Shawn Gallagher-Community Man

Shawn Gallagher still remembers his first impression of the Southport Central School. While waiting to interview for a support staff position in 2013, it was suggested Gallagher observe lunch when his scheduled interview was delayed a few minutes.

Pressed into service, he watched as the head cook, Southport legend Ramona Gaudette, served lunch. Gaudette worked at the school for 57 years before retiring around 2012.

“I’m watching the kids come through, and she gives them their lunch,” Gallagher said. “She comes out from behind the kitchen, and she goes and kisses every kid on the head. At the end of lunch, the kids are leaving and she’s telling them she loves them and giving them hugs. And I thought, sign me up. At that point, I was like, this is home.”

(Sherwood Olin photo)

It was a fitting start to an association that Gallagher maintains to this day as the Southport Central School principal. He got the staff position and the next year was hired as teacher for grades four, five, and six. He stayed in that position for the next eight years.

At the time Gallagher was living on River Road in Newcastle with his wife Elizabeth, but by then the couple had fallen in love in with Whitefield. The Gallaghers had friends in the area and Shawn had been convinced of Whitefield’s charms years earlier by coworkers who lived in the town.

They eventually bought some land away from the village, built a house, and relocated before welcoming their first child, Arthur, in 2020. Gallagher acknowledged having some misgivings about increasing his commute with the move, but said every mile has been worth the effort. On a good day the 42-mile commute takes about 48 minutes, he said.

“The whole time, we kept saying, ‘Am I going to keep commuting to Whitefield?;” he said. “I’m driving from Whitefield to Southport to be a teacher, but the more I did it, the more thought ‘I can’t leave this place. I can’t leave this place at all.’”

Reluctantly, Gallagher did take his leave in 2021, prompted by a need to stay home with his infant son. During his hiatus from teaching he and Elizabeth worked on their home and started a microfarm with his brother Ron, eventually selling produce to about 15 community-supported agriculture programs and a handful of restaurants.

“We wanted good food for our family, and we wanted to start building these routines of a relationship to our food,” he said. “There’s no better place to know where your food comes from than where there’s farms all over all over the place.”

Gallagher left Southport not knowing if he would or could return. As it happened, the Southport principal’s position just as he reentered the work force in 2024 and he eagerly applied for it.

Read Full Story at Lincoln County News