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Member
Profile
Amos Orcutt saw his first movie some fifty years ago
at the Alamo Theatre in Bucksport. It was a special
occasion for a boy from a poor farming family, and
Orcutt still remembers the film, Godzilla, and the
excitement of sitting inside one of the town’s
popular institutions.
The president and CEO of the University
of Maine Found-
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ation, Orcutt lives in Bangor,
but
he still takes in a show
at the Alamo now and then when he is spending time at
his Orland farm. His nostalgic soft spot for the theater,
now restored and a centerpiece of Bucksport’s
downtown revival, is one reason he supports NHF, but
it is not the chief one. “Film is our history,”
he explains, referring to the archives’ mission
to preserve and make accessible the moving images of
Northern New England. “When you lose it, you lose
a link to our culture.”
It doesn’t hurt that his
friend, Richard Rosen, owner of Rosen’s Department
Store in Bucksport and a state senator, is president
of our Board of Directors. “I’ve known Richard
for a long time and I have a great deal of respect for
his leadership,” Orcutt says. |
Orcutt
also feels connected to NHF through the University of
Maine. He was a friend of the late Sandy Ives, founder
of the Maine Folklife Center (see Page 11). Ives and
his wife Bobbi were Bucksport residents and Alamo loyalists.
More recently, Orcutt has been
talking with NHF External Affairs Director Jessica Hosford
about working with some of the University’s many
reels of football games and other sports events going
back forty years. He believes it is just one of many
ways the institutions can work together.
“From my standpoint, NHF
is the jewel in the woods,” Orcutt says. “A
lot of people drive through Bucksport without realizing
that the archives is there and what it’s doing
– all those images being preserved for others.”
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