CHAPTER ONE: WELCOME TO STAMFORD
Stamford is just over the Massachusetts state line. While it sits in Bennington County, the town has close ties to nearby Clarksburg and North Adams just over the border. The community of around 800 is best described by its residents.
“Oh, Stamford is a fabulous town, this wonderful farm town surrounded by mountains. Good, decent people, just, you know, a place where my husband and I really wanted to be,” said Pam Tworig, who arrived in the 80s. “My late husband and I were actually living in Readsboro, and we wanted to start a business, and we needed a property, and the property became available in Stamford, and we bought it.”
Almost 40 years after the move, what appealed to her about the community remains as vivid as ever.
“It was just a wonderful small town, very small-town feel, most people knew each other,” Tworig continued. “People kind, decent, everybody worked hard, just did their thing, minded their own business, and had a good life.”
“I came into town with my three sisters on horseback when I was 9 years old, moving into the big house with the lions, and I've lived here ever since,” said Dan Potvin. “I've traveled the globe. I've been to 15 countries on three different continents, but Stamford's my home.”
Standing in front of the Stamford School in the heart of town, longtime resident Potvin paused, gazed out around a late summer evening, and took a deep breath in before offering WAMC his explanation for what makes Stamford special.
“You smell the air,” he said. “It's beautiful. Like I said, I've been all over the world, and this, to me, is, whenever I come back from traveling, it's like- I don't know, there's something very special about Stamford. Very special.”
Potvin spent a decade on the town selectboard and has sat on the planning commission for the past 30 years.
“[Stamford’s] roots go way back,” he said. “We were one of the first towns incorporated in this whole region, from Massachusetts, Western Mass down. We were incorporated in 1753, right? So, we have a long history- We're standing next to the Stamford honor roll. I mean, you can go all the way back to the Civil War and look at the men who served in all the wars here. But for me, it's home. It's more than home, right? I consider Stamford my town, right? And that's not a boastful statement. I feel like every man and woman, wherever they live, should consider their town my town, and take ownership of it.”
Marie Kelly-Whitney has spent her entire life in Stamford. Her memories of childhood in town sound like a Norman Rockwell painting.
“Stamford was great,” she told WAMC. “I mean, you could go to the store, we would ride our bikes down to the store, and you get the ice cream. And the owners were just, so, I don't know- They were just, it was family, and that's what it is in Stamford, or it was when I was growing up, that it was just a family place.”
“The first thing that I think of, because it is, it is a lovely little community, you know- It's Vermont,” said Nancy LeSage. “You drive through, and the trees and the lawns and the flowers, it's a beautiful little town to live in. But for me, what makes this a special place is actually the school, because I would think of the musicals, like at Christmas.”
LeSage has lived in Stamford for 50 years.
“What you'd see at these little concerts where everybody would show up. You got the parents, you got the siblings, you got the grandparents, you got the aunts and uncles. Everybody would come into the gym at the school for the Christmas concert, or the holiday concert, and the spring concert. To me, that- That's like part of the heart of Stamford. It begins with coming into Vermont and seeing the beauty, but it also begins with the school, which is something you see as you come into town. That has become the heart of the community, the little school.”
The Stamford School offers early education through 8th grade with an enrollment around 75. Its website refers to it as the “Best Little School in the World, where small classes explore big ideas.” In a community the size of Stamford, the school building – which also houses municipal offices – plays an outsized role, especially since the town grange was sold to private hands.
“These little places where people get together- Now we're down basically to the school, unless you want to, unless you're a churchgoing person, and I'm not a churchgoing person, so I don't find, you know, company there,” LeSage said. “But it all goes back to the school. We don't have a coffee shop, we don't have anything like that, but we do have the school. We used to have the grange”
Things are changing. In recent years, Stamford has taken on a higher profile. Actors Ezra Miller and Susan Sarandon live in town, bringing with them media attention for their various trials and travails.
Beneath those headlines, Kelly-Whitney and other Stamford residents tell WAMC there are other, greater cultural changes afoot.
“Stamford is an old-fashioned town where half the people are still in the, oh, I would say in back in the 70s and 80s,” she said. “And then there's the other group that is has moved into this generation of technology and so on. So, we've got a combination of the old and new living in Stamford.”
Those tensions are acutely felt in town.
“This is very difficult, and I've already been told by a few people, Josh, to be careful with what I say, right? Yes, or some reason, Christian nationalism seems to have found a spot sprout in our little town. And with that Christian nationalism, I'm afraid to say, comes a lot of worry about what they don't understand. It brings out their insecurity. And this is what is happening,” said LeSage. “So, if someone is other – another color, another gender identity, another gender, perhaps, right? – and they don't understand, and instead of being curious about the people in town and why do other people say, well, no, this is a good man- They don't. No one has come, no one from that side has come to me and asked me to ask me why I feel this way, and yet, I've reached out to other people and asked them, why do you feel that way? And I get a load of things that probably comes from something crazy on the internet, whether it's YouTube or whether it's Facebook. I've lost a lot of friends because of social media.”
Potvin is an outspoken representative of the other side of the aisle.
