Jeanette Peters of Fort Fairfield and Dana Hews of Washburn will represent the Northern Region as the newest inductees into the Maine Sports Legends Hall of Honors. Emery Plourde of Caribou and William Haskell of Presque Isle will be inducted posthumously at the Oct. 10 ceremony, to be held at the Alfond Youth Center in Waterville.
The honor is presented to men and women for their extraordinary commitment and work behind the scenes, both academically and athletically, with students in Maine.
Jeanette Peters
Jeanette Peters was born in Island Falls, Maine and grew up on a farm. Peters is a long-time educator, department head and coach. She attended Ricker Classical Institute in Houlton and played on the volleyball team for Ricker College at the time. She then attended Aroostook State Teacher’s College, graduating in 1966 with bachelor’s degree in Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance.
Because the college did not offer women’s varsity sports at that time, she played on all intramural sports and received the Gold Key, which was the highest award at the time for intramurals.
In 1966, Jeanette started teaching physical education at Caribou Middle School. She also coached cheerleading and helped with the Caribou High School track and field team until 1968.
She moved to Virginia after her husband had been drafted and was attending Officer’s Candidate School there. They moved again to Baltimore City and she taught physical education and coached track at an inter-city high school.
From there she moved back to Caribou to teach at the middle school while her husband served in Vietnam. After a short stay in Bangor, Peters went to work teaching physical education at Fort Fairfield High School in 1971.
“Jeanette worked tirelessly as a physical education and health teacher and as a coach. She instituted a lifetime sports program at the school many years before it became the ‘fashionable’ thing to do. She gave the students many choices of activities for class, but they also learned to play and love sports. Many of them are still involved with their learned activity today,” said one of her teaching colleagues, Darrylin Keenan. “Jeanette and her husband worked long hours with student athletes and never looked to be patted on the back or recognized. She was a true behind-the-scenes person, helping youth to succeed. Having these athletes succeed and gain self-esteem was all the reward Jeanette needed.”
In her teaching years at Fort Fairfield she developed a 30-foot climbing wall and built a sand volleyball court, a golf driving range and a putting green.
“One of my greatest accomplishments that I will always remember,” Peters said, “was raising money to buy an adaptive bicycle for a handicapped child.” Her teams always helped serve Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner to seniors in the town.
Peters’ field hockey team was Eastern Maine champions and runners-up in Class C. Her softball teams didn’t miss qualifying for the playoffs and were Eastern Maine champions in 1988 in Class C and runners up in Class D in 2002. Her girls basketball team was Class B Eastern Maine runners-up in 1983. She also coached volleyball, boys and girls soccer and middle school cross-country skiing. Her softball coaching career ended in 1993.
“She was fiercely competitive and was an outstanding motivator, yet modeled outstanding sportsmanship to her players,” said Lynwood McHatten, a long-time basketball official. “I always wanted to be the very best I could be when I worked one of the games she was coaching because of the respect she conveyed toward me and some of my peers.”
Jeanette received SAD 20 teacher of the year in 1996 and 2003. She was inducted into UMPI Athletic Hall of Fame in 1995. In 2003, she was named Maine’s Secondary Health and Physical Education teacher of the year.
“She is the most generous, unselfish and hard-working woman I know with students and adults alike,” Keenan said.
Peters and her husband, Ken, along with their two dogs and two cats reside in Fort Fairfield.
Emery Plourde
Emery “Flash” Plourde, born in Caribou in 1920, was an outstanding athlete in high school and in the 1930s and 1940s, where he set many records both as a high school student at Caribou and as a collegian in New Jersey.
He also served as the official starter at track and cross country meets at Caribou High School along with many area road races for 40 years.
“Over all of his 40 years starting meets he encouraged hundreds of youth to excel in the sport of running, he had a real passion for running and wanted the youth in northern Maine to experience this athletic sport,” said Dwight Hunter, who served as athletic director at CHS during those years.
