Politics no barrier to philanthropy for Baxter family

THE BAXTERS OF MAINE, Down East Visionaries, by Neil Rolde, Tilbury House Publishers, softcover, 340 pages, $14.95.

When it came to his magnificent obsession — the securing of Mount Katahdin as the centerpiece of an envisoned wilderness park for the people of Maine — Percival P. Baxter was no more successful as governor than he had been as a legislator. And so he did what came naturally to a man of independent means who would not be denied his dream: Using his own money, he bought the mountain and 200,000 surrounding acres of forest and gave it to the people.

Take that, you tight-fisted bureaucrats.

The consummate politician, Percy Baxter didn’t get mad, he got even. And this corner of the world is the better for it. Today, the state park that bears his name remains forever wild under the terms of his beneficence, drawing thousands of hikers and campers annually for a true Maine wilderness experience. Rare is the native Mainer who can gaze upon Katahdin without thinking of the visionary described by the author as “the lone voice crying out in the wilderness for wilderness values,” the man who made it all possible more than 65 years ago.

Rolde, an aide to former Gov. Kenneth M. Curtis who later served in the Legislature, is a Maine historian who decided to make his eighth book what Mainers might call a “two-fer” — a double biography of father and son philanthropists who left their marks indelibly upon the state of Maine.

James Phinney Baxter, the father, was six times mayor of Portland, creator of its modern park system, and one of Maine’s foremost historians. He made his money in the canning business, leaving much of it to Percy, the youngest of his six sons, who used it in ways that have made the state ever grateful.

All of that makes for a good story, including the behind-the-scenes politics that played out over the years before the Katahdin park and other philanthropies such as the Baxter School for the Deaf became realities. As well, we are given an enduring picture of young Baxter, the frugal bachelor Yankee with a heart of gold who, in his later years, became a relentless world traveler. And we hear again of Baxter’s devotion to his dogs, and how he angered veterans groups when he ordered the flags over the State House complex flown at half-staff after a favorite pet died.

But the saga of James Phinney Baxter is every bit as interesting as his son’s. This industrialist with a penchant for painstaking historical research and writing chose as the hero of his magnum opus the 16th-17th century English philosopher and politician Sir Francis Bacon. He believed he had added a magnificent contribution to world literature by proving once and for all that Bacon had written Shakespeare’s plays. In this task, he essentially failed, but — nothing ventured, nothing gained.

James Phinney, the naturalist, was the moving force behind a kinder, gentler environment within his beloved city of Portland, of which Baxter Boulevard and Baxter Woods are but two enduring monuments. Like father, like son.

There seems little question that the father was a domineering force in young Percival’s life, and perhaps one reason the younger Baxter never married is that any potential wife never seemed to quite measure up to the old man’s standards.

In hindsight, this is a circumstance that may have been a blessing for the state of Maine. Had Baxter had a wife and family on which to lavish his inheritance, the story might have had a different ending. There very well might not be a Baxter State Park today, and Mount Katahdin might have become the commercialized entity the Baxters so thoroughly detested.