Will Corbett

Will Corbett has lived in Saxtons River for the better part of his adult life, though he grew up in Newark, New Jersey. At age 18, in 1968, he was a student at Essex Catholic High School. “Growing up with a single mom and an older brother, I found history was my thing in High School. I grew up reading about war heroes and Davy Crockett and all those myths. Then in 1968, I graduated from high school and that’s when reality intruded into my life and that of my whole generation.

“Bobby Kennedy was assassinated June 5,1968, days before I graduated from high school. Two months later in Chicago at The Democratic National Convention, anti-war protesters demonstrating against escalation in the Vietnam War were accosted by thousands of Mayor Daley’s police force and thousands of National Guardsmen. The Civil Rights Movement was all around me. Buildings were burned in Newark. Rascism and Civil rights demonstrations were everywhere around me as were demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. The myths I had read as a boy went up in smoke.**

‘In September, 1968, I enrolled at Essex College in Newark and two months later Richard Nixon was elected as the death toll was rising in Viet Nam. I was part of the anti-war demonstrations in Newark. Or I would take the train from downtown Newark into New York City. I’d walk down to Washington Square to join hundreds of students from NYU in demonstrations. (All this was SO NOT Newark.) But many of us would then go to Filmore East to listen to The Grateful Dead., then me back to Essex College to study history.

“In 1969, I transferred to The University of Scranton in Pennsylvania where my brother had gone. The counterculture continued to draw me, but by 1972 things began to change for me: the world was in turmoil. In 1972 Washington International College offered study-abroad programs. I took a six-week course in London. I visited Salisbury Cathedral, took the train to France and saw a bit of Europe.

“I returned to the US where I heard about an internship at The Sheriden School near The National Cathedral in Washington, DC. I became an assistant in their Wilderness Training program for 6^th – 8^th graders. I guess that’s where my intertest in environmental education surfaced. In the summer of 1976 my brother, Lou, who was living in a ramshackle place in Athens, VT invited me to come stay with him for awhile. I did. Soonafter, I heard that a day-camp in Saxton’s River was looking for help. I got the job

“From 1976 to 1979 I worked for the Fall Mountain YMCA and later ran a youth program for 7^th to 12^th graders for The Hooper Institute in Walpole, NH. One Earth Day we hiked from Hooper Institute down to the center of Walpole Village, picking up trash along the sides of the road. A week or so later we all climbed Mt. Monadnock picking up trash as we went up and came back down. We all got a LOT of satisfaction doing that, so much so that I’m still doing that today, 45 years on.

“In 1979 I was hired by Tony Kulik to a federally funded Rural Community Assistance Program. I became an advocate for low-income elderly Windham and Windsor County men and women. I worked with The Farmer’s Home Administration helping homeowners. I worked with The Rural Assistance Program for a year and then for SEVCA (Southeast Vermont Community Action) from 1979 to 1984 because I knew the federal regulations. In the end, federal, state and local support for these organizations began to dwindle. In 1986, I found myself out of work.

“I got odd jobs here and there and worked for Gordon Hayward for two years on his garden installation crew. Then I was a caretaker and took odd jobs while living on Davidson Hill in Saxtons River. I worked for Harlow’s Farm, was a receiving clerk at SONNAX, as an assistant for David Mann, surveyor.

“In June 1990 I took a job as a member of the road crew for The Town of Westminster, staying for just over thirteen years. In 2013, I was eligible for a modest pension. In combination with Social Security, I’m able to sustain my life living in a home in Saxton’s River that my brother left me.

“I‘m also a side-of-the-road one-man-volunteer clean-up crew. I walk the three miles from Saxtons River to Cambridgeport or north about four miles from town out to the Fisher Farm, in both cases cleaning up refuse from one side of the road going out and the other side coming home. Once I even found a friend’s lost credit card!”