Her name is Katie Spencer White. She is the new executive director of the Boothbay Region Community Resource Council. She urges strangers to call her Katie.

Although she has lived in Boothbay since March and has yet to enjoy her first lobster roll, she is eager to know and help our community. The council, known by the acronym BRCRC, is the volunteer umbrella organization that brings neighbors together to help other neighbors. Whether it is to battle addiction, find winter fuel, provide needed school supplies and food for kids, or just to help us navigate the complexities of life, BRCRC has become a vital part of our peninsula.

“For instance,” Katie explained, “we all know there is a housing crisis. Many teachers and others who work here cannot afford to live on the peninsula. It is not an academic experience. I know, I am on the sharp end of that spear as my family is looking for a home.”

Katie came to us after a long career serving as a high school social studies teacher in California and Baltimore, Maryland. She spent 11 years living in the UK with her husband and children, where she became a solicitor and managed a child welfare agency.

After a while, she experienced a strong desire to come home to the USA. “I just wanted my children to breathe the air in America.”

A mutual love of the outdoors and a chance to live not far from her elderly parents led her to Charlottesville, Virginia where the couple enjoyed the hills and valleys of the Blue Ridge mountains. She soon became active in the community, joined Habitat for Humanity,  becoming its chief partnership officer, and she operated a freelance writing and internet startup. Along the way, she was involved in a series of political and nonpolitical social justice movements.

That is what she and her husband, Lee, were doing on Aug. 11, 2017, when they attended an interdenominational service at St Paul’s Episcopal Church, a stately structure located just across the street from the iconic rotunda of the University of Virginia. Known for its veneration of its most famous resident, Thomas Jefferson, the community plunged into turmoil after a black teenager asked town officials to remove two statues of Confederate generals, Robert E. Lee and Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson. She saw the statues as symbols of racial oppression. Others saw it as an attack on Southern history and culture.

The community discussion turned ugly when a group of white supremacists obtained a permit to hold a rally entitled “Unite the White.”  On the evening before the rally, Katie and her husband joined with others to pray for peace and justice. Inside, the church speakers denounced racism. Outside, hundreds of the white supremacists, many carrying flaming Tiki torches, gathered in a nearby park and began to march through the winding university pathways.

Chanting racial and ethnic slogans, including some echoing Nazi brownshirts of the 1930s, the angry crowd circled the iconic statue of Jefferson located just down the hill from St. Paul’s and walked into a group of students and counter protesters.

“As we got ready to leave the service, someone said the police wanted us to sit down,” Katie said. “Something was happening at the University.”

Our TV sets captured images of the next chapter, a riot, as angry white supremacists clashed with students and counter protesters. It was beyond ugly. After a while, police told church leaders it was OK to leave (in pairs) by the side door. The next day, in a park known as Emancipation, the supremacists again battled with their critics in a clash that moved to the city streets.

Just down the street from the park, as hundreds of anti-white supremacists gathered in a narrow street chanting slogans, a grey car roared down, slammed into the crowd, killed one woman and injured 19 others. Katie and Lee were in that crowd and escaped injury, but she said the emotions of that incident left them “emotionally raw.” It triggered a time of family reflection.

Later, when a glance at an internet job search site showed an opening at BRCRC, she thought it didn’t hurt to apply. “I sent an email to an organization I never heard of. It was like a message in a bottle.”

She flew up in January and said the community's  spirit called out to her. And, it offered her a change, a chance to begin, once again.

In large organizations, she found that bureaucracy seemed to get in the way of the real work. She said BRCRC was not only smaller, but it featured a “can do” spirit and a sense of mission that said:  “Let’s just roll up our sleeves and do the work.”

It was just what she was looking for, and that is not a bad way to begin a new life.