Chuck Ott of York takes a trip in his stoneboat, a rugged sled he recently built, with the help of his mules, Moses and Jack.
Photo by Virginia Woodwell
Who wouldn't be intrigued by a retired school superintendent who keeps a pair of mules?
We certainly were.
We first met Chuck Ott, of York (he's no relation to attorney David Ott, also of York) in Portsmouth, N.H., at a meeting on Jan. 12 of folks committed to sustainability.
When we gave him a call a few weeks later, he graciously invited us to his home, and there, on a cold but clear day, we ended up being introduced to Moses and Jack (the mules), and spending a good two hours chatting, comfortably seated around Chuck's warming hearth.
The Ott home is situated in a cul-de-sac at the end of a long, winding dirt road. The Otts have two sets of neighbors there, but the setting remains pastoral, and, to sustain his interests, Chuck has built, by himself, in addition to a vegetable garden (now deep under snow), a two-stall shed for the mules, a single-story barn with attached coop for a little flock of hens and a shelter for some pond ducks.
Our talk revealed the origins of this passion for the rural and agricultural - but, also, by the time we were done, a whole lot more, some of it on the edge of eye-widening.
How about, for example, a retired school superintendent who keeps a pair of mules who has also been a Peace Corps volunteer, a marathoner, a high-elevation rock- and ice-climber and an ardent student of Abraham Lincoln?
We should say at the outset that Chuck himself wasn't blowing his own horn about all this. He was just answering questions and impressed us as quiet, deliberate, thoughtful, temperate, soft-spoken and decidedly modest.
Here are the basics.
Chuck and his wife Ann, whom he calls Annie (she has written and published under the name C. Ann Ott), both came from Indiana, he from Southport, and she from Bloomington. They met as students at Indiana University, and thereafter went together to West Africa, to Sierra Leone, as Peace Corps volunteers.
They were in Sierra Leone for 26 months, from 1967 to 1969. Chuck's job there was to demonstrate improved ways to grow rice - in particular, to encourage the use of swamps as alternatives to soil-eroding slash-and-burn techniques - while Ann worked in maternal healthcare, demonstrating the effects of improved nutrition on infants, and of sanitation in baby-delivery.
When the Otts returned to the U.S., they settled first in Northwood, N.H., then in Portsmouth, where Chuck served in the school system, off and on, for 20 years. He was assistant superintendent when he left there in 2000, after which he served as superintendent in the Somersworth/Rollinsford school district until his retirement in 2005.
Along the way, both Otts earned advanced degrees.
Chuck, whose field was school psychology, first earned a master's degree at the University of New Hampshire, followed by a certificate of advanced study at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, followed by an Ed.D. from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Ann, whose field was rhetoric and linguistics, earned a Ph.D., from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and went on to teach and write at the University of New Hampshire. Among her publications is a novel, "Losing My Place," published in 1986 by Peter Randall Press in Portsmouth. Part autobiographical, it draws upon her experience as a young girl in Indonesia at a time when her father, Cecil K. Byrd, was a consultant to the Indonesian government.
The Otts have one child, a daughter, Esther, who is herself now a teacher at the Oyster River School in Durham, N.H.
Tragically, Ann Ott was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2001, and her condition has deteriorated to the point where she can no longer read or write. Chuck cared for her at home until last year. He now makes a 60-mile round trip to spend time with her each day.
The Otts came to their York home in 1987, after living for 12 years on Cabot Street in Portsmouth, and Chuck has a story to tell about how the move came about quite out of the blue one day when they knew were tired of noisy city living.
"One day a guy knocked on the door and said, ‘I'd like to buy your house,' and I said, ‘Well, that's good, because I'd like to sell it.' So we sat down at the kitchen table and worked out an agreement."
At the same time, a friend in real estate who was also a fellow church member at Portsmouth's Christ Episcopal Church, where the Otts have been attendants for 35 years, introduced them to the out-of-the-way York house, and, says Chuck, "It was love at first sight. We knew it would be a wonderful place."
His interest in farming, he told us, goes back to his rural Indiana youth, and, in particular, to a grandfather and grandmother who'd been farmers there. That grandfather bought him a horse and helped him train it, and Chuck got to work on a farm, and like many others there, learned early on about activities like raising hens and growing tomatoes.
His mules, he told us, he acquired in 2004, shortly before he retired - first, a pair who didn't work out because they proved too old, then another who proved too fractious, and, finally, Jack and Moses.
Chuck credits a good friend, Bob Crichton (it's pronounced "Krayton," he said), of Pine Hill Mules in Berwick, with helping him out in this sphere, including shopping for the mules in Pennsylvania Amish country.
Chuck's mules are Belgian drafts, which means that their mothers were Belgian draft horses and their fathers mammoth jack donkeys. Chuck doesn't hire out with them but uses them only to give occasional rides to friends in a wagon or carriage, or, this winter, in a stoneboat (a rugged sled) that he's just built -- though a recent issue of the magazine Seacoast Bride features a beguiling photo of Jack and Moses pulling a wagon in a field with Chuck in front at the reins and a bride and groom on the seat behind, kissing. They'd requested the ride, Chuck reported, and he'd obliged.
"I have an Amish cart," he added, "and early on in Annie's illness I'd take her for rides in that, and she loved that."
The marathons and the mountaineering?
He ran the Boston marathon for three or four years in the late 1970s, Chuck said, and one in Lowell to qualify for it, and others elsewhere, like the Mary Hitchcock in Hanover, N.H., and one of his fondest, the Casco Bay, where he did the course in 2 hours and 46 minutes when he was 37. (He's now 62.) But by 1980, he reported, he'd amassed so many injuries from running that he'd had to quit.
The mountaineering became a substitute. Another friend, Chris George, who's principal of Dover High School, introduced him to it, and, together, he said, they've now climbed, summers, "all over the U.S." -heights like, among other places, Long's Peak in Colorado, the Devil's Tower in Wyoming, and Wyoming's Grand Tetons.
Chuck still keeps his hand in professionally a bit. For two days a week he does work in dropout retention and recovery at the Strafford Learning Center in Somersworth.
And, clearly, he still thinks.
We came away that day with some philosophy as well as facts.
Here are three nuggets.
- From Chuck's study of Lincoln: "I've always felt one of his great strengths was his sadness. In modern times, it's almost taboo for a politician to exhibit any sadness."
- From a devout-Baptist grandmother who preached a lay sermon denouncing racism and nationalism: "Now, devout Christians are associated with the right wing in politics, but then they were real progressives."
- From caring for Annie: "This will not be a great country until we take better care of our children, elderly and disabled."
Take it all around, eye-opening, indeed.
