And with the help of some people named Bush, the wedding gains worldwide media attention
KENNEBUNKPORT — It was just a small wedding, held in a Kennebunkport back yard in front of 65 guests. It was, says Helen Thorgalsen, “not meant to be a big deal,” at least not in the sense of it being a political statement.
Naturally, the Sept. 21 ceremony was a very big deal for Thorgalsen and her longtime partner, Bonnie Clement. But, though a couple since 2001, neither was active in the 2009 drive that legalized gay marriage in Maine, the subsequent repeal of that law before it could take effect, or the more recent citizens’ initiative that finally made if legal for same-sex couples to marry as of Dec. 29, 2012.
But it’s not every couple, gay or straight, that has their wedding certificate witnessed by a U.S. president, and, within moments of Thorgalsen posting a picture of George Herbert Walker Bush signing the marriage license – with the caption “Getting our marriage license witnessed!” – the story had gone viral. Photos from the wedding were lifted from the Facebook page and posted, Thorgalsen says, with only minor hyperbole, “in about a zillion places.”
Thorgalsen even got a note from a cousin living in Norway, with a photo attached from the Oslo newspaper, showing that there, too, the wedding was big news.
“We never expected it to grow this big,” Clement has said. “Within 10 minutes, we had more emails, it had gone international.”
Many of the news bites focused on the fact that Bush’s son, President George W. Bush, has opposed gay marriage. But Clement and Thorgalsen say the Bushes did not witness their marriage certificate as a means to speak out on the issue of gay marriage. In fact, the younger George Bush and his wife, Laura, were invited to the wedding at a home near the Bush family’s compound at Walker’s Point, but had other commitments.
“This was not meant to be a political statement by any means,” said Thorgalsen, “This was just them coming to the wedding of two friends and witnessing their wedding certificate as friends.”
“We just thought for us personally that would be the most memorable and just be a great thing,” said Clement in another interview regarding her wedding. “We get how blessed and lucky we are for them to be our friends. We just never expected it to be this way.”
Far from being a photo opp, the pictures were candid shots, taken without many of the wedding guests even realizing it was happening, recalled Thorgalsen.
“It wasn’t like it was a big formal thing,” said Thorgalsen. “Everybody was just milling around after the wedding when they signed, just as anyone would have their license witnessed. It wasn’t sort of, ‘OK, everybody stop and watch the president sign.’”
Still, even with the worldwide publicity and controversy about gay marriage, Thorgalsen says there’s been a paucity of hatred thrown their way.
“Everyone we see has been very happy for us, with all kinds of people offering their congratulations in cards, letters, emails, Facebook messages,” said Thorgalsen. “We’ve had a lot of publicity but, honestly, we’ve had minimal negative reaction. To me it’s just a union of two people who have been together for so long. Most people who know us just saw it as, ‘Oh, Helen and Bonnie are getting married,’ not, ‘Oh, it’s a gay wedding.’”
In that way, the couple says, the acceptance mirrors what they’ve experienced since moving to Kennebunk more than a decade ago.
Clement, 60, and Thorgalsen, 55, first met more than 12 years ago, when one of Thorgalsen’s then-teenage daughters began washing dishes at the Dockside Café in Kennebunkport, run at the time by Clement. Thorgalsen herself worked at the cafe for a short time and, soon, she and Clement were dating.
In 2002, they bought Meserve’s Market, located in an 1865 building at 15 Western Ave., in Kennebunk’s Lower Village, and moved into the second-floor apartment, along with Thorgalsen’s two daughters, making renovation of the store a family project.
Out went the carpet and metal shelves of what had been a corner convenience store, in came wood shelving and window tables and an old-fashioned general store ambience.
H.B. Provisions opened on May 21, 2002, and has not closed a single day since, opening its doors for half-days even on Thanksgiving and Christmas, offering groceries and newspapers, but also specialty coffees, a full deli, baked goods, meals, craft beers and an extensive wine collection, featuring 450 labels and monthly tastings.
“We wanted it to be more than a store,” said Thorgalsen. “We both shared the vision of it being a place where community members can come and greet each other, or just sit in the window and watch the world go by.
And the reaction was nothing short of fantastic.
“All we did was take the paper off the windows and people started pouring into the store,” said Thorgalsen.
Of course, there was, despite Clement’s experience in the restaurant industry and Thorgalsen’s people skills as a counselor, a “very steep learning curve.”
