Women come home to Bar Harbor Y

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BAR HARBOR – In a tiny gymnasium – built back when it was considered unladylike for female basketball players to dribble – women ranging in age from 20 to 80 sat at folding tables and giggled like girls over turkey and mashed potatoes Tuesday afternoon.

They toasted one another with plastic cups of cider, celebrating the miracle that they’re here together.

Kate Grover, 22, is a local girl working as the resident director while she waits for a December baby to be born. Anne Atwood, a lady who won’t divulge her age, set out for a new life in Bar Harbor six years ago, after both her husband and parents died.

Some women come to the YWCA to escape abusive partners. Some women return every summer to reunite with friends and work in the tourist trade. And some come and go like ghosts, never sharing the stories of their pasts.

But when they arrive at the big doors of the brick mansion on Mount Desert Street, the past doesn’t matter. They’re home.

“We function like a big family,” said director Benni McMullen, who has been with the Bar Harbor YWCA since 1973. “Several women have said that they came here to end their lives. But there was so much warmth in this building that they couldn’t do it.”

According to the national organization, 200 of 313 YWCA’s nationwide still provide housing, serving more than 400,000 women each year. Only two of those – Bar Harbor and Portland – are in Maine.

Portland’s program, which now includes both short-term shelters and long-term residences for teens and older women, has been operating continuously since the 1890s, said the Portland YWCA’s resident director, Penni Thorn.

“It was our first program – it’s an important part of the history, taking care of the social services for women – it’s not something we would let go of,” Thorn said.

At the Bar Harbor YWCA, women stay anywhere from a few nights to many years, paying what rent they can afford, and building friendships that carry them through the tough times.

Recently widowed, Atwood got on a bus in Michigan six years ago, with five suitcases full of her belongings, and set out for Bar Harbor – a town that she knew only from photographs.

She’s lived at the YWCA ever since.

“It’s been a real haven for me,” Atwood said. “I didn’t want to live with in-laws, or kids, or anything like that. I’ve gotten to meet people from all over the world,” she said. “I’ve made some really classy friends – we’re like sisters.”

Atwood’s tiny room is stacked floor-to-ceiling with boxes of clothing and books, her bed covered with a collection of stuffed animals. Colored glass prisms hang at the window to catch the morning sun, and colored Christmas lights glow over her desk.

“Goofy things, I suppose,” she said, waving her hand at the decorations with a smile. “But it makes me feel at home here.”

The YWCA has a long history of providing a safe haven for women – hosting a core group of five to eight women during the winter months, and as many as 40 during the summer peak, McMullen said.

During the 1960s and ’70s, unmarried girls who became pregnant would often leave their hometowns and come to live in hiding at the YWCA until their babies were born, she said.

McMullen, who her co-workers refer to as the “mom” of the group, once drove a resident the 10 miles to and from high school every day, so she could complete her degree despite the fact that her parents had kicked her out of their home after she announced her pregnancy. That young mother brings her little girl back to visit McMullen and the YWCA staff every year.

“Benni always thinks that people are worthy,” said Beth Hamill, who coordinates the YWCA’s teen programs. “She has a really great way of seeing what people need, giving them the smallest thing to start them turning around.”

Older women, too, have needed help finding independence.

“We would see older women who have been widowed and had never worked, never written a check – who had no way to carry on,” McMullen said.

Recent years have drastically changed the sort of women who come to the residence. As battered women’s shelters in Ellsworth and Bangor struggle to serve the entire region, some women bring their children to live with them in security at the YWCA.

“Sometimes they come back four or five times before they finally make the break,” McMullen said.

And an increasing number of women struggling with mental or emotional difficulties have come to the YWCA for help, as state-run support programs have closed, Hamill said. Staff members are working to adapt, and coordinate with groups like The Next Step, Mount Desert Island Hospital and local police departments to provide the services their residents need.

“There just aren’t places for people in crisis,” Hamill said. “Sometimes there just isn’t anywhere else to go.”

The Bar Harbor Young Women’s Christian Association was founded in 1904, but its home wasn’t built until 1913, when a wealthy summer matron named Mrs. Emma Baker Kennedy funded construction of the brick mansion which has housed the YWCA for the past 88 years. Wearing a frilly ball gown at odds with her stern expression, Kennedy stares down from a portrait hanging above an ornate mantelpiece in the YWCA’s front parlor.

“We keep her hanging around,” said Sally McCadden, who has cared for the YWCA building for the past decade.

Kennedy’s donations created a socially acceptable home for young ladies from rural areas who came into Bar Harbor to spend summers working in shops that catered to the summer population – a tradition that continues today.

Each summer, dozens of young women, many of whom travel from Europe, spend summers sleeping dormitory-style in crowded rooms at the YWCA while they scoop ice cream or boil lobster for tourists, and spend their evenings relaxing on overstuffed couches in the TV lounge.

“We try to keep it homey for people, so it’s not institutional-like,” said McCadden.

But records show that early classes provided to women living at the YWCA included such prosaic topics as Bible study, cooking a meal for a dime, and how to make your own corset.

Of course, some ideals from the past remain. Guests with alcohol or drugs are asked to leave the YWCA, and men are not permitted upstairs in the residence.

“There were a few years when we just didn’t get teen-agers – the colleges became so free and open that this became sort of a Dark Ages for them,” McMullen said.

But strict rules haven’t prevented a few creative boyfriends from sneaking in over the years. Some have tried to climb the fire escape, others don dresses and wigs in a futile attempt to blend in, said McMullen.

“One night, a few of them actually put on high heels, and they had the hairiest legs you’ve ever seen in your life, wobbling all over,” she said, laughing at the memory.

The good memories – such as the tale of coincidentally-named Selma, Velma and Thelma, who struck up a friendship one summer, or stories of countless women who have gained a sense of independence and self respect within this stately old home – keep the staff inspired when the monthly utility bills arrive.

The Bar Harbor YWCA “squeaks by” on the donations of local businesses and about 200 members scattered throughout Mount Desert Island. But staff members promise the women’s residence will still be around when the YWCA hits its centennial in 2013.

“You can come here when the world gets to be too much,” McMullen said. “I’m going to keep these doors open, no matter what it takes.”