Prioritizing Peace #165

Tim Wilson:

A lot of the kids want to talk about. They want to have a conversation on race. They want to sit down and really discuss what it means, what it spreads to, the economics. I mean, all the issues around it that surround it. It's coming from high school kids. You can't just gloss over there. Things are fine. You got to talk about them so that people then understand. I may not like you, but I can respect you, I can trust you, and I can communicate with you.

Moses Small:

It's a really profound idea that we're inheriting the world. And there's going to be a day that comes very soon for all of us within the next 10 years where we're going to be the ones in government. We're gonna be the ones dealing with major issues. We're not gonna be on the sidelines anymore watching what our parents are doing. No matter how much someone in our generation might complain about our flaws, but there are flaws in every generation. And there are also a lot of great people that come out of each generation, too. And I think a lot of those great people come from See the Peace the Summit Project.

Ted Coffin:

The number one goal is making sure that main heroes are not forgotten. We need to tell their story. We need to make sure that they don't end up just being a name on the wall.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle, and you are listening to Love Maine radio show number 165, airing for the first time on Sunday, November 9, 2014. Today's theme is prioritizing peace. How do we get to a place of peace? Usually by navigating through conflict. It can be difficult and uncomfortable to understand others who do not share our views. Today we speak with Tim Wilson and Moses Small from Seeds of Peace about the importance of truth, dialogue and mutual respect in conflict transformation. We also talk with Ted Cauthin about how the Summit Project honors lives that have been lost in the interest of peace. Thank you for joining us. Here on Love Maine Radio. We understand that in order to be peaceful and compassionate and have a peaceful and compassionate community, it really is something that we need to actively engage in. And there are two individuals with us today who really can speak to this to a much greater degree than even I can today. We have with us Timothy Wilson, Tim, who is the senior international advisor for Seeds of Peace and the main seeds director for Seeds of Peace. Thanks for coming in.

Tim Wilson:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We also have Moses Small, who is a junior at Portland High School and considered to be a seed. You are a main seed.

Moses Small:

Is that true? I am.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, thanks so much for coming in.

Moses Small:

Thanks for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Tim, let's start with you. You have a very extensive background with Seeds of Peace, and I want to talk about what Seeds of Peace is. But first I want to understand why is this idea of conflict transformation, whether it's in Maine or whether it's international, why was this so important to you?

Tim Wilson:

Let me start off by saying that Seeds of peace is 23 years old or will be 23. And the person who started it was John Wallach. He passed away in 2002, much too young. But he it was his idea. He believed that the transformation came from young people. And the way to do that was to interact with conflicting groups with young people to get them to he had a term, wanted the enemy to see the other person's face so he would understand a little bit more about him, about that person. And that's the crux of the beginning of the program, which started in 1993. I can only say that John had a vision and I happen to be along a partner in a sense in that with the other co founder, Mrs. Bobby Gosschuk, who is still alive and she's still very much involved with the program. She's like the grandmother of it. But John, it was John's program and I just happened to be there at the time when they wanted to start it. And I ran the camp up until 2006 and then retired for about a half a minute. And they got me to continue. But we have a situation where the camp is the foundation, but we run programs in the Middle east and that's Egypt, Jordan and Palestine. And I happen to be a person after that to go out 2002 to 2006, I lived out there and helped develop some of those programs. And so I had a really interesting time in the international part of it. And then we have our domestic side, which is Maine and Syracuse, where we take some of the things from the original program and move it into our own issues that we have in our country. With the influx of immigrants from around

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

the world, what people will typically remember seeds of peace for is the camp here in Maine.

Tim Wilson:

That's correct.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Where children who I think are their high school age, they are. Are brought from Israel.

Tim Wilson:

Israel, Palestine, Palestine, Egypt and Jordan were the big four. They evolved to that around 2007. But before that, we had countries coming from North Africa, we had countries from the Gulf. So at one time, I remember we had 22 countries in camp at the same time, which was different. Plus, we did the Balkans and we did Cyprus, the Balkans during the Balkan war, and we did Cyprus with their whole issue with the Greek and Turkish Cypriots.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's also. It's interesting to me to hear you talking about this and think about the interview that we did with George Mitchell and the work that he has done with conflict and conflict in the Middle east and other parts of the world, and to know that this is something that Maine has, for some reason, gotten involved in.

