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Notable New England Fraud

The man who broke North Haven's heart

by Mel Allen

From Yankee Magazine September 1989

Twice each day, when the ferry from Rockland, Maine, docked, the children of the island suddenly appeared, as if by magic. Then, as now, North Haven days were marked by whom the ferry delivered and whom it removed. The children joined their elders who, on the pretense of waiting for the mail, roosted on the stone wall beside the post office just up from the pier and kept watch.

On a day in August 1956 a stranger stepped off the ferry. He'd come to see about the vacancy at the two–teacher high school. He spoke in a heavy, sonorous tone. "Like out of a barrel," an islander said. He called himself "Martin D. Godgart." He took pains to never omit the "D." It was almost, as an islander later said, as though he was getting used to the name, syllable by syllable.

He stood six feet tall. His weight was anybody's guess. Some said 250. Some ventured higher. His age was 35. His hair was dark, close cropped. He wore a heavy tweed suit and a bow tie. He climbed into North Haven's "taxi," Frank Sampson's old station wagon, for the hop "up island" to the high school where the school board and Dana Smith, the principal, waited.

In his interview Martin D. Godgart impressed them as a well–spoken, likable man. When someone remarked "Godgart, Godgart ... never heard that one before," he shot back, "Only heard it once before myself!" He now lived in Lawrence, Massachusetts, but longed, he said, for an island's peace. He held a B.A. from Wagner College and a master of education from City College in New York. He had taught in New Jersey and seven years at one of Brooklyn's toughest public schools; the setting, he would tell people, for the movie Blackboard Jungle.

While some members of the school board wondered why a man of Godgart's background would teach at their humble 25–student high school, for Dana Smith the answer was simple: Martin Godgart was a rolling stone, a man with no ties to anyone or anyplace who simply desired to catch his breath. A man unlikely to put down roots on the island, but few teachers ever did; year by year they came and left. You threw a net into the sea and hoped for the best. Martin D. Godgart's willingness to accept their $3,200 salary struck them as one of the wondrous mysteries of life, like a pearl plucked from an oyster. School would open in a few weeks. Nobody else had even applied. The job of English, Latin, and French teacher was his.

For generations the green, craggy shores of the island — nine miles long, three wide, 12 miles to sea on the western edge of Penobscot Bay, just across a ribbon of bay from Vinalhaven Island — had been the coveted playground of families named Rockefeller, Cabot, Saltonstall, Morgan. Here Charles Lindbergh came courting Anne Morrow at her family's summer home. In summer the 350 or so natives were outnumbered by the "rusticators" three to one. The islanders respected the boundaries set in place years before between people from away and themselves.

"We'd see people get off the boat in summer," remembered one man, "but we didn't associate with them. You just didn't cross over."

The men were handy and worked as caretakers, carpenters, gardeners, and boatmen for the summerfolk. Their women did laundry and cleaned and cooked. There was a small boatyard in the village and a small farm here and there, but few could remember when the island looked seaward for its livelihood and pride. At summer's end the visitors left, and the island emptied, and the men kept watch over the silent, boarded–up houses. Little of the outside world, and little of the rusticators' affluence, trickled down to the Island children and their schools.

The high school was a square, two–story frame building two miles north of the village. A closet crammed with books served as school library. A chemistry lab and darkroom were tucked beneath the stairwell behind the propane tanks. Tools hung from a beam in a corner woodworking shop. In many ways it was the perfect place for a man who heeded few boundaries, who set few limits on what he might accomplish and alter in whatever world he found around him.

He lived at the Widow Crockett's, the telephone operator in the village. The house, like Hope Crockett, was handsome and well cared for, with white–painted shingles and flowers set along the windows that looked out to the yacht club, close to the watchers on the wall. Sometimes people commented that Mr. Godgart never brought schoolwork home. But their kids soon set them straight.

He could read upside down. Whatever he read once, he could repeat word for word. "He tried to impress upon us that we could remember anything we set out to," recalls Joel Wooster, who was a senior that year. "Mr. Godgart" — you never forgot there was a Mister in front of his name — "sent one of us to the mail to bring back a magazine. It was still in the wrapper. He went through it then put it down. 'Name a page,' he said. And he rattled off everything on that page."

His classes seldom bored. "He had a story for everything he taught us," said David Cooper, who today delivers mail to the outlying island homes. Stories told in a voice that fastened them to their seats. Stories that brought a largely unknown outside world to their classroom.

His temper sometimes flared as if from an unseen spark, and then his voice became a strap that made them shake. But the voice could also stroke. "If you spent an hour with him," said Dana Smith, "you always left feeling very good about yourself." When he sang them songs in Latin, he imbued his small, dark classroom with the air of a church. His students remember when one of the younger students from the seventh grade cut himself badly. They say a doctor couldn't have patched that boy up any better.