“I served in the military, okay, so I'm a constitutionalist,” he told WAMC. “I believe in the Constitution, and if I don't have a right to speak, if you don't have a right to speak, there's a problem, okay? And so, that's always been my area. Nationalist, I don't know. That language is thrown out quite frequently this day. I'm a patriot. I love my country, right? Are there areas that my country falls short? Yeah, but it's my job to help make that better, okay? Christian, yeah, I'm a Christian, I'm a Catholic. Christian nationalist- I don't know, I don't like this ring of that. Do I stand on my principles? Yes, I do. Yes, I do.”
He feels the tension, too.
“The whole country is divided now, and that's what makes me nervous, because I don't want, I don't want that coming to my town, Okay? I don't,” said Potvin. “I don't like that. I don't. I've read a lot of history. I don't- On both sides, whether it's conservative or liberal, on both sides, everybody's talking these days about civil war, okay? And I've read history. Civil wars are terrible, right? We want to avoid that.”
Kelly-Whitney thinks the changes started around 2016.
“I think when Trump came into office, he'll he unleashed all the people that were keeping their mouth shut because they knew it was wrong and they would be called on it,” she told WAMC. “Now, I think since then, they think that they have the right to spiel this hate and everything like that, and it's just wrong. It was allowed and accepted, and it was modeled, and people felt okay, I can do this too. And that’s where the other group comes from.”
Tworig says the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent shutdowns in 2020 pushed the divisions into overdrive.
“It just seemed like all the sudden, I went to a school board meeting, and I couldn't believe it,” she said. “I mean, people were just losing their minds over the masks and the COVID things, and it just was all of the sudden, just this completely different world that I did not even recognize.”
In late 2020, Stamford garnered the attention and praise of the right-wing anti-vaccine movement by voting to reject Vermont’s pandemic safety regulations in defiance of Republican Governor Phil Scott. Potvin was at the center of the effort.
“I tried to intimidate the governor during the vaccines, right?” said Potvin. “And he did back down, right, under the mandates, right? He backed down. I was trying to intimidate him. I made a threat to the governor, right? I said, you want to enforce that shit, you come down here and give it a go.”
The move was rejected by the then- state Attorney General TJ Donovan, who said the town had no legal authority to override the governor’s emergency guidelines. Scott lifted all COVID restrictions in June 2021 after over 80% of the state’s population was reported to have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
CHAPTER TWO: BATHROOMS AND FIELD TRIPS
This June, Stamford again garnered notice in the wider world.
In his farewell message to the community on June 30th, former school principal Randy Lichtenwalner cited homophobia and bigotry in the community as fueling his decision to leave town for a job in Brattleboro about 40 miles east.
“I previously worked in in Pound Ridge, New York, which is little, very wealthy, highly Republican conservative enclave in New York, and had some similar pushback, but over time, people got to know me, and I feel like I really won people over,” said Lichtenwalner. “But what happened over the course of time in Stamford – and I'll get into the specific talking points – but in broad strokes, is that the people who were, I use the word prejudice in my letter, because that's really what I feel it was. They were judging me without giving me the opportunity to get to know me. They were not open, really, to having conversations. They avoided me, and didn't want to talk to me about what their concerns were, and they really seemed to want to instead look for affirmation of their thoughts and ideas, and didn't want to engage in in dialogue about it.”
In the letter, Lichtenwalner said that his commute to Stamford every morning had morphed from enthusiasm to dread since he began working there in 2021.
“I’m not someone who is unaccustomed to this,” he told WAMC. “I'm in my early 50s, and I grew up at a time when I had to deal with a lot of this, and so I've been through, as a gay man, I've been through a lot of marginalization or being in the spotlight, and I've been in communities where I've had to face that, and I've done that by essentially being myself, you know, and meeting it head on, not in a brazen, out loud, in your face sort of way, because that's not how I live my life either. I'm just who I am.”
The letter details a series of flashpoints between him and some members of the Stamford community. One election day, a poll worker was surprised to learn that the Stamford School’s bathrooms had been designated single-user and gender-neutral.
“What happened as a result of that is the grandparent who was the poll worker took that information and sort of ran with it, and felt that this must have been part of this new principal’s agenda,” explained Lichtenwalner. “And they read that as a gay or trans positive agenda.”
The bathroom change actually predated Lichtenwalner’s tenure, and was made for logistical purposes.
“No one came to me to ask me about the bathrooms, but instead they started making calls to other schools to inquire about their bathrooms, and started to call the superintendent and the agency of education to inquire about rules about bathrooms, and to complain that a young, impressionable female student may have to see a urinal in a bathroom when they go to use the bathroom,” he said. “And should they be subjected to that, and how would we explain that, and things like that. But still, though there were these people making these calls, no one was coming to talk to me about it, and I wish they had, because I would have explained to them that I didn't change the bathrooms. It was actually two principals before me at the onset of COVID, when the recommendations were to put kids into pods in school to separate kids and to not have kids interacting within groups.”
Another ongoing hot-button issue in the small community gave fuel to how Lichtenwalner was perceived and treated by a segment of Stamford.
“At this time, we had a student in our middle school who was trans, and that was a topic of conversation in the community,” he said. “Now, I would also point out that student was trans before I arrived on the scene, right? That was who he was. But it was a topic of conversation within the community. His parents called me soon after I took the job, just explained to me the recent change in pronouns, the recent change in preferred name. And I offered my support going forward, we worked through a plan. And the interesting thing in a small community of students is that the students, they transitioned very easily. It was very simple and very, very easy. And there were no problems with the students of the school, but it seemed to be a larger problem within the community, and I think that this seemed to coincide and get connected somehow in in people's minds.”
