Ethel Wilson Gammon

Ethel "Billie" Wilson Gammon (July 31, 1916 – January 11, 2009) was an American educator and living history museum founder and director. In 1974 she founded the Washburn-Norlands Living History Center on the former estate of Israel Washburn in Livermore, Maine, and served as its volunteer executive director until 1991. Her educational and outreach programs brought 40,000 visitors to the site annually by the end of the twentieth century. She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 1997.

Early life and education Ethel Searle Wilson was born in Augusta, Maine, to Howard Goucher Wilson, a farmer, and his wife, Mable Beatrice Searle Wilson. She was always known as "Billie".

Career

After high school, Wilson taught in elementary schools in Parkman, Livermore, and Augusta. The stories that the couple told her about the Israel Washburn family piqued her interest in the estate. In 1973 she convinced the Washburn heirs to sign over their property to a nonprofit educational foundation called the Washburn-Norlands Foundation,

Gammon designed educational and outreach programs that immersed visiting students, teachers, and tourists in what it was like to live in mid-nineteenth century Maine. According to a 1999 article in the Indianapolis Business Journal: "Pennsylvania State University students in Parks and Recreation Management trek to Maine every January to cut ice". Gammon also created three-day-weekend programs for teachers and students, as well as for paying tourists, in which participants experienced historical living and study. She served as executive director of the living history museum on a volunteer basis from 1974 to 1991. Though she retired on her 75th birthday in 1991, she returned in 1996 as interim director.

Awards and honors Gammon was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 1997. She received a Distinguished Achievement Award from the University of Maine in 1997. In 1999 she received the Constance H. Carlson Public Humanities Prize from the Maine Humanities Council. and the Washburn-Norlands Foundation endowed its annual Ethel "Billie" Gammon History Education Fellowship for Maine high school seniors in 2009.

Personal life She married Alfred Quimby Gammon (1915–1985), a comptroller, in June 1938. The couple settled in North Livermore, where they converted a carriage house into a home. conducted an oral history interview with Gammon for a graduate course at the State University of New York at Buffalo, producing the paper There May be Flies on Ma and Pa, But There Ain't No Flies on Bill': An Oral History of a Rural Maine Woman, 1916–Present. Over the next decade Wakefield expanded the book with additional stories and material; the completed book was published in 2006 by the Maine Folklife Center under the title No Flies on Bill': The Story of an Uncontrollable Old Woman, My Grandmother, Ethel 'Billie' Gammon.

Selected bibliography

(with Glenda Richards)