“On the first day we opened, Bonnie didn’t know how to run the cash register and I didn’t know anything about the deli,” recalled Thorgalsen, with a laugh. “There was so much to learn, stuff that we just didn’t know to keep the flow going.”
They were still very much feeling their way on their second weekend, with Thorgalsen working in the office, when she heard Clement call from the doorway, “Let’s go, the president is here.”
Bush, with a Secret Service agent in tow, explained that he’d heard there was a new business in town and that he wanted to check it out. As longtime residents of the nearby Walker’s Point compound in Kennebunkport, it was not that unusual to see the former president in town. Still, says Thorgalsen, it was “quite a thrill” to see him in their store.
That first visit became another, and then another, and soon the Bushes were both regular customers and genuine friends.
“They became friendly and came in more and invited us out on the boat and to different events,” said Thorgalsen. “We just gradually over time got to know them more and more. We’d often socialize with them at different gatherings. We’ve been to Houston to see them. Just as friends develop over time, we developed a relationship.
“So, they are our friends. That’s all there really is to it,” said Thorgalsen. “I certainly didn’t sense any hesitation at all [when asking them to sign as witnesses to the wedding].”
“It wouldn’t have been uncommon for us to invite them because we have been friends for many, many years,” Clement has said. “This was just our friends coming to our wedding.”
The decision to marry stems from a minor medical emergency last fall. The couple split briefly in 2007 when Thorgalsen left the business to re-enter her former career as a counselor. She has since earned a doctorate in C.O.R.E. Education – an acronym that stands for Conscious, Ownership, Retrieval/Release, and Engage – and now works primarily as a counselor through her website, IWantToFeelBetter.com. But the couple stayed in touch and were drawn back together when Clement was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009.
“She said, ‘You know what, I’m just going to be here for as long as this takes. We’re just going to work through this.’ So we did,” Clement said. “It was a very long year of treatment and we just sort of realized at this point that it was destined. We just never really have been apart. I said we always knew.”
Then, about a year ago, Clement took ill and was transported by ambulance from the store to Southern Maine Medical Center in Biddeford. Thorgalsen went ahead by car to start the requisite paperwork, but found much different treatment from what she experienced during Clement’s cancer treatments, primarily at Mercy Hospital in Portland.
“When I got to the hospital they asked if I was related to her,” said Thorgalsen. “I said she was my partner and they said, ‘Well, then, you’ll have to go and wait in the waiting room,” and they wouldn’t let me in.
“That was the spark that prompted the whole thing,” said Thorgalsen. “Once that happened, it made us realize how important this [marriage] can be.”
So, during a trip to the Von Trapp family lodge in Vermont last December, timed to coincide with Thorgalsen’s birthday, Clement popped the question, with one of Thorgalsen’s daughters part of the occasion in person and the other tuned in via FaceTime.
“My children look as much to her for guidance and support as they look to me,” said Thorgalsen, noting that she and Clement have co-parented the girls, Audrey, now 24, and Lindsay, 26 and expecting her first child within weeks.
“Up to that point, getting married didn’t feel like something we needed to do,” said Thorgalsen. “We didn’t give it a lot of energy. But I’ve been in other gay relationships, I’ve been in other straight relationships, and she was the person I fell in love with.”
Although Thorgalsen now only works in the store part time, it remains the central part of their lives. The wedding had to wait past the busy summer tourist season and a major remodeling of the building’s living quarters.
Even on her wedding day, Thorgalsen notes, she stopped in to the store for a quick coffee and ended up working an hour through the morning rush.
“That’s a big part of living it, and loving it,” said Thorgalsen. “It’s a big part of both of us, it carries both of our names, even though my real calling is the counseling and working with people on a more individual basis.”
Meanwhile, Clement, who has become so plugged into the needs of the community that some have taken to calling her “The Mayor of the Lower Village,” has said life in Kennebunk is about as good as it gets, a fact that remains true even after a honeymoon trip to Venice and the Italian Alps, and a wine-tasting tour of California’s Napa Valley.
“We said it probably was a good thing that we weren’t here for all [the media attention to the wedding],” she said for a recent interview. “We keep thinking it’s got a little bit of a shelf life. But really, it was about our wedding, to finally acknowledge the fact that we are a couple that is committed, that we have two beautiful daughters and are soon to be grandparents. We’re blessed in so many ways, you just can’t imagine.”
