Labor Day Poker Run

BANGOR – The Maine Chapter of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, along with the Bangor Maine Harley Chapter, Central Maine Harley-Davidson, WABI-TV Channel 5 and WEZQ Radio, will sponsor the Annual MDA Labor Day Poker Run. The ride will begin live on air during the local broadcast of the Jerry Lewis Labor Day MDA Telethon on WABI-TV.

Check-in for the ride will begin at 7:30 a.m. Monday, Sept. 5, at WABI-TV on Hildreth Street. Riders will leave the station during the 9:40 a.m. local telethon break and ride 90-100 miles through central Maine.

They will stop at three different locations to draw cards for their poker hands. The last stop will be at the Sports Arena on Route 2 in Hermon, where they will draw their last cards. Food and drinks will be available for purchase, and awards will be given for the top poker hands and top fundraisers.

Interested participants are encouraged to pre-register with MDA by calling 854-3749. Poker hands for those who pre-register will cost $15 per hand, while poker hands purchased the day of the ride will cost $20 per hand.

Those who pre-register will be eligible to receive an official ride bandanna and a commemorative ride pin and will be entered in a drawing for a getaway trip. They also will be sent a fundraising kit to raise additional funds for the ride.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the partnership between MDA and Harley-Davidson. Events such as the poker run help fund clinics like the one at Eastern Maine Medical Center, provide assistance to support groups and fund MDA’s purchase and repair program for communication devices. In addition, each summer, youngsters with muscular dystrophy are given the opportunity to attend the Pine Tree Camp in Rome.

For more information about the ride or MDA-sponsored patient programs, call the Maine MDA office at 854-3749.

Honor for Bangor woman

BANGOR – The Institute for Child and Family Policy, a research and public service unit within the University of Southern Maine’s Muskie School of Public Service, was renamed on July 1 in honor of a woman who worked for a half century to improve family services and mental health care reform throughout Maine.

The institute became The Catherine E. Cutler Institute for Child and Family Policy in recognition of gifts in Catherine Cutler’s honor from members of her family and friends. The gifts will support construction of a new home for the USM Muskie School.

Catherine E. Cutler of Bangor, Hancock Point and Portland died in February 2003. A graduate of Wellesley College and a trained economist, Cutler began her career in community mental health and social services following World War II. She returned to her hometown of Bangor with her husband, the late Dr. Lawrence M. Cutler, for whom the Health Center at the University of Maine in Orono is named.

She was a leader in persuading the Maine Legislature to improve the delivery of mental health care by moving mental health services from the Bureau of Prisons to a separate agency. As president of Family and Child Services of Bangor and the founding president of the Eastern Maine Guidance Center, she advocated successfully for the merger of those agencies into what is now known as the Community Health and Counseling Center. The center, which serves five eastern Maine counties, is the largest such community mental health organization in northern New England.

In the mid-1960s, she received a federal grant to establish the Women’s Information and Advisory Service in Bangor. The program, the first of its kind in Maine, provided career counseling to women who wanted to resume or begin new careers. Cutler later helped found Spruce Run in Bangor, a shelter and agency for victims of domestic violence. Together with author May Sarton and photographer Berenice Abbott, she was one of the first three recipients of the University of Maine’s Maryann Hartman Awards, which recognize women’s contributions in public service, professional life and the arts.