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June 8, 2017 • The Essex Reporter • 1
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RepoRteR { Thursday, June 8, 2017 }
Coffee and community mesh at Nest By COLIN FLANDERS
PHOTO BY COLIN FLANDERS
Nest Coffee & Bakery and Firebird Café owner Jake Tran shows the difference between two bean types under the glow of his Diedrich roaster last Thursday.
Jake Tran has spent the better half of the last decade bouncing around a kitchen, overseeing the daily lunch rush like a seasoned air traffic controller. Yet for the past six months he’s been elsewhere — specifically, pouring energy into his newest endeavor, Nest Coffee & Bakery, which opened on Main Street on May 20. A stream of customers trickled in last Thursday morning, some stopping by for the first time, others well on their way to becoming regulars. Tran greeted a few by name — familiar faces from Firebird Café, he explained — though the comparisons end there. That’s because while Tran is no stranger to owning a business, the second time around has been a much different experience. Opening Firebird was like inheriting a tilled garden, he said. With the shell of its former grub hub still See NEST, page 2
ADL sings sew-long to retirees Family and consumer science teacher departs
Musical Moreau retires with 41-year career
By KAYLEE SULLIVAN
By KAYLEE SULLIVAN
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amily and consumer science teacher Terry Potvin, née Francis, wrote a farewell poem to her homeroom students as they ended their journey at Albert D. Lawton Intermediate School in 1993.
ary Moreau didn’t plan on teaching in the Albert D. Lawton Intermediate School music program for long. “Two or three years,” he thought as he entered his first classroom — a miniscule spot now used by custodians — in summer 1976, a year after graduating from the University of Vermont. He’d move on and chase his dream as a professional singer. Or so he thought. Forty-one years later, Moreau attributes his staying power to his long ago realization that the performing business was cutthroat. Remaining where he could simultaneously sing and teach was the best of both worlds.
The time has come to say so long and send you on your way. And now, after 36 years in the Essex School District — six at Essex High School and the latter 30 at ADL — Potvin is the one saying so long. But before you leave ADL, I have a few things to say, she wrote. She’s seen the transformation from four to five food groups to the food pyramid and then to “Choose My Plate.” She’s watched Chromebooks flow into her classroom as hands-on classes like technology education and drama fade away in others. Over the years, she’s experienced growth in both class size and budget restraints and witnessed former students become coworkers. Through it all, Potvin said, ADL has become her home and its people her kin. She’s spent over half her life at the school. I’m sure my own kids would agree, That you are all like family.
PHOTO BY KAYLEE SULLIVAN
Family and consumer science teacher Terry Potvin poses in her Albert D. Lawton classroom last week with a cookbook she made during her master's degree work at Southern New Hampshire University. When she moved from the high school to middle school after receiving numerous reduction-in-force notices, Potvin was fearful. Little did she know she was about to fall in love with a caring, tight-knit community. “It’s just been the best place I could ever be,” she said at her desk last week, with only a few pictures left hanging on the wall See POTVIN, page 12
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Moreau and his students sang “The Road Not Taken” by Ruth Elaine Schram, a version of the Robert Frost poem, at his last concert in late May as reality of his June retirement hovered. “It has definitely been a really fine career to have,” he said in his classroom last week, a picture of his ballerina granddaughter twirling on his desktop. “And I can’t think of any place better than Essex Jct.” Thousands of students have sat in
PHOTO BY KAYLEE SULLIVAN
Albert D. Lawton music teacher Gary Moreau holds sheet music for "Why We Sing," a song by Greg Gilpin, in his classroom last week. After 41 years at ADL, Moreau performed the song with his students at his last concert in late May to commemorate the power singing has on those who take part. his classroom, all for general music education and many who chose to partake in his chorus class each morning. Those who went on to become music teachers themselves are even greater prodigies. Students may not only remember See MOREAU, page 12
Student, refugee reflects on path to graduation By COLIN FLANDERS
FILE PHOTO BY MICHAELA HALNON
Participants in this year's Chittenden County Relay for Life will hit the track far earlier than normal. Event leadership has moved the traditionally overnight walk to daylight hours.
Daylight savings
Chittenden County Relay for Life changes event time By MICHAELA HALNON Instead of circling around the Champlain Valley Expo overnight, participants of this year’s Chittenden County Relay for Life will hit the track at noon on Saturday, June
17, walking to raise money for the American Cancer Society in broad daylight. Jennifer Clark, the event’s community manager and a cancer survivor herself, said the decision to switch up the annual Essex event
came after significant deliberation. The overnight walk, traditionally held from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., is often paired with a Relay slogan: “Cancer never sleeps.” But after consulting past See RELAY, page 10
School has served as a sanctuary since Hari Adhikari’s earliest days, a place to escape life’s harshest realities — one where she could simply be a child. Years later, in a home a world away, her education is pushing her toward a bright future, the kind her parents dreamt of when moving here all those years ago. Adhikari is the second youngest of four children. She was born in a refugee camp in Nepal, where her parents landed in the early ’90s after they were exiled from Bhutan. For 11 years, they lived in bamboo house with a thatch roof. Sometimes, on rainy days, Adhikari remembers moving pots across the floor to keep wa-
ter from soaking the handful of clothes she owned. Adhikari said her parents did their best to protect them from the harsh conditions. When their rations dwindled, they always managed to find extra food, despite her father only earning $1 a day. During particularly bad storms, they’d stay up all night to make sure the house didn’t collapse on top of them. Some good memories remain, Adhikari said, like getting into “all the shenanigans kids do.” But as she grew older, she saw how their refugee status meant they were outsiders. The best part of living in the camp was school. There, everyone was equal, but the days only lasted so long.
See GRAD, page 4