"You know how much we respected him?" recalled Gertrude (Beverage) Foltz, senior class president that year. "He needed a bath badly. He wore the same wool pants every day and the same tweed jacket. And how he'd perspire. The water just stood out on his forehead. And you know most kids are so picky on a teacher's faults. But we'd open the windows and in a way so as not to hurt his feelings."

Wherever one looked on North Haven, it seemed that Martin D. Godgart had claimed a chunk of island life as his own. Though he professed to be Episcopalian, he became Sunday school superintendent at the Baptist church. When Christmas approached, he rented a postal box for Santa Claus; that year the children received personal letters from the North Pole.

Off–season the island storytellers who gathered by the post office were a valued resource. Soon Martin Godgart was known as one of the best of them. He stuffed his coat pockets with bubble gum and balloons, and after school the younger children thronged around the wall for their treats, and the men would gather too, and prod him for a story. It seemed he had been practically everywhere, had done practically everything.

He watched the youngsters meet the ferry, then ride around in cars. Same roads, same kids, same sights. Barely settled, he decided the island's eight seniors should have a class trip to remember the rest of their lives. He quickly crossed the summerfolk boundary, helping students write to the rusticators, asking for assistance. Money poured in. On North Haven the idle boys needed something to do. "All we had was basketball," remembers a former player. "Our coach never showed up for practice, just games. He wore an old felt hat, and he'd holler and scream. Then disappear until the next game."

Soon Martin Godgart had organized all 18 of the island's teenaged· boys into the North Haven Sea Explorers Ship 396, a maritime version of the Boy Scouts of America, complete with personalized Sea Scout stationery. "Martin D. Godgart, Advisor," it read at the top; "Do A Good Turn Every Day" at the bottom.

"He seemed uncommonly interested in letterheads," said Dana Smith. "One day he saw me mailing a letter on school stationery. It merely said, 'Office of the Principal, North Haven High School.' He wanted to know why I didn't have my name there. I told him principals change often and stationery would become obsolete pretty fast. He told me having no name showed no class."

His scouts toured the state prison in Thomaston. He took the boys to fly aboard a Navy plane at the Navy base in Brunswick, but weather closed in and the boys spent the night huddled in a hangar.

Every Halloween the island, with so many vacant estates, braced for mischief. The Knox County sheriff's department appointed Godgart's scouts special constables, with power "to prevent and report malicious damage, vandalism, and any or all disturbances on that day." .It was the quietest Halloween anyone could recall. Wrote a state scout director: "What I could do with a thousand Martin Godgarts!"

He savored publicity for the scouts yet seemed peculiarly camera shy. "He always seemed to be somewhere else when I pointed the camera," said Dana Smith. He refused all entreaties to pose with his scouts. At a father–and–son scout banquet Godgart avoided the group photo by staying in the kitchen, carving turkey. "At my son's two–year–old birthday celebration," said Smith, "I was taking photos, and before I could snap the shutter he had leaped out of view. All I had was a picture of an empty chair."

To many islanders Martin Godgart was becoming a local hero. Austin Grant, who was a senior that year, remembers his teacher telling him, "Someday I'll put this place on the map!" Few doubted him.

But the pastor's wife had felt uneasy about Martin Godgart from the start: "Just a woman's intuition," she'd say later. An island laundress was surprised to find a tag that read "E W. Demara" in Mr. Godgart's shirt, but said nothing. "It wasn't my business what he wanted to call himself," she later said. Now and then a scene of disquieting anger, of inner frustrations barely kept in check, made a few others wary. He carried a loaded .38 pistol— for target shooting, he said. "That would upset my mother," said David Cooper. "She couldn't figure out why he needed a loaded gun on North Haven Island." One day Cooper, then in eighth grade, bolted for the schoolhouse door with his baseball bat, not noticing the towering behemoth standing in his path, a bowl of hot soup in his hand. The soup crashed to the floor. In an instant Godgart ripped the bat from the boy's grasp, grabbed him by the shoulders, and snatched him on high. "Don't you ever pull that s - - - again!" thundered the Sunday school superintendent and scoutmaster.

Islanders knew that Martin Godgart seemed awfully fond of alcoholic beverages, but he never drank in front of the children. The island was dry, so Saturday mornings he'd ferry to Rockland, return with his packages, and spend the weekend alone in his room. Once Widow Crockett found him passed out on the floor and had to summon the doctor. The enormous energies he showed upon his arrival dampened, he seemed unable to decide what to tackle next. He grew restless. His weight ballooned. Nagging miseries occupied his conversation: his back, the weather, the kids. One day he exploded at the junior–senior English class. "You're all a bunch of imbeciles!" he shouted. "Now get out!"

