You never know who you might meet at the Bangor YMCA. There are former athletes, service members, teachers, local TV personalities and gal pals who use the facility on Second Street on a weekly basis — a true grab bag of people from the region, and just about anybody could be swimming in the pool, on the treadmill or lifting weights on any given day.
Sometimes members even run into a few familiar faces from their youth. That’s what recently happened to three senior citizens using the pool at the Y. After striking up a conversation in the water, the participants soon realized they had a lot more in common than they first thought; all three attended Lynn English High School in Lynn, Massachusetts. And two of them just happened to be former classmates and graduates of the class of 1957.
“When we moved here, we didn’t know a soul,” Carol Kitchenka said. “We moved here [to Bangor] for affordability.”
After settling into their new home in Maine, Kitchenka and her husband, Frank, became members of the Bangor YMCA, making fast friends with the participants in the aqua jog class that meets every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
“I met Carole [Saulnier] in the class and come to find out she went to the same high school in Massachusetts. She was just two years ahead of me,” explained Kitchenka. “She then introduced me to Joe Pickering, who actually was in the same class I was, class of 1957, at Lynn English. It was kind of a coincidence.”
Although the two were in the same graduating class, Kitchenka and Pickering rarely crossed each other’s paths.
“We had a very large class of over 400 and it was divided into groups. You either went to a college prep program or business. I happened to be in college prep and Joe was in the business program, as was Carole,” Kitchenka explained.
All three had very different interests and each had a different circle of friends, yet they all managed to share a lot of the same teachers throughout their years at the high school.
“Remember Ms. Bartlett?” Kitchenka said, in a recent conversation with Pickering.
“Oh yes. Ms. Bartlett was probably five feet at best and in her late 70s,” Pickering answered. “She had complete control of her class through soft voice and was treated with utter respect.”
Saulnier recently shared a painting she did years ago of Ms. Bartlett with both Kitchenka and Pickering.
“With Joe our backgrounds go even further back than the Y. We just lived a street away from each other [growing up],” explained Saulnier. “My husband, who passed away, was in the same airborne division as Joe, and both were shipped out on the Cuban crisis.”
The three Massachusetts natives joke often about being from ‘Lynn, Lynn, the city of sin,’ as the old New England saying goes, and reminisce about how much that city and they have all changed over the years.
“I have many fond memories of Lynn,” said Pickering. “It was such a beautiful, blue collar community.”
“I try and get down there once a year,” said Kitchenka. “Lynn was a pretty big city and it was one that declined in the 1950s and 60s.”
The Lynn trio now spend their golden days building new memories at the Bangor YMCA, in the Queen City they all happen to now call home — entirely by happenstance, but a happy happenstance.
“It is very unusual to have three people from Lynn English High here at the pool,” Pickering said.
“It is just amazing that so many of us have migrated to Maine,” Kitchenka added.
