Burnt into Memory: How Brownfield Faced the Fire
July 24 7:00 pm Jo Radner
In October 1947, in just a few hours, a terrible wildfire destroyed almost all of the town of Brownfield, in western Maine, including all its churches, schools, post office, and other public buildings. In the face of the fire, Brownfield residents responded with courage, care, and, in some cases, obstinacy. Retired schoolteacher Mabel Stone, for instance, chose to stay home with her beloved dog Woofie and fight the fire with a broom, a bucket of water, and her snow rake. Confronting the devastation after the fire, neighbors ingeniously made do, shared what they had, and rebuilt what they could.
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Jo Radner spent a year interviewing people who experienced the Brownfield Fire, and from those interviews, letters, historical photographs, and newspaper reports created a powerful story of terror, courage, neighborly responsibility, recovery, and – yes – even humor.
Before returning to her family home in western Maine as a freelance storyteller and oral historian, Radner spent 31 years as a professor at American University in Washington, DC, where she taught literature, folklore, women's studies, American studies, Celtic studies, and storytelling. She has published books and articles in all those fields. Most recently, she published Wit and Wisdom: The Forgotten Literary Life of New England Villages, about a 19th-century village tradition of creating and performing handwritten literary newspapers. Radner received her Ph.D. from Harvard University and is a past president of the American Folklore Society and the National Storytelling Network.
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Tonight’s Sponsor –
Normandeau Trucking
