It was great to hear from Faye Morton at Brunswick Bay in Maine this week. Faye wrote to tell everyone in the network about the statewide gathering all five Maine ROCs had — a gathering that was light on work and business and heavy on fun. Here’s what she had to say:
Hi Cooperative Families of USA!!!!!!
My name is Fayette Morton and I am the secretary of RONA and Brunswick Bay Mobile Home Co-operative in Brunswick, Maine.
RONA stands for Resident Owned Neighborhood Association of Maine, and our goals are to be able to do bulk buying for the ROCs in Maine from heating oil to solar lights and everything in between. The association was just started in March of 2015 by Jessica Pooley, so we are a fairly new association working hard together to succeed in helping our ROC families. The board consists of Jessica Pooley (Director), David Nadeau (Financials), Dawn Mitchell (President), Linda Sprague (Treasurer) and I.
RONA just had their first-ever summer bash at Broken Acres in Jefferson, Maine. There were five ROCs represented plus their families. We had colored T-shirts for each co-op: RONA board wore tie dye, Medomak pink, Pemaquid purple, Wardtown green, Brunswick medium blue and Deer Ridge red. There were crafts and games such as a raw egg relay, which Medomak of Waldoboro won; Tug of War which Brunswick Bay of Brunswick won; Trivia Crack which Pemaquid Villas of Pemaquid won; Wardtown showed great sportsmanship for all these games and lastly Family Feud and best percentage of members attending which Deer Ridge of Augusta won plus they won the grant for $250 to do what they wanted for their ROC. The BBQ consisted of drinks, potato salad, macaroni salad, hot dogs, hamburgers and dessert.
We had two bands, one modern country called American Ride and Rick Graham and Rachel Blackerby who sang classic rock like Janis Joplin.
We had three great guest speakers: Paul Bradley of ROC USA, Andy Danforth of CDI and Bill Floyd of Genesis Community Loan Fund.
This event lasted all weekend if you wanted to stay and set up camp. At night, sitting around the campfire shooting the breeze with each other saying what a great time we’re all having. It is nice to get together for fun and not all business. We are looking forward to next year and it will be bigger and better.
Sincerely,
Fayette Morton
BBMHC & RONA Secretary
Interested in reaching out to Faye to learn more about the planning that went into the event? Make her one of your connections by looking her up with the Member Search tool on the left hand side of the screen.
Do you have any news form your ROCs? We’d love to share it. Just connect with Mike Bullard and message him, or send email to contact_us@rocusa.org.