We would like to thank the writer of the letter, “Beals builds boats,” in the May 19 edition of the Bangor Daily News, for calling out attention to the matter. We appreciate the information you gave us about boat building on Beals. We have obtained a copy of the book “Maine Lobster Boats” to further look into the topic, and appreciate your efforts in researching this in the past.

We would like to clarify the terms of our assignment. The project was to highlight one topic that we felt was unique to our community in the 20th century. We did numerous interviews with community members, and none of them mentioned boat building. We therefore chose a topic that seemed to be univeral in drawing our community together each year. Basketball has a tendency to draw our community together on cold winter nights. We are proud of this tradition, and feel we have been misunderstood in our choice of basketball.

We followed the terms of the letter, and apologize for any hard feelings that may have arisen from this project. We welcome anybody who wants to view our project porfolio to call the school and set up an appointment. Beals Elementary School Class of 2000 and their English teacher, Robin Smith