Maine Storyteller John McDonald needs your help
Ask John McDonald how he’s doing, and he’ll respond, “Not bad for an old guy.”
Though his sense of humor keeps him afloat, John has had a tough year. After heart surgery and a fall with a few broken vertebrae, John is down for the count and in need of assistance. For the first time in his seventy-plus years, he requires more personal care than his family alone can provide for him. Not all the services John needs are covered by insurance, and John and his wife Ann are struggling financially.
Many of you know and love John as a former radio talk-show host, author, and Maine humorist & storyteller.
When he was a boy, John would go down to the wharfs in the summers and listen to the fishermen swap stories. He practiced telling those stories to his family when he got home. In the days before TV, which John remembers, storytelling was the entertainment of the day. John liked to make people laugh, whether in class or around the dinner table, so he worked hard on perfecting the dry sense of humor of the fishermen he admired.
As a young adult he got the chance to perform onstage with the late great Marshall Dodge and Captain Kendall Morse at the Grand Theater in Ellsworth, and from then on he knew storytelling was in his future. The rest of his professional life was devoted to Maine storytelling or regional humor, the dry sort that is so understated you might have to think about it for a day before you burst out laughing.
John travelled the state and beyond, performing at schools and state fairs, festivals, and concert halls. He once brought the house down (not literally, much to everyone’s relief) at the historic Connecticut home of his favorite comedic writer, Mark Twain.
In addition to telling stories onstage, John authored several books and hosted a beloved and long-running radio talk show on WGAN in Portland. Resisting the sensationalism and divisive rhetoric of so many political talk shows, John invited guests and callers to actually talk about issues. He was known to be a respectful, even-tempered, and always entertaining host.
John’s radio show came to a premature end during the COVID pandemic, when the WGAN studio closed briefly. Upon the reopening of the studio, John’s show was not put back into the lineup despite its consistently high ratings. Emails from John’s many fans to the station did not change management’s mind.
So what happens when beloved talk show hosts are let go after 30 years without pension? What happens when storytellers are no longer able to get up on stage and tell stories? John, who has brought laughter to so many, is no longer able to work and in need of financial assistance to pay for the daily care he needs, even though (as he points out) he’s not doing bad for an old guy.
If you once laughed at a John McDonald story; if you enjoyed one of his books; if you tuned into his show on a Saturday morning… if you could pitch in a few dollars, you could help an old Maine storyteller in his time of need.
