GUILFORD – In 1967, Frank Stanio was anxious to obtain his Piscataquis Community High School diploma, go to work in a local textile factory and raise a family.

Today the 54-year-old man is back in school with a much younger generation, cramming for exams, anxious to get a degree so he can find a job that won’t be replaced by foreign labor.

Returning to his alma mater 35 years later was not what Stanio had in mind when he whooped with glee after receiving his diploma more than three decades ago. Nor was a future outside the manufacturing world.

But when Dexter Shoe Co. announced late last year that it would no longer produce shoes in Maine, the Guilford man found himself considering both.

“I planned on retiring from Dexter Shoe,” Stanio said during a recent interview.

Like many of his high school classmates in the 1960s, Stanio did not consider postsecondary education because the local mills were thriving and jobs were readily available. Stanio had worked part time at Guilford of Maine while in high school, so was assured a job after graduation. He married his high school sweetheart, Christy, and started a family. Six years later, he lost his job at the textile factory during a management change.

At the time, Dexter Shoe Co. was prospering under Harold Alfond’s ownership, so in the early 1970s both Stanio and his wife started careers in the shoe industry. Their combined income made for a good life.

“If you worked hard, you made good money,” Stanio said.

Beginning in the early 1990s, however, the Stanios began to see changes in the marketplace. They found that instead of creating new jobs, the North American Free Trade Agreement passed in Congress in 1993 actually caused people to purchase more imported products – including shoes – because they cost less than domestic products. They also discovered that companies like Dexter Shoe were starting to move some of their product lines to foreign countries for the cheap labor.

“I could see it coming,” Stanio said of the company’s plan to cease its manufacturing operations in Maine. Stanio said workers first noticed a gradual shift of certain manufacturing processes to other company locations in Puerto Rico and abroad. Then the company began downsizing its operations in the state, closing factories and laying off workers, including Christy, in a piecemeal fashion. “You knew it was working itself around,” Stanio said.

Stanio received his pink slip last December – an early Christmas present, he noted sarcastically. He gave his heart to the company for 29 years, he said, and in exchange he was booted out so his job could be given to Chinese workers. In fact, the company introduced him to his replacements during one of his last days on the job. Asked by management to show the foreigners, who were taking photographs of the production line, how he did his job, Stanio said he refused and walked away.

“It was the lowest and cheapest thing I’ve ever seen done there,” Stanio said, and something he will never forget.

Nor will he forget the difficulty Christy Stanio and her co-workers had trying to get help after being terminated two years ago. There was no concerted effort by state or federal government to find replacement jobs or retraining for those terminated earlier, as there is now, he explained. Christy ultimately enrolled in a nursing course, but when her husband lost his job she went to work at another local manufacturing company in order to get health insurance benefits for the couple.

The harrowing process she and other employees went through to get unemployment benefits and information about training and college had such a profound effect on Stanio that when he was laid off he decided to return to school to get a degree in human services. “I want to find the kind of job that I can do the most good for the most people,” he said.

Returning to school was not easy for Stanio, who admits he had butterflies in his stomach. But Warren Myrick, SAD 4’s adult and community education director, knew exactly how to react when Stanio sought help. He gave Stanio the encouragement and assistance he needed, the same as he has with countless other people who lost their jobs over the years or who wanted to improve their chances at a better one.

As testimony to Myrick’s efforts, SAD 4 has led the state the last two years in the number of credits earned through the University of Maine’s Continuing Education program, which utilizes interactive television and the Internet.

Myrick, a past president of the Piscataquis County Economic Development Council, has always recognized that for the county to grow economically its workers must be educated. “An educated work force is the number one factor in economic development,” he said. “The more college graduates we have, the better economic development opportunities we have.”

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, warning bells went off for Myrick when he discovered that a majority of the high school graduates aspired to work in the local mills like many of their parents. In fact, Piscataquis Community High School was dead last in the state in 1970 for students going on to college. “We were 114 out of 114,” according to the educator.

Recognizing the need to do something to raise aspirations, Myrick applied for and was awarded a $10,000 grant to study aspirations. “The more I studied it, the more I realized that the people here had aspirations to go on to higher education and improve themselves, but what was lacking was the opportunity,” he said during a recent interview. At the time, Piscataquis County had no postsecondary learning center, and the nearest colleges were in Bangor, Orono and Augusta.

Myrick always believed that if the opportunity was presented in the Guilford region, students would take college courses. He first offered college classes at PCHS with live instructors from technical centers and when interactive television became a reality in 1989 he encouraged school directors to establish a site. And as a member of the economic development council, he pushed for the opening of the Penquis Training and Education Center in Dover-Foxcroft, where students can further their education and laid-off workers can be retrained.

“I knew there was an audience here for the classes,” Myrick said of the ITV offerings. His prediction proved correct.

Students enrolled in ITV courses range from high school students to people in their 60s, and most are working either part- or full-time, according to Myrick. Of the approximately 500 Dexter Shoe workers laid off last year, about 58 were from the SAD 4 towns of Guilford, Sangerville, Parkman, Abbot, Cambridge and Wellington. Many of those are enrolled, have finished some kind of training or are getting their general equivalency degrees in preparation for college courses, he said.

Myrick takes pleasure and satisfaction in helping people get further education, a role he has worked at for 30 years. “It is the most rewarding job I’ve ever had without a doubt,” the former history teacher said. He also is equally pleased that aspirations have been raised in the high school. He noted that today about 80 percent of the PCHS senior class has been accepted into postsecondary learning institutions or enrolled in the military.

Since the ITV program has been offered at PCHS, more than 30 people have graduated from college with associate or bachelor’s degrees, according to Myrick. “I like to say we cut off all avenues of escape when they get their GEDs; they learn they can keep going [for higher education],” he said.

Stanio is a minority in the ITV program. He is a man in what appears to be a woman’s world. According to Myrick, more than 80 percent of the students in the program are women, a statistic that prevails statewide. “That’s a curiosity to me and I don’t know why,” he said.

Debbie Clukey of Sangerville believes she has the answer. Clukey, who was the first person to get her associate’s degree in liberal arts through the SAD 4 ITV site, said education empowers women. “It gives women opportunities and power – a vehicle to go up,” she said.

After graduating in 1980 after a rather unsuccessful high school performance, Clukey went to work in the local factories and later worked at a library.

“I didn’t want to continue picking strings out of shoes,” Clukey said, so when a flier arrived in the mail about SAD 4 adult education classes, she took the plunge. “I had no idea what I was getting into,” she said. While working part time and raising two children, she took five classes the first semester and earned all A’s. She ultimately earned her associate’s degree in two years and later earned a bachelor’s degree. Today she serves as a child development supervisor for Head Start.

“Anyone can further their education,” Myrick concluded. And, he said, there are good jobs available in Piscataquis County, especially in the health-related field.

That is directly where Stanio hopes to be employed a couple of years from now, after he graduates with a degree in human services.

“I look at [school] as a job. You only get one crack at this,” Stanio said, referring to the education he is receiving through federal Trade Adjustment Assistance. “I decided I wasn’t going back into manual trade. I’ve got a brain and I’d like to use it.”

He credited Myrick and Merlene Sanborn and Helen Kelly of the Penquis Training and Education Center for helping him adjust to his student life.

Stanio admits it is a struggle. “The whole era of teaching is different from when I was in high school,” he said. “But I’m not going to sit back and collect a paycheck for six months and then worry about getting a job.” His determination to make a difference in his life and those of others is not likely to let him down.

If anything, Stanio hopes high school students contemplating entering the work force without postsecondary education will learn from his mistake. “Education, you gotta get one,” he said.