Tim Wilson:

Well, I think, you know, knowing the senator, I mean, I do know him, and he is. And he has spoken many times to cede to different confabs. We've had, as well as he's received an award from seed. So he's been an integral part of the growth of our. Our program. I think the best way to put this is that John felt that Maine was the perfect place to have seats of peace. He felt that the camp, where the camp was located, he felt that the way things were done here, you know, you were left alone to do what you needed to do. If he tried to do that in New York, we would have been indated by press and people all the time. But being in Maine, people let us do what we had to do, which is only. It's only 45 minutes from here to camp. But people understood where we were, but gave us the room to do things. Plus, the government, our own main government, was involved. Angus King was involved. Jock McKernan at the very beginning, Governor Baldacci, even Governor LaPage, they've all been involved at some level, as well as our congressional delegation. So they. I think that's the other side of it. The support of the people who actually live here, as well as the leadership, was there to help us along the way.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You spent 20 years as an educator. You were a language arts teacher.

Tim Wilson:

That's correct.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you saw some need for conflict transformation, for addressing what goes on in relationships between students firsthand.

Tim Wilson:

True. I think that the part that I don't always speak to, but I guess it's appropriate for now, is I'm a black American. And so being in Maine for nearly most of my adult life over 50 years, I've seen the transformation in many different ways. And I've seen young people who get the opportunity to meet people. You can remember now this is a 97% white state. All of a sudden, you bring all these new people in and you see the transformation and how people react to each other over time. Over the last 10 years alone would give you a little bit of that thought of what you brought up. And in classes, especially in schools, there are schools that have no one, but yet still the kids that come from those schools, schools to be a part of Seeds of Peace, go back with the knowledge and have the opportunity to be around young people who are not from their backyard. And their empathy, their knowledge rubs off onto the rest of the neighborhood, which is good. But on the other hand, you have a Native American population where people sort of ostracize them. And our young people are asking the questions why? Which is also good for right now for all the kids who are now a part of CGP's, because they see that as another frontier for them to change in this state so that we're more representative of what we should be doing at home. So, I mean, it's fun for me to watch

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Moses. As you've been listening to this, how has this been relevant to your experience? You're an AP student. You're studying AP classes at Portland High School. You're a musician. You're currently a broadcaster, but you're an aspiring broadcaster. You play violin, you play soccer, you've done drumming. I mean, you've done so many different things. You've been so involved in your high school community. What is it that Tim's saying that you can relate to in your own life?

Moses Small:

What I related to the most at camp was just seeing so many different types of people, because even myself doing these different activities, I've met different types of people, but I've never really engaged with them, because at camp, you live with these people for two weeks, and you really do become a family in a way that's kind of hard to describe and hard to relate to something back at home. And so I know for myself at least, like, I was able to talk with a lot of other African American kids who grew up with the same stereotypes I had, one of which in particular was being called white because you speak or act a certain way. And then you get to see an outside perspective from the people who would interpret that type of thing as a joke. And so you get to hear everyone's different view, and you get to hear something that you would never hear back at home.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You bring up an interesting point. I would never have thought that, you know, I guess because I am. I am white. I've never thought that being called white would be derogatory or in any way a problematic. But that's very.

Tim Wilson:

It's been going on for years. It's not anything new. I grew up with the same stuff. The kids know when I'm talking to them. You know, as you said, I'm a language arts teacher. I came out of a city. And because my parents, I have older sisters, sister and older brothers who graduated from colleges long before me. And because I'm able to speak and act a certain way, you were branded acting white because that was a way to sort of keep you in your place within a smaller group of people in your own community. Okay. It goes back to identity. It goes back to just what people are like. And this isn't new. It's just, as you said, you've never heard it before, but we hear it all the time. And it is that part that affects kids. Like the kids who come from Syracuse to our program. It affects them a lot more than it would somewhat for Moses, because in their community, they don't have what I call the idols of young people that they can look to that are. That are moving along because they're all sort of caught in a time warp for me, because the schools aren't in some of those places, as good as some of the schools here. I mean, that's just a fact. And the communies aren't. Their communities are having a tough time. You're talking about larger cities, finances, and everything else. They're the last people to get things. Some of the kids here are realizing that even though there are issues, they're realizing they're getting opportunities here that they couldn't get elsewhere.

Moses Small:

Just expanding on that. It's all about, like, different social experiences, I think, in the main session. And just this, the African American stereotype that I personally dealt with, just one example, but one thing, big thing you really learn there is that you spent two weeks escaping categorization. You spend two weeks without social anxiety, without fear of judgment, and that really just changes you. And Makes you see everyone else a different way.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

That's true. And I think high school in particular can be a very challenging social time. So you're dealing with just really baseline things that are related to things like identity and socialization and understanding your own, just where you fit in the larger scheme of things. So to be able to have that space at Seeds, to explore things from a different vantage point must be very useful.

