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Marvin Makinen, The Spy Who Got Left on the Cutting Room Floor

The 2015 Tom Hanks film Bridge of Spies tells the dramatic story of Bill Donovan, an insurance lawyer called on to defend a suspected Russian spy named Rudy Abel. Donovan built on his connections with Abel, indeed a Russian KGB colonel, to negotiate a swap that brought home American spy pilot Francis Gary Powers. But another American named Marvin Makinen slipped through his fingers.

The story focuses on how Donovan bartered for the release of both Powers and an economics student studying in Germany, Frederic Pryor. The East German police arrested Pryor in 1961. They had misinterpreted his economics dissertation as a spy report.

Powers, meanwhile, had been famously shot down flying an American CIA U-2 spy plane over Russia in May of 1960.

Bridge of Spies movie poster.

But while Donovan helped secure the release of two men in 1963, he also wanted to free a third. He failed, though, to free Marvin Makinen, an Ashburnham, Mass., college student who actually was a real spy arrested and jailed in the Soviet Union.

Marvin Makinen

Makinen, a chemistry student in Berlin, might seem an unlikely spy. But he belonged to a large group of students and tourists recruited by the CIA to spy on the Soviet Union. Sometimes the program had troubling outcomes.

In one famous case from 1960, Mark Kaminsky of Michigan and Harvey Bennett of Bath, Maine, were arrested while traveling in Russia. The two men had photographs of Russian military sites and notes about them in their possession. They explained Kaminsky was writing a book about the buildup of the Russian military. It didn’t satisfy the Soviets and they went to jail.

Back home in the United States, their stories seemed equally shaky. The two men had served in the Air Force together. Something called the Northcraft Educational Fund had paid for their travels to the Soviet Union with $2,000 grants. But the foundation had no record. A lawyer who represented Northcraft would not explain why it paid for the research or who backed it.

Mark Kaminsky and Harvey Bennett arriving at Idlewild Airport (now JFK)

Though both Bennett and Kaminsky eventually returned to the United States, skeptics believed the Educational Fund was simply a front for the CIA. They thought the agency used it as part of its covert program to infiltrate the Soviet Union with spies traveling under the guise of tourists. Or, as in Makinen’s case, as students.

Failing at Spycraft

Makinen has explained that he did undertake the mission to spy on the Soviets. He took photographs of military installations while traveling in Russia as a student, but he was a poorly prepared spy. If caught, the CIA had told him, he should simply do his best to try to slip out of trouble.

Gary Francis Powers in Soviet custody

The Soviets caught Makinen in 1961. He was still in prison in 1963, during the events depicted in the film Bridge of Spies. According to the movie version, Donovan tried to free Gary Francis Powers — and got the student, Frederick Pryor, freed as well. But Makinen was actually the one that got away.

Soviet stamp commemorating Rudy Abel

Over a 10-day stretch of negotiations, Donovan pushed to get all three men released in exchange for Rudy Abel. Abel, the Russian colonel, had siphoned military secrets out of the United States for nine years.

One day Makinen was in the mix, the next Pryor and the next Powers, Donovan recalled.

In the end, Pryor and Powers got exchanged for Abel. Makinen had to wait until later in 1963 for his release in a separate swap.

Makinen and Pryor both went on to have a successful career as college professors and researchers.

This story last updated in 2022.

Images: Francis Gary Powers in Soviet custody By RIA Novosti archive, image #35174 / Chernov / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18163538.

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The 6 Tallest Trees in New England

Once New England had the greatest forests and the tallest trees in the world. They were a major attraction for English colonists and their sponsors, who coveted the huge white pines as masts for the King’s Royal Navy. The Crown reserved the biggest pine trees, which government agents marked with three slashes called the King’s Broad Arrow.

The laws protecting the trees for the King were honored more in the breach than in the observance. Pine trees became a symbol of resistance, and images of them appeared in flags.

The New England Flag

Tall trees exercised a fascination over people apart from their political context. Societies formed to identify champion trees. And today, many states maintain registries of their tallest and biggest trees.

The Tallest Trees

In 1940 a nonprofit called American Forests started the National Register of Big Trees and named the Wye Oak in Maryland as the national champion for more than 60 years. But measuring the tallest trees isn’t always an exact science, and most champions yield their place to new specimens. Either another tree grows taller or the champion is felled by disease, weather or real estate developers.

