Ogunquit News
Isabel Lewando: Ogunquit Citizen of the Year
By C. Ayn Douglass
Isabel Lewando, Ogunquit's Citizen of the Year, has been a volunteer docent or educator at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art since 1991. She is pictured standing next to one of her favorite paintings, "Perkins Cove from Coe House" by Henry Strater. Lewando knew Strater and was one of his models during the formative years of the arts movement in Ogunquit.
Photo by C. Ayn Douglass
OGUNQUIT - The Ogunquit community, under the auspices of the Ogunquit Chamber of Commerce, honored Isabel Lewando as Citizen of the Year at the chamber's annual meeting held Thursday, Oct. 26, at The Cliff House on Shore Road.
While Lewando is technically "from away," her participation in the arts community and involvement in all things environmental, has made her a vibrant and recognizable presence in the small seaside village of Ogunquit.
Approximately 100 people attended the dinner meeting to hear chamber member Carla Carriere of Genesis Day Spa praise Lewando's contributions to the community.
Beginning as a life model at the Ogunquit School of Painting and Sculpture in 1948, "it didn't take long for her to become hooked on a beautiful place by the sea … full of interesting people who are environmentally-aware."
Isabel came to New York when she was a child, migrating from Germany with her parents on a steamship across the Atlantic Ocean before Hitler came to power. After graduating from high school at age 16, she took classes at a vocational school for beauty culture and worked in beauty salons and as a model at Syracuse University until she was 20 years old. Shortly after that, she came to Ogunquit for the first time and spent four summers here modeling at the art school and another six as a breakfast cook at The Island House, a bed and breakfast inn. She married artist Roy Lewando in Philadelphia, Pa., and they had a son, Ben, in 1961.
She moved permanently to Ogunquit with her son in 1964 and later built herself a home on Ocean Street where she still resides.
Lewando worked for the York County Coast Star from 1964 to 1992 with Alexander Bacon "Sandy" Brook, who credited her with being the most accomplished photographer and most sensitive writer. According to Carriere, Brook said he "had never known anyone who didn't like Isabel and would never want to."
During her years with the newspaper, she wrote the Ogunquit column, compiled the coming events section and proofread and copy-edited the work of other contributing writers. In 1982, Lewando received a first-place New England Press Association award for editorial writing for a memorial she wrote about Marshall Dodge, who helped her with the Ogunquit Dunes project. She also received a second=place award for photography.
Carriere honored Lewando's contribution to protecting Ogunquit's extraordinary natural resources saying, "In 1974, Isabel spearheaded a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture for bulldozing the Ogunquit dunes and supplanting them with a flood control dyke built of gravelly fill."
Her interest and concern for the Ogunquit dune system led to her initiative in re-opening the clam flats to recreational shellfish harvesting in 1998.
In 2006, she received the Wells Reserve Laudholm Farm Conservation Award partly due to her work to re-open the Ogunquit clam flats.
Today she serves on the Ogunquit Conservation Commission, Shellfish Commission, Historic Preservation Commission and Cable Regulatory Commission. She is a member of the Ogunquit Art Association, volunteers with the Ogunquit Heritage Museum Committee and contributed her experiences and love for the town in a book released this summer titled, "Ogunquit Love Stories."
Nominated by lifelong friend and last year's Outstanding Citizen Award-winner Blanche Staples, Lewando continues to defend political, social and environmental stands through her letters to the editor in several local newspapers.
Of her award, Lewando said, "It is a blessing to live in a town that welcomes you with open arms into the life of the community. Where the public sector often allows the private sector to invent is own ways of being of service. Witness the Chamber of Commerce initiating the idea in 1997 of turning the deteriorating Winn House, given to the town by Phyllis Perkins, into a museum of the fishing community and the art colony, sited on land given to the town by Dorothea Jacobs Grant, plus a trust to create a park. I'm very flattered, very excited and this is a really nice party."
