We met at the Northern Maine Fair in Presque Isle in July. I was tending a display of magazines in the fair’s Historical Pavilion. One copy featured a cover photo of the imposing French Baroque Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel Church in Lille, which is now a cultural museum.
“I can tell you a story about that church,” Rita Lannigan of Presque Isle said as she studied the display. Rita’s story led me to a series of stories that suggest her grandmother, Alma Dube, was something of a legend in Lille.
When Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel closed its doors in 1978, Alma was its oldest member, Rita told me. “She was devastated. The church was her life — the church and her kids.”
The mother of 18 children, Alma lived near the church and visited daily, sometimes more than once a day. “If we couldn’t find Grammy, we’d go across to the church,” Rita said, adding that her grandmother would stay all day on holy days of obligation.
Alma was in her 90s when the church closed for lack of funds. She did not have a vehicle to travel to the nearest church, down the road in Grand Isle.
To symbolize her mourning, Alma hung a memorial wreath on the locked front door of the church building.
Her gesture caught the attention of a photographer from National Geographic on assignment in the St. John Valley for a story about the Madawaska border region encompassing towns in Maine and New Brunswick on opposite sides of the St. John River. Photographer Cary Wolinsky wanted an image to portray the feelings of parishioners about the closing of their church, according to museum curator Don Cyr of Lille, who remembers the National Geographic story.
Alma agreed to pose with her wreath on the steps of Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel as though keeping a vigil. The image appeared in the September 1980 edition of National Geographic, one of 26 photographs illustrating a 19-page article by Perry Garfinkel titled “Madawaska: Down East with a French Accent.”
A copy of that issue found its way into a doctor’s office in the upper peninsula of Michigan, where Rita’s sister, Barbara Ouellette of Munising, picked it up while waiting for an appointment. One can only imagine the expressions of others in the waiting room when Barbara recognized her grandmother on Page 400 of the magazine.
“They thought she had lost her loot,” Rita recalled. “She was so excited. She asked the doctor if she could buy the magazine, and he gave it to her.”
The family was unaware that the St. John Valley had been featured in the magazine and that Alma Dube appeared in the article. Barbara called her sister in Presque Isle, and her excitement spread within the family.
“My mother thought it was cool,” Rita said, describing the reaction of Aline Dube Willette, Alma’s eldest child, when she learned her mother’s picture was in the magazine. “The article resulted in a number of family members subscribing.”
Rita and Barbara are two of Aline and Wallace Willette’s nine children, with dozens of cousins related to the 18 children of Alma and Alfred Dube. Their brother, Gary Willette, was so impressed with his grandmother’s photo he commissioned artist Boyd Pryor of Portage Lake to reproduce the image as a pastel, now a precious family heirloom.
After meeting at the fair, Rita and I found copies of the September 1980 National Geographic and agreed to get together to continue our conversation. In the meantime, I mentioned our encounter to Don Cyr, who had his own story to tell about Alma Dube.
He was living in the church rectory next door to the church and was among the people interviewed and photographed when National Geographic came to the St. John Valley to feature the lives of people living on the international border. He had met Alma and knew of her but did not know her well.
“For some reason, quite a while after the article appeared, I decided to turn on the lights illuminating the statue of Our Lady of Notre Dame in front of the church,” Cyr recalled. “I had never had the urge before, but something inspired me to turn on the lights. They stayed on all night.”
The next day he discovered his decision might not have been his alone.
“When I went to the post office the next morning, I learned Alma Dube had died during the night. Townspeople were saying she had lit up the church,” Cyr said.
“She probably did.”
Kathryn Olmstead is a former University of Maine associate dean and associate professor of journalism living in Aroostook County, where she publishes the quarterly magazine Echoes. Her column appears in this space every other Friday. She can be reached at kathryn.olmstead@umit.maine.edu or P.O. Box 626, Caribou, ME 04736.