Still recovering from a recent illness, David Pope, of Wiscasset, can still crack a smile. The retired Lincoln Academy science teacher likes to stay active and has compiled a lengthy list of achievements, interests, and skills. (Sherwood Olin photo)
On the mend from a case of meningitis he contracted in April, David Pope is currently living a new normal.
The illness laid Pope low for three months, he said, two of which he spent in MaineHealth Maine Medical Center in Portland followed by another month at Cove’s Edge in Damariscotta. He was able to return to his Wiscasset home in mid-July.
The illness damaged his hearing, peeled 25 pounds off Pope’s already lanky frame, and still affects his balance. However, the 80-year-old retired educator is alive and well and delighted to be back home, sense of humor intact.
“It happened after I was doing some chainsaw work,” he said. “I don’t think it was the chainsaw or everybody would be getting meningitis.”
For the time being, recovery has slowed Pope down a little; unfamiliar territory for a perpetually active man with many interests.
A lifelong musician, skier, hiker, and outdoorsman, Pope also enjoys sailing, cycling, and tennis. He played competitive ice hockey into his 60s, stopping only after he cracked his pelvis during a game.
In his 70s, he completed his quest of hiking all 48 of New Hampshire’s 4,000-foot mountains. Then, figuring it wasn’t all that much more effort, he hiked all 14 of Maine’s 4,000-foot peaks.
A former biathlon competitor, he spent the winter of 1969-1970 training with the U.S. men’s biathlon training team and later volunteered to help the biathlon competition in two Olympics: Lake Placid in 1980 and Salt Lake City in 2012.
He was hospitalized April 15 after alarming his wife, Linda. David Pope said he felt totally lucid, but he was not and Linda Pope wisely called an ambulance. The next thing David knew, he was waking up in a hospital bed.
“I was having lucid dreams about places I’d been recently, people driving me, like around western Maine,” he said. “I was in la-la land and eventually I just sort of came out of it. Linda (said) ‘You know this is what you’ve been doing; what you’ve been through.’ So it was really bizarre.”
Today, Pope affectionately credits his wife for his survival and for her ongoing support. Among other things, she has worked with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to get Pope the insurance coverage he earned serving in the Air Force.
“She’s the one, who called the ambulance because I was just like, blah, blah, blah,” he said. “You know, stupid. She called and said ‘Get over here and get him to the hospital. He’s not making sense.’ She’s done a lot of my scheduling and just plain support. She’s been great.”
Married for 57 years, the Popes met when they were both students at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y. in the mid-1960s. A fraternity brother very much interested in beer and women at the time, Pope noticed his future bride right away at a school function.
“It was at one of these early get to know the school things, and I was there early,” he said. “I don’t know if it was skiing or something, but, you know, I just scoped her out and never looked back.”
They married in June 1968, following Linda’s graduation.
College was an enjoyable experience if a demanding one for Pope. He did well his first year, but his grades suffered after he joined a fraternity as a sophomore.
Graduating in 1967, just as the Vietnam War was ramping up, Pope completed a year of graduate school in Rhode Island before he decided to get ahead of the draft by enlisting in the Air Force.
He ended up a weather observer, stationed in Anchorage, Alaska for the bulk of his four-year hitch. It was a good post for him, he said, but less so for Linda, who was working as a school teacher and commuting morning and evening in the dark.
Once he mustered out in 1972, the Popes returned to Rhode Island long enough for David to complete his master’s degree in geology at the University of Rhode Island. Then they went looking for a place to call home.
“After that year, we decided to just drive Downeast and see if we could find a place to live that would give us jobs,” he said. “My wife got a job teaching at the Woolwich Central School, and so we were living in Wiscasset and then we bought the house on Academy Hill about the time I got the job at the Darling Center, so it worked out great.”
While working at the Darling Marine Center in Walpole, David Pope studied chemical oceanography. He remained there for an enjoyable two years, but when a science teaching position opened at Lincoln Academy in the summer of 1975, he jumped on it.
“Lincoln was a great place to work … I loved every part of it,” he said.
Pope remained at Lincoln Academy for 20 years before retiring in 1996. During his tenure, he assisted the school’s drug and alcohol prevention team, coached the track team and founded a cross-country skiing team, which he continued coaching up to his retirement. To make his team’s travel easier, Pope earned a bus driver’s license specifically so he could shuttle his teams to and from competitions according to their schedule.