Misinformation subsequently spread about Lichtenwalner promoting a book about trans identity to students at the school, though he counters that had no knowledge of the book in question and had no intention to teach it.
The concerns around the bathroom and the nonexistent book project were just a warmup to what would prove to be a much larger issue in Stamford: an optional school field trip to a statewide convention for LGBTQIA+ and allied youth in Montpelier in the spring of 2023.
“Every year, Outright Vermont, which is the organization in Vermont that supports the organizations and schools that were formerly known as [Gay Straight Alliances], some of them are still called GSAs, they hold a leadership day,” explained Lichtenwalner. “So, every year they host a leadership day in in Montpelier. The students gather together at the Pavilion Building, which is, I don't know, 100 yards from the Capitol building, and they walk together to the Capitol, and they present senators and representatives and any elected officials who will attend with ideas on what they can do, right, to help support young people. This sounded like, oh, this is an idea of something that maybe our students could participate in.”
Lichtenwalner saw it as the appropriate complement to a student-driven project that had begun under a guidance counselor who left the school before the undertaking had been finished.
“That was the unanimous decision of the students in the class, that they all had- It came down to a couple of different ideas, but the one thing that they all could get behind was LGBTQ rights of young people, and that in spite of the fact that they all had different backgrounds, they had different beliefs, they had different upbringings and families who maybe had different perspectives on this, they all felt that kids had a right to be who they needed to be, and that that was why they could all get behind this idea,” he said. “And I said, okay, then this is, this is the topic for your unit. So, go ahead”
Only members of the 7th and 8th grade classes were involved in the trip.
“We brought the idea to the students, and overall, they were satisfied with, okay, sure that that sounds fine, but it was coming up very quickly, so we had to move quickly on it, mostly because the school board has a policy that any trip outside of a 25-mile radius of the school has to be board approved,” Lichtenwalner continued. “Anything within a 25-mile radius the school principal can just approve on their own. And of course, Montpellier is outside of that that radius. So, I had to take it to the very next board meeting, which was just a couple of days away, and I had to get it added to the agenda at the last minute, which often happens- Things come up and it gets added to the agenda on the night of the meeting. It got added to the meeting, the school board discussed it a little bit. I sensed a little bit of tension in the in the conversation. And one of the board members said, you know, Randy, I think that, I sense that people here all want to support this, but we're concerned about this, mostly for you. And I said, well, then that is not a reason to not approve the trip for the kids, right? They chose this topic, they've studied this. This is just the culminating event to this unit of study for them.”
Participation in the march itself was not mandatory, and the day included a trip to the Vermont statehouse among other Montpelier offerings.
“Some students, their parents did not sign the permission slip for whatever reason,” said Lichtenwalner. “I think one of them actually had a dentist appointment that day. So, they didn’t go. But the kids went on the trip, and things seemed fine, right? Nobody called to complain about the decision about the trip or anything. And it wasn't until after, and the next board meeting that it was flagged to us that there was going to be trouble at the board meeting and that people were going to be coming upset about this trip.”
According to the official minutes, the school board unanimously approved the field trip after a motion by chair Erika Bailey and a second from Gary Bellows at its March 9th, 2023 meeting. The event was described to board members as the continuation of a unit on social justice and LGBTQ rights driven by student interest, and faced no opposition that merited inclusion in meeting minutes.
CHAPTER THREE: THERE IS NO GREATER LOSS THAN THE LOSS OF A SOUL
Whatever red flags Lichtenwalner had encountered from some of Stamford’s residents before paled in comparison to the reaction to the trip. The next Stamford School Board meeting after the visit to Montpelier for Outright Vermont’s Leadership Day on April 13th, 2023, was one that deeply impacted both its attendees and the wider community. An unusually high number of residents attended.
“And as it turned out, it was people who I never saw, right, people I didn't know,” said Lichtenwalner. “They didn't have children in the school. They were citizens of the town of Stamford, but not parents of current students for the most part. And it was bad, and it was hard to sit through.”
“I think everyone was shocked. I think everyone that was there was shocked, disturbed, upset, unhappy, distraught,” said Tworig.
The meeting’s intensity was apparent before it even began.
“There was a large group of people having a prayer vigil outside the school before the meeting,” she told WAMC.
Once inside, the tone escalated.
“Trans rights are being pushed on kids,” said resident Larry Potvin, Dan’s brother. “Being trans is the ‘cool thing to be’. It shouldn’t be in school. Schools are pushing this on the kids. If we disagree, we are haters. But you can disagree with something, and you can just disagree.”
“I’m not anti-gay, anti-lesbian,” said Rick Arnold. “I have gay and lesbian friends. I wasn’t taught that in school; I was taught that in life. I respect them because they are good people. If my granddaughter was still here, I would pull her out of school. NPR said that all trans people in VT and NH should start packing guns. Did you know that when the kids went to the rally? The school shouldn’t be teaching this; the parents should be teaching it. I have family members who thought they wanted to be trans, but decided they didn’t.”
Tom Denault called for the school to be shut down over “telling people how to be trans.”
“We have to protect the innocence of the children; it is complicated to do that,” said David Orton. “This is not a high school. We are split in this town; it is a complicated issue. Some of the decisions - I hope some of you feel ashamed of them. We can’t start the day with a prayer, but we can go to a rally on transgender rights. It’s a confused world.”
