CASTINE, Maine — The first time Curtis Brown visited the Maine Maritime Academy campus, the former U.S. Navy corpsman from a big city thought there was no way he could stay in a town like Castine.
“I said this is not the place for me,” said Brown, originally from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “It was a small, little town in the middle of nowhere. There was no way I could survive out here.”
But he came, and though the road to a degree was a hard one, Brown graduated from the college on Saturday. And right after the ceremony, he threw a party for the whole town, which, he said, had welcomed him with open arms.
“Everybody in the town helped me out a lot,” he said. “Not just financially, but with food, with baby-sitting, with gas money. Anything I needed, someone was always there to help.”
Even last week, when he needed to get to Portland to pick up family members arriving for graduation, one resident lent him a vehicle.
“That kind of says it all about what the town has done for me,” he said. “I knew I could never pay them all back, but I wanted to find a way to say thank you.”
After the town’s selectmen approved his request to use the town dock, Brown spent most of April planning the event. Although townspeople credited him with organizing the party, he stressed that he had help, from Town Clerk Susan Macomber, who assisted with the planning, and from harbor master Ben Gray and Fire Chief Randy Stearns, among others.
“I’ve had full support,” he said. “Anything I needed.”
A sign of the support the townspeople have provided came when he wanted to set up an inflatable “bounce tent” for kids as part of the event.
“I tried to get it donated. That didn’t work, but the company gave me a really good price,” he said. “I was going to pay for it myself, but I didn’t need to. Within 10 minutes out here on the corner, I had the $165, all to provide a bounce house for the kids.”
Three local bands provided music, and some of the businesses offered specials during the day.
The idea of having the party on the town dock also was a way to generate some revenue for the downtown businesses during the spring lull between the time when the academy training ship leaves and arrival of summer tourists, Brown said.
“This gives us an opportunity for people to come to the town and to see what we’re really like; we’re a small town, but we have a lot to offer,” Gray said Saturday. “This is an incredible gift from Curtis to the town. Castine used to have street parties. We don’t do that anymore, but maybe this will catch on and somebody will keep it going.”
Brown said he hopes that the town will remember the party.
“This was my way of giving back to the town that has given me so much, to generate some revenue and to just have fun,” he said. “I’d like people to remember this and to say, ‘Remember 2010 when Curtis graduated?’”