A few years ago – before the pandemic stopped church suppers — I discovered my husband and I were sitting beside a classmate and his wife at a locally renowned fish chowder supper at the Congregational Church in Searsport, ME. Turned out Elwyn Wooster and I had a lot in common — and not just as members of the Class of ’65.
Elwyn owns a rock and gem shop on Verona Island, the island in the Penobscot River over which Route 1 runs from the town of Prospect to the town of Bucksport on the other side, and then to points southeast, including Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. I grew up with a father who was a rockhound.
As the oldest of three children, I had the questionable honor of leading the five of us on various vacation rock hunting expeditions, one of which had us exploring the marshy shore of Cape Rosier, looking for rhodochrosite, a beautiful pink mineral. Why I’ll never forget that outing: By the time we turned around to head back to the car, the tide had crept in. As leader, I got to find the wet spots in the marshy grass (by stepping in them) so the rest of the family could avoid them. I swore one day I was going to write a book about our adventures, titled Rocks in the Head.
I’d actually been in Elwyn’s Unique Rock Shop some years earlier in an effort to identify some semiprecious gemstones given to me, but we never made the UMaine connection. We had a lot to talk about at that church supper.
Last summer, Elwyn was interviewed for a feature story in the Ellsworth American, a weekly paper that serves Hancock County. For those of you who may not remember, you pass through Ellsworth on the way down Route 3 to Mount Desert Island and Acadia.
Elwyn’s shop houses an extensive collection of rocks, gems and minerals — about 800 varieties in all, including a collection of Maine specimens that fill an entire dedicated room. His father started the shop in 2000, and Elwyn took it over three years later.
Elwyn is also a member of the Penobscot Mineral and Lapidary Club in Milford, ME. Its members, from all over Maine, gather for rock talks and mining field trips.
I had to laugh when I read the Ellsworth American’s story – it said Elwyn was passionate about rocks in his youth and would come home from the beach with pounds of them, his favorite being — you guessed it — rhodochrosite. I’m envious; we never found any.
The Unique Rock Shop at 135 U.S. Highway 1 draws repeat customers from all over the country. Elwyn said he tries to carry unique rocks, and he keeps his inventory fresh (he added about 2,200 pounds of new rocks in 2023). “But a lot of people think I’m the most unique thing here,” he told the Ellsworth American.
My work, usually done remotely, took me to Maine for several weeks last summer as we sadly closed down Maine’s oldest weekly newspaper, the 195-year-old Republican Journal, based in Belfast, in Waldo County, together with three Knox County weeklies. The following week we launched a new regional weekly, the Midcoast Villager. It’s a different approach to a newspaper — in both design and the way we cover the people and events of two coastal counties — and has been well-received, with subscriptions growing for both the paper and the website, midcoastvillager.com. Wish us luck!
Although I’m writing this in 2024, you are reading it in 2025 — the 60th anniversary of our graduation from the University of Maine. Hope to see you at the Reunion, and, meanwhile, please let me hear from you!
Until next time.