As is his habit, Pope immersed himself in his duties, to the point where he needed to take a break here and there to recharge and recalibrate, he said. He took two school-year sabbaticals during his tenure, spending one of them in Colorado working for the U.S. Geological Survey.
“That was marvelous experience,” he said.
Running into former students in the area when he is out and about is a pleasure that never gets old for him, Pope said.
At Lincoln Academy, Pope taught physics and chemistry because that was what was needed, but he was a geologist by inclination and training. He had been interested in the subject since he was boy growing up in North Conway, N.H.
“Growing up in New Hampshire, I had friends who got me into mineral collecting and that kind of went hand in hand with hiking,” he said. “That was a thing that my parents didn’t discourage and I just kind of stuck with it because it was something I was interested in and liked to study.”
David Pope plays mandolin with the Narrow Gauge String Band in 2017. A lifelong musician and multi-instrumentalist, Pope is currently unable to play after a recent bout with meningitis damaged his hearing. (Courtesy photo)
In his retirement, Pope has continued to teach geology for Central Lincoln County Adult Education.
In 2015, Pope contributed to the canon of Lincoln County literature producing his first book, “Geology of the Pemaquid Region, Midcoast, Maine,” which was printed by the Lincoln County Publishing Co., publisher of The Lincoln County News.
In retirement, Pope has remained active in his community. He helped build out Wiscasset’s trail system, south of the Wiscasset Middle High School, extending behind the town’s community center. Linda and David Pope both volunteer for the Lincoln County Historical Association as docents at the Old Jail in Wiscasset.
In the early 2000s, the couple spent three years trying to develop a co-housing community in Edgecomb before abandoning the project in 2008. David Pope said working through financing, ordinances, and legal challenges drained the life from the project.
“It just fell apart when the state Supreme Court said, ‘OK, you can build your place now’ (in April 2008),” he said. “We thought we don’t have the energy, which was OK, because we were pretty well done anyway.”
By a stroke of fortune, the Popes sold their Edgecomb property in 2008, just ahead of the global financial crisis that erupted in September that year. The Popes recouped most of their investment and subsequently moved to Wiscasset.
He has become a skilled, amateur carpenter with a particular zest for rehabilitating old houses. In the last 30 years, the Popes have bought and sold several properties together, and David Pope said he loves the work.
“I’ve really enjoyed working on old buildings and, and you know, my wife does too,” he said. “She’s excellent painter and, and she’s got a good eye for the old stuff and what needs to happen.”
Unfortunately, for the moment at least, Pope’s bout with meningitis has taken away his ability to make music. The illness affected his hearing to the point where music sounds strange and often abrasive, he said. When he is listening to music, often he doesn’t recognize tunes he has known and played for decades.
“The only really bad thing about this meningitis is that it screwed up my hearing so much that I can’t play music,” he said. “I keep trying to get it to come back, but it just sounds like seventh grade band tuning up. Any sort of more than a single tone, is just horrible.”
Particularly painful for Pope is the loss of his ability to participate in the weekly fiddle jam sessions held at the Aekir Brewing, at 111 Main St. in Wiscasset.
“It’s been fun but all I can do is sit there now, until I get some more back,” he said.
Pope has been a dedicated musician since middle school when his father first showed him how to tune a guitar. His grandfather gave him a fiddle and Pope went on to add the banjo, mandolin, and accordion to his repertoire and played baritone saxophone and sousaphone in school bands in high school and college.
Growing up during the “Great Folk Music Scare” of the late 1950s and early ‘60s, Pope said he has always gravitated toward acoustic music. For over 20 years he founded and led the Narrow Gauge String Band, a collection of like-minded souls playing traditional Appalachian songs and Americana.
“I always had the hope that I would be able to play with a group,” he said. “I guess what really inspired me was when I was like 15, 16, there was a coffee house down on the Vineyard and the likes of Tom Rush and all these well known folk musicians played there. The first time I was there and heard live music, it blew me away so I just jumped on it.”
Ironically, Pope’s retirement “career” as a carpenter has lasted longer than his teaching career. When he was interviewed by The Lincoln County News Aug. 28, he was looking forward to traveling to Exeter, N.H. to help his son Elliot work on his house. The Popes have two sons, Tyler and Elliot, who have blessed them with four grandchildren.
“I have felt able to help my kids with their various houses,” he said. “They both bought old wrecks of houses and I just like doing it. I felt like I’ve been able to do something constructive.”
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