WINDHAM – Bob Marley, Maine’s reputed king of comedy, is making his fifth straight annual appearance at Windham High School Monday night, March 18.

Marley, who performs throughout New England in what is nearly a non-stop appearance schedule, will perform his popular stand-up comedy routine starting at 7 p.m. in the auditorium, with proceeds going to local charities, Windham Neighbors Helping Neighbors and Camp Sunshine in South Casco.

Marley is excited to be coming back to Windham, especially since some of the proceeds go to the Windham Neighbors fuel assistance fund.

“We help out when we can, and it feels good to do that. And I like the cause. It’s a great cause,” Marley said in a phone interview Wednesday. “Oil assistance, especially this year is, like, crazy since we got so much snow. What do we got, like 100 inches of snow? Right? It is unbelievable.

“And the whole oil thing is frustrating anyway, because I got a call from my oil company saying, ‘Bob, Kevin is in your yard right now but he’s not going to make your delivery because you didn’t shovel him a path to the oil tank.’ I said, ‘Really, Joyce, well, tell Kevin that for $4.80 a gallon he ought to be dropping his wife off inside the house before he makes the delivery,’” Marley joked.

“So it’s a great cause. And Neighbors Helping Neighbors is a good organization and we always have a good crowd up in Windham and I always like to go around the rotary and bang a hard right.”

Marley’s annual visit is organized by the Business Simulation class at Windham High School. Known as BusSim for short, it has been taught by Diane Leavitt since its inception in 2000. The class teaches students how to operate a business-related venture by allowing them to directly organize events. All money raised, minus performance fees such as Marley’s, goes to local charities.

Camp Sunshine has been a longtime beneficiary of the BusSim events and in recent years the class has also been raising money for Windham Neighbors, which formed in late 2007 to provide one-time fuel disbursements to needy families who don’t qualify for state assistance.

The annual Bob Marley show is one of the group’s largest fundraisers and biggest draws, with tickets usually selling out for the funnyman known for his “wicked good” Maine humor.

“Years ago, I had a kid who wanted Bob Marley, so I said go for it, see what you can do. And he did. So it became a regular event for us,” Leavitt said. “Every January we put in that we’d like Bob Marley to come and they do their fundraising meeting to decide where he’s going to go and almost every year he’s come to us. He likes our venue, and he likes our causes.”

Leavitt said Camp Sunshine has been a longtime partner “and just as Windham Neighbors started to form, the economy shifted drastically and we started to change how we fund-raised, realizing we had a lot of families in need and we wanted to focus it back to our families, and we wanted to help out Windham Neighbors.”

Also driving the desire to raise money for Windham Neighbors was the death of former high school student Nick Townsend, who died along with his father from carbon monoxide poisoning. Townsend’s family was heating their home off Dutton Hill Road with a portable kerosene heater.

“So we had a student die because of not having heat and that definitely had a huge impact on that decision to help Windham Neighbors,” Leavitt said.

Bill Diamond, president of the Windham-based charity, said the group’s board of directors, all of whom have been selling tickets and plan to attend Monday night’s event, are thankful for the high-school students’ efforts.

“It’s part of a series of goodwill and outstanding support from the high school students and staff,” Diamond said. “They come to us with fundraising ideas all the time. They do unbelievable things. They’ve taken up collections in homerooms and sent them to us. In February they helped by putting cans around in local businesses to collect money because we always run short of money in February.

“They have just been phenomenal and this is just one more example of how the high school kids and staff have stepped up.”

Diamond said the fuel fund was down to about $7,000 in mid-February and that the group will probably end up spending about $28,000 for the 2012-2013 heating season.

“And $7,000 is low when you consider 100 gallons of fuel costs basically $400,” Diamond said, adding that each season the group is seeing more requests for fuel assistance. “Calls have started to slack off a bit so it looks like we’re going to make it through the season but we’d like to get a cushion going for next winter.”

Ashley Caswell, events coordinator at Camp Sunshine, was a student in the BusSim class in the early 2000s when it first began. She took part in Camp Sunshine fund-raising activities and now works in marketing at Camp Sunshine.

“We’ve had such a longstanding relationship with Windham High School. It’s a great partnership to have. And, personally, it’s how I got started with camp, so it’s nice to see,” Caswell said. “But it’s such a good group and we couldn’t do what we do if it wasn’t for folks like Windham High School with their BusSim class and other folks who are willing to go out into the community and raise funds for us and donate their time and volunteer to make everything happen.”

Marley said his annual Windham visit is part of a busy schedule. But he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’m out quite a bit. I’m pretty lucky,” he said. “We really, really hustle and try to build new fans and try to keep the old fans happy, and you know, I consider it a blessing so I don’t ever take it for granted.

“But it’s that old saying, make the hay while the sun’s shining. You never know, 10 years from now I might be saying, ‘You want to supersize that? $4.55. Please drive forward.’”

Comedian Bob Marley
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