Resources are inherently scarce. Whether natural, like timber, limestone or oil, or capital, like money or credit, the amount is nearly always finite. The same is true of an important, and overlooked, resource of Lewiston and Auburn: its people. The community’s millworkers, specifically.

On Oct. 8, some 400 millworkers and guests were feted at the Bates Mill during the Millworkers Reunion, sponsored by Museum L-A. It was the second reunion organized by the museum, and its continued success – including drawing a gubernatorial visit this year – is gratifying.

Yet, despite the sunny skies over the revelry, threatening clouds are on the horizon.

The approximately 400 attendees represented a marked drop-off from the first reunion in 2004, according to Rachel Desgrosseilliers, Museum L-A’s executive director. It’s not for lack of interest, she said, but the simple passage of time; L-A is losing millworkers every day, their lives becoming encapsulated in brief newspaper obituaries, rather than being celebrated and preserved for the ages.

Desgrosseilliers’ father was a veteran of the mills; he would come home from his shift, eyes full of lint and ears ringing from the din of the machinery. Her father, she said, and his peers in the L-A mills considered themselves simple laborers. Just millworkers.

Historical perspective, and events like the reunion, contradicts that view. “My father had no education,” said Desgrosseilliers recently, gesturing across the cavernous Mill No. 5, which today houses hundreds of lint-littered artifacts waiting for museum restoration. “I’m not sure I could do what he did.”

During the first reunion, she added, millworkers whose bonds with their life’s work were abruptly cut were tearful upon returning to the factory floor. Dusty memories came roaring back, as the slightest touch, or smell, or forgotten – yet familiar – face stirred potent emotions. These people, who with their backs and hands made L-A into an industrial powerhouse, showed they were far more than laborers.

But they are disappearing. Desgrosseilliers reads the obituaries each day. When she sees a former millworkers’ name, she solemnly crosses the name from her list.

This is why Museum L-A has aggressively pursued an oral history program to document, in their words, the millworker experience. And why Desgrosseilliers has scoured the region for artifacts, and saved countless irreplaceable pieces from neglect, disuse, or downright disposal in the dump.

The Millworker Reunion, although first organized to thank and enlist public help in sustaining the fledging museum, has, with its second iteration, revealed a dangerous reality: with each day that passes, pieces of our community’s foundation are disappearing.

And, in an ironic twist, the museum is also in jeopardy, as Desgrosseilliers believes commercial demand for space will force the collection out. A $400,000 planning grant, she said, has been secured to outline Museum L-A’s future.

We urge planners to make the museum a downtown fixture, as the mills once were.

With so much emphasis on Maine’s future, it’s easy to neglect the past. With wondrous events like the reunion coupled with its tireless preservation efforts, Museum L-A has become a proven community asset, and deserves accolades for its valuable efforts in real resource preservation.