Four veteran educators with over 100 years of combined service to local schools will retire from Great Salt Bay Community School at the end of the academic year.
Bus driver Sandra Lane, health and physical education teacher Sue Lewis, ed tech Stella Lydon and fourth grade teacher Pat McLean spent their May 17 lunch break with The Lincoln County News.
Lane, of Bristol, began her career with local schools in 1969 as a driver for the Longfellow School in Bristol Mills. She spent 26-plus years in Bristol and a relatively short period in Nobleboro before arriving at Great Salt Bay.
Lane credits her vocational longevity to higher powers. “I’ve been fortunate to have God ride beside me for all this time,” she said.
“I hope He continues for the next 30 days,” she added, laughing.
Lane has a full itinerary of post-retirement plans, beginning with a retirement party at the 1812 Farm in Bristol Mills.
Lane said she’d probably stay on as a substitute driver and devote more attention to her volunteer efforts with the Bristol Parks Commission, Elder Power and Full Circle America.
Volunteer efforts figure prominently in the post-Great Salt Bay plans of all four retirees.
Lewis, of Nobleboro, taught in Wiscasset schools for 10 years before spending the last 13 at Great Salt Bay. After retirement, she wants to work with Habitat for Humanity. She’ll also continue her contributions to composting and gardening projects at Great Salt Bay in a volunteer capacity.
Lydon, of Bristol, has logged 21 years at Great Salt Bay. She hopes to spend more time with her four children and six grandchildren, spread across America from Lincoln County to Washington state.
Lydon loves traveling and wants to return to Ireland where, with her husband, she embarks on 80-90 mile hikes, hoofing it across the Emerald Isle from one bed and breakfast to the next.
A voracious reader, she also plans to tackle neglected stacks of books and pass the days gardening, kayaking and volunteering.
McLean, of Damariscotta, a 26-year Great Salt Bay veteran, also hopes to travel. Growing up as the daughter of an Army Colonel, McLean moved on an annual basis. “I want to go back and visit the places of my childhood,” she said.
She’ll also continue her work with the Damariscotta Cemetery Committee.
The soon-to-be former coworkers universally relish the idea of life unfettered by the academic calendar.
“I’m just tired of waking up at six o’clock every morning,” Lane said.
Retirement offers opportunity for “spontaneity,” Lydon said.
“If you want to go away overnight,” you can, McLean said, without a thought to arrangements for a substitute teacher.
“I think our job is so intense,” McLean said. “When you walk into school at seven in the morning until you leave at four, you’re dealing with something.”
Although the group isn’t shy about their collective anticipation of the joys of retirement, it’s clear that their departure will be a bittersweet time as well.
All four tell of their relationships with individual students who rely on them for a boost in their day – the eighth grader who visits McLean’s fourth grade classroom daily, the students who stop Lewis in the hall for a hug between classes, the little boy who, upon learning of Lane’s impending retirement, asked her to move to Hamden with his family.
“I have very mixed feelings about retirement,” Lydon said. “I’m going to miss the children.”
Lydon’s post is the school’s resource room, where she works with one or two students at a time on reading and writing. “I just love the personal connections – the small successes we have that lead to the larger ones,” she said.
Lane, meanwhile, considers herself a sort of adjunct teacher on wheels. It’s important to keep student morale high on the morning commute, she said. “If you’re not in a good mood, they’re not going to be in a good mood.”
Lewis, the phys ed/health teacher, enjoys “giving kids basic skills so they’ll be happy to move for the rest of their life,” she said. “I just love seeing kids moving.”
As for health, Lewis finds humor in her students’ curiosity and encouragement in their desire to learn. “I just finished doing sex ed. with eighth graders,” she said. “It’s such a hoot.”
On a serious note, “what they learn in health affects them for the rest of their lives,” Lewis said.
For McLean, “It’s the lightbulb moments” – the moments when a child learns to read or grasps a basic math skill for the first time – “that make it worthwhile.”
Principal Jeff Boston thanked Lane, Lewis, Lydon and McLean “for their dedication, creativity and [development of] positive learning environments for their students” in a recent message from the principal.
“We’re very fortunate to have such knowledgeable and caring teachers working with our students,” Boston said May 17. “They’re a real asset to our school and will be missed, but I wish them well in their retirement.”
