Luckiest People in the World | Inside Yankee
Passion projects show us what happens when work entwines with joy.
Yankee Editor Mel Allen
Photo Credit : Lori PedrickIn the summer of 1975, I mailed a story to the Maine Sunday Telegram about my time as a teacher at a Maine treatment center for troubled youths. The center had recently been front-page news because several teenagers had run away, risking the forest over the often-harsh “treatments” I had observed. A few days later, the paper’s features editor called me. His name was Eddie Fitzpatrick, and he wanted to meet. Soon, he was sending me on assignments everywhere in the state, then coaxing me through rewrites, and every few weeks a 3,000-word story with my byline would lead his Sunday features section.
He was the son of an English coal miner, and his infectious excitement about Maine became my own. He loved wilderness adventure, writers, artists, and cooking. In his pages and his life, he brought them all together. So many Portland artists owe him a debt for bringing their work to light. As I do. Were it not for Eddie Fitzpatrick, gone now two years, I would not be writing this editor’s letter today. Because when I met with Yankee’s new managing editor, John Pierce, in the fall of 1977, I came with a stack of my newspaper stories—from the tragedy of a child lost at a remote campground to a profile of a young Maine writer whose horror novels were catching fire.
Photo Credit : by Diane Hudson
I tell you this because recently I saw a remarkable photo exhibit called “Everyday Maine.” My eyes followed along the procession of 120 photos through several rooms of the University of New England Art Gallery in Portland. Suddenly, I stopped. In a photo titled “Porch Talk,” there was Eddie Fitzpatrick, sitting between two friends at a North Woods cabin, happy, no doubt telling or hearing a story. He had often told his longtime partner, photographer Diane Hudson, “We are the luckiest people in the world.” His passion for Maine and its people now seemed to infuse the gallery. And the more I learned about how the show had come together, the more I wanted to bring even a small part of it to Yankee’s readers [“Everyday Maine”].
Elsewhere in the magazine, you will meet others who have followed their passion. Whether they are tending to flowers that bring thousands to walk among them [“A Bridge for Dreamers”], or restoring an orchard to create acclaimed hard ciders [“Apples of Their Eye”], or preserving the most famous replica ship in the world [“The Big Question”], this issue is an exhibit in itself of what happens when your work entwines with joy. You become one of the “luckiest people.” I know I am, and Eddie Fitzpatrick helped me make that happen.
Mel Allen editor@yankeemagazine.com
Mel Allen
Mel Allen is the fifth editor of Yankee Magazine since its beginning in 1935. His first byline in Yankee appeared in 1977 and he joined the staff in 1979 as a senior editor. Eventually he became executive editor and in the summer of 2006 became editor. During his career he has edited and written for every section of the magazine, including home, food, and travel, while his pursuit of long form story telling has always been vital to his mission as well. He has raced a sled dog team, crawled into the dens of black bears, fished with the legendary Ted Williams, profiled astronaut Alan Shephard, and stood beneath a battleship before it was launched. He also once helped author Stephen King round up his pigs for market, but that story is for another day. Mel taught fourth grade in Maine for three years and believes that his education as a writer began when he had to hold the attention of 29 children through months of Maine winters. He learned you had to grab their attention and hold it. After 12 years teaching magazine writing at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, he now teaches in the MFA creative nonfiction program at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Like all editors, his greatest joy is finding new talent and bringing their work to light.
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