Tribute to my late father, Abbot

“Life is great adventure” was a motto of my late father, Abbot. Though he didn’t have a particularly easy childhood, he had the good fortune to spend summers with his grandfather, Rear Admiral William B. Fletcher on Orr’s Island, Maine.  “Grandpa” and Abbot raced and sailed the 32 ft. gaff-rigged Lawley sloop “Juanona” from the 1920s to the 1960s. In 1966 Abbot commissioned a Bill Tripp designed, Graves-built 38 ft. sloop “Majek” in which he had a long and distinguished racing career, including more than a dozen Monhegan Island class wins and class wins  in three Marion, MA to Bermuda Races and first overall in 1997. Crew consisted of my two sisters and me along with close family friends. Abbot shared his love of sailing with his family and with all who sailed with him, including the Bowdoin Sailing Team for which he served as coach in the 1990s.

Dad was Program Manager of the FFG shipbuilding program at Bath Iron Works which consistently delivered ships to the Navy ahead of schedule and under budget. He contributed his immense talents to the Bath area community through involvement in dozens of organizations ranging from mental health to the YMCA to Big Brothers to education, and he found time to counsel troubled teens one on one – all of which he did while holding down an extremely demanding job.

Dad was beloved by all who knew him. I wrote him the following letter for his 77th birthday in September 1999, shortly after he had been diagnosed with an aggressive cancer.  I read the letter at his memorial service that December. Majek’s genoa hung from the ceiling of what became an overflowing church.

                                             “To My Dad on His Birthday” 

You often brag about your kids, but we have a lot to brag about you! I’m not sure anything I write can do justice to just how special you are, but then you’re so modest that you might not recognize what I’m saying anyway.

You and mom provided a great environment for your kids to grow up in. You introduced us to Orr’s Island and to sailing, both of which have been defining influences in our lives. There were ups and downs as in any family, but in the end we all became particularly close. It’s no coincidence that your children now live nearby you.

You showed incredible judgement in selecting the design for a family sailboat. And just as you contribute the letter “A” to the name “Majek“, I think you earn an A-plus in just about everything you do in life.

I don’t know anyone with as many different interests in the world around, and in other people, as you. The depth and breadth of your knowledge of the world is stunning. You can speak with authority in a vast range of subjects – from geology to psychology, from history to engineering. 

Though I pretended not to listen to your lectures about nuclear power, I was quietly proud that you had the courage and the strength of conviction to be a public debater for Maine Yankee. No one asked you to do it, you volunteered. And with your keen intellect and mastery of detail, I was very glad not to be on the other side in the debates!

You always believe in the basic goodness of others, and always give others the benefit of any doubt. I remember when some neighborhood kids vandalized the cottage, you didn’t confront them the way most people would. Instead, you hired them to keep an eye on the cottage. Naturally, there was never another problem, and you gave them a chance to learn a lesson, too.

I also admire how years ago – long before counseling became commonplace – you sought out and helped troubled teens, such as the Morse High student who used to come by our house to talk to you. Again, no one asked you to do that, you were simply trying to make a difference.

I am amazed to think how many volunteer, charitable, and educational organizations you have gotten involved with and how you have poured your heart into them. You have always given far more than you have taken. For that reason alone you deserve to live to age 110. 

It’s no wonder you are loved and respected by everyone who knows you.

You always identify with the underdog, the little guy.  You go out of your way to recognize a job well done by others – whether an unsung volunteer at the Yacht Club, or a tireless worker for Friends of Perry’s Eagle Island. Your heroes include the soft-spoken Robert Parish, who worked the trenches while Bird and McHale got most of the limelight.

You’re a person of the highest sense of decency, goodness, and integrity of anyone I know. For me you are a connection to another era, an era based on rock-solid values where a person’s word could be trusted. Yours always can. You’re a gentle person, and you’re a true gentleman, who never seemed to learn that in the modern world you’re not supposed to talk to strangers in elevators, or help those you don’t know. To you, one person is just as important as another.

It must have taken a lot of courage to trust me to take Majek out when I was in my early teens. But in so doing you let me develop confidence in myself, and freed my imagination to pursue my dreams. Without doubt you gave me the best nautical education available anywhere, period. I would never have crossed oceans, or sailed around Cape Horn, without the lessons and the freedom you gave me in those early years. 

I still remember the first trophy we ever won in Majek – third place at an Interclub regatta. You were truly my hero. Over the ensuing decades of sailboat racing you even managed to top that achievement!

In fact, you became the wizard of Hussey Sound, ducking into every cove to escape the current. I still remember how we drifted past a competitor in the middle of the night, and we heard him say “fantastic” to describe the way you kept Majek moving in the light air and foul current. I’ve raced with you for nearly forty years, and I still don’t quite know how you do some of those things. But I couldn’t help but learn your creed: to make your own decisions, to separate from the pack, and I know those lessons apply to life just as much as to sailboat racing.

Over the years of racing your crew sometimes had different ideas about race strategy, and you absorb a certain amount of criticism and naysaying. Yet you have always been a gentleman, and have never once raised your voice. Very few skippers come close to that claim.

I smile when I think of the officials inspecting Majek after the Bermuda race in 1997. They looked at you, unshaven and unkempt, having just won this tough 650-mile offshore sailing race, and said: “Do you mind if we ask how old you are?” It was one of the greatest compliments to your spirit I’ve ever heard. 

Indeed, you have amazing energy. You were 70 when we sailed in the Arctic, yet you moved around that boat like a 30-year-old. Two years later, in the Bermuda race, we were doing nine knots and surfing down big seas. I was getting ready to put a third reef in the mainsail, when you came on deck, looked around and said, “Hadn’t we ought to get some more canvas on her?” In the Monhegan race this past August, the wind was gusting to 25 knots. Despite the great physical discomfort you were in, you said: “If we want to catch those boats ahead, we better get the spinnaker on her.” We did catch those boats ahead, and four days later you endured your first bout in the hospital. I now understand the expression, “Wooden Ships and Iron Men.”

You recently told me, “Life is great adventure, or it’s nothing.” You’ve been on a great adventure all your life. Roger Rosenblatt of Time magazine recently wrote “…lives are measured by the impressions they leave on the world and by their intensity and virtue.” Dad, you are off the chart.

I remember sharing cinnamon toast, cut in thirds, while we watched Y.A. Tittle play football for the New York Giants. Summers, my sisters and I would wait by the road for you to come home from work, just to get a 30-second tailgate ride down the driveway. You’ve always held a very special place in our hearts.

Being your shipmate on Majek will always rank as one of the greatest honors and special privileges of my life. It is truly a magical experience, and we have an oceanful of memories that will never be forgotten.

When I was a kid, I wanted you to build me a rocket to the moon, because I thought you could do anything. And you know something, Dad? I still do.  

Abbot stands on his head at the South Pole, January 1996, Age 73