DUBLIN, N.H. — On a recent morning, Mel Allen, a spry 79-year-old, led a reporter on a walk from the offices of Yankee Magazine that he and his colleagues often took during their lunch breaks.
He followed a path from the center of the village, up a hill, through the woods and into a cemetery, which opened up to an expansive view across the blue waters of Dublin Lake to Mount Monadnock, rising into a blue sky with tufts of white clouds.
“Now look at this — this is where we’d come,” he said, admiring the postcard-perfect view. “Can you believe this is where we work?”
Allen spent almost 50 years at Yankee Magazine, writing stories about the people of New England — about their hopes and dreams, their challenges and resilience. Earlier this year, he retired from the magazine, where he was a reporter and editor.
Allen began his reporting career in Maine, and first joined Yankee Magazine in 1977, when he showed his clips to Jud Hale, the editor and nephew of the publication’s founder, Robb Sagendorph. Hale was impressed with the young writer’s work, and took him on as a freelancer. Two years later, Hale offered Allen his dream job.
“He said, ‘Find stories,’ ” Allen recalled. ” ‘Go wherever you need to go. See the people who interest you, who touch you, whose stories deserve to be known.’ ”
Allen dug in, writing hundreds of articles and essays about life in New England, dozens of which are collected in a soon-to-be-published book, “Here in New England.”
Many of the stories are about people who persevere, who embody the flinty toughness of New England’s hard-scrabble, rocky soil and long, cold winters.
“There are some characteristics that people will always associate with New England,” Allen said. Those include independence, resilience, thriftiness, love of tradition, love of nature and, according to Allen, love of the seasons.
“My goodness, where would we be if we didn’t have the seasons?” he added with a laugh.
“Here in New England” includes stories about the hard-working lobstermen and mill workers, the quirky artists and writers, their towns, villages and seaside communities. There are stories about baseball legend Ted Williams and author Stephen King, before he became famous. And Bertha Nunan, who makes the best lobster in the world, according to Allen.
In one story, he writes about a veterinarian from Hope, Maine, who adopted an old elephant named Rosie.
“I learned about that just by walking into a country store, saw a collection jar that said, ‘Bring Rosie to Hope.’ ”
Allen’s writing takes readers to darker places too, delving into some local mysteries and tragedies. He wrote about the disappearance of Kurt Newton in the deep woods of northern Maine, in 1975. The 4 year old was on a camping trip with his family in the wilderness, just south of the Canadian border. One day, he mounted his big wheel tricycle — and vanished. The hunt for the boy lasted weeks.
It was a story about 1,500 people who left their homes to search for this child, Allen said. They came from all over Maine, and from other states, to scour the wilderness.
“It’s a story about being relentless,” Allen said.
Despite the huge effort, which included a military plane from an airbase in Florida equipped with infrared sensors, Kurt Newton was never found, and his disappearance remains a mystery to this day.
Did he fall into some hole or cave that the searchers missed? “Unlikely,” Allen said. Was he snatched by someone with nefarious motives who happened to be driving through the remote wilderness the day he wandered away? Possible, “but what are the chances of that?” Allen wondered aloud, adding, “I have no theory, except the unfathomable that you can’t ever explain.”
Allen’s writing is sharply evocative and his stories are compelling. He became the magazine’s fifth editor in 2006, and set a standard that helped define its narrative style, according to Ian Aldrich, executive editor at the magazine, who worked many years with Allen.
“Mel brought a poetry to his stories,” Aldrich said. “When people talk about Yankee’s narrative legacy, they are really talking about Mel’s work.”
In Ode to a Bold Pilot, Allen profiles a writer and adventurer named Lynn Franklin. It begins: “Looking back, it seems appropriate that word of Lynn Franklin’s disappearance should come like a summer storm, late at night without warning, while I was sleeping.”
Franklin was an exuberant dreamer and doer, “whose thirst for dangerous adventures knew no bounds,” Allen said.
As Franklin worked on an oral history of the bush pilots of Maine, he became convinced he had somehow acquired the aviation skills that they had learned over generations, according to Allen. So, he got his pilot’s license, and flew with irrepressible abandon, scaring those who knew and loved him.
“Sometimes he would fly so low, looking for street signs to figure out where he was,” Allen said. “That’s the kind of pilot he was.”
One day, Franklin took off from Maine in bad weather, and headed for New Hampshire, where he crashed into Mount Monadnock, and died. He was 46.
Ode to a Bold Pilot ends with a humorous but poignant scene: Allen, along with Franklin’s girlfriend and nephew, Ken, hiked up the mountain to view the wreckage.
“At 21, Ken resembled the youthful Lynn,” Allen writes. “He looked at the plane and then laughed, and you could hear Lynn in that laugh.
“He’d be so angry with himself,” Ken said. “I can just hear him. He’d say, ‘Next time, Franklin, next time we fly over the mountain!’ ”
The publication of “Here in New England” in September will coincide with Yankee Magazine’s 90th anniversary. It will also cap a long career that Allen admitted he will miss — one that he’s not quite ready to walk away from.
“I absolutely love hearing people’s stories,” he said.
Looking ahead, Allen wants to travel with his wife, Annie, and get to know a newly arrived grandchild. He also will hold the title “editor at large,” and continue to hunt for stories to tell.
“That doesn’t have to end,” he said.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
Copyright 2025 WBUR