Tim Wilson:

Well, they get to do it 90 minutes a day, and that means a lot. It's called dialogue. And we have two professional facilitators to help them, and that's a safe space. And the kids in those dialogue sessions get the opportunity to talk about things they would not normally talk about, but knowing it was a safe space, that none of that was going to go somewhere else other than unless it was a health and safety issue. But in general, that's the difference. Even to the kids from the Middle east, they get to do the same thing. They get to talk about those things. That pain that comes from war comes from conflict. And once you get past blaming each other, then you get down to the nitty gritty about, what am I going to do to make it better? How can I help? That's the part that you said, the formal task of the. Of that whole idea. And I think when John started it, that was the key we worked at for the first three or four years of getting that dialogue to a place where kids felt, geez, that's the most important thing at camp. Granted, I get to play basketball or play my violin or whatever, but that 90 minutes a day makes a difference.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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[Unidentified voice]:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

tim as you've been working through these programs with seeds, this started in 93, you said. So now you're a couple decades old. Well, you're a little bit, you personally a little bit older than that. Yes, but the program is a couple of decades old. It seems to be one that continues to evolve. You've done the Middle east and you've extended beyond the borders of the Middle Eastern conflict. You've brought students from Maine schools, you've brought students from Syracuse, and you've actually talked about the Native American population in Maine. Do you think this is a new frontier for Seeds? Is, is this a direction that you may go in at some point?

Tim Wilson:

It's not. It's a direction we have to. We've been requested to do that. It's taken us, believe this or not, 10 years to be able to do this with the Native Americans. It has a little bit on their side, a little bit on our side, but we're looking for this next summer to add the Passamaquoddies and the Penobscots and, and the Maliseetes to camp. We have the right people in the right places to now make that occur, which would be good because the northern part of Maine, that's the thing that many of the students up there that I've talked to said we've got to do something with that. I don't know if you read the Portland Press Herald articles and some of the other things that have been written, but I mean, here we are dealing with things overseas and other places, but we still haven't dealt with this issue that's still, you know, up in the woods, you know, vis a vis Wiscasset, when the lady said, I'm going to have redskins from my driveway, and they changed it to Micmac driveway. Now her street, after all the years of cleaning that up in the state, all of a sudden somebody else wants to bring it up when we did the right thing up here. I don't care what they do in D.C. with Schneider and the Washington football team. That's a whole other issue. But still it's an issue. And some, as you said, we never confront that kind of stuff. We sort of bury it. Kids, I mean, drifting a little bit, but a lot of the kids want to talk about. They want to have a conversation on race. They want to sit down and really discuss what it means, what it is, spreads to the economics. I mean, all the issues around it that surround it. It's coming from high school kids. You know, as you said, what's the ages? Well, the kids that come to Main Seeds are generally. Most of them are sophomores and freshmen, going from their freshman to sophomore year, sophomore to junior year. The middle international group is a little bit different. Many times. It's a. Their kids are sophomores, too, juniors in some cases, but most of them are juniors to seniors. So there's a, you know, similarities and some differences, but they all come away. This whole thing around socioeconomic issues, race, all that ties together, and you have your religious issues. It's there, they're there, they're there. And, you know, you got it. You. You can't just gloss over that things are fine. You got to talk about them so that people then understand. I may not like you, but I can respect you, I can trust you, and I can communicate with you without necessarily being best friends. That's the premise of what we work with.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Is it because there is such enormity to these topics that people don't want to deal with it? I mean, race is so in your face, and it's also so big that people feel like I can't get a handle on it. It's almost like the environmental effort. Well, I can't change the world, so I'm not even going to bother to recycle. Is that part of the issue that people get overwhelmed, or is there fear? Why do people. I mean, I guess. Moses, you look like you have an answer for us.

Moses Small:

It doesn't seem like you said environmentally. It doesn't sound like, oh, we're Doing this. It sounds like to me that everybody thinks racism is already over and it's such a broad topic and everyone has a perspective, but most people really aren't willing to admit that their view may be something that's hard for a lot of people to agree with. And a lot, as Tim said, just respecting views that you might not have heard of, might not agree with. But a lot of people in Portland High School in particular, I've heard they'll say, I'm not a racist person, I'm not racist at all. I have a lot of African American, Asian, Hispanic friends, but I'm not going to talk to an immigrant. So there's kind of a real disconnect between what they see as racism, what they see as prejudice, and they think that they're completely free of racism and all. But really that's not what their actions show.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah, that is very. That's a good observation that people say, well, it's over. We've already dealt. We had the Civil Rights act. That's kind of like gender equity. Oh well, women and men are the same. Let's just expect this. And homophobia, that doesn't exist anymore. I mean, there's so many different things that still persist. Even though we maybe have done some big to your face kind of things, there's still stuff that is subtle and it sounds like it's the subtlety that is the real painful aspect of all of this, like being called white, say you're talking like a white person or the Redskins example that you've given that it's these subtle things that can really cause you to feel over time, so much frustration, anger, resentment.