In 1938, his Vikings won the state cross country championship. Plourde took individual honors and came within 3/10ths of a second from setting the course record, covering the 2.5-mile route in 13:03.25. In 1939, Plourde was again first in the state cross country meet and also placed second at the New Englands, which took place in Boston.
In the spring of 1940, he won both the mile and 880 in the state outdoor track meet, setting records in both events. That year he was presented with a special award by the Caribou Rotary Club for setting seven county and state records. His record time of 4:30.4 mile in the mile was an Aroostook County standard for more than 40 years.
Plourde also won the New Jersey Schoolboy Cross Country Championships held at Seton Hall and the mile run at the National Schoolboy Indoor Track Championships at Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1941. In the fall of that year, he was second in the National Prep School Cross Country Championships held at Elizabeth Park, N.J.
Emery attended Seton Hall University in New Jersey, one of the many schools that offered him an athletic scholarship. In 1942 he was a member of the school’s two-mile relay team which took third at the prestigious Penn Relays. He was also a national runner-up in cross country that year.
In the summer of 1942 he entered the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. After the war, he married and raised a family of six children.
Plourde was inducted into the Maine Sports Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Maine Runners Hall of Fame in 1990.
Caribou High School will always remember Plourde as their “hometown hero” and the person who took the interest and time to fire the starting gun at their meets and telling kids along the way what good runners they were. He officiated his final track meet in the spring of 2000 at Caribou High School.
Plourde’s pride and joy was always his family. He was a loving husband and devoted father. Plourde died in 2008 and was pre-deceased by Ruth, his wife of 59 years.
Dana Hews
Dana Hews was born on May 1, 1930 in Ashland and grew up as the only son on a potato farm. “Dana is the epitome of the term ‘work ethic’ and ‘principled’ – qualities he inspired in many of the students, athletes and teachers that he worked with,” said Dave Maxcy, a friend and teaching and coaching colleague. Maxcy went on to say, “even now as he is involved in the operation at Cavendish Farms during the planting and harvest season, he still shows the same qualities.”
Hews is a long-time educator, coach, guidance counselor, athletic director, principal and basketball official. During his high school years, he played baseball and participated in winter sports at Ashland High School. At Springfield College, where he was a physical education student, he played soccer, baseball and was on the gymnastics team. Also at Springfield as a student he served as the coach of a small college basketball team.
After college, Hews was a teacher and coach for several years at Ashland High School. In 1958 he moved to Presque Isle High School where he organized the physical education and health programs for all grades. He coached basketball at Presque Isle High School and had a successful career, leading the team to the Eastern Maine championship in 1961. Dana was also instrumental in introducing and establishing soccer as a sport in Aroostook County high schools. His career continued as a guidance counselor and principal at several central Aroostook County high schools.
Hews was known as an outstanding basketball official. “I refereed many years with Dana and his integrity stands out in my mind. He was older than I, but always maintained a high level of physical preparedness, giving the same outstanding effort for every game,” said Roger Shaw, who served with Hews on the local officiating board. “He treated the athletes and coaches with ultimate respect. He has a wonderful sense of humor and was a lot of fun to work with, always the same regardless of the situation or the people involved.”
Hews has also established an outstanding record of service in community affairs. He has served as a Little League baseball coach, was involved in church activities as a teacher and lay minister, served on the SAD 45 school board for nine years, was director of the Washburn Health Center for 23 years, was a member of the U.S. Army Active Reserve and continues to farm.
“Dana Hews is a gentleman and a gentle man, always looking out for the well-being of others,” Shaw added.
Hews and his wife, Virginia, are parents of seven children: Dana Scott Hews, Donna Sagner, Leigh Worley, Bonnie McLaughlin, Brian Hews, Sue Chasse, and Meredith Messer, many of whom have been involved in coaching.
(The late William Haskell, a longtime recreation director in Presque Isle, is the fourth inductee representing the northern region.)
