Laura Pineo is all about smiling faces and full bellies.

Pineo came to Maine 27 years ago with a degree in business administration from the University of Nebraska, but soon found her real calling – feeding kids.

Pineo has found her niche as nutrition director for the seven schools and roughly 2,600 kids in Skowhegan-based School Administrative District 54. She oversees the district’s Community Eligibility Provision, a federal program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture offered under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.

The program offers free breakfast and lunch to all students in the district without cost to the family, every day, no questions asked, with no proof of income eligibility required.

“We know that for some children the only nutritious meal that they may get on any day is the one we serve at school,” said Pineo, 57, of Norridgewock. “It’s kind of like a smile, you never know when you smile at somebody if that’s the only nice thing they see all day. I’m grateful for the chance to help other people fill their bellies – not just my family, but the kids here at school.”

She said a child who isn’t hungry all day does better in school.

The Skowhegan district is one of nine in Maine to use the federal nutrition program. Seventeen other schools in six other districts also participate, said Pineo, who is a mother of four children and grandmother of two.

Breakfast each school day morning can consist of cereal or a bagel, fresh fruit, juice and milk. For lunch, there is a salad bar in every school. Some of the food, including winter squash and potatoes, is sourced locally.

Lunch can be a variety of hot dishes, including whole-grain pancakes, pork sausage links, steamed corn, cinnamon applesauce and warm blueberry sauce for dipping.

“They’re nutritionally dense items that children need, and we’re trying to get them to consume more fresh fruits and vegetables every day,” Pineo said.

Brent Colbry, superintendent of MSAD 54, said Pineo has done an outstanding job promoting good nutrition and healthy choices for the students.

“Her work with the Community Eligibility program … has been very important to our efforts to combat student hunger in our communities,” he said.

Pineo is a self-taught nutritionist, but also has received training from state programs and participated in the state Legislative Task Force to End Student Hunger, the Full Plates Full Potential program and the Maine School Nutrition Association.

Nourishing students and teaching them about healthy food is “the fire that burns in my belly,” Pineo said. “It’s what makes me get up in the morning and come to work and try to make it better every day. We’re doing that by building strong children and hoping to teach them things about nutrition that they can take home and share with their families, and perhaps make some different choices at home.”

– Doug Harlow

Read all of our profiles of Mainers to be thankful for in 2015.

When David Clark slips behind the wheel of his Jeep Patriot to help another cancer patient get to the doctor’s office, he’s doing it in memory of his late wife, Ginny.

It’s been four years since she died of multiple myeloma, and Clark has spent that time as a volunteer driver for the American Cancer Society’s Road to Recovery program.

So far he’s logged about 30,000 miles driving patients to appointments and treatments, the equivalent of crossing the United States 10 times.

He’s not reimbursed for gas, tolls or his time, but the 74-year-old Clark said helping others is reward enough.

“When people say thank you, that’s the payment,” he said. “It’s just what is needed. I have a good retirement and I have the time, so I’m glad to do it.”

Theoretically, Clark is supposed to just give rides to patients in Kennebec County, but he’s volunteered to take patients as far as Boston for treatment. Sometimes there are weeks between rides, and other times he’s driving five days a week.

The people he drives have no other transportation. If not for Clark and other volunteer drivers, they would have to cancel their treatments.

He keeps it upbeat for his passengers, talking while they travel or offering them hard candies or bottled water. He’s driven patients as young as 8 years old.

“I thought that was going to be a hard one, but he was so lively,” Clark recalled. Others, he said, are past 90 and are using walkers and wheelchairs.

“We talk and tell stories, tell about our experiences,” he said. “Some say what type of cancer they have, some don’t. I had one patient who said ‘I’m not much of a talker, but I love to listen.’ The next time I drove him he said, ‘You know, you’re fun to listen to.’ ”

And while Clark finds it rewarding, there are tough moments.

“One thing I find hard is when one of the patients tells me it’s stage 4 (cancer) and it’s throughout (their body),” he said. “Or I have a patient that is doing good, then I’m transporting them again and they say the cancer is back.

“I have gone to too many funerals,” he said.

And then there’s missing Ginny, his wife of 44 years.