“I am concerned that we are teaching our children to sin; there is no greater loss than the loss of a soul,” said Lori Shepard. “I believe sex-ed should be taught at home. In school, it should just be reading, writing, and arithmetic. We are behind so many other countries on these levels. We need to get back to where we were.”
Potvin was also opposed to the trip.
“I can't speak for other people that fought against what was going on in the school. For myself, I'm a taxpayer in town, I've been one of the- Not now, but back when I had my big business, I was the largest taxpayer for 15 years in this town, right? And I'm not going to pay taxes to a school, or I don't want to, that I feel, and I'm going to make this very clear – and I spoke at the school board meeting on this – I don't want to, if I feel there's indoctrination or grooming going on, right, I won't stand for it. That's my position, right? And I'm going to fight it tooth and nail, and I don't lose battles. I don't.”
He wholeheartedly disagrees with Lichtenwalner and other Stamford residents who characterize opposition to the field trip as bigotry.
“Okay, so him and I have a completely different ideology, and if I disagree with him, I'm labeled, whatever- Homophobic, Islamophobic,” he laughed. “Whatever the it ‘it’ might be. Intolerant, right? Look, I'm a Catholic. I don't come down here and try to say, okay, all the students have to go to the cathedral up in Burlington to listen to the bishop talk, okay? There is a difference. I mean, I've been called lots of names, and I don't really care about it, but these terms being thrown out to me, okay, it's a bunch of bullshit. It's one way of trying to get you to quiet down and not speak your mind. And I'm, like I said, I was in the military. First Amendment to me, it's like, you come into that building and you better be able to talk. And if you're not allowed to talk, there's a problem.”
According to Lichtenwalner, the tone at the meeting sharply escalated from disagreement to outright hostility.
“There was also a feeling of tension in the air,” he told WAMC. “I can't say that it was intentional, it may have been coincidental, but it did seem like there were more people wearing hats and shirts with references to guns and things like that then is typical. At that board meeting, there were raised voices. There was a gentleman who said when he heard about the trip, he was so angry he wanted to reach out and choke someone, and reached in my direction, and then repeated it again and repeated the gesture.”
The recorded minutes from the meeting synopsize resident Justin Henderson’s comments as follows:
“If someone threatens children, I feel like strangling them. I paid the taxes even though I didn’t have kids in the school because I thought it was good. I never thought I’d be talking in front of the school board about sexually explicit things being done to my children. You have no right to teach this to our children.”
Potvin objects to Lichtenwalner’s assessment of the situation, including the intent behind townspeople wearing shirts with images and references to guns at the school board meeting. He says that town residents supporting gun ownership proudly is something Stamford should be thankful for.
“The Second Amendment, which is trying to be taken away from us- And I will point out every nation that the guns have been taken away have fallen into communism, okay?” he told WAMC. “Take the guns away, the people have no way left to defend themselves from a tyrannical government. But the people in this town, we don't come here with our guns. You're not allowed guns, okay? I would say people on the left living in this town, they ought to be very thankful that there are a lot of people that have guns and know how to use them, because when the shit hits the fan, and it's going to hit the fan leading up to the election and shortly afterwards, okay, they're going to be thankful that people were around to help defend them, right? Intimidated, you mentioned that. I don't- I don't know what to say to that. It's like, nobody intimidates me, right? And I never carry a gun, right? Nobody intimidates me. If you're intimidated, then there's something I feel that that's wrong interiorly in your heart, that you're insecure. And I mean, if you feel strong about your opinions, you should be able to talk with me without feeling intimidated.”
CHAPTER FOUR: A LOOK AT LEADERSHIP DAY
To find out more about the event at the heart of the controversial field trip, WAMC reached out to the executive director of Outright Vermont.
“So, we are a statewide organization with a mission to build hope, equity and power alongside LGBTQ+ youth,” said Dana Kaplan.
Kaplan offered a snapshot of the struggles experienced by the LBGTQIA+ youth of Vermont.
“These are young folks who are trying to find their people, find their community, oftentimes feeling very isolated at schools because of systems that are not including them, things like curriculum where they're not seeing themselves reflected in the curriculum, things like having bathrooms that are not affirming for everybody's genders,” he explained. “So, there's some basic kind of daily things that we all need in order to move through the world that LGBTQ+ young people are often not afforded.”
Leadership Day is a decade-old event for Outright Vermont.
“It's an opportunity for young folks from across the state to come together at the Capitol and to meet lawmakers, to share their perspective about what's happening in their local communities, and to do so with peers from across the state who share similar experiences to them,” said Kaplan. “Every year, there's an opportunity for young folks to do a speak out where they are witnessed and supported and listened to. And for many of them, that is a first experience that they're having, that lawmakers and folks in power are saying, we see you, we hear you, and your experience matters. In fact, you are the experts in your lives, and we need to be listening and paying attention to what you say you need. It's a really powerful day, not only for young people, but also for representatives and community members alike.”
Kaplan says the kind of misinformation campaigns, outright bigotry, and attempts to suppress the LGBTQIA+ community Outright has seen in Vermont are of a piece with wider national efforts.