Tim Wilson:

We take people who are my age and you see things the way they're going. Just recently someone asked me, how much has it changed? I said, outwardly it's changed a lot, inwardly hasn't changed at all. It depends on A, economically where you are, B, educationally where you are, and C, your location. When you put that all into the computer now and you go through all the stuff that they do now, you'd be surprised how much it remains the same. Back to what you just said and more so what Moses said it. We do a good job of instant magic. We don't want to work at anything seriously, one person at a time. If I take my time to recycle something, I've done my part, maybe some, maybe my grandchildren will pick up what I'm doing and do the same thing. That's a long term investment. It's the investment of your time and Your energy to make things better. If I have a conversation with you and you have a conversation with me, we may not agree, but we can open up the conversation. And guess what? If somebody's listening, they have a different divergence of different people having conversations. It's not all the same way. That's legitimately what's wrong with politics.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

One way in which I'm intrigued to see things moving is I have a 13 year old, an 18 year old and a 21 year old. And they are able to, the older ones especially have maintained relationships as a result of technology, largely in a way that never was possible for prior generations. And I think it is the maintenance of relationships, which you sort of alluded to, that has made this so much more interesting. So, Moses, you're, I'm assuming somewhere around 17, 16, 16. So the likelihood that people that you have met when you were 10, 12, 15, 16, and continuing some connection with later in your years, that probably shifts the way you think about them as individuals and your willingness to engage in, I don't know, trust, respect. I don't want to assume anything. What do you think?

Moses Small:

It definitely does help you stay in contact with people. You get to talk to people who you never get to see someone, a friend who might have moved away, someone who lives far away to begin with. But I don't necessarily think that it deals with any of the core issues because you still see people's prejudice. I mean, for example, I saw something I really do not support on Twitter, phs, Unwritten rules. One of them was stay away from the upper calf, because that's where most of the immigrants and people who aren't from the United States, that's where they sit. And so you still see this prejudice. And I don't really think it does anything to break down, as you said, this culture of avoidance of issues. So social media isn't going to be a place or isn't a place now or ever really that I will see where people deal with deep conflicts that needs to have been in person face to face, or else people are going to retreat back to their comfort zone, back to their friends, back, back to the people they're following on Twitter.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, and that is a good point. I think social media can be a good tool, but like any tools, it can be used in a positive way and a negative way. I guess what I was thinking is my daughter who is at college, she maintains some sort of contact through social media and then that causes her, when she comes back from college to want to get back together with People that maybe she wouldn't have otherwise gotten in touch with. Not just her good friends, but maybe she was at a swim meet this weekend. She saw a friend of hers that she used to swim with from high school. You know what I'm saying? Like, that sort of connection makes it more possible. But I agree with you. I mean, I think that it's the face to face. And frankly, people feel uncomfortable being face to face, I think. And more so now, and more so now, I think there is a disconnect that occurs as a result of technology.

Tim Wilson:

A typical conversation that kids get from me is that I use offices, for an example. There are people that sit in cubicles side by side and something comes up. Instead of going around the cubicle and speaking to the person about the issue,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

they send an email.

Tim Wilson:

They send an email to me. That's the problem. I mean, again, I'm older. I mean, I just got in touch with someone using social media who I have not seen in 40 years. But it just happened that by Facebook, by the death of someone else. I followed up and we actually spent an immense amount of time with each other. And here we are talking on the phone, finally, after all these years. That's a plus. But on the good side of that, we've made a deal how we're going to get together and see each other face to face. That, to me, is the other side of that. But going back to the issue, the problem we have, it's easy to spew things about people badly when you can just do this. When you have to look at them face to face and say so and so and so is the case. That's not necessarily going to happen because now we have an out. Now we have an out. And the more Twitter and all these other things, I mean, the kids have got me on some of this stuff. They joke about it. I used to throw my beeper into the water when I was at camp because I hated it. I'd go swimming with it years ago, and everybody used to laugh about it because they knew it was true. And my wife finally, and my sons finally said, no, we got your cell phone now, now what are you going to do with it? A couple times I went to water with that too, but that's neither here. But the idea was I hated them. And I still don't. I mean, I do well now, but I understand that part of me that just finds that just offensive. I love guys who say, I'm not on Twitter, who, you know, who are, you know, up the line in media and Whatever. And say, I'm not on Twitter. I. Yeah, Facebook, you know, they really despise it. The point is it's not going to go away. So that's how I look at it. You can help make it better by sometimes what you say, but it's there.

