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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 4/30/2001
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION Call Tim Harrison, 207-646-0515
WELLS - With the final decision still several weeks away, it's anybody's guess what will be on Maine's new 25-cent piece. However, "West Quoddy Head Lighthouse, in Lubec, is what should be on Maine's State Quarter", says Tim Harrison, president of the American Lighthouse Foundation, whose group is campaigning for the lighthouse.
Harrison said they are not just trying to get a lighthouse on the quarter for the sake of a lighthouse. "It's much more than that," he said. "Because Maine is the easternmost state in the nation and at that easternmost point of the mainland of Maine is, West Quoddy Lighthouse, we believe that it would be the best representation of Maine's place in the union. It's also the point of land that sees the sunrise first. One could say that all the days in this country start first at West Quoddy Head Lighthouse."
Harrison, who is also editor of Lighthouse Digest Magazine, went on to say that other proposed designs that he has heard about would not do the state justice. "All 50 states have a bird, we don't need a bird on a Maine quarter. Many states have pine trees, many states have moose, many states have lobster and all 50 states have flowers. None of those set Maine apart from the other forty-nine states."
He continued, "Maine needs something distinctive, something that sets us apart from the rest of the states. We have encouraged our people to contact members of the special commission appointed by the Governor to encourage them to choose the West Quoddy Lighthouse design that has been submitted."
However, getting a West Quoddy Lighthouse or any other design approved, won't be easy. The Maine Arts Commission, which has been designated with the task of reviewing the submitted designs, is required to pick five finalists and submit them to Governor King. Governor King will then personally pick the three he thinks best represent Maine and submit them to the U.S. Mint. Then the Mint will pick the design that will become our state quarter. However, the Mint has been known to reject designs that have been submitted and informed a state to resubmit something better. This was the case recently with North Carolina's design where the state wanted both the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and the Wright Brothers first airplane flight on the quarter. The U.S. Mint said that they could have one or the other, but not both. The Wright Brothers "First Flight" won by one vote.
Photo 21-1.jpg
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Caption 1
Quarter design by Melissa Pelletier-Provencher
Date Entered into online database: April 30, 2001
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