‘Papa Martel’ author is working on a sequel to his beloved Franco book

AUBURN – Gerard Robichaud knew it was history.

When soldiers raised the U.S. flag atop Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi, the 38-year-old seminary dropout was watching from about 100 yards away.

The image, captured by photographers and circulated around the world, eventually came to represent not only the battle, the last big fight of World War II, but also the determination and patriotism of American soldiers.

It’s a moment that Robichaud revisits in the sequel to his revered 1961 novel, “Papa Martel.”

The story has been a long time coming.

The author – who turns 98 today – has been working on the story for several years. And it’s yet to be finished.

In his home in Auburn’s Schooner Estates, Robichaud’s manuscript pages sit atop a modest desk where he still writes.

“I write because that’s what I do,” he said.

He has slowed since middle age, when he worked at the New York offices of Citicorp and wrote fiction during his off hours.

The pages come slower, but the quality remains, he said.

“I think this one is really good,” he said. “Of course, I’ve written lots of books that I liked but were never published.”

He works hard, but he doesn’t let it overwhelm him. He writes for three hours each morning, then he puts the stories away.

“I go out to see what the world is doing,” said Robichaud, still a robust figure who claims never to be sick. He reads. He goes for a ride on his motorized scooter. He visits with friends.

“My doctor examined me last week and said I have a ‘lovely heart,'” Robichaud said.

His friends seem to agree. They gathered Sunday to celebrate his birthday.

It’s an affair he looked forward to, because his friends saved him the work of going to them. And he seemed unbothered to be nearing the century mark.

“It’s my reward for having lived well enough to deserve 98,” he said.

Robichaud was born in Canada and moved to Livermore Falls as a small boy.

His experiences, growing up as a Franco immigrant in small-town Maine, became the basis of the partly autobiographical “Papa Martel,” chosen by the Baxter Society of Portland for its list of 100 books that reveal the history of Maine and the life of its people.

That novel, which ended in 1937, portrayed the life of a big family: births, marriages, deaths.

The new one focuses on one of the family’s sons. Again, it mirror’ Robichaud’s own life story.

When he was only 12, young Gerard Robichaud left Maine for Montreal, where he attended a preparatory school, then the seminary. He wanted to be a priest.

He never got that far, though.

“I spent my last year at the seminary finding out that I needed to get out,” he said. “I had questions that they couldn’t answer. I still have questions the Catholic church can’t answer.”

When he returned to Maine, his father tried to introduce him to the mills. Robichaud refused to join those thousands of workers.

“They’re not living,” he said. He headed for New York.

He was living there when he was drafted into the Army in 1941. He was sent to the Pacific. By 1945, he was 37 years old – elderly by military standards – and serving as a master sergeant leading a group of young infantry soldiers.

On Iwo Jima, he was not a hero, he said.

“I was just another GI,” he said. “That’s all. I lived in a foxhole for 25 days.”

Much of his time there was spent watching the Marines scratch and fight for every foot of the island.

“We were glad to leave it to them,” he said. When the flag was raised at the summit, he happened to be close by.

“I knew it was special,” he recalled, sitting in an easy chair beneath a photo of his platoon and a display of his medals.

It’s the scene that opens the new book, which explores the feelings of a man very much like himself. The journey – from the seminary to the battlefield to the homefront – is what this book is all about.

His young character, Emile Martel, must decide what kind of person he is.

After the author returned to the states, he earned a master’s degree from Columbia University on the GI Bill. He wrote and worked for a bank.

And he met his future wife, Elizabeth.

Their 35-year marriage, and its conclusion, may offer some insight into how this sequel, tentatively titled “A Pearl of Great Price,” will end.

In the last years of their marriage, Elizabeth suffered from lung cancer. Despite his own advanced age – he was 80 when she died – he nursed her at home until the end.

Her photos decorate the walls of his home.

“By taking care of another person, you learn who you are,” he said.