Moses Small:

Definitely. It can be used both ways, I guess. For people my age, we don't make that much of a big deal out of it because just a continuation of how we talk and communicate with people. But it just seems like it's just the same as they would in person. So if this person would say something bad, then necessarily, they. They might feel more free to say it on social media, but that's the type of person that had a lot of things harbored in them to begin with. So definitely, social media is not a problem for people our age. It's just how they want to say certain things.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Moses, I'm wondering what you think your legacy is.

Moses Small:

My legacy is basically just youth empowerment and just not having fear, because in camp, I realized that I was living with anxiety and everybody else was, that no one was noticing because there's constant pressure from social media. Someone gonna subtweet you for this, someone gonna talk badly about you for that. And I guess just if I had to define what my Legacy is at 16, it'd be breaking down this culture of avoidance.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Tim, what about your legacy?

Tim Wilson:

That's mine. All these kids. I mean, I feel fortunate because I've been in Maine since. Off and on, since 1960. I coached here, I taught here. I've done seeds, I've done a myriad of things, whether it be coaching sports or whatever. You know, I feel very honored. I'm in the Wrestling hall of Fame and the Football hall of Fame for coaching. I mean, all community stuff. I mean, my point is, is that I've had the opportunity to work with so many different people, whether they be governors to, you know, the guy who used to fix my phones at Fairpoint when I was at camp. But it's the kids. It's the. Now that they're. You know, I've got people now that are superintendents of schools, principals, you know, coaches, whatever. And what they're doing with kids and what they see and what they're trying to see, their effect on kids. Also my effect on them has an effect on the kids they're dealing with now. So that's how I see it. Like Moses saying what he says makes me proud, and that's my legacy. What I'm leaving behind is these young people who I think I think they're going to do fine. You have children? I have. Mine are much older, but I have four grandchildren. And my granddaughter is just shades above me in a lot of ways. The thing she's already doing is she's just 19. She's a sophomore in college. She's just unbelievable. The potential that she has. But it stems from the same kinds of things that Moses is talking about. That's where I see any parent or anyone else who has, you know, they're around young people. The idea is to move that forward so that they're proud to be, as Moses was saying, the empowerment, that to me, is the most important thing, because we need that. We truly do.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How do people learn more about Seeds of Peace?

Tim Wilson:

We have, you know, we have a big website, it's www.seedsofpeace.org. and we, you know, like I said, you get on that website and you can read all the things that are going on, whether it's about the staff, because some of the staff are phenomenal.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Moses, is there anything you would add to Tim's comments?

Moses Small:

I would just say that the best way to learn about TTPS is. Is to talk to someone about it. Because anyone who's been there, anyone who's facilitated or been a counselor can talk for hours on it. And reading the words on the website, you get an idea for it. But it's really more of a feeling. You need to see how deeply everyone really believes in what they're saying and what we're doing at Seeds of Peace and just getting use the idea in our generation that it's a really profound idea that we're inheriting the world. And there's going to be a day that comes very soon for all of us within the next 10 years where we're gonna be the ones in government, we're gonna be the ones dealing with major issues. We're not gonna be on the sidelines anymore watching what our parents are doing. And so I think Seeds of Peace is just one way of preparing us for that, no matter how much someone in our generation might complain about our flaws. But there are flaws in every generation. And there are also a lot of great people that come out of each generation, too. And I think a lot of those great people come from Seeds of Peace.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I encourage people to go to the CE of Peace website and learn more about all the individuals who have done great things as a result of being part of Seeds, and then also the opportunities for this next generation that is coming up. It's really been an honor to speak with both of you today. Thank you.

Moses Small:

Thanks for having us.

Tim Wilson:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We've been speaking with Tim Wilson, who is the Senior International Advisor for Seeds of Peace and the main SEEDS Director for Seeds of Peace, and also Moses Small, who is an AP student at Portland High School, musician, and aspiring broadcaster. And having listened to your voice, I really can't imagine why you wouldn't end up being a broadcaster.

Moses Small:

Thank you. Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Thank you so much for being a part of Love Maine Radio.

