PORTLAND (AP) – Donn Fendler, who knows a thing or two about what it’s like for a 12-year-old Boy Scout to be lost for days in the backcountry, says he was interested to hear what Michael Auberry had to say about his ordeal in the mountains of North Carolina.

“I just hope the young man is OK,” said Fendler, 80, who followed the story about Auberry’s rescue with special interest because of their shared experience.

Fendler’s story of survival on Mount Katahdin in the summer of 1939 captivated the state. Featured in a book and recounted for generations of schoolchildren, it still resonates around Maine.

“You’re out there alone in the middle of the night. You really are scared,” Fendler told the Portland Press Herald in a telephone interview from his home in Clarksville, Tenn., after searchers found Auberry on Tuesday.

Fendler was a 12-year-old Boy Scout from Rye, N.Y., when he got lost on July 17, 1939, during a hike with family members on Maine’s highest mountain. His disappearance triggered a search that drew wide media attention and spurred speculation as to whether his training as a Scout would increase his chances of survival.

Auberry was found after four days, about a mile and a half from where he had disappeared. Fendler was lost for eight days and ended up more than 30 miles from where he got disoriented in fog, fell in a hole and ended up away from the trail.

A book about Fendler’s experience, Joseph B. Egan’s “Lost on a Mountain in Maine,” was published in September 1939 and is still read in elementary schools across the state.

“I think every classroom in the state of Maine, from the time I was in first grade, the teacher was reading that story,” said Irvin “Buzz” Caverly, who was Baxter State Park’s director for 24 years before his retirement in 2005. “It was one of the things that attracted me to the park.”

State troopers, National Guardsmen, Great Northern Paper employees, loggers and guides joined in the search for Fendler. As days passed with no sign of him, fears mounted that no one could survive near the rugged, mile-high summit for that long.

But Fendler, who had followed a stream and a telephone line, showed up on the afternoon of July 25 near Nelson McMoarn’s sporting camp on the East Branch of the Penobscot River, near Stacyville. Cut, bruised, emaciated and shoeless, he had survived on a diet of berries and stagnant water.

McMoarn took the boy to safety. Days later, Fendler received a hero’s welcome in Millinocket and Augusta. He later received a medal from President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Fendler enlisted in the Navy during World War II and later served 28 years as an Army officer. He has retold his story many times during visits to museums, schools and Baxter State Park, recalling how prayers and his will to live helped him.

“Never give up. Everybody has that inside of them, whether they know it or not,” he said. “If you give up, you’re through.”

Fendler said he expects questions about the Auberry search when he returns to Maine this summer. He has a camp on Lake Sebasticook in Newport and usually speaks to classes in September and October.