We did our best to identify the tallest tree in each state. But who knows? A storm could have felled it since it was last measured. If you know of a tree taller than the ones mentioned – or if any of those trees have fallen – please comment below.

Connecticut’s Gold Standard

Pinchot Sycamore, one of Connecticut’s tallest trees.

The most famous tree in Connecticut, other than the Charter Oak, is the 104-foot-tall Pinchot Sycamore in Simsbury. It’s 28 feet around and at least 200 years old — if not 300 years old. It was named after Gifford Pinchot and officially dedicated to the conservationist in 1965.

The big old sycamore sits on the east bank of the Farmington River near the base of Talcott Mountain. Floodlights illuminate it at night, and canoers can launch their boats nearby. For a while the Pinchot Sycamore tied the largest sycamore with a specimen in Bath County, Virginia, until a bigger one in Ashland, Ohio, surpassed them both.

The Pinchot Sycamore, though, is not the tallest tree in Connecticut. That honor belongs to a 144.6-foot-tall white pine in a small forest in West Cornwall called Gold’s Pines, named after the man who purchased it in 1870, Theodore S. Gold. The forest grew to 46 acres, and then 56. It now belongs to the Housatonic State Forest as one of the few old growth forests in Connecticut.

“Here, even on the brightest of blue sky days, the gentle wind makes a thunderous noise as it passes through,” wrote one hiker who waxed elegiac about the canopy of the ancients.

You can reach Gold’s Pines on Rte. 128, just right of the Little Guild of St. Francis animal shelter. Gold’s Pines also boasts a 127.8-foot-tall Tulip tree.

Maine’s Unofficial Champ

Yarmouth Dutch elms, possibly the tallest trees in Maine once.

There are no reliable height measurements in Maine available, according to the Monumental Tree index. Maine has its own registry of big trees, which it updates periodically but is considered unreliable. Maine residents nominate trees for the honor of appearing in the registry. The 120-foot white pine in Morrill is the unofficial tallest tree in Maine.

Maine, however, can claim the tallest chestnut tree in North America. The tree is 115-feet high, 20 feet higher than its closest competitor. Only a few dozen chestnut trees remain in Maine, as chestnut blight wiped out large stands of the trees from Maine to Georgia in the early 1900s.

The chestnut was discovered last year in a forest in Lovell, near the New Hampshire border. The forest was once part of an artist colony, Hewnoaks, founded by artist Douglas Volk (1856-1935) and his wife. Volk’s wife donated the property to the University of Maine Foundation.

Maine was once home to the largest Dutch elm tree, nicknamed Herbie. Planted in 1793 on Main Street in Yarmouth, Herbie grew to 110 feet tall with a circumference of 20 feet. Children watched some of its diseased limbs being cut off and cried, “What are you going to do to Herbie?”

Herbie finally succumbed to Dutch elm disease and fell to the ax and chainsaw on Jan. 19, 2010. A section of the trunk’s base was displayed at the 2010 Yarmouth Clam Festival. You can now see it outside Yarmouth’s town hall.

Jake Swamp

Along the Mohawk Trail, where you’ll find some of Massachusetts’ tallest trees.

The tallest tree in Massachusetts has a name: Jake Swamp. It’s a 163.2-foot white pine in the Trees of Peace Grove in Mohawk Trail State Forest. The forest, located in Charlemont, Hawley, and Savoy, has 83 trees reaching 148 feet, the largest collection of tall white pines in New England. It was discovered by Robert Leverett, a big-tree hunter and co-author of The Sierra Club Guide to Ancient Forests of the Northeast.

In 1996 Leverett helped found the Eastern Native Tree Society. Its members search for old stands in remote places and for giant trees in parks and cemeteries. When Leverett discovered the tallest white pine in Massachusetts, he named it after Mohawk Chief Jake Swamp Tekaronianeken.

Jake Swamp founded the Tree of Peace Society in 1982. He traveled around the world planting Trees of Peace near places such as the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and Constitution Hall in Philadelphia. A year after his death in 2010, trees were planted around the world on October 18 on what would have been his 70^th birthday. A Tree of Peace was planted in his honor in Huntington Park, Mass.

Reader Norman Schell personally measured another giant tree in Massachusetts: the Sycamore on Rte. 47 in the center of Sunderland. A sapling when the United States ratified the Constitution, it measures 32 feet in circumference. It is acknowledged as the oldest and largest Sycamore tree east of the Mississippi.