Moses Small:

Thanks for having us.

Tim Wilson:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As a physician and small business owner, I rely on Marcy Booth from Booth, Maine to help me with my own business and and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marcy.

[Unidentified voice]:

I can't imagine that I will ever be an artist. While I appreciate all kinds of art, I know that creating it is just something I'm not able to do. I don't have that kind of talent, and I find myself in awe of the people who do. Realizing that all of us have different and unique abilities and that we can't be good at everything is a tough thing to admit. It's a lesson I teach my children. But it's a lesson we all need to remind ourselves of as adults. Recognizing your strengths and talents early are keys to happiness and success, and leveraging those talents that others have is another key to a success. So while I may never have a gallery exhibition of my artwork, I find great joy in knowing that what I and my entire team have is the talent to help businesses run better. We are the leverage an entrepreneur needs to be successful. I'm Marcie Booth. Let's talk about the changes you need. Boothmaine.com

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Maine is home to not only many individuals who are dedicated to remembering people who have served our country and our state in ways big and small, but also amazing mountains. So when you combine these two things, amazing mountains, amazing people, you get the Summit Project. And today we have with us Ted Coffin, who is a volunteer with the Summit Project. Thanks so much for coming in and talking to us.

Ted Coffin:

Thank you for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So I want to talk about the Summit Project, but first, tell me a little bit about yourself. You are from Portland, you went to Deering High School, and you now live in Raymond.

Ted Coffin:

Yes, yes. Met my wife 18 years ago. And she lived in Raymond and I moved up there and. And love it. Love being out in nature, a little bit away from the city, but close enough to get into the city and still have some of the nightlife and the restaurants and whatnot.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So for you, being outside is really important. You've been a hiker, and you're an endurance athlete. So that's how you got involved with the Summit Project.

Ted Coffin:

Yes, yes. I met Dave Cote, who's the founder of the Summit project, in 2013 at the run for the Fallen. And, you know, a few of us were training for some of our endurance events and honoring the fallen. We had heavy backpacks, some extra sandbags on top of that. And Dave Cote came up like the whirlwind that he is and introduced himself, said, I need some good, strong hikers like you guys. Handed me his card, and off he went. And I was a little bit shocked, stunned. Didn't know what had just happened. Went back home after the event and researched and said, well, this guy, he's the real deal. His heart's in the right place. And volunteered for the inaugural hike on Mount Katahdin and told him, I want to stay involved and do anything that you need done. So I've been working very closely with him since then.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So describe the Summit project. What is it? For people who are listening that don't

Ted Coffin:

know, the Summit Project is a living memorial. What we do is we collect stones from. From the families of the fallen. And they'll take stones that have sentimental meanings. They've come from farmer's field, from fire pits, from riverbeds where they've done some fishing, or from mountains that they've hiked. They get the stones to us. We get them engraved. And the stones are housed at the maps. The military entrance processing station in Portland. They've got a beautiful room. Each stone has its. Has its own little shelf that it sits on. You can check out the stones. And we take these stones on tribute hikes. And there are several hosted events where we've climbed Mount Katahdin and Cadillac Mountain. We carry the stones, carry them to the summit and bring them back down so that other people can do different events with them. And we learn about the fallen soldier that we're carrying. We think about them as we're hiking. And at the end of the hike, at the end of the hosted hikes, we'll meet the families, we'll hand the stone back to the families. We'll have that personal connection. And when all that's done, we'll reflect on what it meant to us what the hike was, what we thought about. And we'll write a letter back to the families and just keep that personal connection and just with the hopes of making Maine the smaller community that it is for you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What is the connection between the stone, the hike and the fallen soldier? How do all of these things connect?

Ted Coffin:

It's amazing to me just to hold this stone that a family actually went to look for, found, and that stone is their soldier, it's their son, it's their daughter, it's their brother or sister. And you can see that when they're holding that and when you get that stone and you hand that back to them, it's more than a hug, it's more than a handshake. You've actually carried a burden for just a little bit for them. It's an amazing experience and it's amazing connection with people that you may not otherwise have known.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it's a way to have something, have a tangible reminder of someone. But at the same time, I think it's interesting that you use the word, carry the burden, that this sense that having lost someone dear to you, that becomes a heaviness and for you to take on that heaviness and journey with it for a while and have it become part of you is important.

Ted Coffin:

Absolutely, absolutely. It's more than. It's more than a name on a wall or a plaque or something like that. To me, it's not just a stone, it's a living entity. It takes on different forms for the hiker, for the family, for people that research and see it online. I've been involved long enough and done enough with all the different stones that I see the stones and I know who the stones represent and I know who the stories are surrounded around them. So it's just a very, very unique and amazing idea to bring everyone closer together and kind of help the healing process as much as we can.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You said that you first met the founder at the Run for the Fallen?

