Ron Phillips moved to Maine more than four decades ago with his wife, a Damariscotta native, to build a new life. Phillips was raised in Massachusetts and the couple had been working in New York City, but wanted “a different journey,” he said.

With repayment of a $2 million bond used to fund the withdrawal from RSU 12 due Jan. 15, 2016, the Wiscasset Board of Selectmen considered refinancing it at the board’s Tuesday, Dec. 1 meeting, and braced for the beginning of a budget season which, selectmen said, would be “brutal.”

Wiscasset Town Planner Jamel Torres’ resignation was announced at the Wiscasset Board of Selectmen’s Tuesday, Dec. 1 meeting, and selectmen accepted the resignation with deep regret. Torres’ last day at the Wiscasset town office will be Dec. 15, according to his letter of resignation.

Approximately 20 people were killed and more than 100 held hostage in a terrorist attack that laid siege to the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, the capital of Mali, for nearly 10 hours Friday, Nov. 20. For Alna native Amy Faulkingham, the attack was close to home.

Since the end of World War II, Howard Cederlund has traversed the North American continent and traveled internationally, oftentimes reuniting with his former shipmates aboard the USS Menard and their surviving family members. The Pacific region, however, is an area of the world he has no intention of returning to, he said.

At 26 years old, Lee Richards, who had worked in construction and flooring since he was 14, began to experience knee problems. Unable to find a kneepad on the market that would keep him working, he designed his own. “Thus began the journey of ProKnee,” Richards said.

Whitefield resident Louis Sell joined the U.S. Foreign Service fresh out of graduate school in 1971. For the next 28 years, he supported the Soviet dissident movement while stationed in Moscow, worked on nuclear arms control negotiations with the USSR, served in the former Yugoslavia as it disintegrated into a brutal ethnic war, and worked as an adviser in the process that brought peace to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In the spring of 2014, neighbors reported seeing dozens of trucks outside the Musical Wonder House in Wiscasset. The museum’s collection of antique music boxes, which had achieved international acclaim, was loaded into them.