DOVER-FOXCROFT – The plight of a Dover-Foxcroft man who was academically suspended for a semester from the University of Maine last year because he said extenuating circumstances distracted him from his studies, caught the attention of a Houlton man who has offered his help.

Stan Ginish, 56, a retired Navy SEAL who has disabilities, has paid the $964 course fee so John Marshall, 19, can take calculus online, a subject he failed during his freshman year. Ginish said he has faith that Marshall, whom he has never met, will pass the course and be readmitted to UM for the spring semester. In exchange for his gift, Ginish, who has two sons in college, has asked Marshall to give him a periodic progress report.

“I’m so grateful,” Marshall said Friday. “I want to do the best that I possibly can.”

Marshall said university officials told him that passing the online course would benefit him when he applied for readmission to the university, although it was not a guarantee he would be accepted back.

The former Foxcroft Academy honor student learned four weeks into his freshman year that a photograph of him taken at an ATM machine was posted by campus police in two places under an announcement and alert section of the campus’s internal conferencing network. The bulletins sought information about the man in the photograph. While police asked the university community to identify the person so they could speak to him, Marshall said he later learned police believed he had fraudulently withdrawn money from someone else’s account when he had not.

At about the same time, Marshall said he learned his 87-year-old mother, Frances Marshall of Dover-Foxcroft, was having difficulty with her living arrangements. The two issues consumed him, he said.

Although the University Credit Union apologized for coding his account incorrectly, which caused the mix-up, and his photograph was removed from the online site, Marshall said it was embarrassing. Some people recognized him from the bulletin and thought he had done something bad and it became stressful for him, he said. While Marshall claimed his photograph was online for several days, university and credit union officials said one of his photographs was removed a couple of hours after it was posted, and the other photograph was online for less than eight hours.

To Ginish, it didn’t matter how long Marshall’s photograph had been online. He said the damage had been done. In all fairness, Ginish said this week that the person who posted the announcement should have noted online that the individual had been identified and that he had done nothing wrong.

“He got a baptism into the adult world that not too many kids get and recover from,” Ginish said. Ginish said he figures the experience will make Marshall work harder to get his college degree. “I’ve really got a lot of faith in him, and there’s no expectation of any money back from him at all.”

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