To the Editor:

This letter is in response to Amanda Novak’s Letter to the Editor published Nov. 5 on LymeLine under the title, “Re-elect Powell-St. Louis to Region 18 BOE, Her ‘Passion and Track Record’ Make Her ‘Outstanding Choice’ for Lyme.”

While she is a doctor, Mary Powell-St. Louis has not endorsed women’s rights to control their own healthcare, including access to abortion and the need for sex education. For students and their parents, these are important issues about which they should be informed and have choice.

Mary has signed the petition that circulated in Old lyme to ban books, hardly an expression of tolerance or understanding.

At a 2018 rally in Haddam, Mary and her husband, dressed in American flags, joined a protest against the Freedom of Speech rights of the Haddam Selectwoman who had chosen to demonstrate against Donald Trump‘s embrace of Putin. Again, hardly evidence of Mary’s tolerance or her defense of the First Amendment.

More recently, Mary has sent a letter to Lyme residents admitting she is a conservative Republican, but claiming she is not in step with national Republican leaders. She did not elaborate about what she opposes or whether she believes Joe Biden won the 2020 election fair and square. Mary’s claim about the distance between her views and the extremism-dominated national Republican Party is hard to believe.

On land she owns, Trump‘s biggest financial supporter – Timothy Mellon – had his orange electric road sign flashing right wing messages.

Now, I believe in free speech, so that display was not the problem. The sign’s presence simply shows there is little evidence that Mary does not support Trump all the way! Trump’s national education policies, his lying and his persistent intolerance and bigotry are hardly qualities we in Lyme want represented in any way on the Board of Education.

Sincerely,

Lillian King,
Lyme, CT.

To the Editor:

I am writing as a progressive Democrat to encourage all others to reelect Republican Mary Powell-St. Louis to the Region 18 School Board.

Despite my readiness to argue politics, I assume that all people, regardless of political persuasion, want what is best for their children—and for other people’s children. I have no doubt that Gavin Lodge does so. Indeed, that is why it is so alarmingly disappointing that he and the Lyme DTC have resorted to lying and fear rhetoric to depict Dr. Powell-St. Louis as a figurehead for the banning of books in our schools.

The truth of the matter is that Mary Powell-St. Louis became a physician, moved to Lyme in 1998, sent three children through the LOL school system, served two terms on the BoE since 2015, earned a Masters in Public Health at Yale, earned an MBA from Babson, was recruited by Pfizer as a physician researcher and now serves as director for clinical trials in vaccine research. Her colleagues on the Board routinely praise her expertise, reasonableness, and ability to work across the aisle.

To the contrary, the Lyme DTC would have you believe that Dr. Powell-St. Louis accomplished such an impressive record so that, in 2024, she could prevail upon the Board of Education to override longstanding District policies and initiate book bans in our school libraries.

Look, I love a good thriller as much as anyone, but that absurd tale needs considerable workshopping. Who in their right mind could find it believable? And shame on the Lyme DTC for propagating such falsehood about an intelligent and successful woman and mother who has honorably given so much to her community.

The citizens of Lyme deserve a contest of ideas, not a barrage of deception. And to my fellow progressives and Democrats: If honesty and character matters in public officials, it must always matter. We must expect it from people on our side of the political spectrum as much as we demand it from our friends on the Right. Lying and spreading falsehoods is not a democratic virtue nor a Democratic principle. If we excuse it for our candidates, we cannot object to its use by our opponents.

As a father of two intelligent and spirited young women with strong moral compasses and of two equally fine young men whom my wife and I have taught to respect all genders, I know far too well how deleterious—but how regrettably common—it is to tolerate lies about women. I urge all of you who vote not to let the Lyme DTC’s duplicity set the stage for when elections return to our town. We are better than that, and our daughters and sons are watching.

On November 7, vote for honesty in elections and for respect of women in public service. Vote for Dr. Mary Powell-St. Louis.

Sincerely,

Stephen Olbrys Gencarella,
Lyme, CT.