Mainers are happy to contribute to the Otisfield camp.
By Gail Geraghty
Staff Writer
OTISFIELD
The Maine connection is the strongest it has ever been at Seeds of Peace International Camp, which starts its 11th season Wednesday.

This year there will be 57 Maine residents working full-time, part-time or as volunteers at the camp on Pleasant Lake, doing everything from counseling teens, hosting foreign delegates, to peeling potatoes or washing laundry.

One of the camp counselors, Ben Wood, is a recent graduate of Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School. Seventeen other Oxford Hills youths work in the kitchen.

Leona Merc, 17, of Otisfield, a Seeds of Peace camper for the past two years, is volunteering this summer to work in the camp store and help visitors.

“I can’t imagine any place I would rather be,” she said, beaming.

Tom Hancock of Casco, a teacher and member of the Hancock Lumber family, serves as a guide to the adult delegates from outside the country.

“Where else can a boy from Casco get to know hundreds of people from around the world?” he asked.

During the third session, Aug 16-30, the camp, which is dedicated to peaceful coexistence among teens from war-torn cultures, will also play host to 67 teenagers from Maine, the largest Maine contingent yet.

“The support we receive locally generates a great deal of respect for Maine from other people” all over the world, Camp Director Tim Wilson said.

Two key local staff members are Glenn Pastore, head of buildings and maintenance, and his wife, Annie, head of housekeeping. They live two miles down Powhattan Road from the camp. Annie is Otisfield’s town clerk, tax collector and treasurer.

When Glenn was hired, two years after the camp began, he was the only Maine employee. Now he works full-time, year-round, tending to every detail of the camp’s 66 buildings and 50 acres. This summer he’s being assisted by his son, Noah, 20. Their daughter, Lindsey, 19, helped out at the camp last summer.

‘A family thing’

“It’s a family thing,” said Annie. “We’re lucky to be able to live in a town that is so beautiful anyway, and then to have a job that has something to do with world peace.”

On Tuesday, the Pastores were laboring hard behind the scenes as the 170 teenagers from Israel and Palestine, Turkey, Greece, India and Pakistan struggled with nervousness and jet lag, having arrived the night before.

Glenn Pastore has been the camp’s full-time director of buildings and maintenance since 1977. Tim Wilson, camp director, said he considers Pastore his closest confidante on camp matters, “after my wife.”

Annie worked four years as a volunteer before Wilson asked her to head up housekeeping.

Yet the Pastores keep a low profile. Two years ago, Annie convinced Wilson to hire teens from Otisfield, Casco and the Oxford Hills to staff the kitchen. Prior to that, the kitchen staff was brought in from outside the country and were housed at the camp, at considerable expense.

Annie was busy Tuesday sorting laundry bags after planting flowers at the big entrance rock on Powhattan Road where Wednesday’s flag-raising ceremony will be held.

“I work very hard,” said Annie. And the physical labor, May through August, is a welcome break from the mental labor of tax collecting. “I love it here. I really do. I feel like I’m helping to keep John’s dream alive,” she said, tears welling at the mention of the camp’s founder, John Wallach, who died a year ago this month.

Sweat poured from Glenn Pastore Tuesday as he labored to unload box after box of donated frozen food for delivery to the kitchen.

“No matter what I do in the fall, I’m never ahead in the spring,” said Pastore, the camp’s only year-round employee. Glenn is proud of the improvements made to the Pleasant Lake camp over the years. “When they gave me the keys, it was very run down,” he said.

Pastore starts getting the camp ready in March by turning the water on. The big push came May 28, when 160 volunteers from a Pennsylvania contracting firm of the camp owner, Bob Toll, came up to help out.

“In September when it’s all over, I still hear the sounds and music” of the campers echoing through the property. “It stays alive,” Pastore said.