By Ward Peck

Editor

    Residents and their guests gathered last week for a
dinner celebrating a special birthday at the Mill Cove Apartments
building at the corner of Broadway and Cottage Road. The building
itself is about to turn 25.

    The building officially opened to residents on March
1, 1982. Now operated as subsidized public housing, the building has
seen many residents come and go over the past two-and-a-half decades,
but from the beginning the building has fostered a strong sense of
community that has endured, according to long-time residents.

    It was those residents– the pioneers– who served as
the guests of honor at the dinner, which was attended by more than 40
people in the second floor Joseph Greeley community room.

    The pioneers are the seven remaining original
tenants who have been there since the building opened it’s doors–Edythe
O’Keefe, Hazel Dalfonso, Louise and William Callahan, Arlene Fullerton,
Lance Gridley and Florence “Flossie” Morridge.

    The seven have seen bridges come and go and
supermarkets remodeled again and again. They have done their part to
instill that sense of community that the more recent residents now
enjoy– buying furniture for community rooms and pots, pans, dishes and
silverware for the common kitchen enabling them to put on dinners such
as the one celebrating the most recent milestone. They have produced
plays and contributed to documentaries. Lance saw the need for a
handrail outside the building and made sure it was installed– a
necessity in the slippery winter months.

    “I love it just as much as I did the day I moved
in,” Flossie who is in her 90’s said in her sixth-floor apartment with
a view of Portland Harbor and the Portland skyline, while a small tube
in her throat exhaled rhythmically. “I have no intention of leaving for
a long time.”

    Flossie, who lived on B Street with her sister and
mother watched the building as it was constructed and wondered.

    “I would look up and wonder what floor I would be
on,” she said. “When we got the word we were going to move in, we were
asked what our one wish was. Mine was to be on the waterside and I got
it. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I can hardly stand going
to the store I love the view so much.”

    In her twenty-five years she has seen friends pass
and remembers fondly her best friend, Margaret Cullen. Together
Margaret and Flossie started a building association and soon dreamed up
ways to raise funds for the building.

    After many dinners, lunches and beano tournaments
the association had enough money to put on a theatrical production.
Their first production was a “mock wedding” with Flossie- then in her
80’s playing a pregnant secretary (the father was marrying someone
else). The show was such a hit it was replayed again and again on South
Portland’s community television. Next came a mock trial spoofing a
controversial building policy that threatened to expel any resident
caught feeding pigeons.

    “It’s such a nice place to live. We’re like one big family,” Flossie said.