The other day Shannon Gilmore, executive director of Lincoln County Historical Association, emailed saying Kevin Johnson, the photo archivist at Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport wanted to get in touch with me about an article I’d written on Wiscasset’s marine worm industry. I often get inquiries like this and am always willing to share what knowledge I might have. So I sent an email off to Kevin offering my help. Much to my surprise, I received five really interesting digital images Kevin said were taken by Kosti Ruohomaa. I recognized that name but couldn’t connect the dots. Then it dawned me this was Kosti Ruohomaa who had taken the photographs appearing in the book “Night Train at Wiscasset Station.”

More emails followed, Kevin explaining he and his associates at Penobscot Marine Museum had spent the past several yearsdigitizing Kosti Ruohomaa’s vast collection of Maine photographs. This involved about 45,000 images taken from the early 1940s to 1961. The pictures he sent me, which I've included here with Kevin’s permission, document Wiscasset’s worm digging industry. I recognized the one showing the pickup truck and car, which had been taken outside of Frank Hammond’s home at the upper end of Water Street. For over 40 years Frank operated a bait business in his basement where he bought blood and sandworms from the diggers. Wiscasseters Greg and Diane Hammond recognized the picture of the man bending over the seaweed as Frank himself. The pictures were taken by Kosti Ruohomaa in 1958, but Kevin couldn't say for certain if they'd ever been published. 

My favorite is the one of the three worm diggers, their backs to the camera, rakes tucked in their belts trugging from the mudflats. Frank Hammond’s two-story home can be seen in the background facing the river. To the left is the former railroad shed. Kevin was pretty pleased I knew where the pictures had been taken, and I was grateful to him and Penobscot Marine Museum in allowing me to share these Kosti’s images with you.

Frank, who has long since gone to meet his maker, began by selling bloodworms to bait and tackle shops in the 1940s. A prized bait for saltwater fishermen Frank bought his stock from worm diggers, aka, “wormers” who worked along the Midcoast mudflats at low tide. When they finished their day’s harvest, they’d sort and count their worms in Frank’s dimly lit, damp basement after which Frank would pay them. When bloodworms became scarce, the catch included sandworms. In the early 1980s, I’d interviewed Frank several times for the Wiscasset and Boothbay newspapers. He often kept his cellar door open so local anglers could buy a package or two of worms with customers paying on the honors system.

Returning to Kevin Johnson and his project. It began, he told me, in 2016-17. He was assisting writer Deanna Bonner-Gantor with the biography she was writing on Kosti Ruohomaa. Kosti, as he’s better remembered, began his photography career in the early 1940s after he joined Black Star, a photography agency based in Manhattan, New York. “I wrote to see if we could have Kosti Ruohomaa’s archive for the museum and much to my surprise they (Black Star) said yes." Shortly thereafter Kevin was on his way to Fort Lee, New Jersey where the agency’s archives are stored.

Kosti Ruohomaa, born 1913 at Quincy, Massachusetts was the only child of Finnish immigrants. His family moved to Rockland in 1926 and settled on a blueberry farm overlooking Penobscot Bay. Farm life didn’t suit young Kosti who preferred a more creative outlet. Leaving home to seek his fortune he went to art school in Boston, which led to a position working on the West Coast as an illustrator for Walt Disney Studios. Kosti soon discovered photography to be more to his liking. He moved back east to New York City and got a job with Black Star as a photojournalist. He must have had a knack for picture taking because his first assignment landed on the cover of LIFE magazine. As his career progressed his work appeared in LOOK magazine, National Geographic, Maine Coast Fisherman, National Fisherman and Down East magazine.His Maine photographs include pictures of everyday people from all walks of life – fishermen, farmers, loggers, teachers, preachers, kids at school, kids at play, festivals, parades, landscapes, animals – you name it he photographed it. Sadly he died much too young at age 47 from a stroke in 1961.“Night Train at Wiscasset Station” published posthumously in 1977 features a number of his black & white images and a foreword by Maine artist and Kosti's close friend Andrew Wyeth.

Kevin told me Kosti used three different cameras to take pictures, a 35mm Leica, a Rolliflex Medium Format and Wista 4" x 5." “The Rolli was his camera of choice,” he said. Now that most of the pictures have been digitized the images will become a part of Penobscot Maritime Museum’s permanent collection. “We have had two exhibits so far, Kosti Comes Home and Kosti: The Maine Assignments that have been very well received. We hope to do a bigger photo book now that most of his work has been digitized,” Kevin added.  A sampling of Kosti’s work can be enjoyed on the museum’s website and includes a photograph of Wiscasset former schooners, the Hesper and Luther Little.

In the 1970s, when I was training to become a photojournalist one of my professors told me, “a good photograph was like a well composed piece of music.” Well, take it from me Kosti’s photographs really sing. Maybe after seeing some of them you’ll agree. To do so, log on to https://penobscotmarinemuseum.org/kosti/

Thank you to Kevin Johnson for allowing me to share with my readers several of these priceless images of Wiscasset's past. 

Phil Di Vece earned a B.A. in journalism studies from Colorado State University and an M.A. in journalism at the University of South Florida. He is the author of three Wiscasset books and is a frequent news contributor to the Boothbay Register/Wiscasset Newspaper. He resides in Wiscasset and be contacted at news@wiscassetnewspaper.com