(The conclusion of “In this ‘cultural island’ in the mountains of Maine”.)
BETHEL — Psychologist Kurt Lewin, one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational and applied psychology, and the founder of the National Training Labs (NTL) chose Bethel to administer his training, but died of a heart attack before his arrival in 1946.
Despite Lewin’s sudden death, the work continued as planned starting in 1947. NTL eventually moved into the House, called “The Founder’s House” in 1955.
The buildings behind Gehring House were called The Clusters. They used other spaces, too, like at Gould Academy and the Norseman at Sunday River. Leland Bradford, Ronald Lippitt, and Kenneth Benne continued the work of Lewin, returning with each year with the Seashores, who owned the Bingham House, and the Weirs.
NTL Gehring House
According to NTL literature, Bethel was a cultural island in the mountains of Maine. Lewin chose this place as his training site because he believed that, “change could more readily occur if the learning happened some distance from the participant’s home environment.”
For several Bethel residents Lewin’s life work which continued in his absence, left a lasting impression on them, despite living here and “not having travelled some distance.” While it was simply a job for some, it was a life-changing experience for others like Janet Willie of Bethel.
Janet Willie
In the late ’80s Willie was screened in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia for the Peace Corp. “It was to see if you had what it took to be in a different environment and teach and help and communicate while in a different country and culture.”
Part of what she learned from the eight-day training is, “you have opinions and biases. Your culture and how you grew up affects the way you think and see the outside world.” Willie had grown up in Colorado but by then had lived in several places in the US because of her work as an environmental educator.
By the time she was notified that she passed the screening and could join the Peace Corp she was living in Canada because had fallen in love with a Canadian. She decided to put her Peace Corp plans on hold.
Eventually she landed in Newry as an Outward Bound instructor. She was intrigued when she saw a bulletin board listing offering NTL classes to locals. NTL was the same group that had conducted her eight-day Peace Corp training.
In 1991 when Willey arrived here, NTL was booming with 12-15 labs going simultaneously, each with eight to 100 people. The labs were from April to October. The first lab she participated in was the basic or HI (Human Interaction) lab. Charlie Coverdale (brother of Don Coverdale of Bethel) and four other facilitators taught the 7-day lab. For locals the cost was just $50.
Willie remembers that facilitators were psychologists, sociologists, and human behavioral scientists from big universities all over the country like Michigan, Fielding Institute, Case Western, American University, and Union Institute.
“They sent their grad students to follow, to become lab leaders. Students from all over the world. You’d be in town and you’d have a hundred people around, nine countries in our community walking around. It was awesome,” said Willie. “If you were a curious person, you were in heaven.”
After that first HI training she came out a completely different person. “I haven’t tapped into this kind of self-confidence ever in my life,” she thought. She had just graduated from massage school and the week at NTL prompted her to set up her practice in Bethel.
She rented the third floor of the brick building at the intersection of Broad and Main streets, about the halfway point between the village and the NTL.
“These people were working at the highest levels of infrastructure around the world. Not just our country… helping negotiate communication styles … mostly internal conflicts inside of a system or organization … or countries, governments.”
Whole Systems Change was one of the models they used (how to make organizational change within a company). “I was translating it into anatomy, physiology, body change… ‘How is the heart speaking to the liver? How is the stomach in communication with how I choose my food?’ I was translating the language.”
She eventually began teaching 45-minute sunrise seminars for NTL on a platform behind the Gehring House. She would see what was on the flip charts, and, “I would get them to embody whatever the theory was.”
Willie said as a massage therapist she had people patronizing her business from all over the world. She said she could tell what day of the week it was when she put her hands on a participant’s body. “Oh it’s a Monday…”
She took about 13 different labs over the years and became a co-facilitator for some of them. For 14 years she worked alongside Edi and Charlie Seashore and also often worked with Dr Cathy Royal. “I was always learning,” she said.
Willie attended the 75th Jubilee of NTL last July on line. “I tapped in to go to the first introductory meeting and I stayed for the next three days from nine in the morning to 4 p.m. and just listened to all the speakers.”
“I was always an outsider inside my own friend group because my relationship with them was so deep and strong. They grew up with the theory that NTL was odd and weird and different.”
Amy Chapman
Chapman said her brother, Steve Wight and his wife, Peggy owned the Sunday River Inn for over 40 years. In the summer NTL would hold advanced classes there. Said Chapman, “they had a class where they started as infants. You might come one day and they would be curled up in the fetal position in the field.
Then they might be crawling, someone would be holding their hand. Next they would be walking. They would go through all the stages of life. They would end up leaning on someone’s arm. Then they would dig holes and mock bury each other at the end.” She said these were NTL’s extended, long classes. “[The participants] would stay out there, out of town.”
Today
Ironically, Dr. John Gehring who originally owned the house at the far end of Broad Street also administered unusual treatments for patients. His treatment was sometimes called “therapeutic tourism.” His clientele were prominent people from various fields who stayed for varying periods to receive treatment for anxiety, stress, depression, and digestive ailments.
As the Gehring House sheds it’s skin once again to be transformed into middle income housing, it is important to look back and remember the past.
Some of Bethel’s bed and breakfasts and other businesses benefited greatly each summer from the influx of repeat NTL customers. Bethel’s locals were invited to “sunrise seminars” at NTL every day.
On the flip side, some of Bethel’s teenagers were likely very uncomfortable when asked to be nearly naked waitstaff (apron only) for the Weirs’ seminars where all of the participants were also unclothed.
For over 50 years NTL was part of this community; people still hold memories … for better or worse.
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