New Hampshire’s Skinny White Pine

White pines, probably the tallest trees in New Hampshire if not all of New England.

The tallest tree in New Hampshire is a white pine measuring 166.1 feet tall on a private estate in Claremont. It was declared the new New England champion by the Native Tree Society. It’s a mystery to us who owns the estate, but if you’re in Claremont just look for a tall stand of white pines. The tallest one is ‘extraordinarily skinny,’ according to Robert Leverett, one of the men who measured it.

There were also extraordinarily tall white oaks in the Claremont stand. “The 115.2-foot white oak blew my mind,” wrote one big tree hunter. “The growing conditions have to be superb to support such a height for white oak so far north.”

Additionally, the Bradford Pines Natural Area in Bradford has trees over 200 years old and over 150 feet tall. Randy Redford believes they may be the tallest trees in New Hampshire, if not all of New England. They even have lightning rods on them.

A sugar maple in Ossipee was believed to be the biggest in New England until it fell in 1846. It yielded 3,300 board feet of lumber and nine cords of firewood.

According to legend, a pine cut on the site of Dartmouth College reached a height of 240 feet. But many doubt the species can grow so tall.

The Mighty Tulip

Tulip trees, the tallest trees in Rhode Island.

Several tulip trees have been identified as Rhode Island’s tallest tree.

According to the Cranston Herald, the tallest tree in Rhode Island is at 975 Warwick Neck Ave. in Warwick. The Rhode Island Champion Tree List of 2014 shows a Warwick tulip tree measuring 126 feet high as the tallest in the state.

The Native Tree Society, however, claims a 115.7-foot tulip tree on the ‘Nathaniel Green’ site in Kingston. They could be referring to the University of Rhode Island Campus.

The tulip tree has large flowers that sort of resemble tulips. Sometimes it’s called a tulip poplar or yellow poplar, but it’s actually related to the magnolia. Indians hollowed out its wood to make canoes from its light wood, and sometimes people refer to it as a canoewood tree.

The fattest tulip tree, measuring 16 feet around, is in Bristol. Click here for a map of a walking tour of the town’s historic district, where the tree resides.

Vermont’s White Pine

A tall white pine

Vermont’s tallest tree is a 143.4-foot white pine in Arlington, according to the Eastern Native Tree Society. It’s tucked in among one of the state’s best collections of large-diameter white pines, the Fisher-Scott Memorial Pines Natural Area. There they are safe from development.

The Fisher-Scott Memorial Pines Natural Area was a 1975 gift to the state from the heirs of Vermont writer Dorothy Canfield Fisher. Fisher, a tireless social activist, promoted education and prison reform. Though originally from Lawrence, Kansas, Fisher adopted Vermont as her home state.

The Arlington property that is now a protected wildlife area served as Fisher’s writing retreat during a career that produced more than 40 books, both nonfiction and fiction (largely set in Vermont).

Vermont takes its champion trees seriously. The state keeps a registry of its biggest and tallest trees by town and species, from the Dwarf Chinkapin Oak in Bridport to a giant Cottonwood in Hubbardton. To check it out, click here.

You can visit the Fisher-Scott Memorial Pines Natural Area on Route 7A just north of Arlington.

Photos: Pinchot sycamore: By Msact at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48227856. Pinchot sycamore with people By Marty Aligata – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56461629. Tulip tree: By Timothy Valentine – http://www.flickr.com/photos/el_ramon/3583585898/in/set-72157614131871676/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6945589; White pine bough, By DigbyDalton – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28948041. This story about the tallest trees in New England was updated in 2023.

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William King: From Shoeless Wanderer to First Governor of Maine

William King set out on his own at 19 with little more than his portion of his father’s estate: a team of two-year old oxen. Many started with less, but few made more of it.

William King by Gilbert Stuart

King was born in 1768 in Scarborough, which was then Massachusetts. His father died when he was only seven. He did not receive the education his brothers had because the estate was tied up in lands that generated little revenue.

William King, Workaholic?

Instead, King began working at sawmills and learning the lumber trades. At 19, with his oxen, King ventured north, offering his service in exchange for room and board. He found few takers, and by the time he reached Bath he had worn the shoes off his feet. But he didn’t quit.

