Ben Waxman is a Portland native, third-generation textile worker, and co-founder of Portland, Maine based company American Roots (AR). Founded in 2015 and successfully launched in the fall of 2015, American Roots is a 100% American made textile and apparel company that specializes in direct retail and business to business sales.
Ben left a 16-year career in American politics and organized labor with the national AFL-CIO in 2013 to begin the process of launching a company that would create good paying jobs in his home town. Ben, along with his fiance, Whitney Reynolds, had the idea to provide good jobs and to make a high-quality clothing product made with 100% American-made materials and to keep it at an affordable price.
With an extensive national network of business, labor, and political organizations, Ben has been able to create a significant sales base. With a focus on sales, workforce development, and significant public relations background, Ben along with the American Roots team, has worked tirelessly to expand the American Roots name in its first year.
Ben is a Portland, Maine native, who attended Portland High School and some college time. Ben was inspired by his mother, Dory Waxman of Old Port Wool and his father Dan to pursue building American Roots and continuing a family tradition of textiles. He is an avid fly fisherman, Red Sox fan and family man.
Whitney left a twenty-year career in the hospitality industry in the spring of 2015 to join Ben in the launching of AR. With a background in finance, customer service and management, Whitney made the adjustment to manufacturing with a set of solid workforce skills. She has a primary focus as the Chief Financial Officer, as well as oversight on production, R&D, product line, vendor relations, and staff development. Whitney is originally from Rochester, New York, and graduated from Fordham University. She is an outdoors enthusiast and used to ski competitively.
American Roots had over 10,000 individual units sold in year one with estimated sales in 2017 of 25,000 units to customers across the country. Ben continues to work to broaden the AR brand and network through his personal connections and targeted marketing tactics along with some affinity marketing models.
Ben and Whitney reside in Westbrook, Maine and are expecting their first child in March.
On this Historic Inauguration-Day Friday, we were able to set aside the political events in Washington to come together and talk baseball and opera.....or, to be specific, we heard about an unusual combination of both: a baseball opera.
Dan Sonenberg has been working with Portland Ovations on his latest project. The USM School of music professor, composer, drummer and father of triplets is nearly done with The Summer King, an opera about Negro-League baseball legend Josh Gibson. We heard a short clip from a workshop performance at the Merrill, where it was first performed in a stripped-down format in 2014. Professor Sonenberg commented on the scale of the project, noting that “This is a two-hour opera and a fourteen-year odyssey.” The project is on course for a fully staged world premiere later this year in Pittsburgh - a remarkable achievement and a rarity in the world of contemporary opera - where few operas are written and even fewer are performed at all, let alone by a high-level company.
Josh Gibson came from Pittsburgh, is arguably one of the greatest hitters ever, as well as a solid defensive catcher, playing baseball from 1930-47. He died just before the color barrier in baseball was broken, and had he lived, he would surely have joined other aging heroes of the Negro Leagues in Major League Baseball. His is a tragic story and not well known among the public.
Sonenberg described the many challenges of writing an opera – the number of roles, the number of instruments and types of music, the libretto, and even issues of practicality, like a boys’ choir that comes on toward the end. This, surprisingly turns out to be an impractical factor given that kids need to go to bed, and therefore finding those performers for a run would be challenging.
Portland Ovations and its director Aimee Petrin made what he called a “wild decision” to produce the initial performance. He noted that an opera score is often just “a great paperweight,” mostly because unlike a book that can be picked up and read, it’s something that exists in a strange imaginary space, despite there being a score. “It’s not real until it’s heard and seen,” he noted, adding that there is a huge gulf between going from a small workshop to a premiere.
He said it would never have reached the point where it is now without the early support of Ovations, and a small, but critical, grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, which provided something of a “seal of approval” for the project.
It’s the experience of a dream coming true, says Sonenberg.
President Laura Young opened the meeting at the Clarion Hotel by welcoming 50 Club members, 5 visiting Rotarians and 5 guests.
Russ Burleigh and Alan Nye led us in invocation with prayer and the club “swearing in” to uphold the Four-Way Test. Would that it be a cornerstone of an incoming administration. We Pledged our Allegiance to the Flag and we sang the National Anthem.
(Photo: District Governor Marge Barker.)
Visiting Rotarians included our District Governor Marge Barker, Past District Governor Sheila Rollins, Jim Schmidt from the Casco Bay Sunrise Club, Kitty Chadbourne, and Dennis Robillard both from the Saco Bay Sunset Club. Guests included Andy Stone, brought by Bill Blount; Aimee Petrin, guest of Rusty Atwood; Susy Sonenberg, mother of our guest speaker. Ogy Nikolic, who was received into the club today, brought as his guests, his wife Sanja, and daughter Anastasija.
President Laura delivered appreciation for members with assigned tasks for this week’s luncheon meeting, and to Lili Brown for her efforts with the Lyseth School reading program.
Glenn Nerbak shared a Rotary Moment, which focused on his appreciation for the Club’s dedication to service that appealed to him, and the examples set by Jack Carr, John Marr, and Kris Rosado. Glenn provided a few slides showing Interact Club members engaged in a variety of service projects focused on hunger and Crutches4Africa. President Laura thanked Glenn for his critical role in establishing an Interact Club at Portland High School.
John Lock tried to help Loretta Rowe win the $1,240 raffle pot, but her drawing the Seven of Clubs did not help.
Gracie Johnston led us a cappella, as we sang “We Shall Overcome.”
(Photo: Prez. Laura Young, Russell Voss, Steve Mortimer, Ogy Nikolic, Jill Chase, Terri St. Angelo and Linda Varrell.)
Four new Rotarians were introduced: Linda Varrell presented Terri St. Angelo, a principal in Anderson-Watkins Insurance Agency; President Laura presented Julie Chase, the Dean of Business and Community Partnerships at Southern Maine Community College, and Steve Mortimer, CEO of Maine Management Consulting; and Russell Voss presented Ogy Nikolic, founder of OGO Sense, a digital marketing agency.
Ogy took a moment to share that his initial involvement with Rotary resulted from a question he asked a group of U.S. soldiers in Bosnia, "How could he come to America as an exchange student." One of the soldiers told him his mom was in Rotary, and she could help. That mom turned out to be Kitty Chadbourne of the Saco Bay Sunset Club, who not only arranged for Ogy to become an exchange student, but was present at Friday’s lunch as Ogy became a member of our Rotary Club. We were all touched by Ogy’s telling of his story, and the reach that Rotary has.
PDG Sheila Rollins took a moment to thank Past President Bowen Depke with an award for the club for the most new members in District 7880, and an award for the Club’s top rate of contributions for the Rotary Foundation, all during Bowen’s presidency during 2015-16.
Jim Schmidt of the Casco Bay Sunrise Club invited members to their fundraiser – Party With A Purpose – a buffet and charitable auction at Dimillo’s, on February 1st from 5:30 to 8:30 pm., all to benefit the Maine Children's Cancer Program. For more information, call: 207-662-6274. Buy tickets at: mmc.org/mccpbenefit
Invocation: David Small Program Reporter: Jake Bourdeau Bits & Pieces Reporter: Alan Nye Registration/Greeter: Larry Gross Sell Meal Tickets: Jan Chapman Raffle: Jake Bourdeau Badge Box: None Collect Meal Tickets: Katie Brown* Song Leader: Russ Burleigh Pianist: None Sgt-at-Arms (Early): Matt Tassey Sgt-at-Arms (Late): Mike Fortunato