RUMFORD – Thanks to connections between a Mountain Valley High School group and a Dixfield couple, Gov. John Baldacci will be in town serving spaghetti this week.

The special supper and its accompanying raffle and Chinese auction will benefit the family of Monica Chenard, a MVHS junior who is recovering from critical injuries sustained in a Sept. 19 car wreck on Route 2 in Dixfield. Passenger Cory J. Bouthot, a 2003 MVHS graduate, died at the scene.

Dinner will be served at 5 and 6 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 4, in the Rumford Eagles Hall at 13 Oxford Ave. Members of the National Honor Society and Mountain Valley High School cheerleaders will assist.

“We want to try and raise money for Monica’s family and, in memory of Cory, try to put a scholarship together,” Mike Peters of Dixfield said.

“We asked John to come because he feels for people who have problems,” he added.

Using the family recipe of Momma Baldacci’s Italian Restaurant in Bangor, Gov. Baldacci is bringing enough spaghetti and sauce to feed 400 people, Peters said.

Peters and his wife, Dorothy, a 17-year English teacher and National Honor Society adviser at the high school, said Baldacci is very supportive of Mountain Valley’s honor society. That may be because he’s an honorary member.

Five years ago, Dorothy Peters asked Baldacci, who was in Washington, D.C., if he would speak at an honor society induction in Rumford. He said yes.

So when Dorothy broke the news to society members, they wanted to induct him. A quick call to Baldacci’s spokesperson at Augusta gave the students his biographical information needed for the induction ceremony.

Baldacci arrived on schedule, spoke, and then, at the end of the ceremony, the students called him up, read his biographical clip, and invited him to be an honorary member.

“He was very surprised, but he willingly said OK,” Dorothy Peters said.

“Being a member of our chapter, John has always done so many wonderful dinners here. He’s just a people’s person.”

About three weeks after the Sept. 19 wreck, she said a group of parents got together to assemble the ingredients needed to raise money for Chenard’s family, “who are so overwhelmed” by the tragic event and medical costs.

According to the Peters, Chenard, a National Honor Society member and cheerleader, has returned home from the hospital and is undergoing therapy four times a week in Lewiston and Portland.

Dorothy Peters said the loss of Chenard at school and in the society has “been tough for the National Honor Society kids, because when they go to a meeting, there is such a void without Monica there.”

“I’ve been helping them deal with it and it’s bringing the chapter together. Something like this really hits home in a small school. Everyone was deeply affected,” she added.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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