BRUNSWICK

Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell spoke about the American dream at Bowdoin College’s Pickard Theater on Wednesday night in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the national Upward Bound program.

A Bowdoin graduate from the class of 1954, Mitchell has been a strong advocate of Upward Bound, starting the Portland-based Mitchell Institute, providing scholarships to deserving students in every high school in Maine based on academic performance and economic need.

One year after Upward Bound was created by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965, Bowdoin College started the first such program in Maine and, since its inception, more than 2,000 students have been served by the Bowdoin program.

“My mother was an immigrant. She came here as a teenager, moved to Waterville where her older sister had preceded her as an immigrant and almost immediately went to work in the textile mills that were booming all across Maine and New England at the time,” Mitchell said.

“She spent 50 years working the night shift,” Mitchell said, all while raising five children at the same time.

Mitchell said his father was the son of immigrants, left to be raised in an orphanage in Boston before being adopted by a childless couple who happened to live next door to his mother’s sister in Waterville.

“My father left school at the age of 10, where he began a hard life of work and manual labor for very low wage, ending up as a janitor at Colby College. My parents lived their entire lives at the edge of failure — they died penniless, but in their minds they led successful lives because they had a dream and they saw that dream become a reality,” Mitchell said.

Parents’ dream

Mitchell said his parents’ dream was that each of their five children would go on and finish college and have the better life that they sought when they came to this country.

“I believe in the American dream because I’ve lived it. I believe that despite our many and serious imperfections, our country remains the most free, the most open, the most just in all of human history,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell said that he and each of his siblings have had the opportunity to live lives “beyond the imagination” of their parents.

“In America, nobody should be guaranteed success but everybody should have a fair chance to succeed,” Mitchell said to applause from the crowd.

A federal judge

Mitchell said that before he entered the Senate he was a federal judge in Portland and Bangor, joking “it’s the only job I’ve ever had where I’ve had any real power.”

Mitchell said that what he most enjoyed about his job was when he would get to preside over citizenship ceremonies. He said given his own background it was a very emotional ceremony for him and said that after each ceremony he made a point of speaking with each new citizen.

“Most of us in this room are Americans by an accident of birth. Every one of them is an American by an act of free will, often at great risk and cost to themselves and their families,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell said of all their stories he heard, they were best summed up by a young Asian man who replied in slow and halting English, “I came here because everyone in America has a chance.”

“We all know, however, that is not the reality of life in America — that is an aspiration — it is a goal — it is an ideal which we seek, but we have not yet as a society been able to transform it into reality.

“The Upward Bound program is a step in that direction. It seeks to make it a reality for hundreds and now in the aggregate, thousands and thousands of young Maine boys and girls. That they can have the opportunity to go as high and as far as their talent and their willingness to work will take them,” Mitchell said.

“The single most important factor is not talent — they’ve got it. It’s not brain power — they’ve got it. It is making sure they’ve got the self-esteem, the sense of worth, the sense of belonging — of being part of the community that enables them to unleash their talents,” he said.

Mitchell described his early days as being insecure and lacking self confidence, saying the day he set foot on the Bowdoin campus was the luckiest day in his life. He described how the leadership at Bowdoin instilled those qualities in him through his time there.

“Keep in mind that genius knows no boundary, no language, no religion, no color. It can come from anywhere at anytime,” Mitchell said.

dmcintire@timesrecord.com