Next month, the Mahoosuc Land Trust will submit its application to the Land for Maine s Future Board for the purchase of the summit of Whitecap Mountain in Andover. If the trust’s work to conserve Whitecap Mountain in Rumford succeeds, it will be due in no small part to Leon Akers’ foresight and persistence.

His concern for the fate of Whitecap was sparked by the potential impact on Andover of a large housing development. “I thought, this could happen to Whitecap,'” Akers said during a recent interview.

In 1999, Akers wrote the Mahoosuc Land Trust urging the group to make conserving Whitecap a top priority. Attorney Kirk Siegel advised Akers that “…the first thing you have to do is find out who owns it.”

Akers found out the 750-plus acres of Whitecap’s summit, along with all of its forest properties in Maine, had been sold by MeadWestvaco to Bayroot LLC. Wagner Forest Management is selling off parcels. He shared his findings with Bob Iles, a member of the Mahoosuc Land Trust board and chairman of the Whitecap Committee that quickly formed (of which I am proud to be a member).

The group worked hard. It raised funds to pay for the work necessary to prepare an application to the Land for Maine’s Future board and, in the summer of 2004, the trust board voted to take on the effort to conserve Whitecap Mountain “for traditional recreational uses.”

For those of us who climb, ski, berry, picnic or hunt on Whitecap, “traditional recreational uses,” while concise and apt, does not convey the joy the mountain affords.

Leon Akers is not the kind of person who makes impassioned speeches at public meetings. But he is passionate about conserving the natural beauty and character of northern Oxford County. “…you need to protect the environment and the aesthetic; I mean, why do you live here?”

Leon left Orono with an engineering degree that he never used. “I didn’t want to live on Long Island.” Back in Andover, he took a temporary job teaching math in the old Andover-Byron-Mexico-Roxbury school district. He taught for 19 years, building his ski business on the side.

Linda Farr Macgregor lives with her husband, Jim, in Rumford. She is a freelance writer and the author of “Rumford Stories.” Contact her at [email protected].