SWH clinic spends last day doing what it did for decades - caring for patients
This is a cruise-ship free issue. OTHER NEWS: Open Table MDI seeks support; Times, others recount scandal at passing of Brooke Astor's daughter-in-law.
SOUTHWEST HARBOR, AUG. 31, 2024 - Yesterday was a normal day of work with a full schedule of patients at the medical clinic on Herrick Road. It was also its last day of operation after serving the area since the Sixties, when residents and businesses raised money to buy the building and gift it to create the family care clinic.
A spokesperson for North Light Health said it was to early to determine how many of its 1,600 patients will stay with Northern Light.
Dr. Clarke Baxter, the chief provider, has agreed to continue with Northern Light at its primary care clinic in Ellsworth.
Dr. Baxter gave me a checkup in early August here, but I had to drive to Ellsworth for my blood work. That visit was seamless. The clinic had an airy waiting area. It took me less than 15 minutes to have my blood drawn. The results were available online in less than 24 hours.
“While many of our current Southwest Harbor clinic patients have appointments scheduled with us for September and beyond, we are unsure how many will choose to remain with Northern Light Primary Care,” stated Kelley Anne Columber, a communications director, in an email.
“We have invited all of these patients to stay in our care, in Ellsworth or at another location of their choosing. We will not know how many patients choose to move to another practice or provider until they let us know, or request to have their records released to another practitioner.
“We are very happy that Dr. Baxter will continue caring for patients at Resort Way in Ellsworth, as we transition the practice to this location next week.”
The building at 45 Herrick Road is still on the market, she stated.
Family nurse practitioner CeCe Mailhot joined Mount Desert Hospital and will begin seeing patients at its Northeast Harbor Clinic in September, the hospital announced.
Southwest Harbor still has the MDI Hospital clinic at 16 Community Lane in the village, near Carroll’s Drug Store.
Daniel Lomelin, a family medicine doctor with capacity to take on new patients, joined the practice this summer. Dr. Peter Witham, a primary care internist, was promoted to hospital medical director but still sees some patients in Bar Harbor.
A substantial percentage of Dr. Baxter’s patients are in the Ellsworth area and will have less of a drive for their appointments, said one Herrick Road staffer yesterday.
One person casting a wary eye on the number of patients who might seek care in Ellsworth is Carissa Tinker, executive director of Island Connections, the non-profit which offers free rides for medical appointments and grocery shopping.
The rides for medical appointments has increased from 4,100 in 2019 to 5,000 in 2023, she said.
Off-island rides are especially challenging, she said, because of the need for volunteers willing to drive longer distances.
“It's definitely going to be harder once there's more off-Island rides. A lot of volunteers will do two in-town rides a week, but going to Ellsworth and back, or Bangor and back - that’s their one bigger ride instead of the smaller rides.”
Here are its web pages for volunteers and donations.
Open Table MDI needs donations to reverse financial strain
BAR HARBOR - Open Table MDI, one of the major area providers of food for the needy, is facing a financial crunch in the midst of co-founder and executive director Mahandeva Singh’s recent health challenges.
It recently announced on its Facebook page it had to close for two weeks while Singh received treatment in Boston. Its partner Cottage Street Ramen continued with its normal hours Thursdays through Saturdays.
A member of the board said the non-profit’s cash runway - normally at six months - has declined to two months.
Open Table is one of six food providers I support regularly. The others are Bar Harbor Food Pantry, Common Good Soup Kitchen in Southwest Harbor, Westside food pantry in Southwest Harbor, Share the Harvest at Beech Hill Farm and most recently Loaves & Fishes in Ellsworth.
All are reporting a significant spike in demand for food.
Bar Harbor Food Pantry reported June 2024 was its busiest month in history, with more than 100 persons a day using the pantry.
If you already donate, please consider increasing your gift or volunteering.
Here is the Open Table donation page.
Times, Telegraph, others reprise Astor scandal after death of daughter-in-law
NORTHEAST HARBOR - The New York Times was among several newspapers which reported the recent death of Charlene Marshall, whose late husband Anthony Marshall was convicted of defrauding his mother, the late socialite Brooke Astor.
“The heart of the case was the presence of Mrs. Marshall. She was neither named in the suit nor charged with the crime, but in some ways she was the one on trial,” the Times wrote on Aug. 21.