“It’s still one day at a time. Every once in a while it tweaks me,” he said. “I will admit, there’s times I go to bed or go to get up and see that empty side. Or I’ll be looking over at that empty seat (in the car) and without thinking about it I’ll say, ‘Well, you aren’t going with me.’ ”

– Noel K. Gallagher

Read all of our profiles of Mainers to be thankful for in 2015.

Baby Matthew – that’s his real name; he was born in India, the “baby” in a family of six – hasn’t had a day off in four years.

“I work a lot,” he said with a laugh.

Matthew, 63, is an operating room nurse at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. His other “job,” for which he volunteers 30 to 40 hours a week, is overseeing the food pantry at the First Assembly of God church in Portland.

“He pours his life into it, and every week I think ‘How can he keep going,’ ” said his wife, Barbara, who also volunteers in the food pantry. “But every week when we finish there’s a feeling of satisfaction, the feeling that we’ve made a difference in someone’s life.”

The church gives away more than 10,000 pounds of food to its neighbors in need every Sunday. That’s the equivalent of 8,000 meals.

“He is the main hub of the operation,” said Pastor Memana Abraham. “He finds his meaning and purpose in that ministry.”

Matthew spends a lot of time on the road, picking up boxes of fresh produce and nonperishables donated by grocery stores and restaurants, including Hannaford and Panera Bread. The church also buys food from the Good Shepherd Food Bank in Auburn.

On Saturdays, he and other dedicated volunteers sort through the boxes and arrange the food on sturdy tables in the church’s cramped basement. By Sunday morning there’s usually a long line snaking around the block.

Many of those who depend on the food pantry are refugees.

“He’s passionate about it because he’s gone through all of those challenges (of coming to a new country) himself,” said longtime parishioner Peggy Hinman. “He serves with humility and he works tirelessly.”

Matthew, who was raised on a small farm in India, came to the U.S. in 1976. His family didn’t have much, he said, but what they did have, they shared.

“My mother used to feed people who came to our house hungry,” he said.

That’s a lesson her “Baby” took to heart.

When the doors to the food bank open, Matthew and his wife welcome every person with a hug, a handshake, a smile. And he always makes sure he has treats at the ready for the children who come.

“In refugee camps they were just a number,” he said. “(Here) you’re not just a number. You are a person.”

– Susan Kimball

Read all of our profiles of Mainers to be thankful for in 2015.

If you’re looking for silver linings, one advantage of being the state with the country’s oldest median age is that it puts Maine at the leading edge in tackling issues that affect the elderly.

Jessica Maurer sees that on a regular basis as executive director of the Maine Association of Area Agencies on Aging. She’s a tireless advocate for older Mainers and is constantly pushing for improvements in how the elderly are housed, get around, and deal with daily challenges, even helping to run a program to get warm coats to older Mainers in the winter.

Maurer got her first taste of working on policy issues while in the Maine Attorney General’s Office. She said she saw older Mainers being taken advantage of and decided to continue trying to help after leaving her state job.

“I wanted to create social change,” she said. “I want to create a new vision of how we live together.”

American society changed dramatically in the 20th century, and how the elderly live is one of the areas that has changed most dramatically, she said.

People are living longer and want to stay in their homes, but need help staying mobile, she said. But that means things like home maintenance, making weekly shopping trips when they are no longer able to drive, and getting to appointments often become issues for elderly Mainers. In many cases, adult children have moved away, eliminating a natural support system.

“Our current systems are failing,” Maurer said. But there are ways to get those systems back on track, she said, such as the $15 million senior housing bond that voters passed on Election Day, which will be used to build modern, energy-efficient homes for older Mainers.

There’s an array of other issues that Maurer said also needs attention, from a shrinking labor pool of workers providing direct care for seniors, to transportation systems that don’t reach rural areas of the state.

Still, Maurer remains positive and keeps looking for solutions.

“She’s a real dynamo,” said Dave Brown, 74, who works with Maurer on a program to help the elderly stay in their homes in Harpswell, where Maurer lives.

Brown said Maurer has an ability to work on big, overarching statewide issues, as well as smaller programs that may reach fewer people, but make a real difference in how they live. Maurer remains optimistic that older Mainers will get the help they need as they age.

“You can get overwhelmed by the whole, but we’re making progress every day,” she said. “I am unbelievably optimistic. I’m inspired by the communities that are tackling these issues.”

– Edward D. Murphy

Read all of our profiles of Mainers to be thankful for in 2015.