Ted Coffin:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How did you first get involved with that project and why?

Ted Coffin:

I've never been very patriotic. I have a grandfather that was in the military. I now have a cousin that's current military and doing some of the endurance events that I do. They're a military based endurance event. So I've just met other people that are like minded that want to push themselves a little bit, met some different military people and Run for the Fallen. It started out as just. It was, it was another training day, it was another. Another race that we could do under some heavy weight. Started out with four of us that had. We had. We had heavy backpacks. You know, we were carrying bricks in them. Two guys brought extra sandbags to carry. And as we got. Got rucking and we were. We ruck a little bit and we'd walk a little bit. And we got down to the part where the signs were for all the fallen soldiers and they were families. Maya. And at that point, you know, we were kind of swapping the sandbag around a little bit, just kind of sharing that extra, extra weight and extra burden. When we got down to the way those families were, we were actually fighting over who got to keep the sandbag. So, you know, we all just wanted to carry that extra burden a little bit farther. After seeing these families and seeing them kind of the shock on their face, the surprise, the happiness that people would do something like that to honor their fallen. So this year, we actually carried Summit Project stones during the Run for the Fallen. So we knew whose stones we had. We saw the families out there, interacted with them, and when we told them that I've got your son stone with me, they were just blown away. And they love it. They're amazed that we would take on just the very, very slight burden, that we'd take that on for their soldier and tell their story and make the connection with them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As you were describing this, you got very emotional.

Tim Wilson:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And something that. This happened a while ago, you know, this is something that. And you've done it now twice, it sounds like. Yes. But you still carry these emotions associated with the action of connection.

Ted Coffin:

Yeah, yeah. When we carry the stones to the top of the summits, we do a ceremony where we all talk about the stones. There's some rules with the Summit Project. You need to. You need to learn about the soldier. You need to read what's on the website. There's some videos posted. You watch the videos, and then you need to do some other research about the soldiers. You need to talk about the soldiers, talk about their families. You need to tell other people, make sure that the main heroes aren't forgotten. At the summit, we'll do a little ceremony where we talk about the soldier and we'll place a stone. And I have yet to get through that without getting choked up. And just thinking about some of the hikes that we've done, I get choked up. I just can't. It's very emotional when you hand the stone back over to the families. That's harder than. Than any hike that I've ever done is handing it back over to the families. And Just knowing what that means to them and the connections that you're making and then writing the letters back. It takes some time to collect your thoughts and actually get that out on paper for the families to see.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It must be very hard for these families, families to have this gap in their lives. And there must be some part of them that really wants to make sure that their soldiers, that their sons, daughters, grandchildren aren't forgotten. Because then otherwise it seems like such a waste, such a waste of life. Do you feel like what you're doing is speaking to the preciousness of these lives that have been lost?

Ted Coffin:

That is the number one goal. If people don't get anything else out of what we talk about, the Summit project, the number one goal is making sure that main heroes are not forgotten. We need to tell their story. We need to make sure that they don't end up just being a name on the wall. They were a person, they had a great life before they went to serve. They had a great life as they were serving. A lot of these soldiers did some amazing things. There's a lot of them that saved a lot of lives through their actions and they've given us the freedoms. To be able to do this, to be able to talk about this is just, it's amazing, you know, and if we can help, if we can, we obviously can't ever, you know, fill that gap for the families, but if we can, if we can just help them in any way, shoulder the burden for just a little bit, that's, that's what we want to do.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

are there any stories that you can share with us about experiences that you've had without causing any problems with confidentiality.

Ted Coffin:

I just did a, I actually just went on a. It was a non hosted hike this weekend and the Lake Region High school, they actually built a six week curriculum around the summit project. And I hiked with 19 high school girls and didn't really know what to expect and I wasn't planning on going. I had a trip that got cut short. So I was able to go and I originally just wanted to go just to meet the girls to, you know, help help them get the stones loaded and everything and, and turned out that I was able to hike with them for the day. And just from the beginning of when they were picking up the stones, with how much reverence they were showing to the stones to just, you know, hiking up the mountain and talking to these, I was just blown away. I was amazed. Three of them were our foreign exchange students that were there to carry the stones. It's just, it's amazing. You know, one girl, one girl was from Germany and this is a, this is just how small this world is. And that's another kind of, another mainstay of the summit project is just making the connections and making the community a lot smaller. She lives in Germany. One of the stones from Captain J. Brainerd just came over from Germany two or three weeks ago. I had the honor of carrying that stone on Cadillac Mountain two weeks ago. The girl from Germany had chose that stone because of that connection. She lives a half hour away from where J. Brainerd's wife lives now. So she, she hiked that stone. She'll make that connection. No doubt they're going to interact, meet when she gets back to Germany in a few months and just really neat and just some of the words that she said of, you know, she says, if I can share, you know, if we share this in Maine, if I can share this in Germany, if everyone around the world can see this kind of stuff and know who these soldiers were and know that these soldiers are dying, maybe soldiers don't have to die anymore. From, you know, from a 16, 17 year old girl. That was astounding.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