“I think it's really important for us to recognize the fact that while there's a lot of things that we're doing well in Vermont, and we've got a lot of strengths here, we're oftentimes out in front leading in terms of progressive social policies, there are also plenty of ways that our young folks and community members are not immune to the targeted hate and harm that we're seeing across the country right here in Vermont,” he told WAMC. “From all corners of the state, we are seeing both local leaders and also folks from outside of Vermont trying to come in and strip young people of their rights. It's happening. There are trainings that we do, professional development, trainings with schools, and there are moments where those trainings have been interrupted from folks trying to shut down the exchange of information. There's misinformation that's flying around, oftentimes at the local school board level. But also, it's important to recognize that what's happening on the national stage impacts young people's lives and impacts their felt sense of safety, whether those are bills and laws that are being passed in Texas or right here in Vermont.”
Kaplan offered a message to those across the increasingly divided cultural war aisle.
“I think that there's a gentle calling for folks to mind their business, right?” he said. “Like, you don't need to agree and you don't need to understand, but that doesn't mean that you get to strip people of their basic rights to live right. It oftentimes takes one to know one, and if it's not your lived experience, and you don't have a beloved who is a part of the LGBTQ community, then it's true- There's tons of misinformation and stereotypes out there. I think to trust that everybody is doing the best they can and to try and practice curiosity, and if that's not available to you, then really, to mind your lane. I think that we have to be awake to the fact that there are detrimental impacts, and it's a strategy of the right. We know that this is a divisive issue, right? And so, it's kind of picking on people who do not have power, and it's, honestly, it's detrimental. So, I think it's important for folks to be aware of the statistics, to be aware of the harm, the real-life harm that is being caused, and to say, take a deep breath and like, go get some therapy. Do what you got to do.”
CHAPTER FIVE: TOBACCO JUICE, HARD FEELINGS, AND THE RETIRED PRIEST
Such was the tension in the Stamford community around the field trip that the district requested law enforcement attend school board meetings to prevent violence.
The Bennington Sheriff’s Department confirmed to WAMC that it dispatched officers to meetings on April 13th, June 15th and 22nd, August 10th, and October 25th in 2023.
Lichtenwalner and others in Stamford told WAMC that nothing was the same after that school board meeting.
He says he went on to experience regular reminders that an outspoken portion of the Stamford community was furious with him.
“People coming into the school lobby and talking to the town clerk, because I would be sitting at the front desk of the school,” said Lichtenwalner. “The window faces the lobby, the lobby also is shared with the town office, and you really can't hear conversations across the two windows, typically, unless someone is trying to make sure you can be heard. And there were several times where people were very obvious in their in their efforts to make sure that they were being heard by people at the school. Oh, that board meeting that's coming up, they better be ready. They're not going to be ready for what comes next. There was a retired priest who came in to the town clerk and did something similar. Talked very loudly about the huge increase in enrollment at the Catholic school because of all of the indoctrination that's happening at public schools. And it was clearly very much directed towards me and the administrative assistant, right? It was so that we could hear it. The irony is that our enrollment didn't change. Like, our students weren’t leaving the school to go to a Catholic school.”
Those long drives to and from Stamford every morning and night became tortuous as Lichtenwalner prepared for days of townspeople spitting in his direction, grimacing at his pleasantries, and filing petitions of grievance with the state of Vermont over the field trip.
“While some of that is, you know, not aggressive, but slightly harassing and intimidating, some of the other things- Just the people who are gruff and angry as they walk past you, the person spitting in my path, with the road rage incident,” he sighed. “The things that happen, as a result, then start to make you question everything.”
Potvin offered his own explanation for Lichtenwalner’s account of being spit at.
“It could have been me chewing tobacco, spitting. I spit all the time,” he told WAMC before spitting tobacco juice on the ground. “No, no, no. I mean, right, somebody lost their brakes coming down County Road and ran into a train over there, right? And people tried to make it sound like it was some kind of a personal attack on some gay guys [that] live over there. Somebody lost their brakes, they crashed into it they had to get towed away, period. And the media, and people try to make something out of nothing.”
At the next school board meeting in May – with no Bennington Sherriff deputy present – Lichtenwalner attempted to respond to issues raised at the April meeting with a structured Q&A.
According to the minutes from that meeting, Henderson – the Stamford resident who had openly discussed strangling anyone he deemed threatening to the community’s children the month prior – interrupted the meeting, “including shouting and a threat to punch a school board member in the face when she tried to de-escalate the situation.”
For Lichtenwalner, the situation never recovered.
“There were times where I'd be holding the door open, whether it's for students or families or whatever, and there would be people coming to visit the town office, and I'd get sneers, I'd get people who just wouldn't even look at me,” he said. “It's okay for people to disagree, I just don't think we have to be disagreeable about it, and that we can have some basic decency with one another, especially when there are children nearby, right? Like, let's model kindness. Let's model the decency that I think we'd like all of them to be showing. Those are the things that I would start to worry about. And so, as a result, I found myself not putting myself out front as much, not opening the door for strangers that I didn't know as frequently, not putting myself in the line of potential fire. And I think that I even started feeling like I was distancing myself from the kids of the school, which is the saddest part about it, because that's the thing that that's the aspect of the job that I value the most. It's the thing that I think is the most important part of the job, is the relationship with kids. Because it's that relationship that we that we leverage to foster everything else, right? Whether it's to improve academic performance, whether it's to help shift a student’s behavior, it’s all dependent on the close relationships we have.”