It’s appropriate that the final stop on Wesley McNair’s “Last Hurrah” tour as Maine poet laureate is the Chebeague Island Library in Casco Bay on Dec. 6. As Maine’s poetry ambassador, McNair has tried to remove the stuffiness that sometimes surrounds poetry and put it in the hands of everyday people.

For five years, McNair has visited cities and towns across Maine – 175 in all – to read poems he’s written as well as works by others, focusing on the imperfection of life and celebrating its joys and sorrows. But Chebeague is special. “It’s the only town in Maine, or the only place in Maine, where there is a weekly poetry group, not to write poetry, but to appreciate it,” said McNair, a retired university professor from Mercer.

“That’s why I’ve spent the last nearly five years doing the things I do,” he said. “One of the encouraging things I’ve discovered is how much the people of Maine seem to really like poems and poetry, especially poems that come out of life experiences and help us have insight and help us understand our lives and live them more truly.”

As poet laureate, McNair has used his post to improve the lives of Mainers by introducing them to and reminding them of the reward of a few well-chosen words, smartly arranged in lines and conveying observations and commentary with emotion and humor. He has stumped for poetry like a politician, speaking at any library, school or grange hall where he’s invited, and at agricultural fairs and churches. He introduced a weekly poetry column in newspapers around Maine, edited two anthologies of poems and rescued Maine’s illustrious poets of the past – Longfellow, Millay and Edwin Arlington Robinson – from what he calls their “wax museum” status by reading their poems and putting their lives in context.

His five-year term ends this winter.

McNair is a regular guy, said Chebeague library director Deborah A. Bowman. He could be anybody’s father or grandfather, with his cajoling demeanor and friendly white beard. He smiles a lot, likes to laugh and never comes across as smarter than the person he’s talking with, Bowman said.

“When he comes to Chebeague, he’s a Chebeaguer,” she said. “He will sit and talk with anybody, and he gives you his full attention. His poetry is so Maine, it’s so local.”

She observed the depth of McNair’s humility when he shared a work-in-progress with his island friends. He wanted their feedback. Hearing him read unfinished pieces and making edits on the fly “was like watching someone paint,” Bowman said.

Joshua Bodwell, executive director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, said McNair’s success as poet laureate is communication. McNair is a good listener and understands people’s motivations and inspirations. Those attributes make him a good poet, Bodwell said.

“Wes’ poetry has always eschewed obscurity in favor of accessibility. He has sought to say difficult things in simple ways,” Bodwell said. “As the poet laureate, Wes has followed this same instinct of communication and walked a line to both honor poets and poetry, and to bring poetry to people as a sort of conversation in which they feel included.”

Last May, McNair read from the pulpit of a Unitarian church in Sangerville, framed by a mural that featured Plato, Moses and Jesus Christ. McNair noted the name of the mural: “Christianity Triumphant.”

“Standing in front of it while I read poems in my high pulpit, I felt a little triumphant, too,” he said.

– Bob Keyes

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When people praise Pat Packard for her tireless work over the past 25 years, helping make the Saco River Theatre in Bar Mills a success, she is quick to point out she was not alone.

“So many people have made that theater come to life that I shouldn’t get so much credit for it,” said Packard, 78. “But I will talk about it. It is my very favorite subject.”

Packard’s whole family has been integral in turning the 118-year-old grange hall into a thriving center of arts and culture in a rural village, as have volunteers and community members.

But Packard has been the face of the theater and its mission for so many.

She booked shows at the theater for many years, put up posters and set out the intermission snacks. Her son, Dana Packard, is now the nonprofit theater’s executive director and his wife, Jennifer Porter, is artistic director. But it’s Packard’s smiling face that greets people at the dozen or so concerts and three plays held there each year. Her hands still take the tickets from people entering the 175-seat venue.

“Pat is as much a part of the theater as the stage, the lights and the audience,” said Maurine Lucas, a volunteer at the theater.

Packard, who grew up in small-town Vermont, traces her passion for the theater to her early belief in the strong connection between the arts and rural life. She studied nursing at the University of Vermont, as well as art. Her husband, Dr. Andrew Packard, had been a music major and became a radiologist. Once he got a job practicing in the Portland area, the couple decided to buy a house in the Buxton village of Bar Mills.

