Mt. Rushmore. Wow. Powerful thought. See it again: Mt. Rushmore. Pretty heavy stuff.

Last week, dear reader, we left off with the thought that Scarborough, about 355 years young as a town, ought to have (at least figuratively) a Mt. Rushmore. Who should be on it? This column today contains my picks. What are yours?

Rob Moulton Community

A police department is a big part of who we are as a people. You can tell a lot about a civilization by how they treat themselves, how they enforce their laws against members of the tribe and outsiders.

Rob has been with the Scarborough Police Department since shortly after he graduated from SHS in 1975 (full disclosure: I grew up with Rob. But, no, he won’t fix my parking tickets either!). He has gone up the ranks summer cop, patrolman, traffic duty, Sergeant, Lieutenant, and chief for about a decade.

There is no monkey business with Rob. He has tried to run a good department. His tenure has coincided with the department growing from a bit of a rough operation in the late l970s-early l980s with some folks who are long gone into a department with some officers getting FBI technical training, and all officers being schooled at the Criminal Justice Academy in Waterville. We’ve come a long way from Andy of Mayberry. Rob has been there each step of the way.

Packy Mcfarland Sports/Education/Coaching

Packy was baseball coach and basketball coach and Athletic Director and classroom history teacher at SHS for about 30 years. He touched a lot of lives. More important, he established a lot of systems, programs and a culture. Packy was old school. He had 1,001 corny sayings. One was, “A boy in sports is a boy not in trouble.” Another was, “Cigarettes and athletics don’t mix.”

His strong belief that sports was a big character developer for kids led him to set up what is now Community Services. He insisted that his former players return home from college and on weekends and vacations come and help out at the old Bessey School coach and ref basketball for kids K-5, help with Little League baseball in the spring, and do other sports.

He had a favorite saying from a Robert F. Kennedy poster: “Spend your life on things that will outlast you.” Packy McFarland did.

Rodney Laughton Historian

Rod is the unofficial town historian.

He has been a member of the Scarborough Historical Society for close to 40 years, since his graduation from SHS in l978. He has led the group, and also been a good foot soldier, depending on what year, and phase of his life, it is.

He knows people, places and things. He will tell you who used to live in your house, in your neighborhood, and what three stores were located in the building that now houses a food store, or exercise gym, etc.

He knows what Scarborough was (fishing, lobstering, farming potatoes, lumber) and values the history but knows we had to modify or die. We modified. He values people, both current and those of 350 years ago.

“Those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it,” a philosopher said. Rodney Laughton knows our history.

Winslow Homer Arts

You all know Homer. The world knows Homer.

World-class artist. Painted the “real Scarborough” dark clouds, storms, rugged waves, fishermen in precarious positions.

Homer is valuable as a person who created value in the outdoors here. From time to time, we want to” pave every square inch of our town, and forget the birds, the bees, the trees, the blue sky and the green grass,” as SHS biology teacher Lillian Lee used to say.

Not Homer. His work reminds us to go easy. Remember who we are we are people in a town with great God-given beaches, ocean, marshes and wildlife. Make sure we keep it that way.

We have current custodians of the environment in Scarborough. Homer was first.

Conclusion

Those are my four picks!

Who are yours?

Dan Warren is a Scarborough lawyer and can be reached at jonesandwarren@gmail.com