mitchell’s addressing Maine issues, such as Bath Iron Works, from Washington; working on the Middle East portfolio, especially foreign assistance to Lebanon; the military base closure process and Loring Air Force Base, Brunswick, Charleston, and Long Beach bases; and Mitchell’s decision-making process.
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Lily Andra McVetty
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community