Packard and her family bought an abandoned one-room schoolhouse in the 1970s and moved it to their backyard as a place for them to put on plays. The family bought the grange hall that now houses the theater and renovated it in 1990 as an extension of the backyard arts philosophy.

Dana Packard and Jennifer Porter founded The Originals theater company in 1988, and were already putting on productions in Maine. The grange hall would give them a permanent home for the next 25 years.

Since 1990, the theater has hosted 75 theater productions and hundreds of concerts, silent films, dances and other events. Many touring national artists have made the trek to rural Buxton to play the venue, including blues legend James Cotton and Nathan and the Zydeco Cha-Chas.

Packard remembers being asked by a reporter in 1990, when the theater was about to open, what events would be held there. She just started listing events that traditionally happen in grange halls, including concerts, silent films and dances, and soon performers from all over Maine were calling the Packards wanting to contribute to the new venue. The local schools’ theater programs, which had developed many talented performers, also were a help.

“It was letting the genie out of the bottle,” Packard said. “There is all this love for the arts and talent here (in the Buxton area), it was all here already, it just needed someone to take the cork off of the bottle.”

– Ray Routhier

Read all of our profiles of Mainers to be thankful for in 2015.

It had been a couple of days since Sheilah McLaughlin had heard from her twin sister, who lived alone a mile up the road in Cape Elizabeth.

Her sister hadn’t been answering calls, and McLaughlin’s worst fear came true when she decided to go check on her. She found her dead.

Among the first responders was Duncan Perry, 69, a volunteer with the Trauma Intervention Program. He offered water to McLaughlin, 53, and even got some for her sister’s dog. He provided information about funeral homes and acted as a liaison between her and police.

But there was one thing he did, McLaughlin said, that helped her the most.

“He said, ‘Tell me about your sister,’ ” she recalled.

In the past year, Perry has responded to 19 emergencies, from house fires to drug overdoses, providing tissues, information and sympathy to victims, their families and bystanders.

He’s one of 25 volunteers who work three, 12-hour shifts a month to make sure the service is offered around the clock to the people of Greater Portland.

A retired college administrator, Perry often fills in for others who can’t make their shifts.

“Duncan really gets the 24-7 mind-set,” said Leslie Skillin, manager of the Maine Behavioral Healthcare program. “Being able to respond in a moment’s notice is just another level of dedication.”

Skillin said it takes certain characteristics to be a TIP volunteer, including courage and a willingness to face the unknown. Along with those qualities, she said, Perry gives his undivided attention to the people he’s helping – and has a great sense of humor.

McLaughlin said that came in handy in the first moments when she was dealing with her sister’s death that day in September, when she was first reprimanded by an officer for altering the scene by covering her sister with a blanket and when she got a call from someone with a wrong number, trying to reach a car dealership.

“Duncan just looked at me and started laughing,” she said. “He responded to who I was. He picked up that humor was the way to get through the next couple hours.”

Perry, whose education and career have taken him all over the country, moved to Maine two years ago, but he didn’t hesitate to start giving back.

At first, he joined Volunteers in Police Service in Scarborough, where he lives with his wife.

It was at a meeting of that group that Skillin gave a presentation about the Trauma Intervention Program, which Perry jumped at the opportunity to join as well.

“I believe that when you live in a community, you have the responsibility to contribute to that community,” he said.

– Leslie Bridgers

Read all of our profiles of Mainers to be thankful for in 2015.

Dr. Mary Dowd was a Yarmouth family doctor until several years ago, when she started moonlighting in primary care for prisoners at the Cumberland County Jail.

She saw that most of the people in jail were there because of substance abuse.

“I became fascinated by addiction. It was in my face every time I was there,” Dowd said.

Intrigued and motivated to help others, Dowd left her family practice, and in 2008 started working in the detoxification center at the Milestone Foundation on India Street in Portland. She now also works for Catholic Charities in its substance abuse treatment program and at Discovery House in South Portland, a methadone clinic.

Dowd also has become an advocate for treatment as the state grapples with a heroin crisis. Heroin overdose deaths in Maine and the number of people seeking drug treatment have surged since 2012, but treatment options have shrunk, according to state health statistics. Heroin deaths increased from 34 in 2013 to 57 in 2014, with 2015 on track to surpass last year’s numbers. Mercy Recovery Center in Westbrook closed this summer, as did a treatment center in Sanford.