From a 16, 17 year old girl who's from a country against whom we fought in World War II.

Ted Coffin:

Just amazing and astounding and all of. There were just so many stories like that this weekend with those girls. It was just, it was incredible. There was no, you know, they weren't stopping to take selfies and they weren't posting on Facebook and you know, it was just Amazing. And they've done, they've already done an essay, they did the hike, they're going to write letters back. They've got another program that they're going to do for the school reenacting the hike. And just amazing. There was a couple of the Gold Star moms that were there that, that we were hiking their stones and they met them and that was just amazing to see the connection there when these girls met the moms. Just amazing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And a Gold Star mom is someone who has actually lost a child. When my brother, I think I had a brother, a sister, maybe two brothers and a sister that were serving in the Middle east. And my mother had the flag that had three blue stars in the window. And this is a way to show that you have a child that is, is serving. Everybody came back and those stars stayed blue. But to have the Gold Star, that means that that transition has occurred and it's something that not everybody in current society knows about.

Ted Coffin:

Yes. And I didn't know about it before. Getting involved with the Summit Project and meeting the Gold Star families and, and just that term means so much more to me now than it ever could before. I'd seen it before, I'd heard it before, but just never paid attention to it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I'm thinking about my experience with the conflict in the Middle east and how the first conflict occurred while I was in college and then it kind of died down and then we had this other conflict that has just gone on and on and on and on. People are still dying. There's still a war going on. There are still people who are sending their children over there to serve. And yet it's easy to forget that this is true. It's easy to just live our lives on a daily basis. What you are trying to do and what the Summit Project is trying to do and what the Run for the Fallen is trying to do, all of this is to remind us that this is still out there, that these people are still fighting, they're still serving, people are still losing their children and that life is still valuable.

Ted Coffin:

Yes, yes. And that's one of the things that at the military entrance processing station, when you go and see this room and the shelves that were all hand built by volunteers to see all of the stones there and just let it sink in that those, I mean these are just, these are the soldiers, just the soldiers that have died since 9 11, and these are only the soldiers that the families have come forward to donate a stone. There are some families that they just, they're not in the right place to be able to do that. It really brings it home when you see that the first time we loaded all the stones out to bring to Baxter State park for our first hike last year, last Memorial Day, we emptied all of the shelves and I just looked back on it and I think I said to Dave, I said, you know, I think the Summit project is a great thing, but I'd rather that those shelves look just like that. And there wasn't a stone up there at all. You know, we can't do anything about the soldiers that have passed to bring them back. We can make sure they're not forgotten, you know, and hopefully this does bring some awareness too, to, to, you know, limit some of the casualties that we have moving forward.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

TED how can people find out about the Summit project?

Ted Coffin:

They can just do a Google search. The summit project or the website is also mainmemorial.org Lots of information on there about the, about the different hosted events we do. You can there's a lot of information on individual stones and videos and testimonies and letters from the family and then letters from the hikers back to the families are also posted there. So lots of information there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

TED I appreciate the time that you have spent remembering those who have fallen and also connecting with the families of those who have fallen. And as someone with many military members in my family, fortunately all of whom have arrived back on American soil safely, I know how important this is. So I appreciate the work that you are doing and the work of the Summit Project. We've been speaking with Ted Coffin, who is a volunteer with the Summit Project. Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

Ted Coffin:

Thank you for that. Thank you for the time you have

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

been listening to Love Maine radio show number 165, prioritizing peace. Our guests have included Tim Wilson, Moses Small and Ted Coffin. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit themainmag.com Radio Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on itunes. For a preview of each week's show, sign up for our E Newsletter and like our LoveMain Radio Facebook page, follow me on Twitter as drlisa and see my daily running photos as bountiful1 on Instagram. Instagram. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. Also, let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Lovemain radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our Prioritizing Peace Show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.