Faculty Vacations For Free--Almost--On Isolated Island Off Maine Coast

Harvard's free vacations for faculty members are no longer free. This year for the first time, the University will ask for a "Voluntary contribution" of $25 to pay for repairs on the float and dock of its summer house.

Since 1941 the Kendall House on an island off the Maine coast has been University property. For the past eight summers, family groups from the faculty have spent a rent-free two weeks there.

Atlantic Storms

This year, the cost of keeping up the dock, which is usually hard hit by the Atlantic storms in the winter, forced the University to suggest that donations be made. However, it is noted that all contributions are deductable on income tax returns.

Faculty members who stayed in the house last summer felt that "it was a wonderful deal--awfully cheap for the price." The weather on the Maine seashore is quite comfortable during July and August--sometimes a little cool, the vacationers agreed.

Usually more people apply for the lately-christened Kendall House than can be accommodated in the 12 weeks it is open. Each group may stay only two weeks.

Preference is given those who haven't vacationed there before, though many of those who have applied so far this year have spent summers there already.

Newcomers to the island will come upon an old eight-room house with three baths and five bedrooms. About five can live comfortably there though more can squeeze in the house. It is located on the seaward side of the island, right on the water. Dotting the beach are several other summer homes.

Sutton Island, where the house is located, is about 270 miles from Boston, and near Mt. Desert Island. It can be reached once a day by mailboat from the mainland. There are no cars, or even horses on the island. Once on the square mile of land, there is nothing much to do but talk, pick berries, and fish off the docks for small sculpins, flounders, and jellyfish.

The resort was provided by the will of a Harvard alumnus after whom the house is named, William M. Kendall '76.

He intended it to be used by the University for free faculty vacations and left a sizeable sum to cover the costs. Two years later, after some renovations, the house was opened up at no cost, and it was only when the waves pounded too fiercely this year that the free vacations needed reinforcing with "voluntary contributions."