For an organization like the Milestone Foundation, which is mainly a short-term detox center that also has a small long-term treatment program in Old Orchard Beach, having fewer places to refer people for treatment makes the situation even more difficult. There are far more patients than available treatment options.

“We’re needed now more than ever, but some people we have to turn away, and that’s very, very sad,” Dowd said. “People just want to be treated with basic human kindness, because they have so little of that in their lives.”

Dowd, 64, of Yarmouth, is a Massachusetts native who moved to Maine in the 1980s.

“I like to think about things I don’t understand. Since there’s many things we don’t understand about the brain and addiction, there’s lots to think about,” said Dowd, who is married with four adult children.

Lauren Wert, nurse manager at the Milestone Foundation, said Dowd is a vital part of the detox center’s operation.

“She’s quiet and listens and wants to be here. She can really connect with the patients,” Wert said.

Dowd said she may treat people as they are going through withdrawal, but most of what she does is listen to people’s stories and help them connect with treatment or housing or help them think of strategies to improve their lives.

Also a writer who has penned op-eds for the Press Herald, Dowd wrote a poem called “Composite,” in which she described the people who seek treatment at the detox center. The following is an excerpt:

“She is 24, full lips, green eyes

red gold hair, tall and slim and silent.

Her arms are covered,

like a sleeve tattoo,

in a swirling dance of scabs and scars.

Rust brown puncture wounds

snake round and round.”

The poem’s ending line challenges people to recognize how addiction can affect anyone.

“He is your son.

She is your daughter.

What now?”

– Joe Lawlor

Read all of our profiles of Mainers to be thankful for in 2015.

Atak Natali and Divine Macibiri, students at Lyman Moore Middle School in Portland, are known in their large families as problem solvers.

That was even before they organized a cleanup event at the Front Street neighborhood playgrounds and secured a grant to repaint and repair the equipment there.

“When there’s something wrong in the house, I’m always up to making it resolved,” Atak said with a self-assuredness that’s rare in a 13-year-old. “She’s like the neighborhood co-leader,” he said, referring to Divine, 14. “If there’s any fight, she stops the fight. If there’s nothing for the kids to do, she does something with them.”

Atak and Divine participate in the Multilingual Center’s after-school program called Make it Happen!, which seeks to help students build a resume that will impress college admissions officials. The program steers them toward more challenging courses and encourages them to be involved in leadership roles outside the classroom.

Divine was born in Rwanda and came to the United States when she was 5 years old. Atak was born in the U.S. after his parents came from Sudan and South Sudan.

Make it Happen! staff suggested to Atak that he come up with a community problem to work on.

“I said, ‘Bingo! My neighborhood playground needs to get fixed,’ ” Atak said. He asked Divine to work on the project with him.

The playgrounds – both have two small climbing structures with a pair of swings and two slides – were in bad shape, and had been for a while. The swings were broken and there was graffiti on the slides and climbing apparatus.

“Some people, when they see a kid, most times they think they can’t make a difference,” Divine said. “They think the older ones are the only ones who can make a change.”

Their social studies teacher, David Hilton, said he helped the pair apply for a $500 grant from Painting for a Purpose. Teachers, the Portland Red Claws basketball operation and the Portland Housing Authority, which operates the 50 family apartments at the Front Street public housing complex where the two students live, all offered to help. For their efforts, the two received plaques of commendation from the Portland School Board.

When the pair organized a neighborhood cleanup, 50 children and a handful of teachers showed up. Now that the playground is refurbished, more children use the equipment, Divine said.

The playground improvements, which also included a new layer of wood chips on the ground, were completed last spring and summer, but Atak and Divine say they’re not finished.

“We’re going to keep moving forward,” Atak said. “I was kind of hoping to get the neighborhood some street lights because it’s really, really dark – and maybe get some speed bumps.” Divine wants to get a basketball hoop installed.

Listening to the pair speak during a break in classes, it seems inevitable that they will continue to exert a positive impact on their community. Each has been given a handcrafted desk, the gift of an anonymous Portland police officer, to thank them for their work on the playground.

Atak says he would like to study law when he grows up. Divine is less certain about what profession she’ll pursue, but knows she wants to improve people’s lives.

“I was interested in engineering, but there’s a lot of other stuff,” she said. “I just want to help people. If something’s not right, make it better.”

– David Hench

Read all of our profiles of Mainers to be thankful for in 2015.