BY PAUL H. MILLS

Lewiston Sun Journal, September 3, 2000

In my first column of the summer I vowed to continue the search for Frank MacKenzie. He is the man who after getting elected to the legislature took a few months out from operating a tourist establishment at Moosehead Lake to successfully sponsor a bill anointing our state with the "Vacationland" motto, now the world's oldest license plate slogan. That was in 1935 and because the usually meticulous state law library had nothing on him since the end of his single term six and a half decades ago we speculated that he had perhaps disappeared into obscurity or on the other hand might still be with us!

After a vigilant summer-long investigation this columnist can now report that MacKenzie followed his own advice and made Maine merely a personal vacationland, returning to the land of Anne of Green Gables - his native Prince Edward Island - about 15 years before his death in 1963 at age 81, stopping along the way to be manager of the Penobscot Hotel in Bangor. 

Though his Canadian obituary - none apparently ran in the Maine media - did not mention his sponsorship of the vacationland bill PEI's Charlottetown Guardian did report that MacKenzie was once chairman of the Maine Hotel Association. 

An old acquaintance of MacKenzie, interviewed by this columnist just last week, retired army sergeant Mike York now of Charleston, Maine, recalled growing up on Moosehead and getting to know MacKenzie quite well, recalling an energetic leader "always on the go," a "popular guy," who was known for his "generous hospitality."

Though MacKenzie left one of the most indelible legislative imprints of the 20th century, he had no immediate family legacy, the only surviving member having been his brother, a priest who at the time of MacKenzie's death was living in British Columbia.

So much for Frank MacKenzie, the unheralded progenitor of the vacationland license plate!

Exactly four decades ago this Tuesday Rumford's Lucia Cormier made the cover of TIME because her candidacy for Maine's US Senate seat resulted in the first all female US Senate race, Cormier sharing the cover with incumbent Margaret Chase Smith. The event that catapulted Rumford's Cormier to TIME's cover has only happened twice since, the latest being in 1998 when Patty Murray (derided by an earlier advisary as a "Mom in tennis shoes") defended her Washington state seat against a challenge from GOP Congresswoman Linda Smith.

Though today it is Margaret Chase Smith who is remembered and Cormier who is forgotten the one-time French teacher at Rumford's Stephens High and Columbia masters degree recipient had already assembled an accomplished public service resume by the time of her 1960 bid for the US Senate, by which time she was in her sixth term in the Maine House, then serving as the Democratic House Floor Leader, the first woman of either party to fill the position. Lorin Arnold, dean of Maine political columnists, referred to Cormier as "the most efficient, most sincere, and hardest-working woman legislator ever to grace the legislative scene."

Cormier had not only educational and political acumen but was also known for her retail business establishment, one she opened after she gave up teaching in 1945. Those in the know among old timers of downtown Rumford today recall her stationery and office supply store on Upper Congress Street. "Go to Cormier's," was the motto of many Rumford area business and professional people who sought out the well stocked inventory of the store she ran in the years following her teaching career during her part-time state legislative service.

The historic achievement symbolized by the cover portrait she shared with Senator Smith on Time's September 5, 1960 issue commemorates the first time when American men were put in the same position that most women had experienced in the 40 years since winning the vote in 1920, namely, having their choices constricted to voting only for a member of the opposite sex for a US Senate seat.

The 1960 cover was also a milestone of another sort, namely, the halfway point between our present day and the time 80 years ago when women were first guaranteed the right to vote nationwide with ratification of the 19th Amendment in August 1920.

Remembering Cormier last week in an interview with this columnist was another one-time Rumford-based political leader, Severin Beliveau. Beliveau recalls that it was his sister Judy who was one of Cormier's drivers during the 1960 campaign and praised Cormier as a "pioneer in many ways," not only because she was one of the early women leaders in Maine but also because she was one of the earliest US Senate nominees of French-Canadian descent (two earlier ones being Lewiston's Roger Dube and Waterville's Harold Dubord). Beliveau also recalls Cormier as being quite demanding, expecting as much of others as of herself.

It thus comes as no surprise that at one point she confronted Rumford school administrators, resigning over complaints on her homework - they claimed she assigned too much of it. The meager salaries paid public school teachers of the mid-1940s was another occasion for her leaving her dozen years in the local school system behind in favor of a plunge into a downtown retail business. 

The 1960 Senate campaign occurred at the same time as the celebrated JFK-Nixon contest and like the presidential race also featured televised debates. Those who hoped for the candidates to verbally "slug it out" on TV were disappointed, however, for the two avoided direct personal attacks on the other. For example, Cormier attacked Republican party positions but not Smith herself on the issues while Smith reminded voters of her accomplished Senate record and experience which included a leading role in armed services committee work, an inducement for coastal shipyard workers to give her their support.

Smith's personal wrath was reserved for her fellow Maine Senator, Democrat Edmund Muskie, whom she felt was playing up his support for Cormier a bit more than the dictates of normal partisan loyalty. To Smith, Cormier was so closely identified with Muskie that the day after the elections Smith expressed her gratitude to voters in a statement that commended them for rejection of the "one man rule," she believed would have resulted if Cormier had become Muskie's junior Senate colleague. 

Ideologically, the independent-minded Smith's pro-labor voting record found much in common with Cormier's position, though it was Cormier who received labor's financial support, allowing her to outspend Smith nearly four to one, $20 thousand to the Senator's $5 thousand - Smith usually turned back outside contributions, relying on her own frugal resources.

Fluent and articulate in French, the only language with which thousands of Mainers were at home, an experienced educator, business and legislative leader, Cormier was still no match for the personal magnetism and charisma of Maine's senior Senator, who even though more than a decade older than the 51 year old Cormier was at the prime of her persuasive charm and personal agility. One-on-one, the Margaret Chase Smith of 1960 could make even a 1980 Ronald Reagan or a 1960s JFK appear tepid by comparison. Her almost photographic recognition of the names and background of the thousands of Mainers whose hands she shook was also legendary.

The 62% vote total by which Mainers gave Smith her third term was the highest of any GOP senate candidate in the country that year, even though in each of the three preceding Maine elections the state had put Democrats in the Blaine House and in most of its other congressional seats. 1960 did see Democrats winning back the White House, allowing Cormier to pick up one of the state's leading federal patronage appointments, that of the Portland regional customs collector, a position which she held for the next 15 years.

Like Frank MacKenzie's, Cormier's death at age 83 in 1993 attracted scant notice in the Maine media. The brief published accounts relegated to the obituary pages while referring to her service as a state legislator and customs official failed to even mention her precedent shattering role in the 1960 senate race.

Perhaps this is because a state like Maine, the nation's only to have elected three women to the U.S. Senate, has long since made voting for them a routine event. If so, then Lucia Cormier is an exemplar of why we have come to take it so for granted that none thought the event worthy of comment at the time of her passing. 

But in a world where universal suffrage is so new to civilization -- 80 years being merely a split second when calibrated against the thousands of years since the advent of ancient Greek democratic rule -- to ignore the role of Cormier and others like her is to risk placing the rights of us all - men and women alike -- on a more fragile footing than they deserve.