Pathways to Pembroke

In September and October of 2025, we visited Maine to relive memories collected over almost fifty years of living and/or visiting there with our mother, Jean Bloemendaal, and her husband John. With them now gone, we had discussed a possible trip to visit places we always enjoyed in the times we spent there with them. We certainly needed another trip to Marden’s! I need to clarify who “we” are; besides myself, it was my wife, Tammy, her son, Geoff Brown, and my sister and brother-in-law, Peggy and Sergio Quesada.

It all began in 1976, when Jean and John bought a boat located in Robinhood Marina just east of Bath. It was a thirty-five foot John Alden designed sloop built in 1942, and it was a beaut! The following spring, after graduating from college, I drove with my step-father from our home in Holland, Michigan to Kennebunkport, Maine. At that time there was a boatyard there named Bresney and Wester, and our reason for the trip was to move the boat from Robinhood to the boatyard in Kennebunkport.

The plan, as I understood it, was to spend the summer in Kennebunkport refurbishing the boat with the intention of sailing it to the Caribbean in the fall. I was invited to go along, for the work and for the sailing after. The idea of spending that much time with my step-father did not appeal to me at all. I went to Missouri. My sister, Peggy, went along for the adventure.

The parents stayed in Kennebunkport after the trip to the Caribbean (in a rented boat) and Peg went to Taiwan. John tried to find work in the area, but was not successful. The next summer they left Bresney and Wester’s in the DJINN and sailed it home to Lake Michigan at Saugatuck, where they lived until Mom’s retirement from teaching in 1985. With their worldly goods packed into a rented truck, and DJINN loaded onto a flatbed trailer, Jean and John moved to Maine to start a new life. They spent two years in Machiasport before landing in Pembroke in 1988. They were there until 2015, and that’s where most of our Maine memories were made.