Hearty Maine Hello! I hope everyone had a great summer and fall!
Andy Estabrook was featured with his brother, Tom, in MaineBiz in late June for their business Estabrook’s Nursery and Garden Centers. They just opened a state-of-the-art commercial greenhouse in Pownal, which is 55,000 square feet — nearly as large as a football field. This new facility doubles their company’s production capacity while reducing the amount of time required to grow plants to ready-for-market size by 30 percent. The new and larger facility is also more energy efficient than their existing Yarmouth location, which has 27 traditional greenhouses covering 45,000 square feet.
Tara McKechnie G, ’09G was named superintendent of School Union 76 in April, which includes the towns of Deer Isle, Stonington, Brooklin, and Sedgwick. Most recently, Tara served as principal of Vinalhaven School, where she served for a year. Previously she served as assistant superintendent of AOS 93, the Damariscotta area’s public school system, for two years and the principal of Deer-Isle-Stonington Elementary School for five years. Before entering school administration, she was a teacher in Blue Hill for 23 years.
In July, I started as a faculty senior associate at Defense Security Cooperation University’s Defense Security Cooperation Organization Institute in Arlington, VA. I am training military, civilian, and locally employed personnel to work in security cooperation offices in U.S. embassies globally. I have lived in northern Virginia since 2020 and retired from activity duty Army as a Eurasian foreign area officer earlier this year.
A quick reminder about the Class of 1998 Scholarship Fund. I see more and more classmates announcing their children’s acceptance and decision to attend the University of Maine! The Class of 1998 Scholarship is annually awarded to descendants of the members of our class. Please consider contributing to the scholarship through the University of Maine Foundation and encourage your children enrolled at the University of Maine to apply.
Please continue to send in your accomplishments and life updates! We love hearing from you!