All roads lead back to Maine for Wiscasset resident E.J. Dupont, the new Maine State Ferry Service director.

After 32 years of military and diplomatic service across the globe, Dupont is settling in as head of the ferry service while resettling in his childhood state.

The retired colonel spent the last half of his military career managing military operations between the U.S. and foreign governments, but he said the ferry service has posed new, interesting challenges of its own.

“It’s a big undertaking, but it’s fascinating,” he said.

Dupont’s family settled at the now-decommissioned Naval Air Station in Brunswick when he was 6 years old. His family was only supposed to be stationed there for a few years, he said, but after his father died in a plane crash while serving in the Navy, Dupont stayed in Maine until graduating from Mt. Ararat High School in Topsham.

After graduating from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, Dupont joined the Army as an intelligence officer. What was supposed to be a four-year stint in the military ended up being a 32-year career, he said.

Rising to the rank of colonel, Dupont became the point of contact for U.S. military activities in countries like Uganda, Liberia, and Belgium as a senior defense official for the U.S. Department of Defense and Defense Intelligence Agency.

The Army requires officers to retire if they have not been promoted after a rank-dependent period, Dupont said, but he enjoyed his job so much that he requested a three-year extension to continue serving. After that three-year period ended in August 2024, Dupont and his wife, Catie, who is from Brunswick, decided it was time to return to their roots.

“We both knew we wanted to come back to Maine,” Dupont said. “We wanted to be near the water.”

In what he said was an “emotional buy,” the couple stumbled upon an old ship captain’s house near the Sheepscot River and promptly decided to purchase the Wiscasset property.

“I spent a little time enjoying my leave … doing some work on the house … and then started looking for the next opportunity,” he said.

He said leading the state’s ferry service seemed like an interesting challenge to tackle.

Even though he didn’t work directly in the military’s more water-oriented branches, Dupont said he helped rebuild Liberia National Coast Guard “from scratch” with U.S. aid and worked with African countries’ naval forces and coast guards. He said he found those brushes with maritime activity “pretty fascinating.”

“(Maine Department of Transportation) definitely didn’t hire me for my maritime experience,” Dupont said, but his leadership, problem solving, and diplomacy skills have been assets in his new role.

The Maine State Ferry Service oversees routes to the islands of Vinalhaven, North Haven, Matinicus, Swans Island, Frenchboro, and Islesboro. The service manages ticketing and reports interruptions.

Since starting at the ferry service on July 14, Dupont said no day on the job has looked the same. From testing out ferry routes to communicating with ferry service workers at every level, he said he’s enjoyed learning about what keeps the ferry service running.

“There’s good days and bad days, but it’s always interesting,” he said.

In his almost two months as director, he said his top priorities have been safety, reliability, and communication. As he speaks with the public, personnel, and the service’s advisory board, he said he wants to maintain strong relationships and open dialogue across the board.

“It’s always better to over communicate than under communicate,” he said.

Improving reliability for the ferry service is also top of mind, Dupont said. Even though many ferry routes are dependable more than 90% of the time, he said he wants to reduce the number of unexpected changes as much as possible.

“Any single one of those canceled trips, somebody was coming to or from a medical appointment, from school, or a job … so every single one of those was missed opportunities and frustration,” he said.

The day-to-day operations at the ferry service look different from foreign diplomacy, but Dupont said Maine’s island inhabitants are counting on the ferry service as a running and reliable form of transportation – a responsibility he doesn’t take lightly.

“It’s sort of cliche … to say the ferries are their lifeline or their bridge, but it’s true,” he said. “We want to support that as best we can.”

 This article appears through a content-sharing agreement with the Lincoln County News.