The Achievement Hall of Fame Induction was postponed in 2020 due to COVID 19 protocols. The inductees waited two years to gather to celebrate their accomplishments.
Old Town Class of 1979 JoAnn Yvon Eberle, Pilot for United States Army
JoAnn Yvon graduated from Old Town High School in the top 10 of the graduating class of 1979. During her years at Old Town High School, JoAnn received many awards and achievements. She was a standout as a student, athlete, and musician during her days at OTHS. She was a National Merit Scholarship semi-finalist, a member of the National Honor Society, represented OTHS in Girls State, and received the Outstanding Math Student Award. JoAnn was the co-Captain of the cross-country team, a member of the swim and track teams. She was an accomplished musician. She played first clarinet, first alto saxophone, and was a member of the concert and stage band for four years. She was nominated for the McDonald’s All-American Band, received the top score of 1 at numerous individual music festival competitions. She was selected all four years for All-State band/orchestra on clarinet.
In College, JoAnn continued her excellence in the area of academics. She received a 4-year ROTC Scholarship and chose to study International Relations at Georgetown University of Foreign Service. During this time was the first-ever female battalion group commander of Georgetown’s ROTC detachment. JoAnn graduated from Georgetown in 1983 with a BSFS in International Relations Western Europe Concentration.
After graduation, JoAnn was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army. She received Georgetown’s Marshal Award as best cadet. She was selected as a military intelligence/aviation officer. She completed her initial intel training at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona followed by a flight school in Ft. Rucker, Alabama (one of 2 females in the class of 30). JoAnn has been stationed in California, Korea, Washington DC, Alabama, and Germany with a deployment to Bosnia. In 1989, JoAnn was selected as an Army Foreign Area Officer and attended a 2-year graduate school program at Georgetown and completed her MSFS in 1991. JoAnn was selected for the Army Congressional Fellowship Program (only about 5 officers per year are chosen from the US Army) which included courses at Johns Hopkins and served a year as a congressional fellow with Senator Olympic Snowe of Maine in 1997-98. JoAnn was the first female ever to command the 12th Aviation Battalion and Davidson Army Airfield at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. During this time JoAnn was responsible for over 300 military and civilian members, including UH-1 Huey and UH 60 Blackhawk helicopters. She oversaw Heavy Engineering equipment, aviation and engineering maintenance, air traffic control, airfield operations, National Capitol Region security missions, and the normal command and staff functions and personnel. After the attacks on 9/11 JoAnn’s unit led the aviation and engineering recovery and security missions at the Pentagon; at one point the only aircraft allowed to fly in US airspace her from Unit. JoAnn’s troops and several units brought in for further support (including a CH-47 Chinook unit and a mortuary affairs unit) immediately went to 24-hour alert status and did an unbelievable job under horrendous condition in digging colleagues out of the rubble, transporting their remains to the airfield with dignity, helping to secure the area and ferrying supplies and people in and out of the area.
JoAnn is married to Nate Eberle (also a retired Army Officer and pilot, and a West Point 1981 graduate), together they had two boys, John and Michael. Both JoAnn and Nate are retired Lieutenant Colonels. In retirement, JoAnn began working in a new Virginia winery and traveled visiting their son at the College of William and Mary, who plays D1 soccer, spending time with her sister, Renee (class of 1981) and parents Bernie and Gail Yvon.
Old Town Class of 1954, Anita Peavey-Haskell, Community Activist
Anita Peavey-Haskell, Class of 1954, is a selfless woman who has dedicated her life to serving others – God, family, community, and the people of the State of Maine. Thousands of people have benefitted from her efforts to make life better for others.
Anita was born on September 30, 1936, in a log cabin in Greenbush, ME, the only child of Helena and Harley E. Peavey. Her childhood home was an old farmhouse with no electricity, running water or indoor plumbing.
She was an intelligent, observant, and inquisitive child who did well in school and graduated with honors from Old Town High School, Class of 1954.
Anita married Leon Haskell of Milford, on November 6, 1955. Earning a college degree was one of her goals, and she worked as a waitress to pay for her education. She completed a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of Maine in 1959 and began a career as an elementary school teacher.
She continued to further her education while working full time, and in 1966 she earned an M.Ed. degree from the University of Maine. Anita’s teaching career spanned over 30 years in the Old Town School System. She taught at the Helen Hunt School, Herbert Sargent School, and J.A. Leonard Jr. High School – now Leonard Middle School. During her career, Anita served on the Milford Board of Selectmen and School Board; she was also active in the Old Town Education Association (OTEA).
Anita and Leon welcomed their son, Raish Peavey-Haskell, into their lives on May 1, 1973. At age 4 months, Raish was diagnosed with a rare eye cancer, Retinoblastoma. Traveling to New York City for treatment and having to sleep on hospital floors became the norm for Anita during the remainder of his life. Raish died on Mother’s Day in 1977 – 8 days after his 4th birthday – and was buried on his father’s birthday.