Charlene Marshall, 79, died at her home here Aug. 6. She was the third wife of Anthony Marshall, the only son and heir of Brooke Astor.
The Telegraph of London wrote, “Marshall became a social outcast after being convicted in 2009 of taking advantage of his elderly mother’s dementia to swindle her out of millions of dollars.
“Anthony Marshall was in the dock, but it was Charlene, the former wife of an Episcopalian minister, who was painted by some elements of the popular press as the real villain of the piece.”
Astor’s grandson, Philip Marshall, sued his father in 2006, accusing him of elder abuse, and later during the criminal trial in 2009, lawyers and reporters painted Mrs. Marshall as a participant in the supposed abuse and as the primary drive behind Mr. Marshall’s actions.
“Anthony Marshall’s preoccupation for getting money for Charlene was actually motivation for the scheme to defraud,” Elizabeth Loewy, an assistant district attorney, said during the trial.
Philip Marshall became an activist against elderly abuse and made it his life’s work. On June 20, he was the principal speaker at an AARP forum in Bangor on legal justice for Maine’s elderly.
Philip Marshall said his grandmother’s sad circumstances spurred a greater recognition of elder abuse and how Mrs. Astor's life “exemplifies ways our last decades can be so purposeful and filled with philanthropy—an engaged love of humanity.”
Charlene and Anthony Marshall, a decorated Marine and a former ambassador to several countries, married after they both left failing marriages in the late 1980s. “That was a scandal in itself in the small town of Northeast Harbor, where the Astors had a summer home and where Mrs. Marshall’s former husband was the minister at Mrs. Astor’s church,” the Times wrote.
“The Marshalls met in Maine; though later news media accounts accused her of stalking him and seducing him into leaving his wife, the couple later said that both their marriages had been falling apart.”
In 1979 Brooke Astor turned to Anthony to manage her money. “But 10 years later he embarked on an affair with Charlene Gilbert, wife of the minister at St Mary’s- by-the-Sea in Northeast Harbor, where his mother worshipped during summers at her estate in Maine. They married in 1992,” the Telegraph reported.
“Her mother-in-law clearly found Charlene repulsive. She called her ‘Miss Piggy’ and ‘that bitch,’ complaining: ‘She has no class and no neck.’ In the 2009 court case her chauffeur recalled her saying: ‘I don’t want that woman to wear my jewellery because she doesn’t have the neck to wear my jewellery. Why did my son have to marry that woman? He can just sleep with her.”
The Telegraph went on:
“Anthony had a clear incentive to lay his hands on as much of his mother’s fortune as possible before one or other of them died. Although he was her heir, he could only inherit if he outlived her. Should he predecease her – by 2000 he had already suffered several heart attacks – the bulk of her fortune would go to charities.
“Charlene, in this case, was destined to receive nothing but a necklace, a pair of earrings and two second-hand fur coats made for her size 6 mother-in-law and therefore unlikely to stretch over her more generously proportioned figure.
“By the turn of the century Brooke Astor was suffering from Alzheimer’s, and as her condition deteriorated, suspicions arose about her son’s management of her affairs.
“In 2006 Phillip Marshall, a university professor and one of Anthony’s twin sons from his first marriage, filed a guardianship lawsuit, backed by Annette de la Renta (wife of the designer), David Rockefeller and former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, accusing his father of allowing Brooke Astor to live in squalor and mismanaging her millions.”
Brooke Astor died in August 2007 at age 105. Three months later Anthony Marshall and Francis Morrissey (for forgery) were formally arraigned to face a total of 18 indictments in the New York Supreme Court.
In October 2009 the jury convicted Marshall on 14 of 16 counts, including first-degree grand larceny, and in December he was sentenced to one to three years in prison. He began serving his sentence in June 2013, but was granted parole two months later because of his deteriorating health.
Charlene Marshall had a generally low-key profile in Northeast Harbor, according to press reports.
But she was among the summer residents who signed a petition to urge the Planning Board to reject an application for six units of affordable housing in her neighborhood. The matter is now on appeal in Maine’s supreme court after the board approved the housing.
FOOTNOTE: Some of the above spellings in the British Telegraph newspaper are accurate.
Thank you SWH Clinic for your part in my Healthcare for the past dozen years. I am disappointed that Northern Light is forcing a number of small clinics around Maine to close. Sometimes health care just needs to be convenient as well as profitable.