39 Years Of Service In County Schools Ends June 30 When McGaughy Retires

MARS HILL -- SAD 42 Supt. C. J. McGaughy, 66, will retire when his contract ends on June 30, 1968, after having served various schools in Aroostook County for 39 years.

McGaughy has held this position since January of 1952. He came here from the Washburn Mapleton Union.

The retirement announcement was made Tuesday by Luther Bubar, chairman of the SAD's directors.

McGaughy attended grade schools in Portage, graduated from Washburn High School in the class of 1925, and from Colby College with a B.S. degree in 1929. He attended summer sessions et the University of Maine and Wisconsin, receiving an M.A. from Maine in June, 1938.

He taught at Washburn High School from 1929-31 and at Presque Isle High from 1931 to 1938. While teaching in Presque Isle he was a member of the 88th Legislature in 1937, representing Presque Isle.

In 1938, McGaughy was elected superintendent of the Washburn Perham Wade School Union. In 1942 this union merged with the Castle Hill-Chapman-Mapleton School Union. It was from this position that he resigned in December, 1951, to accept the Mars Hill area assignment, from which he is now retiring.

McGaughy has been a pioneer in many areas of school work; when winter roads were opened in 1938-39 he quickly exchanged the horse-drawn cart for the modern school bus, a big innovation for that day. In 1945 he wrote a special law and organized the towns of Castle Hill-Chapman-Mapleton in the first complete school district in Maine, pre-dating the Sinclair law by 10 years.

When the national school lunch program was initiated in Maine in 1946, he quickly developed a full lunch room program in the newly created district in Mapleton, feeding about 450 pupils a day. That too, was something new for the era. but an accepted part of a school unit today.

In regard to consolidation, he has helped to close 29 one-room schools; five, two-room buildings and two academies (joining the two later into one public high school, the present Central Aroostook High School). Plans are being developed to build a new high school unit to serve SAD 42, a district which he helped form in 1965.

The retiree has served as an officer of many organizations. For five years he served was secretary-treasurer and one year as president of the Maine Superintendent's Association. He has been secretary - treasurer and president of the Washburn Rotary Cluh; charter member, secretary-treasurer and president of the Mars Hill Rotary Club.

Mccaughy is married to the former Cirene Knowles, of Presque Isle. They have one son, Lane, who is completing his doctoral work at Vanderbilt University. The couple have a daughter, Linda who is married and living in Middlesex, N. J. They have two grandsons.

McGaughy has announced no plans beyond his retirement.

[December 1967]

1