Dwindling Maine Island Community Goes Fishing for Families

CLIFF ISLAND, Maine — A notice about Cliff Island at the Casco Bay Lines ferry terminal caught a Connecticut family’s attention. A Florida mother was surfing the Internet when she glimpsed the island for the first time.

If all goes as planned, the two families will move here within a few weeks, forgoing the conveniences of mainland living for the beauty and isolation of 425 acres of pine-covered ledge situated 90 minutes by ferry from Portland, Maine’s largest city.

Nominally part of Portland, the two locations are as different as the city streets and dirt-and-gravel roads that cross them. The island’s sea breezes evoke a quieter, more low-key lifestyle. Houses of the island’s 60 to 70 year-round residents are seldom locked, and car keys are routinely left in the ignition.

That tranquillity is Cliff Island’s siren song for families willing to set down stakes with the realization that a visit to the nearest drugstore or supermarket entails at least a three-hour round trip by ferry, or that an evening at the movies is out of the question.

The noon arrival of the ferry that also carries the island’s mail is, arguably, the high point of the day, drawing a dozen or more people to the wharf.

Events of note are rare: the filming 10 years ago of the Bette Davis movie, “The Whales of August,” and the devastating fire last November that leveled the barn used by the island’s biggest employer, FinestKind Builders.

Beyond their skills and their willingness to take on a challenge, the newcomers are bringing a prized commodity: school-age children.

Patricia, who did not want her last name made public, was planning to move to the island from Orlando, Fla., with her son, Brian, 6, who will enter the Cliff Island School as a second-grader.

The 44-year-old widow, a writer, said she discovered the island through its Web site and thought it would be a good place to rear her child.

“I’ve lived in major cities all my life, and this is an alternative,” she said. “It’s an answer to crime, to crowdedness, to the hectic pace.”

Jeffrey and Libra Cusack of Branford, Conn., also have a 6-year-old son, Taylor, a first-grader. His sister Lalania, 17, plans to remain in Branford while completing her senior year of high school.

Cusack, a banker, has already lined up a job in Portland and moved into the family’s vacation home on Sebago Lake while he begins work. His wife will join him in a rented home on the island as soon as she sells their Connecticut house.

“We’re very excited about it. We want a quieter pace of life,” Libra Cusack said. While her husband joins the half-dozen or so islanders who commute to work daily by ferry, she will trade her full-time job in publishing for free-lance work that enables her to garden and devote more time to her family.

Keeping the century-old school open remains a high priority for many of the year-round residents. If it closes, they reason, young families would move away and the community would eventually disappear, leaving only a summer colony.

That scenario is not farfetched. Of the nearly 300 islands off the Maine coast that once had year-round settlements, only Cliff Island and 13 others remain.

Other islands have moved aggressively to reverse the depopulation trend, with varying degrees of success. Frenchboro, off eastern Maine, launched a homesteader program a decade ago in hopes of stabilizing a year-round community that had shrunk from 250 to about 50.

Cliff Island moved to attract settlers by developing the Web site, placing ads in various publications and enlisting summer residents to spread the word about island life.

With high taxes and property values, island living doesn’t come cheap. Lobstering and construction are the principal occupations on Cliff Island, but many newcomers are equipped with job skills that can be practiced anywhere they can plug in a computer and a modem.

Dick Akers, who designs computer software for boat-builders, moved his family to the island last summer. He and his wife, Peg, enrolled their two children in the one-room school, where Annie, 10, was the only fifth-grader and Diego, 5, was the only one in kindergarten.

“We thought of it as an experiment, but we had a lot of hopes about this being a workable permanent solution for us,” Akers said.

That probably won’t happen. After a year on the island, Akers said he will likely move to the mainland, where he can broaden his business contacts, expand his wife’s job options as a nurse practitioner and, most important, allow his children a wider range of friends and after-school options.

As a sixth-grader, Annie would have to commute to school on the mainland. She wants to play basketball, but the ferry trip would leave her little time to pursue the sport.

Akers and his family were no strangers to Cliff Island, where his wife was a lifelong summer resident. But they acknowledge that it takes time to win acceptance by island natives and be accepted into the community.

Dave Crowley, who was originally from Portland but has spent 30 years on the island, agreed that people “from away” aren’t welcomed with open arms by everyone.

“If people don’t have roots here, they don’t last here very long,” he said. “They’re not usually happy here and they don’t make it in the long run.”

Crowley, like several other islanders, works two jobs to make ends meet. When he isn’t in the construction business, he’s likely selling or servicing computer software.

Earl MacVane, Cliff Island’s schoolteacher, takes a similar tack, augmenting his teacher pay with income from lobster fishing.

“You have to be a special breed to live out here,” he said.