According to other Stamford residents, Lichtenwalner’s instincts and observations were right, and he was being denigrated in patently homophobic terms by his opponents in the community.
“People were referring to him as a pedophile, and they had no business doing that,” said Kelly-Whitney. “And they're like, why does he have the only key to the bathroom? And just to make it clear, Randy's not the one who put the bathrooms into, I call it unisex bathrooms. So, he's getting all this backlash from what the principal before did, and I don't know. The key issue is a problem that they're thinking, well, why does he have to have the key, and nobody else has the key? And it's like, are you really serious? I get very frustrated when I hear, excuse the expression, but stupid people and making ignorant comments.”
Kelly-Whitney has lived in Stamford for all of her 64 years, served on the town’s select board and as school librarian, and raised two sons there.
“My intake into this started probably about two and a half years ago, and what my part was that there was a group of people in this community that wanted somebody who knew the town, and is also happens to be a lesbian, could understand what was going down and wanted me to speak on what I knew about bullying and homophobes and whatever else I could bring to the table,” she explained to WAMC. “And being a kid who grew up in Stamford School, I've seen the changes, and there are bad changes, but it's like, again, you have the one group of people, and you have the other group of people, and it gets very hard sometimes to explain things to people when they just think that you're a pedophile or you're a sick person, or something like that, whereas people know me first and foremost, and they don't- I mean, they learned that I was gay as time went on, but they knew me, and I had a reputation of being a very honest [person], and I love the town, so I'm invested in the town.”
As both a dyed-in-the-wool Stamford resident and a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, Kelly-Whitney says she attended the April 2023 school board meeting in an effort to calm the members of the community being whipped up into a frenzy over the field trip.
“I went to that meeting to explain or try to make people understand that homosexuals are not after a kid's body, or they're not after this, or they're not after that,” she said. “What they have a hard time dealing with, and I don't even think it's because he was, the principal was gay that all this started, but it's because he was an outsider. Stamford is a very tight knit group of people. Outsiders are very hard to get accepted here, even though our town is growing unbelievably in number of people coming to Stamford to live because it's such a nice little town. We've just gotten to a point of a group of people in town needed to pick on somebody or to- Let me say this. I don't know what politics everybody is in, but about eight years ago, it seemed people opened up the cages, and all the negative, nasty people came out.”
Potvin sees the situation very differently.
“What was going on was wrong, and it went from the top down,” he told WAMC. “I consider the whole entire school board was to blame, but other people were coming from other areas. That's my area, alright? It's like, that's not going to happen in my town. Other people were coming from other areas. Like, there was one of the guys on the select board, and he was very adamant, and it was a good point- It's like, you don't take 7th and 8th graders to political rally. No, think about it, okay? I'm a Second Amendment guy, and I'm going to take the 7th and 8th graders to a Second Amendment political rally. What if something happens there? They're not college students. You're taking young people to an event, it's a political rally. Who's responsible for that, right? So, some people were coming from it from that respect, okay? Other people had other reasons. What was, I think, significant, is people pulled together and, okay, our side won alright? And when you look at the elections, I think this happened during September and October, when you look at the elections come March, it was a landslide, right? I mean, I'm talking like Stamford's never had votes like that, where people are winning by 100 votes, school board and the select board. I mean, yeah, I'm sure on the other side, they may have hard feelings. I don't.”
CHAPTER SIX: IT'S HAPPENING NOW
Another prominent figure in Stamford is select board member Michael Denault, who owns and operates Deerfield Machine and Tool in North Adams. Denault took part in Stamford’s symbolic rejection of COVID-19 emergency public health guidelines as a town leader alongside Potvin back in 2020, and is closely allied with him. One of Potvin’s sons married Denault’s daughter last year, further cementing their bond.
On his personal Facebook page, Denault’s beliefs are shared proudly, prolifically, and unmistakably.
In June 2022, Denault posted a meme that read “June is Christianity month, reclaim the rainbow,” with the caption “Proud to be a Christian” over the image of a cross atop a rainbow — a clear rebuttal to the celebration of June as Pride Month, which the U.S. government first recognized in 1999 after years of unofficial community celebrations to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall Riots.
A fixation with an LGBTQIA+ agenda in schools is easy to detect in Denault’s posting.
A month later, Denault shared a meme that depicts a woman asking a boy with a backpack on “how was school?” before he vomits a rainbow stream, as well as another that shows a rainbow flag on an alter inside a church with the phrase “A church that worships the true god doesn’t encourage sinful lifestyles.”
That September, Denault posted an article from AmericanThinker.com titled “Transgenderism: A dangerous new fad” with the caption “Educate yourself.”
The right-wing website speculated about a second civil war after Barack Obama first won the presidency, openly praised white nationalist Jared Taylor in 2014, claimed rainbow-colored Doritos were a means of turning children gay in 2015, and recently admitted it peddled debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen.
Days later, he posted a meme that read “God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for the very things we are celebrating and teaching in schools” with his own statement “Open your eyes parents. It’s happening now.”
In April 2023, a day after the much-discussed and heated school board meeting, Denault posted an image of a church sign that reads “Moral confusion, sexual confusion, gender confusion. Author of confusion, Satan.”
This June, he posted “It’s time to take a stand” above a link to an article about a West African contingent of the United Methodist Church voting to leave the denomination over its acceptance of same-sex relationships and unions. He also shared a crude rendering of the iconic Tank Man image from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, with the unidentified demonstrator now holding a cross in front of a line of rainbow-colored tanks.