Their shared journey in pursuit of treatment and Raish’s death inspired Anita to make helping children like him and their families her mission. To that end, she became one of the founders and served as president of Bangor’s Ronald McDonald House that opened its doors on December 16, 1983, with a 14-bedroom facility.
Anita and Leon adopted two boys from war torn El Salvador in the early 1980’s. Their first, Fred, had lived on the streets of San Salvador since the age of 3 until being brought to an orphanage. The Haskells adopted him at age 5. Jose, age unknown, followed sometime later.
Anita served in the Maine House of Representatives – District 13 – for three terms, 2000-2004, and 2012-2014.
She was a Board member for the EMHS Foundation, a long-time Corporator for EMMC and an active member of the Executive Committee for the Heroes, Hope and Healing capital campaign to establish a new children’s cancer and treatment center at EMMC. She has also served as a member of the Board of Directors at St. Joseph Hospital.
Anita has worked tirelessly for decades to improve the level of care provided to pediatric cancer patients and their families. Her hard work and generous gifts were instrumental in establishing the Raish Peavey-Haskell Children’s Cancer and Treatment Center in Brewer which opened in December 2012. The center was named in memory of her beloved son.
Old Town Class of 1976, Tim Folster, Vice President of Operations for Sargeant Corp.
Tim Folster, Class of 1976, has over thirty years in the construction industry with extensive experience in operations management including, estimating, scheduling of resources, project planning, and client relations. His background includes highways, commercial, industrial, and residential site work; water and sewer installations; environmental construction including landfill cell construction and closures, as well as remediation; and wind power infrastructure development.
He has served as Foreman, Superintendent, General Superintendent, Division Manager, and Vice President of Operations. He was responsible for the start of a regional office in the Mid-Atlantic region for H.E. Sargent, Inc. from 1996 to 2000. He served as General Superintendent from Sargent & Sargent from 2001 to 2005, responsible for expanding its sales dramatically within the company’s geographical focus.
He is currently Vice President of Operations/Chief Operating Officer for Sargent Corporation with oversight of all Operations, Estimating and Equipment activities of the Company. Tim is a long serving Board Member of the MBTA and served as MBTA President in 2005-2006.
Tim is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Maine.
Old Town Class of 1940, Bernard Langlais, Artist
Bernard Langlais, Class of 1940, was born in Old Town, Maine. He showed an early proclivity for drawing and left Maine after high school to study commercial art at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. He earned scholarships to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Brooklyn Museum Art School, as well as a Fulbright Scholarship to study painting of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch in Oslo. Working in New York in the 1950s, Langlais developed a modernist painting style characterized by landscapes and still life with bold colors and flattened perspectives, while also experimenting with hard edge abstraction and painterly expressionism.
In 1956, while renovating his summer cottage in Cushing, Maine, Langlais was captivated by working with scraps of wood, which he arranged to create a mosaic-like wall composition. He termed the process “painting with wood” and emphatically abandoned oil painting to explore this new medium. His abstract wood reliefs immediately caught the attention of the New York Art world and were included in the watershed exhibition NEW FORMS-NEW MEDIA at the Martha Jackson Gallery in 1960, in a solo exhibition at Leo Casterilli Gallery in 1961, and at the Whitney Museum’s 1962 Drawing and Sculpture Annual.
Despite his commercial success, by the mid-1960s, Langlais became disenchanted by the pressures of New York gallery culture. Interested in working on a larger scale, he purchased a farmhouse in Cushing and moved permanently to his native state. In the last eleven years of his life, he constructed more than sixty-five monumental wood sculptures on the land around his home, including his best-known commission, the over seventy foot-tall Indian for the town of Skowhegan, Maine. During this period he also produced a massive composition of two and three dimensional works exploring the patterns, textures, and expressive powers of the animal kingdom.
Late in his career, Langlais was the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, an honorary degree from the University of Maine, a Ford Foundation Purchase Award, among other accolades. Following his death in 1977 at the age of 56, memorial exhibitions of his work were shown at Maine Coast Artists in Rockport, Maine (Now the Center for Maine Contemporary Art), and at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. In 2002, the Portland Museum of Art mounted Bernard Langlais: Independent Spirit, a survey of the artist’s work in wood. In 2014, the Colby College Museum of Art presented the exhibition Bernard Langlais, the scholarly retrospective on the artist, accompanied by a 256 page, hardcover catalogue.
Old Town Class of 1984, Craig Skeffington, Musician
Craig Skeffington, Class of 1984, has been an active New England composer, arranger, and educator for three decades with music in the jazz, marching and wind band genres.
A high school band director since 1992, Craig was the 2003 MMEA Teacher of the Year and is currently on the faculty of the University of Southern Maine as an instructor in applied jazz arranging.
