A colleague and friend in need, Doug Beck!

If you love the outdoors, appreciate public parks, trails, and open spaces, and value community recreation in Maine, chances are pretty good that you are, or would like to be, a supporter of Doug Beck. Doug is the the Outdoor Recreation Supervisor for the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands. He is a longtime member and advocate of the Maine Recreation and Parks Association where he as served for over 20 years on the board of directors as president, vice-president, at-large member, parliamentarian, and even its executive director, at one time. Doug is a fierce advocate of MRPA, a trusted colleague, and friend. His family could use some help.

I'm reaching out to share with you that Doug and his family have experienced tough times and significant loss this year, and I know our extended parks and recreation community can help.

Please read the message I received from Doug (and I'm sharing with permission) regarding the loss of his family's home and all their possessions to a fire last spring, as well as his wife Jodi's recent struggle with cancer this year. Like I said, it's been a tough year for the Beck family. I'm asking you to donate what you can to help his family rebuild. Any amount will help and I appreciate you for taking the time to read Doug's message and his advice to you to help protect yourself and your own family.

Message from Doug sent to me via email:

We have good insurance, but even good insurance "replacement value coverage" does not really get you there. While the fire destroyed, up in smoke, everything that was in the garage and my office / den, the smoke, soot, and water damage essentially destroyed almost everything else. What we have left is with us here in our rental, clothes mostly, and in a 10'x15' storage unit. Virtually everything we had is gone.

There is a long, tired story for how replacement value insurance works, and it will work out well for contents, furnishings, clothes, recreational equipment (garage had my Grand Laker canoe just outside - this though will not fare so well - $7k replacement value, but only $1.5K coverage, ashes, three kayaks, all my fishing gear, my road and gravel bike, tools, generator, so much packed in there and so on, and my den had my entire natural history book library, and all of my other near and dear things since I had really just consolidated all of my things to that single room, fountain pen collection, running and biking gear, coats and jackets, all my bald head coverings, so much down to the ashes!) Technically all that we want to replace will be replaced at full value via the insurance, sans the laker.

The important part though is the house part - kind of the most important part - "replacement value" is a matter of opinion. The insurance company is capping us to replace our house at about half of what it would really cost. Ordinarily this would be a fair payout once the process is done, but these are not ordinary times and construction costs mean we are going to have to adjust. We'll make the best of it. We wanted to downsize as we approached retirement anyway, right!

Attached are some pics - before, during, after. This happened twenty days after Jodi's lumpectomy, which came after three months of chemo. She was feeling better and doing some inside spring cleaning. I was doing some outside garden / yardwork cleaning. Beautiful day, up until mid afternoon when the fire started. We didn't know how bad it was going to be until the home inspections started and folks were just basically shaking their heads and saying WOW!

I appreciate your offer. I don't care if you share, but I think the best thing for folks to do is to make sure they review their insurance coverage (thankfully we had recently been advised that we might be underinsured by our agent and so we made some significant upward adjustments), make sure they get their annual checkups and health screenings - annual mamo is what got Jodi out in front of her cancer treatment - could have been too far advanced if she hadn't been prudent about that - and most of all - BE NICE TO EACH OTHER - you never know what kind of shit someone is dealing with, and everyone is dealing with some kind of shit in their lives.

Thanks for caring.

Affectionately,

Doug