Denault is also related by marriage to the late Robert Moulton, a North Adams city councilor who resigned in 2020 after calling the Black Lives Matter movement an anti-family terrorist organization and the COVID-19 pandemic a hoax promoted by Democratic politicians on his public access television show.
The select board member also is open about his involvement with the Risky Ranch Militia, a group of right-wing four-wheeler enthusiasts who congregate in Stamford. Both he and his son Tom – an equally outspoken opponent of the LGBTQIA+ community per his own social media posts – have posted images from the group’s meetings that feature a Confederate flag flying over a group of overwhelmingly white attendees wearing shirts with slogans and images about guns.
Potvin told WAMC that the group is more of a club than a paramilitary force.
“There's no militia in town,” he said. “I wish there was, right, but there's no organized militia in town. There's just a bunch of guys that have four-wheelers and side-by-sides, and they made T-shirts up, right? I think every town should have a militia. The Second Amendment, right? Our National Guard units, which have all been defunded and thrown out since under Clinton during the early 1990s, they were the last vanguard defense for this nation. 90% of them been closed down, the unit I was in, all over, right? So, we know have no defense now, and Americans still think like this nation can't be invaded. Bullshit, right? If I was going to invade this nation, right now would be the time, right? And I had a ticket to go to West Point, right? So, my mind works strategically. We are so weak right now, and we're so divided.”
On July 19th, Denault reposted a 2017 photo of one of the Risky Ranch Militia’s prior gatherings with the caption “Meeting time again.”
Just hours prior to that post, WAMC attended a Stamford select board meeting to ask Denault about how his politics intersect with his capacity as a community leader.
DENAULT: I follow the state laws in the Constitution United States as a select board member.
WAMC: OK, well, I was interested because you posted about your concerns about the gay agenda in schools on Facebook-
DENAULT: That's my personal life.
WAMC: Well, that's true, but you're an elected official…
DENAULT: Correct.
WAMC: …which comes with its own capacities. So, given that the school's principal left the community citing that concern, and that's something you've put your name to in public, I’m interested if you can speak to that.
DENAULT: No, I have no comment about that at all. I've met with the principal many times, been at meetings many times, and have not seen any problems at all with myself or him.
WAMC: OK.
DENAULT: We've actually interacted very well.
At the pivotal April 2023 school board meeting, Denault – alongside members of his family, his political allies, and their families – questioned Lichtenwalner’s decision to send students to the Outright Vermont event.
Reached by phone by WAMC on August 14th, Denault declined to comment on this story.
CHAPTER SEVEN: KINDNESS, RESPECT, DECENCY AND EQUALITY FOR EVERYONE. HOW CAN THAT BE WRONG?
For Lichtenwalner’s supporters in town, his departure and the situation that precipitated it has been agonizing.
“The only reason that I even know Randy is because I was on the select board and I was going to school board meetings because I felt that it was part of my job to stay informed as to what goes on in the community,” Tworig told WAMC. “And again, I care deeply about education. I believe that there is literally nothing more important than the education of our children. So, I did get to know Randy. I watched him in meetings, I saw how respected he was by the school board, I had little conversations with him here and there, and it's just impossible to have a conversation with and to get to know him and for it to not be totally obvious what a truly good and decent human being he is, and just how deeply he cares about children. He just exudes it. He was all about kindness, respect, decency and equality for everyone. How can that be wrong? Isn't that what we want our children and the world to model? He was phenomenal, which is why it's so heartbreaking that this was allowed to happen.”
Nancy LeSage says she’s heartbroken to see Lichtenwalner’s tenure come to a close, and worries that it signifies yet another step in Stamford’s ongoing transformation.
“I think important conversations are not being had,” she told WAMC. “I remember, being here 50 years, I remember what it was like, and if someone stopped by, you know, your neighbor stopped by, hey, I'm doing this, what do you think, come on, can you help me? That kind of stuff doesn't happen anymore. It's not like it was, and I think a lot of that has to do with not having a consistent principal in the school. When we hired Randy, I asked him, why do you want to come here from Florida and teach in our and be the principal of our little school? And he said, because I want to be able to watch the children grow up. I want, I don't just want to see- I think he had grades 6, 7, 8 in the school where he was principal before, and he wanted to see them grow up and graduate and go through the school. He wanted to be with them, and I saw him developing that, Josh, I really did. He had special ceremonies for the kids who were graduating from 8th grade that involved the whole school community. That's the kind of thing we need in a good principal, and that's exactly what we had.”
Kelly-Whitney thinks Lichtenwalner was the victim of Stamford’s ongoing struggle over what defines the town’s values.
“Randy did not get a fair deal at all,” she said. “He was constantly questioned on everything that he did or if he wanted to change things. He had a different way of disciplining, which is the method that they're going to now, the wellness discipline type area, and, yeah, he just had too many strikes against him, and I saw and heard from people in town how nasty they were to him, and I believe he was afraid to be in this town because of those people that are haters confronted him and physically came into his personal space, and that scared him, which I don't blame him, because some of the people that I was talking about, you know, they have guns, and they're like, I'll go down that school. And it's like, no, no, just relax. So, I think people can come to Stamford, can get a great education, can be happy, and so on. To me, you just have to establish yourself as being an honest person. That's the way it is. My son, my eldest son, is going to build his house on the family property. He'll be the fifth generation to live in this town. I do see it as a good place. It's just there's this group that we have to address and just make sure that people are aware, and get each other's back, I guess.”
