Issues → January/February 2011 → Features →

The Restorer

In the world of wooden boats, Jon Wilson is a legend. Few know about his other life in troubled waters.

by Ian Aldrich

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Credit: Shoshannah White

Credit: Kip Brundage

The water still calls to him. Nearly 40 years living in Down East Maine hasn't changed that for Jon Wilson. He's not on the ocean as much as he'd like--his work keeps him more tethered to the land than it used to, he'll say--but the longtime sailor still gets out there when he can. He's navigated a good portion of the East Coast and drifted around the Caribbean, but Maine's waters--"so raw in a way," he says--still captivate him. Penobscot Bay and its scattered islands, the expansive, never-ending feel of the Atlantic off Naskeag Point, the winds that rush along Eggemoggin Reach ... these are the places he returns to again and again.

On those clear, sun-drenched summer days, when blue sky and warm winds make it seem as though winter will never return, Wilson and his wife, Sherry Streeter, board their sailboat--a 34-foot cruiser that's nearly as old as its 65-year-old owner--and let it lumber along at a steady five or six knots. Sometimes they steer to a favorite island; other times, Wilson's looking for something else. "It's a visceral feeling," he says. "That sense of oneness with the boat, the water, and the wind."

It seems so idyllic. And yet, he doesn't let himself remain here too long. "There's a part of me that could just stay out there," he says. "I have to fight it. For me it feels a little self-indulgent. I just feel as though I can do so much more ashore."

You see, amid all that quiet, all that lovely isolation, Wilson's mind often drifts back to land, back to work, back to the lives he's gotten to know almost as well as these Maine waters. Wilson's legacy and fortunes, of course, are secure. He's grown WoodenBoat Publications and its namesake magazine, which he started in 1974 out of a tiny cabin in North Brooksville, Maine, into an $8-million-a-year brand. There's a gorgeous house on the shores of the Reach in Brooklin and that boat he adores, and yet, increasingly, all of it has migrated to the background of his life. Instead, Wilson has placed himself on the front lines of the restorative-justice movement. Through a small nonprofit called JUST Alternatives, which he founded in 2003, Wilson has poured himself into an intensive process of preparing and facilitating meetings between survivors of violent crimes and their offenders.

Known as victim-offender dialogue (VOD), this is a world of mothers devastated by the loss of murdered children; wives trying to move past years of domestic abuse; rage and anger, recovery and forgiveness. Wilson is part counselor, part friend, part advocate. And, in a way, it's not as much of a break from his publishing past as it might first appear.

"I think in terms of possibilities," he says. "That's what WoodenBoat was: the possibility of durability, the possibility of the value of wooden boats and culture. That's all anything I do is."

He is, in other words, still restoring--still a believer that something that's been broken, that's been abandoned, can be put back together. It's different work--deeper work, he says--but it's similar work. Which is why, even when he's out on his boat, the people Wilson deals with are never far from him. "It's unavoidable," he says. "You carry their stories and their pain. I don't find it easy to let go of. I love making a difference. I love being of consequence. I love being responsible for making sure something is happening."