I was born and grew up on Peaks Island, located three miles from the mainland in Casco Bay, Maine. My family inhabited the island since the late 1600’s. My commercial fishing career began at age 13 with two dozen lobster pots and an old wooden dory that I rowed and sailed around the multiple islands and ledges scattered throughout the bay. At age 17 I had a desire to broaden my horizons which lead to a new career in community organizing, and anti-Vietnam war activism while still maintaining my way of life harvesting seafood, a pattern I maintained throughout my life.

In the Spring of 1968 I was elected to the Board of the Portland (Maine) Regional Opportunity Program, a multi-million dollar federal CAP agency representing the islands of western Casco Bay. I had just turned 18 years old. During that year long service I was appointed to board of Pine Tree Legal Assistance, a federally funded project supplying litigation help to low income and indigenous people communities in Maine. Lawyers for that organization filled the first “Indian Land Claims” case in the country that eventually spread throughout the U.S. ending in returning millions of acres of land to the native tribes in Alaska.

Other activist groups I worked with included:

• 1968-69- American Friends Service Committee, organizing anti war/draft groups in the San Francisco Bay area.

• 1969-70- Community organizer with Frontiers Unlimited, founded by Julian Bond, civil rights leader, better known for co-founding the Southern Poverty Law Center. The mission focused on organizing unions in minority communities in the Southeast United States.

• 1980-83- Greenpeace, where I assisted in developing an anti-toxic waste campaign on the east coast of US involving shutting down chemical companies dumping toxins in bays from Georgia to Maine. I also served as first mate on the Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace’s flagship, in campaigns on the West Coast against high seas pirate gillnetting in the Western Pacific and anti-whaling in the Bering Sea leading to arrest and detention by the Soviets in Siberia in 1983.

After the early 1980’s I focused primarily on seafood harvesting and raising a family. My wife Mary, recently retired president of the Oregon Coast Humane Society, and I moved from Portland, Oregon to Florence during covid. I presently volunteer with Florence Climate Action, serve as secretary on the board of the Florence Unitarian Universalist Fellowsip and until recently served on the platform committee for the Oregon Democratic Party.