Blood and Guts
Winona, my great-aunt by blood, liked to talk about her careers and marriages. She lived to almost 104, and by herself in an apartment in Waldoboro, Maine until she was 101. Then she went to live with a grand-nephew and his family in Belfast, Maine.
As a daughter from a large farm family, she found a job in Camden, Maine, as a chambermaid at the Whitehall Inn. This humble job provided Winne with her first step toward independence and the will to have her own career, though most girls her age focused on finding a beau and moving toward marriage. The girls that worked as maids and waitresses at the Whitehall came from low-income situations. Winne learned that some coworkers supported one another and some stayed aloof.
Norma came from a home that struggled to have enough money for the basics. Norma worked hard and was friendly but had a sibling who preferred using a middle name, Vincent, and Vincent seemed more interested in writing and socializing than working. Winnie had mixed feelings about Norma’s sibling, Vincent.
Vincent could have worked at the Inn like Norma, but Norma received permission for her sister, Vincent to reading poetry to well-traveled guests, and sometimes playing the piano for guests, and only the briefest conversations with Winnie, Norma, or any other working staff. Winnie thought Vincent acted as if the staff was not worthy of attention.
Norma had one set of clothes for every day, one Sunday outfit, and the warm coat, hat, scarf, boots, and gloves absolutely necessary to life in Maine. For everyday clothes, Norma depended on using the uniforms provided by the White Horse Inn. Winnie had the same amount of clothing and pragmatic appreciation for her uniforms. Vincent had almost an outfit for every day and looked like a butterfly confident of landing on phlox. Vincent’s ethereal looks of a delicate-limbed greyhound contrasted with Norma’s solidity of a boxer. Not everyone knew Vincent and Norma were siblings. With passion in her voice and words for poetry reading and discussions with rich and well-connected guests, Edna Vincent Millay hardly even spoke to Norma.
One evening, when Winnie’s workday had finished, she went to the room of the Inn’s soirées. Vincent had finished playing the piano and stood to recite a poem. The guests’ faces showed appreciation, and one middle-aged woman did more than applaud Vincent. Winnie learned from Norma that the woman had decided to be a benefactor to Vincent. That guest had decided to pay for Vincent to attend college.
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Vincent’s progress and move to college led Winnie to decide on making a move to a city for a job. Before WWI, she decided that she wanted to see more of the world than Midcoast Maine and wanted to earn more than chambermaid work paid, so she got a job with the Bell Telephone Company in Portland. There, she earned enough to support herself and to help her younger sister, Idalene, pay for college.
Connecticut. From managing the estate household, Winnie took a job that opened up working as a housekeeper for Cole and Linda Porter in their Murray Hill home in New York City. Cole Porter had more fame than Vincent had achieved, but he and Linda also had heartaches. Winne had never expected that fame and success would bring lasting ease and happiness; the Porters, who seemed to love one another through all the ups and downs of their life together showed Winnie the truth about fame and success.
Sometimes, when Winnie watched the love and kindness of the Porters, she thought of Vincent, whose full name was Edna St. Vincent Millay, who also lived in New York City and still preferred the name Vincent to Edna. Vincent had published poems, ignored traditions, survived scandals, married, and had acclaim as a successful admired poet. Winnie did not want to be famous, but Winnie did wonder if she’d ever get married.
Winnie was 39 when she married Guy Ware. Together, they bought a large Inn, the Russel Inn, right on Christmas Cove in Maine, on a peninsula where the Damariscotta River comes into the cove. Winnie and Guy renamed the three-story inn the Christmas Cove Inn.
Even through the years of WWII when people used black-out shades and worried about German submarines coming into Maine Cove, the Inn thrived with Winnie and Guy as owners, hosts, and managers. My mother and aunt learned life skills via waitressing and being chambermaids in the Christmas Cove Inn. Winnie and Guy kept the Inn until the 1950s. It was owned by others until this century when it was demolished. Now there is an open field and new homes have that outstanding cove side view.
Born in June 1887, Winona Steel Ware Powers, my great-aunt, lived to almost her 104th birthday. Guy lived until 1955. Winnie was single until age 75, when she eloped with a man she loved as a teenager. That’s a whole other story, as is her trip to tour the Mideast when she was 94.
Though her body failed, Winnie’s mind stayed sharp. She would answer questions about any of the unusual decades of her life. I asked her many questions over the years and recorded some hours of recall conversations. I wish I had recorded more. The lifeblood stories and gutsy work of relatives can teach us about choices, education, and courage.
