Dr. Nirav Shah asks, "What Do We Owe Each Other?"
MDI YMCA Benefit Celebrates Community, Collaboration, and Belonging
BAR HARBOR—At the second annual MDI YMCA benefit, held Thursday at the Bar Harbor Club, Dr. Nirav Shah posed a simple but powerful question to the crowd: “What do we owe each other?”
For Dr. Shah, the answer lies in third spaces like the Y: places not quite home, not quite school, but vital to learning, growing, and feeling like you belong.
Dr. Shaw, the former director of the Maine Center for Disease Control (CDC), told the crowd gathered at the Bar Harbor Club tables that he was excited and grateful to be home in Maine for good after stepping down from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in February.
“I want to talk about belonging and finding a place, a space, where people can be themselves and be at home,” Dr. Shah told the crowd of over 250 during his speech and prior to answering questions.
Fitting in growing up was hard for him, particularly because he wasn’t athletic. It was a struggle, he said.
“The change was when I started going to the YMCA. That’s where I learned how to shoot a basketball the right way. That’s where I learned how to lift weights,” Dr. Shah said.
He learned the rules for sports at the Y. It was a space that he was in safe in, a space where he could learn and develop and become.
“That’s what the YMCA in Bar Harbor does. It’s not home. It’s not school. It’s a third space,” Dr. Shah said.
Dr. Shah then went further into what he thinks Maine needs and what the Y provides.
Why is it that in a state like Maine, he asked, can people still struggle to find food?
When community is at the core of so much, Dr. Shah asked those attending, why are people still lonely?
How can it be that kids fall behind because they can’t afford to go to camp, he asked.
As the cost of living rises, he said, it becomes harder to get ahead and for many in the state, Dr. Shah said, it isn’t about getting ahead; it’s about just getting by.
In Maine, the dream might be alive, “but honestly I’m more worried about the Maine dreamer” and “the families out there that are still struggling even though there is so much wealth around us,” Dr. Shah said.
Dr. Shah said of the Y and community agencies like it. “What they provide isn’t food or healthcare or a safe place for kids to go. What they provide is dignity,”
And they provide that dignity particularly for those who can’t afford it. That, he said, is what will keep the state of Maine strong.
One question, he says, gets to the heart of it is “what do we owe each other.”
“It’s up to us to make sure that the social fabric doesn’t fray any further,” Dr. Shah said.
There is hope in your own community, Dr. Shah said. That hope is through organizations in the Y.
Dr. Shah referenced the island’s high vaccine rate and low mortality rate during COVID, which was also referenced by Mount Desert Island Hospital CEO Christina Maguire who received the YMCA’s Community Advocate Award and former MDIH CEO Arthur Blank, who presented Maguire with that award.
“Working with Chrissi, I had the opportunity up close (to witness) her passionate commitment to both supporting the needs to our community and access to rural healthcare,” Blank said.
Blank spoke to Maguire’s business and volunteer experience, emphasizing that during the COVID pandemic, she collaborated with businesses, the scientific community, and other segments of the local community to create a pilot program for the state to fund a free COVID testing program to keep high-risk employees tested and safe. She also worked with the Y to provide childcare during the pandemic.
How she uses her collaborative skills to be most impactful on the MDI community is laudatory, Blank said.
“Advocacy is about championing the needs of others,” Maguire said.
Maguire said she accepted the award on behalf of MDI Hospital and recognized last year’s recipient, Jill Goldthwait.
“She sets a high bar,” Maguire said.
Collaboration, Maguire, Dr. Shah, and Blank all said, and taking care of each other, were part of the reasons why the island fared so well during the COVID epidemic.
Maguire said during COVID, she worked with Dr. Shah. “I wanted to keep this community healthy and vibrant and economically sustainable, and we came up with amazing ideas and let me tell you what. He said, ‘How are you doing it? The lowest positivity rate in the state of Maine and parts of the nation and the highest vaccination rate in the state.’ That’s because this community comes together in difficult times and we partner. And that hard work is what advocacy is all about.”
Keating Pepper received the Triangle Award after a rousing introduction from past CEO Lenny DeMuro. Earl Brechlin ran the paddle raise to support the Y.
YMCA’S HISTORY OF CHANGE
There are 2,650 YMCAs in the United States serving 10,000 communities and 4 million children, and 7 million adults. Across the country there are 233,000 people who volunteer for the YMCA.
When the Young Men’s Christian Association began in London in 1844 it helped make physical exercise classes and summer camps popular. It is no longer focused on young men or Christians, but it is still focused on communities.
The MDI YMCA’s message on Thursday night was no different.
The Y is meant to be for the community, Dr. Shah said.
The national Y calls itself a community-strengthening organization. That was mentioned at the benefit as well, by YMCA Board President Steve Gurin and DeMuro who presented Keating Pepper with his award.
“I’m here to introduce the winner, the lifetime achievement award, the Clint Eastwood of Mount Desert Island,” DeMuro said, teasing the entire Pepper family throughout his speech as he presented Keating “Frosty” Pepper with his award.
“This dinner is about scholarship and community,” Pepper said before telling a story of how he was sitting at the Y after swimming. “This young man sits down next to me. I always talk to everyone and the kids make fun of me.”
Pepper asked the boy how his day was.
“It was great,” the boy said, “but I’m a guest.”
Pepper said, “We have scholarships and you could become a member, but he looks at me and says, ‘But I really want to go to summer camp.’ And I’m sitting here thinking, ‘Well, I can make that happen.’”
He didn’t know the boy’s last name, but called the director, who figured it all out.
“If anything stands in the way, make sure this boy comes to summer camp,” Pepper told the director at the time.
It turned out that the boy had two younger brothers—nine and seven. It was the help of scholarships, too, that helped those boys to go to summer camp, Pepper said.
“They really lived the Y experience there,” Pepper said, they were all in on everything during that camp—all the activities, all the moments.
The YMCA often has to tell its stories in numbers—how many served, how many scholarships given out, how many people have entered its doors, learned there, grown there. But the story of the YMCA and its needs and its impact isn’t truly just in those numbers. It’s in the summers like those three boys had, it’s in the collaborations like what happened during COVID. It’s in Dr. Shah finally getting some skills on the court. It’s in people seeing each other, knowing each other’s names, and being a little less lonely.
The YMCA builds community by being that third space and that third space is populated by people who put their whole heart and humor and work into it. People like DeMuro and its Director Ann Tikkanen and her staff and board and volunteers. It’s the kids who go to the YMCA, who play and learn and compete and grow and learn how empathy in action actually works. One scholarship at a time.
One meeting at a time.
One hug at a time.
One “how are you doing” at a time, and one fundraiser at a time.
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Acadia Brochures of Maine.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
The MDI YMCA’s website.
Giving opportunities for the Y.
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