Snowe later married a Lewiston orphan, Olympia Bouchles, now a US senator. (He died in a tragic car accident in April 1973.) John Richter, Senator Snowe's chief of staff, said she was not on the scene when her late husband would have helped LePage, but that Myrick was, indeed, one of Mr. Snowe's close friends and that the incident "sounds like something Peter would have done." LePage has nonetheless remained fiercely loyal to Ms. Snowe, endorsing her reelection. "She went on to finish the job he started," he told a Portland forum, and suddenly looked choked up. "And she is now the senior senator from the state of Maine." Richter said their friendship is partly based on common experiences: "the senator and the governor share the same hometown as well as very challenging times growing up, with the senator's parents having both died by the time she was ten years old." (She endorsed LePage's gubernatorial candidacy.)
THEN AND NOW LePage entered Husson College while its new campus was still under construction. |
Beginning the escapeAttending Husson was a more than just a turning point for the future governor. He recently described it as his greatest achievement, saying everything else has "all been a bonus." He's said his fraternity brothers "were literally my family" and that the education he received was the "driving force" of his future success. "My life began the day I started college," LePage told an audience last summer. "I wouldn't want to live a day prior to going to college."
LePage — thin and serious looking in photos from the period — thrived. He was editor of the daily campus newsletter, the Tomahawk Tally, vice president of the student senate, treasurer of his sophomore class, junior class vice-president, and president of the senior class. He played intramural sports, joined an outing club and a fraternity, and served on the college's student affairs committee and as a counselor to other students at the career planning office. All the while, he held part-time jobs — bartender, short-order cook, editor — to pay his living expenses. (He has said his first-year tuition was paid by Snowe and Anthoine, the remainder covered by scholarships and loans.) He would graduate with, he later boasted to a newspaper reporter, a "3.0-plus" grade point average.
LePage arrived at Husson at a strange historical moment. The school had just moved from its downtown Bangor location to a new campus in the outskirts. Parking lots remained unpaved, and many lawns were still unseeded. The new brick dormitories and academic buildings looked out on the construction sites of other yet-to-be completed buildings. But college administrators were already having trouble filling all those new beds and classroom seats. "They had taken out all this debt to build this campus, but hadn't figured out where the students would come from," recalls Chuck Sliter, who was a year behind LePage. "They looked around and said, oh my God, there aren't enough people in Maine to fill all these dorms!" In desperation, Husson dispatched recruiters to community colleges across the northeast in an effort to get transfer students. "I went up there sight unseen," says Sliter, who transferred from upstate New York. "I couldn't have asked for a better place to end up, because it was probably the most dysfunctional college around at the time."
