Pier a rock-solid memorial to Dr. John Ells

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On the end of the Bar Harbor Municipal Pier is a plaque in memory of the late Dr. John B. Ells.

“The Dr. John B. Ells Pier. Dedicated to the memory of John B. Ells, D.D.S., 1890-1971, a civic and political leader, devoted to this pier, the navies of the world and to the visitors to this pier. Recipient of the Order of the British Empire.”

“I was born on Peanut Row,” Dr. Ells was always fond of telling people. At one time, Peanut Row was a poor section of Bar Harbor located between West and Cottage streets. Later that section of town came to be know as “The Back Yard.”

In his youth, around the turn of the 20th century, he knew what it meant to be poor, but he was determined to pull himself out of poverty. In time, he attended college and went on to become a dentist.

Everyone in Bar Harbor who ever knew Dr. Ells has his or her own story about him. This is one of the many I have.

I began my journalism career in 1965 working at the Bar Harbor Times at Main and Cottage streets, and Dr. Ells and his wife, Florence, lived in the apartment upstairs.

For years he dropped in almost daily at the newspaper to chat with the staff and keep up on the local news. He was a man of small stature, balding when I met him, 75 years old, and he stuttered profusely. But when he walked into a room he took it over.

He was active in politics his entire life, starting out first as a Democrat and rising to Democratic town chairman. Then realizing that a Democrat in Maine could accomplish nothing with the majority of the state’s electorate all Republican, he changed parties and eventually became chairman of the town’s Republican Party.

The town pier is a unique monument to Dr. Ells’ memory because he had a big part in seeing through its construction. It had been a wooden pier, but he got himself elected to chairman of the Board of Selectmen and pushed through the funding for construction of the granite block structure.

He told me that during World War II he talked the town into turning over the town pier to the U.S. Navy for one dollar. Shortly after the Navy took over, Dr. Ells set out one night to make his usual visit to the town pier and was surprised to be cut off by a chain link fence and an armed guard who ordered him to halt. “Don’t you know who I am? I’m Dr. John B. Ells. This is my pier.” He was directed to leave.

He said the other selectmen and some townspeople thought they had the last laugh because he had talked them all into turning the pier over to the Navy and now he was denied access.

Dr. Ells wasn’t about to be put down. Because the war was on and the Navy had control of the harbor, that year the town had not bothered to appoint the usual harbor master. Dr. Ells got the board to appoint him harbor master and then under Maine law, he notified the naval officials that in his estimation as harbor master, he ”feared the town-owned moorings were not safe for the naval ships to tie up to unless they were inspected.” Now an inspection in those days required the expense of either hauling the mooring ashore or sending deep-sea divers in pressurized helmets and suits to the ocean bottom to check each and every link in the mooring chains of every naval vessel. Needless to say, within 24 hours, Dr. Ells was once again allowed his nocturnal walk around the pier and the inspection was not deemed necessary. Throughout the war he was the only civilian allowed free access to the pier.

A World War I Army veteran, Dr. Ells had a lifelong love affair with the Navy. For many years he headed the Bar Harbor Warship Committee, a group charged with ensuring that Bar Harbor had U.S. naval ships for its annual July Fourth festivities. The committee’s membership consisted only of Dr. Ells. He made the arrangements for officers’ receptions and balls and dances, lobster and clambakes and other forms of recreation for the seamen.

He proved his clout with the U.S. Navy to me one day during the late 1960s when he came into the Bar Harbor Times office and told me that “some little snot-nosed kid” in the Navy had informed him that they would be unable to provide Bar Harbor with a ship that year.

Ells took it as a challenge and told me to pass my phone to him. He then proceeded to make a long distance call to Sen. Margaret Chase Smith’s office in Washington, D. C.

“I want to talk to Maggie.

”I don’t care if she’s in a meeting; you tell her I want to talk to her.

“You must be new there. You tell her it’s Dr. John B. Ells calling from Bar Harbor, Maine.” He gave her the Times’ telephone number.

And then he passed the phone back to me and with an impish smile reached into my bottom desk drawer, where he kept a bag of chocolate-covered, orange nougat, penny candy that he kept hidden from his wife, who wouldn’t allow him to eat sweets. He made me buy them for him at Bee’s Candy Store located on Main Street. He popped the candy into his mouth and sat there humming while twiddling his thumbs.

“So what happened?” I asked him. ”They turn you down?”

“You don’t know nothing, you little snotty-nosed editor. You just wait,” he said.

The phone rang and I picked it up. “David Walsh, Bar Harbor Times.”

“Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, for Dr. John B. Ells,” said a young woman.

I passed the phone to Dr. Ells.

“Maggie. They won’t let me have a ship for the Fourth of July,” he said. He gave her the names of the people in the Navy to whom he had talked and they exchanged pleasantries and then he hung up.

”Did you get the ship.?”

”She’s working on it.”

A few minutes later the phone rang again and Dr. Ells had not one but two naval vessels, a destroyer and a submarine.

He took another orange nougat and left, with a big grin.