FORT KENT, Maine — In her 46 years working at the the University of Maine at Fort Kent, Naomi Nicholas was responsible for a lot of things, from organizing presidents’ schedules to wrangling university system board of trustee members during campus visits.
For nearly five decades, Naomi has been a part of the UMFK community, starting as a clerk-typist right out of high school and later as the administrative assistant in the president’s office.
During that time, she has seen eight UMFK presidents, 13 University of Maine System chancellors, scores of faculty and hundreds of students come and go.
I am not alone in not being able to imagine that office without her, but the time has come that we will have to.
When Naomi logs off her computer and locks up her office on April 17, she won’t be coming back, finally having decided to take her full retirement.
“I just didn’t want to train another president,” Naomi joked this week as we sat down to reminisce about her years at UMFK. “I’m not pushing for 50 years.”
Turning serious for a moment, Naomi told me the timing just seemed right to step away from the only job she ever had over her entire working life.
“I interviewed for a job once,” she said. “I stayed 46 years.”
That interview was arranged through her Fort Kent high school guidance counselor with Lucille Pelletier, who at the time was the UMFK business manager.
The open position, Naomi said, was for a clerk-typist. She aced the interview and shorthand test administered by former UMFK administrative assistant Verna Daigle.
Then came the typing test.
“I was pretty proud of how I did with the shorthand, and I had taken typing in school,” she said, adding she figured her training would allow her to breeze through the typing test.
“Then Verna takes me into a room, and there’s this electric typewriter,” Naomi said. “She walked out, shut the door and I panicked.”
Turns out, among all the manual machines in the high school typing lab, there were only two of the new-fangled electric typewriters. Naomi had not had a turn on one yet.
“Every time I touched that electric typewriter, the thing just took off,” she said. “I wanted to cry. Verna walks in, starts roaring in laughter and got me a manual typewriter, and I got the job.”
She never looked back.
When Naomi started at UMFK, Joe Fox was president. When he left and Richard Spath took over, she moved across the hall to work in that office. From that point on, she has been the gatekeeper for every campus president since then: Barbara Leondar, Richard Dumont, Charles Lyons, Donald Zillman, Richard Cost and current President Wilson Hess.
Each, she said, brought his or her own unique management style and academic philosophy to the position. She has seen major construction projects under Spath, a focus on the area’s Acadian heritage by Leondar and Hess’ dedication to the campus’ nursing program.
Through it all, Naomi has provided consistency and a wealth of institutional knowledge.
“I’ve been really lucky,” she said. “I can’t pick a favorite [president] because there has been something special about each and every one of them.”
She did have one piece of advice for every incoming president.
“I would tell them all, ‘I am not a women’s libber, but if I don’t get my way, I just might cry,’” she laughed. “In all the years, I never had to cry.”
Over the years, as the UMFK campus grew in size and enrollment and Naomi grew into her job, she said there have been a lot of changes.
“There is a lot more responsibility,” she said. “I work with the Legislature, the board of trustees and more recently our own board of visitors.”
A big part of the job has been as the gatekeeper of the president’s office, and she has borne the brunt of more than one frustrated or angry faculty or staff member.
“Maybe 85 percent of the time if they could vent to me they were fine and did not need to see the president,” she said. “I was always happy they felt they could come to me and speak openly, no matter what.”
There were a lot of long days, evenings in the office and working weekends, but it was not all serious work — there was plenty of fun and laughter, too.
UMFK’s Cyr Hall, where her office has always been, has long been known for having its share of practical jokers, Naomi among them.
Years ago, she decided it would be funny to surprise the then registrar by hiding in his office closet and grabbing his hand when he went to hang up his jacket.
At times having a hard time telling the story because even after three decades it makes her laugh out loud, Naomi said as she was hiding, she could hear her friend and fellow administrative assistant Peggy Bard in the outer office starting to laugh and feared she would give the whole gag away.
“All of a sudden, I hear two people come in, close the door and sit down,” Naomi said. “Then they start a conversation I never should have heard and will never, ever repeat.”
Not wanting to hear any more, but knowing she could not escape unseen, Naomi was faced with a very public exit in a very sensitive situation.
“I opened that closet door, looked them both in the eyes and said, ‘Don’t blame me; it’s the weather,’ and walked out,” she said. “To this day, I have no idea why I said that.”
Another time, she was left to clean up from someone else’s practical joke when a half-dozen chickens were released into Spath’s office.
“These were really big chickens,” she recalled. “They were on his desk, on his window sill and picking at his flowers.”
They also were doing what chickens do best — leaving droppings on the furniture and presidential documents.
“Every time I tried to grab one, it pooped on something,” she said. “I spent the rest of that day getting brown stains off everything and hoping he’d think it was coffee.”
Looking back on her career, she said it was the crazy stuff that kept her sane.
It also relates to the one piece of advice she wants to pass along to the next person in the job.
“Keep your sense of humor,” she said “That’s what got me through eight presidents.”
Julia Bayly of Fort Kent is an award-winning writer and photographer, who writes part time for Bangor Daily News. Her column appears here every other Friday. She can be reached by email at jbayly@bangordailynews.com.