Dana Smith knew that boredom was closing in on Martin Godgart as fast as the cold, dark days of winter; rolling stones sometimes need to roll, he figured. It was only Thanksgiving. Smith hoped his impetuous and talented teacher could "hang on until the end of the year."

A few weeks before Christmas Martin Godgart showed a photograph of himself to Hope Crockett, one that he said had been clipped from a magazine. The text and captions had been trimmed away, leaving only the posed figure who, dressed in a navy blue blazer, cut a dashing and handsome figure. "Everyone knew he was smitten with her," said a former student. "He wanted to impress her."

Then, as was his evening custom, he strolled down the hill, perhaps 200 yards, to the home of William Hopkins, former ferry captain, current teacher on Vinalhaven, one of the most educated men on the island. In the view of North Haven the two men were fast friends. They were close in age. Hopkins' island roots reached back before the Revolution, and he matched Godgart's tales of worldwide adventure with stories about what he called "this little rock"; of days when "Lucky Lindy" landed his float plane just beyond his house; of winters cutting ice from the pond with his father; and of his summer ice route that brought him into the cavernous ice–box rooms of the rusticators.

Hopkins was napping. Godgart showed the photo to his wife, June. "Why, Marty," said June Hopkins, "is that you? You were much thinner. What did the story say. What was it about?"

Godgart smiled. "If I told you," he said, "then you'd know as much as I do."

Something nagged at the edge of June's memory. She knew she had seen the photo before. She hurried into the bedroom where her husband lay resting. "Bill, wake up," she said. "Marty has a picture he wants to show you."

Hopkins was not a man easily roused merely to see a friend's photo, and he refused to budge, a show of disinterest that visibly irritated Godgart.

June was certain the picture Godgart had shown her was from LIFE. The article had stuck with her because it detailed the remarkable life of an imposter who had performed extraordinary deeds. She wrote to LIFE, asking whether Martin Godgart was the name of the famous imposter.

During Christmas vacation, when Godgart was away, a copy of the January 28, 1952, LIFE arrived in North Haven. In it was a story entitled "The Master Imposter," about Ferdinand "Fred" Waldo Demara. He had left home and school at 15. He was probably a genius. By using stolen letterheads he acquired college records of a multitude of men, and by skillful forgeries he could assume, almost at will, the names and credentials of whoever he desired to be. Astonishingly, he could also perform the work required.

As Dr. Joseph C. Cyr, surgeon aboard a Canadian Navy destroyer, he became known as a "miracle doctor." As Dr. Robert Linton French, he became a college dean. As Dr. Cecil B. Hamann, he was admitted to law school in Boston. Born Catholic, he had been accepted into more monasteries and Catholic orders than probably anybody in America, frequently arriving at the monastery door claiming he wished to convert to Catholicism. He had deserted from the U.S. Navy and for a long time eluded capture by joining the army. The article concluded with Demara at the home of his long–suffering parents in Lawrence, Massachusetts. "I don't know exactly what I'm going to do," he said. "But I have a few things in mind."

June and Bill Hopkins were certain their friend Marty was the famed imposter. Bill couldn't believe his friend's deception. He said perhaps Demara had sought a fresh start, had changed his name, and was now legitimate. For the time being, they did nothing. June hid the article in a bedroom drawer and kept quiet.

"One day after vacation Marty came up to the house," June recalled. "He was watching television with us, which he did almost every night. At 9:30 I went into the kitchen to get coffee and cookies. Bill told me he was going to tell him we knew who he was. I said, 'Oh, please don't.' All I could think of was his loaded gun and the temper which we had seen displayed.

"Bill said, 'We'd like to know your story. I'd be curious to know about it.'

"'What do you mean?' Marty shouted. He was irate. I went and got the article. 'Marty, this is the picture you showed me. This is you.' He denied everything. He went into the kitchen and poured himself a drink. Then he left. And he never came to our house again. "

It was an outrage to Bill that his friend could, as he later wrote in a letter, "take advantage of our open heart." To Hopkins, an imposter was "a liar. . . and you don't set him up as a shining example for your children."

Bill and June carefully wrapped Godgart's drinking glass and a can of beer he had drained. A friend with Augusta connections took them to state police headquarters. Detective Millard Nickerson dusted them for fingerprints, to see if they matched those ofa man named Ferdinand Waldo Demara.

February 14, a Thursday, was a gusty, raw day on the coast of Maine. State police detectives Nickerson and James Milligan arrived on North Haven by Coast Guard cutter just before lunch. They were dressed in plain clothes. "I had heard how popular Godgart was," said Nickerson recently. "The last thing I wanted to see was a welcoming committee at the dock." The taxi drove them to the high school.

