While the family dog Rudy provides neck support, Damariscotta contractor Ben Fearn discusses the meandering path he took on his way to becoming a a happily married family man and business owner. (Sherwood Olin photo)
Ben Fearn’s life today is shaped in part by a treasured childhood memory.
When he was around 6 years old, the Fearn family enjoyed an idyllic vacation in South Bristol. For years afterward, Fearn didn’t know where South Bristol was or even what it was, but that visit was enough to fix Maine in his memory.
When it came time to choose a place to live years later, Fearn knew Maine felt like home long before he actually lived here.
“I had this, like, very distinct memory of this very short span of time in this place, in Maine,” he said. “I had no idea where it was. I didn’t know if it was here … So my entire life is now centered on this little town in Maine and the only reason I’m here is because I have this very specific memory of this really awesome trip.”
The youngest of three children born to Bill and Donna Fearn, a career Marine Corps officer and a registered nurse respectively, Ben Fearn spent most of his formative years in Hawaii, where his father was stationed. It wasn’t until Ben Fearn was a teenager that his father was assigned to a mainland post, transferring to Overland Park, Kan. It was where Fearn completed his final two years of high school before graduating in 2007.
Not really knowing what to do after high school, Fearb enlisted in the Marines Corps. Bill Fearn never pressured any of his children to join the military, Ben Fearn said, but once he decided to enlist he knew without anyone saying so there was really only one branch of the service for him.
Surprisingly, Fearn really hadn’t put much thought into what he actually wanted to do in the military. He just wanted to be a marine, he said. When they put a list of jobs in front of him, he picked the first one to catch his eye.
“They gave me the job booklet, and it was an alphabetical order, and one of the first ones was an Arabic cryptologic linguist,” he said. “So I was like, ‘OK, I’ll do that one.’”
After basic training he was sent to the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in Monterey, Calif. Hoping to get a jump on school, he had started studying Arabic weeks ahead of time. However, once he arrived on campus, he was informed he was going to a Pashtu cryptologic linguist instead.
“Thankfully it was the same alphabet so I had a little bit of a jump on it,” he said.
Then it was off to the International Intelligence Training Center in San Angelo, Texas for more training after which he was immediately sent to Afghanistan for the first of two deployments.
In one sense, being assigned Pashtu was a lucky break as it gave him a chance to use his skills to connect people, Fearn said, as many linguists serve their hitch without having to actually apply their ability to speak the language in the field.
“There aren’t a lot of people that speak Afghan Pashtu that aren’t Afghans, so to be an American providing that bridge between the Afghan people and the occupying military that’s in there, that was a pretty special experience,” he said.
Much of Fearn’s combat experience consisted of him accompanying foot patrols while wearing a large, uncomfortably conspicuous radio antenna that he used to monitor enemy walkie-talkie chatter.
“I was what you might call a POG,” he said, pronouncing the word like “pogue.” “That’s just a person other than a grunt. I’m like an intel member … I’m expected to participate (in a firefight), but nobody is expecting me to be effective.”
In his experience, Fearn said, war really felt a bunch of kids being around led by slightly older kids, all fighting to avoid extreme boredom and death in combat. In the field, there is absolutely no interest or effort spent evaluating what the military mission is or debating the finer points of American foreign policy.
“I just did my enlistment, and then got out,” he said. “I didn’t really have a plan. It wasn’t like I was embarking on a career, but during my enlistment it was obvious to me that I didn’t want to do that for the rest of my life.”
Honorably discharged after a five-year hitch, Fearn took some time to travel nationally and internationally before deciding to go to college and pursue a career in America’s diplomatic service. It was at that point, he turned his attention to Maine, successfully applying to the University of Maine Orono in 2014.
“When I got out of the Marine Corps, it wasn’t like I just need a place to go to school,” he said. “It was like I need to figure out where home is, because my parents are still off. My siblings are all off in different places and because we’re a multiple-generation military family, all my other family is scattered off in different places. So, very consciously I was like, ‘I’m going to go to school in Maine,’ because I remembered it was awesome.”
Fearn failed his first attempt at the Foreign Service exam, which is not uncommon for first-time applicants, but the test is only offered once a year. While waiting for a second opportunity to take the test, he completed his bachelor’s degree at UMO, finishing in two years by building onto college credits he had earned in the Marines.
After college, Fearn applied to The Landing School, a boat-building school in Arundel offering a two-year program. Fearn said he liked boats well enough, but he was really interested in learning the trade.
Ben Fearn stands in the workshop in his Damariscotta home. When Ben and Katie Fearn bought their house, it needed some renovation work, but it was in great location and offered plenty of room for a workshop to support Ben’s contracting business and space for a growing family. (Sherwood Olin photo)
“I just had a desire to learn a hard skill after spending so much time learning all these soft skills with liberal arts studies,” he said. “I wanted actual tangible skills.”
By then, Fearn was living in Portland with his future wife, Katie, a sign language interpreter at the Baxter School for the Deaf. A word from his father and a chance encounter with another student at The Landing School helped him connect to accomplished South Bristol naval architect Bill Peterson.
That led to a job with Peterson, which required Fearn to commute daily from Portland to South Bristol. By then he was well aware of South Bristol. In fact, his parents loved the town so much they bought a retirement home there, located less than a quarter-mile away from the vacation rental still fixed in Fearn’s memory.
The house was still vacant in March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a worldwide shutdown.
“The day the lockdown started we put everything in the car and moved to South Bristol,” Fearn said. “I think we went to Trader Joe’s and stocked up on frozen food first.”
For the next year and change Katie commuted to Portland for work. The couple married in 2021 and welcomed their first child, Emile, in 2023. They welcomed their second child, August, late last year.
The family might have stayed in South Bristol a lot longer they did, except Ben’s parents completed their obligations elsewhere and were finally ready to move into their retirement home in 2022.
After an extended search, Ben and Katie Fearn found a house on Main Street in Damariscotta that fit their needs and their budget. The house still requires some exterior work but it offers plenty of space for a growing family, room for a workshop and enough space to store their boat.
Trained a boat builder and prepared for diplomatic career, Fearn does neither today. Instead he operates a small contracting business Ben Fearn Custom Woodworking. He has four full-time employees.
He doesn’t advertise and doesn’t look for work much beyond the Bristol peninsula, he said. There is no need as there is plenty of work lined up, all acquired almost entirely on the strength of word-of-mouth referrals.
According to Fearn, there is no secret to success. It’s a matter or working hard and treating people with honesty and respect.
“I just maintain good relationships with my clients,” he said. “Just being very open and friendly and trying to build a bigger relationship beyond just doing work for them, and expecting them to pay. That’s kind of like our big selling point as a small construction company. We’re along for the adventure with you. We can build anything you want, and we’re going to kind of figure it out together.”
Since the Fearns have moved to Damariscotta, Katie’s parents have moved down from Fort Kent and live in Bristol, Ben’s brother and sister-in-law have purchased place in Damariscotta, and a good friend form the Marines Corps has brought a summer home nearby.
The Fearns love the community and have no desire to move, but even if they did, they now have family roots in the area.
“This is our place here. We have no intentions on relocating anywhere,” Ben Fearn said. “It’s partially because we love it here and because we’ve dragged our whole family here.”
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