BATH — Kathleen Reed, a Woolwich physician who for most of a decade has volunteered as Woolwich Community School’s health teacher, was presented with the 2012 Mainsail Award in a ceremony at Morse High School today.

The award, presented each spring since 1980 by the high school’s School Community Liaison Council (SCLC), recognizes outstanding contributions to the youth of the greater Bath community.

Maxwell Rawson, chairman of the SCLC, said Tuesday that Reed was selected for her “great interest of the students and our youth — her general care for that group of people.”

A Woolwich woman whose two children graduated from Morse High School — but who did not want to be named, even to Reed — nominated Reed for the award, writing in a letter, “Dr. Reed invests her energy with enthusiasm and zeal because she sees a need. She is hugely talented, highly educated, and amazingly motivated. She could do just about anything that she wanted to. She wants to impact students via good information in all things health-related. She does it because she wants to make a difference in people’s lives.”

On Tuesday, Reed described her work at Woolwich Central School as “a joy.” She credited many others with the health education program that she acknowledges has impacted the lives of students throughout all of Regional School Unit 1.

Originally from New Hampshire and a graduate of Colby College, Reed attended medical school at the University of Vermont before completing her residency at Maine Medical Center and becoming first a surgeon and later, practicing internal medicine.

At UVM, “community service and sharing your skills and your craft was very much a part of the whole curriculum,” she said. “I was trained to give back to the community. That’s a part of being a physician, so this is not a far stretch.”

Reed moved to Woolwich and became involved in the community, but noted that at the time, “No one wanted to touch the puberty talk. So I said, ‘That would be really easy.’ Once I got into the school system, I realized these kids really needed education on how to take care of their bodies.”

When administrators told her school budgets were tight, she said she responded, “We don’t need money, we need time.”

In her practice, Reed said, she saw many patients in their late 80s, “only when they were sick. I thought, you know what, we need to catch these people before their habits are lifelong … let’s swing the pendulum to the other end and see if we can’t catch them (early) so they can be well.”

Reed found a curriculum, “The Great Body Workshop,” to teach health to Woolwich Central School students in grades kindergarten through 8, and raised funds to purchase it at no cost to the school. She continues to teach it three days a week.

When Woolwich became part of RSU 1, Reed joined a committee to shape the health curriculum now used by the entire district — except Woolwich, which continues with “The Great Body Workshop” because Reed said students there are so far ahead.

“The content is every body system — digestive, respiratory, endocrine,” she said. “And I do think teaching health through the science-based curriculum has helped these kids, not just to take care of themselves, but to think analytically.”

In 2005, Reed retired from her practice and, while continuing to teach in Woolwich, now works with The Jackson Laboratory and Colby College on initiatives — including the Maine Scholarship Fund — to create opportunities for Maine students in higher education.

“We have some of the best and brightest kids in Maine and some of the best and brightest who can’t access education,” said Reed, who has lived in Maine 30 years.

‘A big award’

Rawson said Tuesday that when he called Reed to inform her she’d won the Mainsail, “She almost seemed to not want to be recognized. I told her, ‘This is a big award. You deserve it.’”

Reed said Rawson was absolutely right — at first she wanted to decline.

“I’m so embarrassed,” she said. “(But) I always tell the kids, ‘Get out of your comfort zone.’ I’m never going to tell them that again!”

But she planned to embrace the honor today, in large part because it allows her an opportunity to thank others, including her two children and her husband, Thomas Reed — owner of Reed & Reed Construction.

“Without him, if I had had to work, I would never have had these opportunities and could never have made the most of them,” she said.

Among others she will thank are other previous Mainsail recipients — “I walk amongst giants here,” she said — as well as WCS Principal Tom Soule and the faculty she works with, for and how dedicated they are to the students.

Finally, she said, she’ll thank the kids themselves. Reed spoke of a third-grade class that earlier on Tuesday discussed germs with her. Reed took the opportunity to describe how HIV attacks the immune system, she said, and the students began brainstorming.

“They asked, ‘Well, if this little bugger gets in undetected, how are we going to stop him?’” she said. “Then they described four current research initiatives that the National Institutes of Health are working on! It’s great — they give me hope.”

bbrogan@timesrecord.com