RUMFORD — The Larry Labonte Recovery Center celebrated the expansion of its facility at 412 Waldo St. facility with an open house June 3.

“Our staff finally has the tools they need,” Lonnie Labonte, co-founder and president said. “We’ve added offices for our recovery coaches and private meeting rooms for our one-on-one meetings. We have a good conference room now so we can have a medium-sized meeting, even virtual meetings with our owl (meeting) donated by the River Valley Rotary Club.”

Labonte said recovery coaches have new monitors, courtesy of the Oxford Federal Credit Union.

“We still have our old center as a new meeting room. So now we’re able to hold daytime meetings during business hours and be open after hours as well as they have been all along,” he said.

Labonte said they worked with a lot of contractors in the area, all local people. “Most all the contractors gave us an in-kind donation by donating some percentage off their labor in order to stretch the money we got for this grant to produce this wonderful area for us.”

“We’re going to be much more energy efficient” with HVAC units,” he said. There is a new bathroom, new flooring and new siding.

Volunteers — “without them, this never would have got done” — helped with painting and assembling furniture.

Labonte said it took a lot of teamwork to rehab a building like this. “It’s the same kind of teamwork it takes to recover. We started this as a goal to help people in recovery. We had no idea how much people would help us in return.”

Since opening five years ago, he said, “the growth we’ve seen in the recovery community and the reduction in stigma around recovery has just been incredible. And that’s really our goal.”

Gordon H. Smith, director of opioid response, helped the center get its first grant in 2020. He repeated Labonte’s note about breaking stigma.

“It’s about anyone in this area walking in here and knowing they won’t be judged,” Smith said. “It’s about changing the narrative about addiction. It’s really about changing the culture of how we view substance use disorder in this state, the country and around the world.”

Smith congratulated Director Kathy Williams, her son, Lonnie Labonte and the center board for everything they are doing.

He said Oxford County has two “beautiful recovery centers,” Oxford Hills Recovery Center in Norway and the Labonte center.

Smith said things are moving in the right direction, with a notable trend over the past four years. Since January, “Our fatal overdoses are down over 25% from last year … From the high point there has been a 40% decline. “But again, it’s still too many people.”

The Larry Labonte Recovery Center is a nonprofit organization funded in part by the Maine Recovery Council. The center received a $178,000 federal grant in 2023 through the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations, of which Sen. Susan Collins is a member.

Carleen Tremblay of Collins’ office, said, “You folks have done an incredible job with the funding that the federal government has given to you.”

Reading from a letter from the senator, Tremblay said, “Your partnership and compassion are essential in creating a community where recovery is not only possible, but supportive.”

Ben Tucker of U.S. Sen. Angus King’s office talked about when he first met Kathy Williams. He noted her determination to make an impact with this recovery center.

“One of the things about recovery is that it starts with one person,” Tucker said. “One person gets to a point where they say, ‘I can’t do this by myself. I’ve got to find someone else.’ But it’s all about getting to that point. Kathy just put one foot ahead of the other.”

Kayleigh Bordeau, who has a YouTube program called “Recovering With Friends,” spoke on behalf of state Rep. Rachel Henderson< R-Rumford.

Reading from her letter, Bordeau said, “I want to express my deepest gratitude to the Larry Labonte Recovery Center for their unwavering commitment for our community’s recovery efforts. Your dedication and compassion serve as a beacon of hope and resilience in the River Valley.”