Happy Returns Creative thinking allows young Piscataquis County natives to craft a future in their hometown

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When Tracy Michaud Stutzman and her then-boyfriend Sunny Stutzman graduated high school in 1992 – she from Foxcroft Academy, he from Piscataquis Community High School – they left for college and doubted they would come back to Maine.

They didn’t think they would be able to, and years of schooling – she went on to earn her Ph.D in anthropology, and he studied design at the post-baccalaureate level – didn’t convince them otherwise. What would an anthropologist and a designer do in Piscataquis County, after all?

As it turns out, quite a bit.

Today, Tracy, 28, promotes the work of local artisans and craftsmen nationwide as the director of the Maine Highlands Guild. And Sunny, a 29-year-old Sangerville native, is a designer for Moosehead Furniture in Dover-Foxcroft.

“Essentially Sunny and I created the jobs we’re in,” Tracy Michaud Stutzman said as she and her husband took a visitor on a whirlwind tour of the region. In addition to her work with the guild, Tracy serves as a one-woman ambassador for southern Piscataquis County.

Last winter, when Gov. John E. Baldacci established a steering committee to plan the Blaine House Conference on the Creative Economy, one of his goals was to stem the exodus of talented, educated youth such as the Stutzmans from Maine.

“When we talk about the youth leaving Maine, we’re going to talk about the importance of the arts – in having the arts, but also in seeing that there are job opportunities [in the creative sector] here,” Baldacci said in an interview last March. “These are parts of the creative economy that we need to focus on.”

According to census data, between 1995 and 2000, a total of 11,200 people left Penobscot, Piscataquis, Washington and Aroostook counties – some straight out of college, many in their 30s and 40s. They left to pursue jobs, some of which didn’t even exist in the region, many of which came with a higher paycheck.

It is Baldacci’s hope – and the hope of the panel he established to spearhead the Blaine House Conference on the Creative Economy – that by recognizing and investing in the arts and culture, both in the private and nonprofit sector, the people who can choose to live anywhere will pick Maine.

The Stutzmans are not only living the creative economy, they define it. They could have found lucrative, rewarding jobs in any major city, but they chose to return to their home state in 1997, after living in Pennsylvania for three years. Tracy was working on her doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh, and Sunny had studied at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

“After living in Pittsburgh for three years, we definitely wanted to be outside the city,” Sunny Stutzman said. “You build your whole lifestyle around outdoor activities and sports, and when you live in the city, there’s nothing for you to do.”

They knew they would miss the live theater, the dance, the art and the restaurants, but if they stayed, they would miss snowboarding, hang gliding and kayaking more. When they moved back to Portland, they found the balance of culture and nature they craved.

Tracy was teaching at the University of Southern Maine when a family friend who worked at Eastern Maine Development Corp. called with a proposition. EMDC was embarking on a project that looked at cultural heritage and how it fit into economic policy, and they needed a coordinator.

“They knew Sunny and I were from the region and that we were looking for jobs,” Tracy Michaud Stutzman said. “We weren’t expecting to come back here. We wanted to come back to Maine, but it never even crossed our minds that we’d be able to come back here.”

When they did return, they found more opportunity than they had ever imagined. Tracy began to work with the Piscataquis County Cultural Heritage and Ecotourism (CHEt) Committee to develop a cultural heritage directory and worked to implement “Developing a Sense of Place through the Arts,” a regional curriculum that integrates Learning Results standards with local history and folk arts.

“I was taking my anthropology skills and applying them in a way that was making a difference,” Tracy said.

Sunny started working for Dexter Shoe a week after their return. His cousin worked there and had been looking for a designer for two years, but he couldn’t find a skilled worker who was willing to move to the rural town.

“A lot of companies around here put a high priority on where you come from and how much of a tie you have to an area,” Sunny Stutzman said. “If you hire someone from Boston, they stay here three months. There’s a lot of, ‘Oh my God, there’s nothing to do here.’ We grew up here. We knew what to expect.”

The couple were looking toward the future, as well. They knew it would be a good place to raise their children eventually, and when they bought a farmhouse in Dover-Foxcroft, their mortgage was the same as rent in the city.

They became involved in the community – Tracy joined the Centre Theatre restoration effort, Sunny became a member of the Comprehensive Planning Committee, and they both joined the East Sangerville Grange. In their spare time, they played in the Doughty Hill band. Things were going well, and they were really making a living and a life for themselves. Then the bottom started to fall out at Dexter. The factory closed, and Sunny started spending half of his time in Boston, living in a hotel.

“We could just see the writing on the wall. If he was going to stay with that company, we were going to have to live in New York,” Tracy said.

A move would mean a significant pay raise for Sunny, but it also would mean that they would have to leave behind the projects they had started and the community they had grown to love.

“People were really responding and positive about the work we were doing and it felt really good,” Tracy said. “We had said throughout the last couple of years we lived here that we were committed to the area. … We had a decision to make. OK, we could chase the easy money or, not knowing how things were going to work out, we could stay here and see.”

“We felt like it would almost be hypocritical if we left,” Sunny added.

So they stayed, unsure of what the future would hold.

“As soon as we made that decision, things fell into place,” Tracy said.

Within a few weeks, Tracy received a call to develop the Maine Highlands Guild, and Sunny approached the execs at Moosehead with a proposal for a job that didn’t exist. They accepted, and he now works as a jack-of-all-trades, creating catalog graphics for the company one day, and designing a new table or bed the next.

“If you want to make it happen, you can,” Tracy Stutzman said. “That’s the beauty of Maine.”

“As long as you think creatively,” Sunny added. “That, I think is the key to living in Maine. You have to keep an open mind.”

In the five years since they moved back to the area, the Stutzmans have seen some of their classmates return, such as the valedictorian of Sunny’s high school class who has come back to work as a doctor. They’ve become friends with a thirtysomething couple who moved to Dover from Boston, too – he’s a video-game designer and she’s an editor, and they’re planning to open a restaurant and pub downtown.

But during a recent concert at the East Sangerville Grange, Tracy ran into an old friend who now lives outside Boston with his wife, who is also from the area. He said they would like to return, but doesn’t think they can.

“We need more people moving back or staying,” Tracy said. “We just, over the last couple of years, really realized the importance of that.”

Kristen Andresen is a Style writer. She can be reached at kandresen@bangordailynews.net.