Lobstering helps woman earn degree debt-free

SOUTH THOMASTON – Sometime during her sophomore year in high school, Christina Rackliff learned a lucrative lesson.

She wanted a car. Her father, a third-generation lobsterman, helped her figure out how to get one: “My dad said, ‘If you want a car and can put your rear end on the stern of that boat, then you can buy a car yourself,'” she said. “So, I did.”

At 5-foot-2, the slim and trim Rackliff doesn’t look anything like someone you would picture pulling on a 60-pound trap full of lobsters. But she fished summers from her 18-foot outboard motorboat and her father’s 36-foot lobster boat Christina Marie to earn something that can be even more expensive than a car: a college degree.

On Saturday, she will graduate debt-free from the University of Maine with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education.

The summer before her freshman year, Rackliff’s catch paid for $6,000 worth of tuition, and room and board at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. She chose that campus because it was smaller and cheaper, she said, and she could keep her snowmobile nearby.

Attending Orono her sophomore year made it easier for Rackliff to return home weekends during the fall to reap the benefits of the best lobster harvesting time.

All told, Rackliff figures her bachelor’s degree cost her about $32,000 – and it’s paid up.

“This spring, though, my dad helped me out with rent the last couple of months,” she said, because she was student teaching full time without pay. In previous years, she had earned money working at the day care center on the Orono campus.

The 2000 Rockland District High School graduate started stuffing bait bags and banding lobster claws for her father while in grade school. By high school she discovered if she wanted something, she would have to work for it.

Her 17-year-old sister, Meagan, a junior in high school, is learning the same lessons. And Christina Rackliff still hauls in traps with her father, Richard, and sometimes with her mother, Karen.

“We’ve all got it in our blood,” Christina Rackliff said.

When she was a high school senior, her dad built her a boat and paid for a motor to give her a start.

So, with a lucrative career already in place, why did Rackliff choose college?

“My dad was a pretty big influence in that department,” Rackliff said.

“Lobstering hasn’t always been what it’s cracked up to be,” she said, pointing to another early childhood lesson: “My grandfather always told me lobsters come and go in cycles.”

Her father earned a civil engineering degree from UM and worked awhile for Cianbro Corp. Eventually, he returned to lobstering.

You need something to fall back on, she said, “and I really enjoy kids.”

For now, Rackliff plans to continue lobstering and take courses during the spring semester to become certified in special education.

Her plan is eventually to teach elementary school and lobster summers and weekends in the fall. She loves the tranquility of working on the water and being self-employed.

Last year, her father built her a 22-foot lobster boat dubbed Lady Bird. She took out a loan for a 120-horsepower motor. Half of the loan she paid last season with lobstering profits. The remainder will be paid this September.