Lucretia Douglas, an “earwitness” to the Corsair crash in Sebago Lake in 1944, is known around Sebago as a character.

The 88-year-old woman ran for president in 2000. On her platform: “Don’t do anything stupid” and “Let’s keep the jobs we have.”

Running her campaign, which included a local parade appearance, “was an awful lot of fun,” Douglas says.

She believes she got 20 write-in votes.

She’s also a writer and lifelong member of the National Rifle Association, bagging 20 deer in her lifetime.

Douglas sent one of her poems to Pope John Paul II and got a letter back from the Vatican, from a representative, saying the pope liked it.

She gets invited to speak at different Rotary gatherings and in schools. She likes sharing her stories, including one about a horse enema gone awry.

When she was younger, she started waitressing at Goodwin’s Inn, near Sebago Lake, and she kept her customers entertained. When she was promoted to cook, patrons followed her right into the kitchen so they could keep listening.

“They liked to come there. I don’t know, I must have a gift for gab,” Douglas said coyly.

– Kathryn Skelton
Stolen Bible

After shopping at the Salvation Army in Lewiston on Wednesday, Gloria Pierson walked back to her car and discovered someone had stolen her backpack.

Missing: a library book, four money orders made out for rent, telephone, car insurance and electricity bills and a small Bible.

The latter was a gift from her parents for eighth-grade graduation, made more sentimental by the death of her mom in a car accident last November.

It has an inscription inside: “Dear Gloria, this will keep you from sin or sin will keep you from this book. Love, Mom and Dad.”

Pierson, 27, is a single mother of three children. She lives in Wilton.

“The money is hard enough, the Bible is priceless,” she said.

Her windows were rolled up on Wednesday but her car doors weren’t locked. Her backpack was black imitation leather with a drawstring and a flap.

She’d love for it, or at least the Bible, to be returned to the Salvation Army or the Lewiston Police Department.

“I’d like to know why they would take it in the first place, but that’s irrelevant,” she said.

– Kathryn Skelton
Where the women are

Some men might be envious of John Olchowski.

He is the only man in his apartment complex, which he shares with 26 women. “The women say, ‘Oh, you have a harem,'” Olchowski said.

He lives at Frye School Apartments, an old grammar school refurbished into senior housing on Ash Street. The 26-1 ratio came up Wednesday as seniors waited for a visit from U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, who was due to talk about how Congress is addressing prescription drug benefits.

A U.S. Army combat veteran Olchowski came home from World War II to work in the Bates Mill. Now 81, he is a widower.

And though others tease him about being the only man in a building filled with women, he doesn’t date.

“The women here are nice. They talk to me,” he said. “But I’m old. I don’t feel well. I’m done with the women.”

– Bonnie Washuk

Rally improv

During one stage of the Maine Forest Rally race last weekend, a 1998 Subaru Impreza lost a rear wheel.

The car, driven by John Cassidy of Bangor and co-driver Dave Getchell of Camden, also lost its brake rotor and caliper when the wheel came off.

However, the lack of a spare rotor didn’t stop the team from continuing. They borrowed a welder from a competitor, welded the right rear strut to retain brake pressure and put the brake pads in sideways using tent pegs to keep them in place.

Out of 66 cars, they finished in 29th place with a time of two hours, seven minutes and 12 seconds.

– Terry Karkos