Berenice Abbott
Born in 1898, Berenice Abbott grew up in Ohio, spent a brief
period in New York, and then as a young woman traveled to Paris
where she became interested in photography, working as an assistant
to the portraitist Man Ray, and later opening her own studio.
During this period, she photographed James Joyce, Jean Cocteau,
Janet Flanner, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. After she returned
to the United States, her photographs during the 1930s capture
the flavor of New York City during the Depression. Abbott's photographs
from the 1940s focus on scientific subjects in an effort "to
make abstract laws of physics understandable." Later projects
include photographing U.S. Route 1 from Fort Kent, Maine to Key
West, Florida, and A Portrait of Maine, which was published in
1968. Abbott lived in Munson, Maine from 1964 until her death
in 1991 at age 93.
Catherine Cutler
A lifelong resident of Bangor, Maine, Catherine Cutler was born
in 1913 and graduated from Wellesley College in 1935 with a degree
in Economics. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, she and
her husband Dr. Lawrence Cutler, were active in the Family Services
Society, and Catherine served as its president. Cutler was one
of twenty women nationwide selected in 1965 to go to Washington
D.C. for special training in counseling women. Returning to Maine,
she founded the Women's Information and Advisory Service, the
first network and counseling service for women in the State.
Cutler served on the Spruce Run Steering Committee until 1987
and chaired two of its Capital Funds campaigns. The mother of
three children, Catherine Cutler's decades of community service,
exemplified through her work with the Counseling Center, have
concentrated on establishing mental health services in Maine. Catherine passed away in 2003 at the age of 89.
May Sarton
May Sarton was born in Belgium on May 3, 1912, and emigrated
to the United States with her family in 1916. Originally planning
a career in the theater, she served an apprenticeship in Eva
LeGallienne's Civic Repertory Theater. Founder of the Apprentice
Theater and director of the Associated Actors Theatre of Hartford,
Connecticut, Sarton considered herself a poet first, then a novelist.
Sarton's journals, exploring the life of the mind, reveal a writer
at work. In all three genres, she frequently examined the themes
of death, friendship, isolation, and union, and the difficult
choices which confront human beings. Widely popular and steadily
productive, Sarton was a distinguished author. In her canon are
such diverse works as Letters from Maine: New Poems, Mrs. Stevens
Hears the Mermaids Singing, and At Seventy: A Journal. Sarton,
who lived in York, Maine, died in 1995.
