(Editor’s note: Looking Back is a new weekly column including news items reported 10 years ago in The Current, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.)

Issue of Oct. 18, 2001

Of the 36 marriages registered with the Cape Elizabeth town offices in September of 2001, all but one of the newlyweds was from out of town. Every year, hundreds of couples from someplace else decide to spend their most important day in Cape Elizabeth.

Couples who marry in the Cape hail from all parts of the nation and the globe. Most are from Maine and New England, but some couples married here in September traveled from as far away as Oregon, Colorado, the United Kingdom and Germany. Many couples say the decision to marry in the Cape depended on a variety of factors.

Stacy Rickman of Waltham, MA, was married at the Spurwink Church on September 8. “We spent a lot of time in Maine and fell in love with Spurwink,” she explained “The town was so quaint and we really liked the simplicity and location (of the church). It had a very sweet feel about it.”

A proposal to build a Great American Neighborhood development on 150 acres in Dunstan got over the first hurdle in winning a contract zone approval at the Oct. 16 meeting of the Scarborough Ordinance Committee.

This is the first development to seek a contract zone under new rules approved by the Town Council last month. The new rules require a developer to first pitch a concept plan to the ordinance committee, which then votes on whether the project should move to the second step in the process a joint workshop between the Town Council and the Planning Board.

In a unanimous vote, the members of the Ordinance Committee, councilors Kate Borduas, Suzanne Foley-Ferguson and Council Chairman Mark Maroon, agreed to give the project a green light to move ahead. “This project is serious, considered, well detailed and worthy of further consideration,” Borduas said.

With that Borduas, however, was very careful to make sure that the applicants knew the Ordinance Committee was not making any decisions on the merit of the project. “All we’re saying here is that the concept plan provided passes the straight face test and will be allowed to move on.”

President George W. Bush announced his intention Wednesday to appoint a Cape Elizabeth resident to the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad.

Albert Glickman is one of seven appointees who will serve three-year terms. The commission works to preserve documents, memorials and cemeteries in Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

A Portland native, Glickman is on the boards of the Portland Symphony Orchestra and Portland Museum of Art. He is also a trustee for the University of Maine, Westbrook College, Waynflete School and Spurwink School.

Debra Lane, Cape Elizabeth’s town clerk, was given the “Clerk of the Year” award at the annual meeting of the Maine Town and City Clerks Association (MTCA) Oct. 11. “It’s quite an honor. I am very pleased,” Lane said later.

Longtime Cape Elizabeth Town Councilor Henry Berry announced at the Oct. 10 council meeting that he was attending his 100th Town Council meeting. He got some good-natured teasing from his fellow councilors, but took it in stride saying that he has been pleased to represent the people of Cape for so many years.

Berry later told The Current that he was a member of the first Town Council, elected in 1967. Before that, Cape Elizabeth had operated under a board of selectman form of government. Berry served from 1967 to 1971. His service on the council was interrupted by his three terms as Cumberland County District Attorney (1973-1982). Berry is still an active attorney with an office in Portland. He is also a fairly well known jazz pianist.

A group of eighth graders at Cape Elizabeth Middle School has adopted recent Cape high school graduate Pvt. Brendan Sweeney of the 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg, N.C. The students will be writing him letters to help keep his morale up during the war on terrorism.

Sweeney visited the middle school while home on a recent leave, and found the students’reception warm and welcoming.

The students are in teacher Rachel Guthrie’s advisory group.

“They were so kind to him, so concerned,” said his father, Kevin, a member of the town’s School Board.

The advisory group and other middle school students have organized car washes to raise money for the American Red Cross, raising over $1,000, which has been matched by the school’s student council for a total donation nearing $3,000, the students said.

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