Richard Dick Marchi, of Bremen, stands in Shermans Maine Coast Book Shop in Damariscotta on Thursday, Nov. 14. Marchi, who was the principal at Great Salt Bay Community School in Damariscotta for almost 30 years, is a Navy veteran and works with the Kairos Prison Ministry International to help the spiritual needs of the incarcerated. (Johnathan Riley photo)
Whether it’s within a school or within a prison, retired school administrator Richard “Dick” Marchi, of Bremen, knows nourishing a healthy community requires patience and empowerment.
“First thing to do is listen,” Marchi said. “(Then) if you empower the people who you’re working with … to be able to move in the direction that they’re going in, you get them to be spark plugs for others.”
Marchi was widely credited for his ability to empower community members during his 29-year tenure as the principal of what is now Great Salt Bay Community School in Damariscotta. The career educator grew up in Kittery, where he attended high school at Traip Academy. His freshman year, Marchi went to state science fair with a project demonstrating aerodynamics.
“I made a wind tunnel with a contraption that, as I increased the airflow, would rise and you could see the lift factor,” Marchi said. “It demonstrated lift and the failure of lift if you changed the angle.”
Marchi’s interest in aerodynamics came from his father, who was a chief mechanic and tail gunner in a twin engine dive bomber in World War II. On Saturday mornings, Marchi accompanied his father to the Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth, N.H. where he worked on airplanes and the two often got the chance to fly the planes, together.
“I did a lot of flying as a kid,” Marchi said.
By the time Marchi turned 16, he saved enough money working at the local grocery store to go for his pilot’s license. Instead, he decided to buy a boat because it was the practical choice.
“Looking forward, I had no idea how I was going to support my flying, for fuel or for anything else,” Marchi said. “I didn’t see a way forward, but if I got the boat built and I thought I could (get) an engine for it; I was on the water and it was immediate gratification. I loved being on the water, too.”
Aside from his acumen on display at the state science fair, Marchi said his other “claim to fame” in high school was that senior year he and some of his friends decided they were going to be male cheerleaders.
“We did acrobatics … learned the whole routine,” Marchi said, laughing. “The principal would not honor us. We had to drive ourselves (to events). We couldn’t ride the bus. He didn’t stop us, but he didn’t support us.”
After graduating high school in 1964, Marchi attended Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass., where he earned a bachelor’s degree in American history, influenced by a high school history teacher passionate about the subject.
“I made sure I had him as many years as I could possibly have because he was so phenomenal,” Marchi said. “He was real clear about his expectations, but he was so supportive, and he made history come alive.”
While in college, Marchi approached the president of Merrimack College and requested permission to co-found a sailing team for the landlocked school.
“I wasn’t the greatest racing (sailor) there,” he said. “There were several students who were way better than I was but there was a bunch of us and we went all over New England racing.”
Marchi was in his senior year of college when he got his draft papers, calling him to serve in the Vietnam War. Because of the Navy’s 180-day delay program for new enlistments, Marchi had time to kill between the start of his service, so he returned home in 1968 to work at a yacht club that was set to open within a few weeks.
However, Marchi’s father required that Marchi go find additional work until the yacht club opened and he started working at Wentworth by the Sea in New Castle, N.H. There, he met his future wife, Sharon.
“I ended up meeting her in the silverware room and the summertime romance kept going,” Marchi said.
Later that same year, Marchi began his service in the Navy, working his way to quartermaster second class, a navigation position he said he wanted.
“I was on boats on the water,” he said. “I also had no desire to be in a combat situation and be in the bowels of a ship. I wanted to see it coming.”
While Marchi was in Vallejo, Calif., waiting for his ship to be worked on, Sharon Marchi was teaching nonnative English speakers how to read in order to help them pass the American citizenship test.
While Sharon Marchi was teaching adults, Richard Marchi ended up hanging out with the children of Sharon’s students. During that period he had a profound realization about his future.
“I loved (spending time with the kids), I absolutely loved it, so I knew now what I wanted to do,” he said. “I’m not going to teach high school. I’m going to teach elementary level.”
Returning to civilian life, Richard Marchi successfully applied to Boston College, eventually earning a master’s degree in education. His first job was in a first grade classroom in Bedford, Mass. where he did his student teaching. He held the position for a few years until he was hired as the assistant principal at Amesbury Middle School in Amesbury, Mass.
“I felt drawn to help, to be in a position to actually help form and develop a school community,” Marchi said.
Marchi’s graduate work centered on school community and culture and how to make “a school a community, so that it’s serving more than just the kids,” he said.
While he was working at Amesbury Middle School, the Marchi family was living in Kittery. Marchi said he really wanted to work in Maine, but there were no openings in his area.
He expanded his search north and, in 1978, was hired as the principal of Castner School in Damariscotta, Franklin School in Newcastle, and the school in the basement of the Baptist Church in Damariscotta.
When Marchi was hired, he said ground had just been broken on the building of what would become Great Salt Bay Community School.
“The school board was very clear about where they wanted to go, they had a strategic plan and I was able to work from that plan, which gave me direction,” he said.
In January 1980, the students and schools moved into the new building, which Marchi said was a community effort.
“The community was so supportive and that’s another blessing,” he said. “The way we moved from Castner and Franklin was that all the parents in one weekend loaded up pickup trucks with all of the stuff – the books, furniture, all of the material, was moved in one weekend. It was a caravan from over the bridge all the way to the school.”
With the support of the school board and a continuous “phenomenal teaching staff,” the school consolidated and continued to add programs and teachers under Marchi’s leadership.
Marchi developed a student council within the K-8 school and gave them their first task: name the school. They chose a name they felt embodied the connection between Newcastle and Damariscotta.
“They really talked about it and put it to a vote and Great Salt Bay won … the students said Great Salt Bay touches all of us,” he said.
Marchi retired in 2007 feeling the time had come to begin a new chapter. During his final professional years he lost a number of close friends who worked in education, and he said those losses weighed on him.
“Emotionally, I was shot, so I knew I wasn’t going to be any good for the school,” he said.
Marchi took a year off before reengaging the community. The first thing he did, at the suggestion of another recently retired friend, was apple picking.
“He had been telling me that apple picking is the best thing you could ever do when you retired, and that spoke to me,” he said. “I was outside, not being at a desk.”
In 2008, Janice Berlin, the coordinator of the Community Housing Improvement Project called Marchi to ask if he would serve on the organization’s board of directors, a position Marchi continues to hold.
“It’s been a great fit and been a wonderful opportunity to just be able to support people who need it,” he said.
Among other things, CHIP Inc. provides services like weatherproofing and electrical and plumbing for homeowners in Lincoln County who aren’t able to do so themselves.
The second call Marchi received was from a friend of his in 2008 who was the chaplain of the Maine State Prison, asking if Marchi would be interested in bringing the Alpha program to the prison. The program introduces the basics of the Christian faith over 12 weeks of videos and lessons.
“It’s just a tremendous program,” he said.
Through his involvement in that program, Marchi was urged to look into Kairos Prison Ministry International, a nondenominational Christian program aiming to bring the teachings of Jesus Christ to address the spiritual needs of incarcerated people and their families.
“We bring (prisoners) through a series of talks where each of them will share about making choices, friendship with God, it can be church, it can be about forgiveness … it builds on one another,” he said. “The change I see occurring in those men is absolutely unbelievable. It’s a miracle.”
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