Raymond residents mourn loss of longtime lakes protector Turner

By Nancy Crilly Kirk
Special to The Windham Eagle

“Take the Afternoon Off,” lakes volunteer Charlie Turner would frequently say to others. But he never did.

Charlie Turner of Raymond has died at
age 88. He was a longtime president
of the Raymond Protective Waterways
Association and a staunch advocate for
monitoring lake water quality locally, 
requiring shoreland and boating
regulations, and protecting local lakes
and waterways from invasive plants
such as milfoil. COURTESY PHOTO
   

Turner, a longtime lake steward and one of the early presidents of the Raymond Waterways Protective Association, died July 9. He was 88 and left behind his son, Chuck, and Chuck’s wife, Susan.

Charles “Charlie” Turner grew up in Portland, graduated from Deering High, and became a music and history teacher for 38 years in Westbrook. As various former students remembered him on his obituary site, he was a gifted and extraordinary teacher who could connect Renaissance music to the Fifth Dimension from the 1970s, and someone who could create a planetarium in his classroom using garbage bags over the windows and a globe lamp pricked with a needle to show the constellations.

Turner was also praised as a terrifically nice guy, always appreciative, as Jonnie Maloney of the Lake Stewards of Maine recalled.

“He was a warm and wonderful soul, a genuinely good, kind, caring and funny human being,” Maloney said.

As several people remembered, he was always exhorting everyone whom he talked to, “to take the rest of the afternoon off” and it became synonymous with him.

In 1967, Charlie and his wife, Dorothy “Dottie” Raynor Turner, bought a place on Panther Pond and moved there with their son, Charles, Jr. Soon, his great work on behalf of the Raymond lakes began.

In the 1960s and 1970s, lakefront owners washed and shampooed in the lakes, and often neglected to maintain their septic tanks. Lake users ran boats with two-stroke engines that dumped 25 percent of their oil and gas into the water. The lack of “no-wake zone” regulations allowed motorboats to churn up lake bottoms in shallow water, exposing phosphorous, which caused algae blooms to appear on the lake surface.

Charlie’s first and lasting gift to the lakes was monitoring water quality, a crucial first step to requiring and maintaining new shoreland and boating regulations. From 1976 to 2016, twice a week, when the water was accessible, using a standard measure of water transparency, the secchi disc, a round, white and black-colored disc that is lowered into the water, the depth of its visibility was measured. Charlie and Dottie patrolled Panther Pond and often Raymond Pond, supplying data to the now Lake Stewards of Maine Association.

“He also measured dissolved oxygen and temperature, and served as Regional Coordinator, helped us with logistics on workshops and studied invasive plants,” Maloney said.

Peg Jensen, President of the Raymond Protective Waterways Association said that Charlie himself said he did not start the RWPA, but he was involved early on, and was president for many years.

“Besides patrolling, he put out an annual letter, finding the cheapest printer in the area, that was four pages long,” Jensen said. “He always included a plea for Raymond folks to have their septic tanks pumped every few years.”

Bob Chapin, past president of the RWPA, praised Turner for his devotion to keeping the lakes clean.

“Charlie was always interested in doing what he could to help out, even with the scut work like pulling benthic barriers and moving bins of collected milfoil,” Chapin said. “I remember him as being most pleasant and helpful to new IPPers [Invasive Plant Patrollers] and pleased when they got off to a good start.”

Forty-seven years after Charlie began his work, progress has been made, but challenges remain. Septic tanks are now better and more often cleaned, two-stroke motorboat engines have been replaced by more efficient four-stroke engines, and more shoreland regulations have helped the lakes.

But, as Neil Jensen of the RWPA points out, “Continued construction, with attendant loss of forest cover, plus climate change with its increased temperatures, decreased ice cover, and heavier rain events, have exacerbated the phosphorous recycling which encourages algae growth and cyanobacteria problems.”

Cyanobacteria is a form of algae that can harm human and pet health.

Anyone who is interested in honoring Charlie Turner’s long work of taking care of Raymond lakes by continuing his work, can contact RWPA (Raymondlakes.org) to learn more about becoming a volunteer. <