NORWAY — A few black-and-white scrapbook pictures of a pretty, fair-haired young woman in a bathing suit brought a lot of smiles to the faces of Homer Piper and his family.
The mysterious woman, thought to be in her early 20s, shown playing in a snowbank in her bathing suit in one picture and surrounded by young campers at a Boy Scout camp on Lake Pennesseewassee in the 1930s in another picture, has been the source of much conjecture over the years.
Who was the young woman?
The Piper family knew her only as Enid, a local girl who may have worked perhaps as a cook at the Panama Canal Zone Boy Scout camp on Lake Pennesseewassee in the 1930s.
Her identity was long ago forgotten by 89-year-old Piper, a New Mexico resident, who came to Norway in the 1930s at the age of 7 with the Boy Scouts of the Panama Canal Zone.
When Piper and 15 members of his family from several generations came knocking at the door of the Norway Historical Society last week and showed President Susan Denison Enid’s picture, she got curious too.
With a little digging in the age of digital archives, Enid’s identify came to life.
Enid was Enid Dullea Kopp, a talented athlete and 1930 graduate of Norway High school. She not only played basketball on that school’s girls’ basketball team but also was involved in its drama club, served as a senior life guard at Lake Pennesseewassee and was a competitive swimmer.
Through the help of 92-year-old Esther Nava, a lifelong Norway resident who taught swimming to the Panama Canal Zone Boy Scouts, Denison was able to confirm that Enid was a swim instructor at the camp.
In fact, Enid took over Esther’ role as swimming instructor at the camp.
“Turns out Esther was quite a swimmer, too,” Denison said. “She and Enid traveled to different swim meets and won more than they lost.”
In 1935, at the age of 22, Enid went to Boston to join the Boston Swimming Association and swim for the N.E. Championship in the 100-yard event.
In February of 1945, she enlisted with the Women’s Army Corps, serving as a private with the Air Force. She was stationed in Austria.
Records indicate she married and lived in New York in the 1960s and at some point went to Florida to work for the Florida tax department. Eventually, she came back to Maine to work as a bookkeeper for the Mollyocket Motel in West Paris.
“Yes, one of my favorite aunts,” said Dennise Dullea Whitley, of Norway, when contacted by Denison about Enid. “She taught me to swim and she was a great swimmer and swam the length of the lake.” Whitley said she has a picture of Enid in her bathing suit in the snow taken not in Maine, as Homer Piper had, but in Austria apparently taken years later as a WAC.
Enid Dullea Kopp died in 1980 after a long illness at the age of 67 leaving two daughters, two granddaughters and two sisters.
“Enid’s story brought good joy to us all,” Homer Piper’s son, Ti, said when informed of Enid’s story.
ldixon@sunjournal.com
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- Enid Dullea, second from left, is pictured with Homer, bottom left, and Homer’s brother Ray, second from right, and other campers and employees in this picture taken at the Boy Scout camp on Lake Pennesseewassee in the 1930s.
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- Enid Dullea camps it up in a bathing suit in the snow, presumably somewhere in Norway. The caption is believed to say, “Winter swimming in Maine.”
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