Finding work in a Topsham sawmill, he began a lifelong habit of working and saving. Soon, he found a partner and owned half a saw. Then it was a sawmill. Then he became an incorporator in the first toll bridge at Topsham. The state’s first cotton mill followed, and then a bank. In Bath, Brunswick and Topsham he would build more than 10 merchant ships.

By 1795, he also represented the Topsham area in the state Legislature in Boston. Later he represented Bath. His respect and admiration for hard work showed in his actions. In Maine’s early days, settlers would push to the edges of the frontier, build a farm and then find a land speculator had a claim to the land lying in wait. The settlers would then find themselves evicted.

William King pushed through a law that changed that. The settlers could be evicted from the land, but the owner had to pay fair value for the houses they had built. Or, in turn, they could sell the land to the settlers.

Statehood

All the while he expanded his enterprises, with a store and wharves and warehouses. By the War of 1812, King was designated major general of the militia, charged with raising troops for the war.

With his war accolades won, King turned his energies toward the one issue that most defined him: Maine statehood. For seven years he fought to liberate Maine from Massachusetts, and in 1819 the Maine Constitutional Convention approved the separation.

The battle then turned to Congress, where southerners didn’t want to create another anti-slavery state. As part of the Missouri Compromise, they agreed to admit Maine and Missouri as states. Maine banned slavery and Missouri didn’t, so the balance of power would remain unchanged.

The people of Maine chose King to be the state’s first governor, but he lasted only little more than a year. He was selected to go to Washington to work in government settling land claims in Florida, which he did for several years.

Caustic Iconoclast

Throughout his life, King was known as a natural leader in business and politics, but he preferred business. He turned his famously caustic sense of humor against his fellow politicians. He enjoyed telling the story of how one night while in Washington he was walking with a friend. When two gaily dressed young women began following them seeking attention,

King and his friend turned a corner. The women continued following until he turned and told them: “Ladies, I can only say to you that we are not members of Congress,” after which the two young women went off looking for other entertainment.

King’s somewhat dour demeanor did not extend to alcohol, which he served at his table despite Maine’s strong prohibition tendencies.

He was also something of a tyrant and an iconoclast. He led the secession from the Congregational church in Bath, creating a second church with the stroke of a pen on a check. And he frequently won his way at town meeting by shouting down his opponents.

Flaws and all, King nonetheless had the strength of will to lead the creation of a state where none existed.

Special thanks to “History of Bath and Environs, Sagadahoc County, Maine: 1607-1894” By Parker McCobb Reed for this portrait of William King. This story was updated in 2022.

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The Sea Serpent: China to New York in 101 Days

Clipper ships, the ‘greyhounds of the sea,’ are considered the most magnificent sailing ships ever built. They were designed to sail to China and back quickly because their cargo – tea – was so fragile.

Controversy surrounded the first clipper ship, the Rainbow, when she launched in 1845. Some said she’d be swamped because she was too sharp up front; others said she’d lose her rigging in the first stiff gale because her masts were too high and the yards too wide.

The Rainbow on her second voyage sailed to China and back in an astounding six months, 16 days – half the time of the typical voyage. Four years later, the California gold rush created an almost insatiable demand for clipper ships to sail.

The Sea Serpent

Shipyards began building clipper ships in New York, Boston, Baltimore, Newburyport, Mass., Mystic, Conn., Bath and Damariscotta, Maine, and Portsmouth, N.H.

The Sea Serpent slid down the ways on Nov. 20, 1850. She set the season’s record for speed in 1853, sailing from Canton, China to Indonesia in 29 days.

The Sea Serpent would also sail to San Francisco and China. Her owners, Grinnel & Minturn of New York, said, “We do not own a ship that has given us more satisfaction.”

She raced the Crest of the Wave from Shanghai to London in a contest that foretold Boston Marathon cheater Rosie Ruiz. Approaching England, the American captain left the Sea Serpent in the hands of the mate, went ashore in the boat that carried his pilot, took a steamer to Southampton, a train to Waterloo and a cab to the Custom House, where he announced the Sea Serpent had arrived.

The Sea Serpent had a service life of 36 years and 5 months, one of the longest lived clippers ever. Her crew abandoned her in 1891 on a voyage from Dublin to Quebec. The crew was rescued. The Sea Serpent drifted 1,120 miles in 93 days, and sighted 19 times before disappearing.

This story about the Sea Serpent was updated in 2018.

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