In his everyday job, Sgt. Tim Spahr is among the state’s most recognizable game wardens. His trademark gray hair and regular appearances on the Animal Planet TV show “North Woods Law” have guaranteed that.
But for seven years, Spahr was keeping a secret that was only made public in mid-June, when Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Commissioner Chandler Woodcock congratulated the 20-year veteran of the Maine Warden Service at the state’s annual moose-permit lottery in Kittery.
Spahr now holds a graduate degree from Harvard University.
Earlier this spring, Spahr earned his master’s degree in museum studies from the prestigious Ivy League school. His focus was prehistoric Maine archeology.
But for years, none of his colleagues in the warden service even knew he was pursuing a degree — let alone at one of the best schools in the country.
“I never told anybody. It was kind of my private time.” said the 57-year-old Spahr. “Everybody has something that they do. With my off time, that’s what I did. And once I got involved with it, I made a commitment to seeing it through. I didn’t want to start it and then stop it.”
Spahr said he drove to Cambridge, Massachusetts, once per week for classes, and he blocked out time to complete an internship and a practicum.
“I was able to manage it fairly well,” he said. “What it really boils down to is that everyone who works for the state earns time off, through vacation or compensation time, and then I would just plan that ahead for my classes and other things, and I would take that time off to attend class or attend special programs.”
After graduation from high school, Spahr said he enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard so that he would qualify for G.I. Bill money. After his four-year hitch, he headed to Bar Harbor, where he graduated from the College of the Atlantic in 1986.
During his time in the Coast Guard, while docked in Boston, he was sent ashore to procure some books at the Harvard Coop. That experience lingers with him, and it helped spark a desire to return to Harvard some day.
“That was the first time I ever went to the Harvard campus,” Spahr said. “I have to say, when I went there, I said, ‘This is a really unusual place.’ I was kind of taken by the whole environment there. Then, over the years, I got to know more about it. … I continued to dabble with this idea of getting into the program at Harvard.”
That program, run through the continuing education division, required him to take three prerequisite classes before he even qualified to matriculate in pursuit of his master’s degree. Spahr initially began pursuing a master’s in sustainability and environmental management. A bout with Lyme disease disrupted those plans a bit, and after he recovered, he decided to refocus on museum studies. Harvard required that he complete the master’s in museum studies in five years, but it only took him three.
As his practicum, he rehoused the Louis Leakey Olduvai Gorge collection at Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology at Harvard.
“Louis Leakey was a paleoanthropologist, and he strongly influenced Jane Goodall in her work,” Spahr said. “The artifacts that he had located in the Olduvai Gorge in Africa could very well be the oldest artifacts constructed by man or prehuman man. … These stone tools were probably fashioned between 1 million and 2 million years ago. So it was really cool to be part of that and to get them reorganized in the museum collection.”
He also completed an internship with Arthur Spiess of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, doing archeology work in coastal Maine and along the Sandy River.
Spahr said he’s not alone among his Maine Warden Service peers in pursuing higher education opportunities. One warden working in his division has a bachelor’s degree and is seeking another, in mechanical engineering. Another warden sergeant holds a master’s from Husson University.
Spahr said the process of obtaining his master’s has helped him tackle administrative problems and improve as a writer.
“I never thought of it as a big deal,” he said. “Other people continue their educations. I personally think it adds something to a person’s perspective and it makes them better at their job. It makes them a better employee.”
Spahr’s master’s in museum studies can confuse some, he said.
“The discipline of museum studies is not just about what you traditionally think of as a museum,” he said. “It’s also about outdoor spaces. It’s about national parks. It’s about places that people use — historic landscapes.”
Maine game wardens become eligible to full retirement benefits after 25 years served. Spahr, who is in his 20th year as a warden, said that at some point, he’ll likely begin to put his new degree to more specific use. Not surprisingly, doing so will likely also involve being outside in the woods of Maine.
“The interest that all of this has taken to is to be able to work in Maine, coastal Maine most specifically, and work in prehistoric archeology,” Spahr said. “There have been game wardens in the past — Charlie Atkins comes to mind, he was up in Rangeley — who contributed to archeology by being out there in the woods and finding sites that were later identified as significant sites in the study of archeology.”
And though his seven-year journey toward his master’s degree has only recently wrapped up, he finds that he’s already missing the experience.
“[A fellow Harvard grad] said to me recently, ‘I’d much rather be a Harvard student than a Harvard alumni,’” Spahr said. “I feel that way, too. There’s something anticlimactic about [earning the degree]. I wish I were back at Harvard.”