His published pieces with the Neil A. Kjos Music Company, Alfred/Belwin Jazz and CL Barnhouse have appeared in the International Association of Jazz Educators and NYSSMA manuals and consistently receive “Editor’s Choice” in the JW Pepper music catalog. In 2007 and again in 2010, his music was performed at the prestigious Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic in Chicago, Ill. He is both a past president of the Maine Band Directors Association and jazz activities chair for the Maine Music Educators Association. Craig is currently serving MMEA as the instrumental jazz chairperson and at the national level with NAFME as the Eastern Division representative.
As a trumpet player Craig has played with Barry Manilow, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, Natalie Cole, Johnny Mathis, Colin Raye, The Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra from Washington D.C., Kris Berg and the Metroplexity Big Band (from Dallas TX) and toured nationally with the Artie Shaw Orchestra. As a soloist, he has appeared with Grammy award winning artists Wayne Bergeron, Eric Marienthal and Bob Mintzer as well as Grammy nominated artist Bobby Shew.
Locally, he works with the Seacoast Big Band, the Portland Jazz Orchestra and the Larry Williams Band. Craig lives in South Portland with his wife Carrie and their two daughters, Hannah and Molly. His music can be found on the Portland Jazz Orchestra’s latest CDs – “Nor Easter” and “Generations” available on iTunes and CD baby.
Old Town Class of 153, Mary Ellen St. John, Miss Maine and General Manager of the Four Seasons Hotel
Mary Ellen St. John, Class of 1953, graduated from Old Town High School. Following her graduation, she attended the University of Maine when her life took a very different turn. In 1954 she was crowed Miss Maine and represented our state at the Miss America Pageant.
Mary Ellen married in 1956 and until the mid 1960s she was a homemaker raising her three children in Connecticut. During this time she was very active in state politics and local theater groups. When all of her children started school, she entered into a full-time modeling career in greater Hartford, CT. She quickly became one of the top regional models known as the “Connecticut Cover Girls.”
In the early 1970s, Mary Ellen went to work in the sales department for the Sonesta Hotel chain, an international hotel group. She worked for Sonesta for 12 years rising through the administrative ranks until becoming the corporation’s first female general manager. She left Sonesta to again become the first female general manager for the Four Season’s Hotel Chain.
After about eight years with Four Season’s, Mary Ellen was named managing director for the Canyon Ranch Resort and Spa located in the Birkshire’s. During her time with Canyon Ranch, the spa was named the best resort spa in the world an unprecedented five years in a row. Mary Ellen retired from Canyon Ranch in 1998. During her retirement, she consulted with many other companies and served on numerous boards.
Mary Ellen St. John was a champion for women’s rights and was a sought-after speaker on women’s issues in the workplace. By personally overcoming obstacles in the hotel industry and later ensuring that women were recognized and promoted in the hotels she managed, she helped change the culture of the industry.
Mary Ellen died in July of 2016 in Florida.
Old Town Class of 1975, Don Winslow, Chief of Police in Bangor
Donald Winslow, class of 1975, graduated from Old Town High School. He received an Associates Degree in criminal justice from Bangor Community College (Now University of Maine Augusta). Don was also a graduate of the Maine Criminal Justice Academy and the FBI National Academy in Quantico, VA.
During his high school years, Don was a member of the Old Town junior firefighters and served as chief of the group. Following his high school graduation, he delayed his college program to take a full-time position as a firefighter for the Old Town Fire Department. He left this position in 1979 to take a full-time patrolman position with the Bangor Police Department.
While a patrolman in Bangor, Don was responsible for the formation of the DARE program in the Bangor Schools. As a DARE officer, he served as Vice-President for the Maine Chapter of DARE Officers. Moreover, he was honored by the National Association of DARE officers receiving the National Recognition Award. During his years as a patrolman, he was appointed to the detective division; he was the Bangor Community Relations Officer; and for one year he was on loan to the State’s DEA as an undercover officer.
Don was promoted to Sergeant in 1989, and later named a Lieutenant in 1991. In 1992 he was named the Deputy Chief, and in July of 1998 he was name Chief of Police for the Bangor Police Department. He served in this position until his retirement in 2007.
The accolades that Don has received are too numerous to mention. It is important to note that he has received many different awards for his work with at-risk youth; victims of domestic violence (specifically Spruce Run); and drug abuse prevention. He was a board member for the Shaw House; he was chairman of the board for WINGS; founding coordinator for Bangor’s Domestic Abuse Task Force. He received the Distinguished Service Award from the University of Maine at Augusta and the Pickering Award from Maine Association of Police Chiefs.
Don Winslow’s untimely death in 2014 was felt not only by his fellow officers, but by the entire community of Bangor as a whole. To remember Don, the Fraternal Order of Police present an annual award for excellence which has been named the Donald J. Winslow Award. Finally, the new police station in Bangor shows a plaque that reads, “Dedicated to the honor of Chief Donald J. Winslow—Treat people the way you would want to be treated.”
RSU34 - Achievement Hall of Fame 
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