FORT KENT – Marcella Belanger Violette became the heroine of the University of Maine at Fort Kent when Maine’s Higher Education Commission wanted to make the Fort Kent State College, the University of Maine’s northernmost campus, a two-year institution.

She led the fight when the commission met at Fort Kent. Speaking in her native French on Dec. 9, 1969, Violette proclaimed that St. John Valley people would not sit idly by while the small university was torn from their very fabric.

The audience, numbering in the hundreds, rose to their feet many times during her passionate defense of the institution. Scores of St. John Valley students, and many from beyond, have since earned degrees at the school she led the battle to save.

On Friday, the Violette family, friends and even people who had simply read about Marcella Belanger Violette were on hand for the opening of the UMFK Acadian Archives exhibit on Violette. The exhibit, which is open daily through Dec. 31, is aptly titled “Contributing a Lifetime to Public Service.”

“Her involvement in this public confrontation circles us back to our exhibit here today,” UMFK President Dr. Richard Cost said. “We have seen over the years many public accomplishments of the extraordinary team of Justice Elmer Violette and Dr. Marcella Violette.

“Through this exhibit, compiled with the help of her family, we are privileged to peek behind the scenes at the private life and impressions of the young woman from Van Buren,” he told the audience. “[She] was so much of our own, and indeed all of Maine’s history.”

Violette, a consummate believer in education, was the first St. John Valley woman to earn a doctorate. She had earned a bachelor’s degree from the College of New Rochelle and a master’s degree in French and English at Boston University, and her doctorate was earned at the Universite St. Louis-Maillet at Edmundston, New Brunswick.

The exhibition comes from her collection of information about the social and economic fabric of the St. John Valley. When she died in 2005, she left 25 volumes of scrapbooks with information about the St. John Valley from 1921 to the day she died.

Dennis Violette, one of her four sons, said his mother’s instructions to him and his four siblings was to “take care of this” collection.

“She was proud of it,” Violette said. “It was her dream that by leaving her scrapbooks to her children, she had found a home for it.

“She was passionate about UMFK because she knew it was a means for local [St. John Valley] young people to get an education,” Violette said of his mother.

Marcella Violette was not only passionate about education. She was also a force for women’s rights, a staunch supporter of the Roman Catholic Church and a model of her idea of family.

During her lifetime she served on scores of committees on higher education, the church in Maine, education in general in the St. John Valley and her French roots.

Among her appointments were the Maine Commission on Higher Education, the Maine Legislative Commission on Maine-Canadian Relations and the advisory board of St. John Valley Bilingual Education.

She was married to Elmer Violette, a Van Buren attorney, for 54 years when he died in 2000. They raised five children. Along with Dennis, they are former state Sen. Paul Violette, Mark, Thomas and Louise.

Elmer Violette became a state representative and senator, a Maine Superior Court justice and a justice on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. He was the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1972 against Republican William S. Cohen, who went on to become a U.S. senator from Maine.

UMFK also named a forestry program wilderness outpost after the couple. The Elmer H. Violette Wilderness camp, located less than a half-mile from the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, is a university facility where students learn about forestry while in the middle of it.

With the assistance of the Violette family, especially Dennis Violette’s wife, Julie, the 25 scrapbooks were condensed to five major themes for the exhibition.

They include her interests in UMFK, cultural preservation, civic responsibility, the Allagash Wilderness Waterway and the Violette family.

The exhibition has information on the town of Van Buren, the St. John Valley, Franco-Americans, the Acadians, bilingualism, education, politics, St. Bruno’s Church in Van Buren, the Good Shepherd Sisters, the Marist priests, the waterway and the family.

The exhibition in the Acadian Archives Exhibit Gallery is open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, and by appointment, until Dec. 31.