Dana Smith was in the chemistry lab. Out the window he saw Godgart, just returned from the Valentine's Day program in the village, talking to two men in the parking lot. Godgart walked into the school and bounded up the stairs.

"I remember thinking he went up those stairs awfully fast for a man who'd been complaining of his back. He said nothing to me. He walked out the door and never came back. A short while later my wife arrived with eyes wide as teacups."

News of the arrest whipped around the island, and soon the telephones were ringing off the hook, not only on North Haven but at state police headquarters as the media swooped in for the biggest story of the day. That night, as word flashed around the country, phone calls came into the city jail from florida, California, New York, Canada, and Texas. There, before his arrival in North Haven, Demara had been posing as Ben Jones, assistant warden at Huntsville State Prison, a man with an uncanny knack for calming unruly prisoners, until one day an inmate was leafing through an old copy of LIFE. Each call was from people Demara had fooled in the past, all of them asking how they could help him now. Prosecutor Robert A. Marden grew weary talking with North Haven islanders who just wanted him to send Godgart or Demara, or whatever he wanted to call himself, back.

At 5 P.M. Friday Demara faced Superior Court Justice Armand A. Dufresne, Jr. The charge of obtaining fraudulent credentials carried a penalty of up to seven years in jail. The courtroom was packed. Demara had waived his right to an attorney, choosing, as was his wont when so confronted, to speak in his own defense. There was no need.

"I felt on his side," said Robert Marden recently. "I felt like the island people felt. Here was a man who obviously left a place better than when he arrived. I said to the judge, 'Sure, he's guilty. But justice won't be served by punishing him.' That's the only time in my life I ever did that. And I've always been glad I did."

The judge caught Demara's eye.

"You do not intend to get involved in future impersonations?"

"That is correct, your honor," answered Demara.

"This is the time to put a period to this way of life," the judge added as Demara bit his lip. "There has got to be a stop somewhere." Then the judge set him free. Detective Nickerson put him on a bus. "You've just had the break of your life," he said. "Now go home."

Demara got off the bus in Portland, got drunk, left the hotel without paying, and called Bill Hopkins. June answered.

"I've got someone watching you and the kids," Demara said. "I'll know what you're doing." The call left a lasting impression on Eric Hopkins, then aged five.

At the high school Dana Smith forbade discussion of Ferdinand Demara's deception and of how he was discovered. "June and Bill really took their lumps," Dana said. Anonymous letters called them "Judases," and one day June removed them to a box under the attic eaves. Not long ago she found them again. After 32 years, the hurt has not gone completely. "He wanted to be caught," she said. "But an imposter needs the chase."

Dana Smith agreed. "Bill Hopkins was set up. Demara knew Bill was a curious man. He was ready to move on."

A new teacher was hired. The sea scouts soon disbanded. But late in the spring of 1957, the seniors got their class trip: ten days, all expenses paid, to New York and Washington, D.C. "We had the best trip of anyone in the state of Maine," said Gertrude Foltz. A few months later they read in wonder, but not surprise, that police in Alaska were looking for Martin D. Godgart, a teacher in a remote Eskimo village, who suddenly disappeared when an old trapper recognized him from a magazine photograph.

In time the anger subsided. "We all have our faults," said an islander. "We know each other's. But we have to forgive and forget. The island is very understanding. We have to be."

There was a best–selling book by Robert Crichton called The Great Imposter and in 1960 a movie by the same name starring Tony Curtis. Now and then some reporter tracked down Demara, who after the movie spent the rest of his life under his rightful name as an ordained minister.

In 1978 a newspaper reported he was a hospital chaplain in California. Some of his former North Haven students wrote him letters. His reply to one read: "I loved North Haven and would have gladly stayed there the rest of my life were it possible. It is my secret desire to slip ashore one day and wander around."

On June 7, 1982, Ferdinand Demara died of heart failure in California at age 60. "It was like a part of the past died," recalled Dana Smith. Eric Hopkins, now a well–known island artist, was in the post office when he heard the news. Relief swept over him. "I didn't know until then how I'd been carrying around a fear all those years that one day he was going to come back and get us."

Dana Smith has become a collector of Demara memorabilia. A scrapbook is filled with news clippings, photos, and letters. A few months ago, to help celebrate North Haven's bicentennial, he returned to the island from his home in Tenants Harbor and presented a slide show from his collection. He gave the show twice. There is talk of a third. He talked in detail about the island sojourn of a man who many people still think of as Martin. But he would not speak about how he was found out. On North Haven the great imposter has passed from memory into myth, and while he is clearly no longer a hero, in a curious way he is still loved.

"You see," one former student said not long ago, "he didn't really take anything from the island. He gave. How could you not be happy with that?"