All five of Nancy LeSage’s children attended the Stamford School, and she is now raising her four grandchildren in town.
“I have a child who entered kindergarten last year, and so now she'll head to 1st grade with a new principal,” she said. “That for me is the difficult part. When children go from learning one way and the principal has a certain expectation for the for the class, they would have these morning meetings, and the entire school was there every day. I never saw anything like it. It was wonderful. Now they'll go to a new principal. She'll have her own way of running the school. Maybe she'll stay a year, if she gets along with some of these people in town who chased our last principal out. Maybe she won't. Two years down the road, will they have another principal? These are the things that bother me. Josh, it's constant disruption of the system for the school in Stamford. It affects the children negatively, and schools, rural areas, rural schools have a very hard time.”
One of those granddaughters is 14-year-old Aura Potvin. LeSage was once married to Dan Potvin’s older brother, Mark, making Dan Aura’s great-uncle.
Aura and Dan have never met.
As LeSage puts it, there are Potvins in Stamford, and there are Potvins in Stamford.
A Stamford School graduate, Aura now attends Drury High School in North Adams and has nothing but fond memories of Lichtenwalner.
“He was a really friendly guy all around,” she told WAMC. “I never really heard him get angry or yell at all. He was always like, super nice and understanding. Whenever there was, like, a problem or an argument between the students, he always handled it very well, and, like, talked it out in like, a calm manner with everyone.”
She’s sad to see him go.
“I was pretty upset because the school there were a lot of different principals in the last few years,” said Potvin. “No one has really like stayed for a while, and he seemed like a good guy, so I was kind of hoping that he would stick around for a little bit.”
Unlike many in the community who spoke out against it, she actually attended the Montpelier field trip to Outright Vermont’s Leadership Day.
“Everyone who went, we all had a lot of fun there,” said Potvin. “It was a really good experience, in my opinion, to sort of like get out and like, share our feelings and have sort of some real-world experience like that.”
Potvin rejects the narrative that Lichtenwalner or any officials at the school pushed LGBTQIA+ issues on students. She was one of the young people who chose the topic.
“I have some friends who are queer, so I'm sort of in that space a little bit,” she told WAMC. “I know that some of the other kids there were sort of in a similar position, where they were queer or they had friends who were, so a lot of us in that class sort of agreed that it was an important issue right now.”
Potvin says locals aggrieved about the trip and its potential harm to students don’t understand what actually happened.
“A lot of people were throwing around the word like riot, but it wasn't,” she said. “We were peaceful, there was no like, yelling or anything. It was just us there, we marched down the street, and then some people gave some speeches. It wasn't like pitchfork and torches. It was a peaceful protest.”
After she read Lichtenwalner’s farewell letter to the community, she was realized she hadn’t fully grasped how difficult his time in Stamford had become.
She’s concerned about how the increasingly heated cultural battles in town might impact young people in the community.
“I think that because it's so divided, it's hard for kids to feel like they can really be who they are and get the support that they need, because they're not sure if it would be possible because of the controversy around it, where, if there was an attempt to create a more supportive space, then something similar that happened with the trip might happen again, where people are upset about these spaces being created purely because they think that it's another attempt to push a certain way of thinking onto the kids,” Potvin told WAMC.
CHAPTBER EIGHT: THE WATCHMAN ON THE WALL
For Dan Potvin, the hard-fought debate around Lichtenwalner and the school is nothing compared to the future he’s actively preparing for.
“I've called several things here in this town,” he said. “It's the first time publicly I'm calling this. I think there's three scenarios which could all happen between now and January 20th: Civil war, economic collapse, and World War III. World War III looks like it’s at the precipice right now. The other two are very likely, and when that happens, it's like, you have- Americans just don't have any idea, because most Americans haven't read history and they don't have knowledge of history.”
In Potvin’s worldview, the existential threats posed to Stamford and America at large aren’t hypothetical.
POTVIN: I don't see the United States making it beyond January 20th. I'll be surprised if we make it to the 5th of November. And so, all I'm trying to do is, right, I'm trying to build bridges, but I'm also trying to be the watchman on the wall, right, warning people, because I have a responsibility to that, because of the knowledge I have, and if I don't warn people, I'll be accountable for that.
WAMC: Does part of that come from your faith as well?
POTVIN: Yeah, It's Ezekiel, Chapter 38. The watchman on the wall- If he doesn't warn the people of the enemy coming, and then the people die, he's held accountable. But if he warns the people and they don't pay attention, he's done his job, right? And that's- I'm just a little guy, okay? I'm just a little man in a small town, and all I can do is warn, okay, but I have a good- I warned the town Russia was going to invade Ukraine, like, 10 months before it happened, right? How did I know that? I don’t know, good news sources. I'm not a prophet. Certainly, I don't have- I don't have messages from heaven. I just like read the signs of the times, and I can see you know where things are heading.”
The most recent warning Potvin issued to Stamford – cosigned by Denault – involved preparation for “any emergency or catastrophic event,” delivered “in light of the state of world affairs.” Dated May 18th, the communique recommends local resources for hand pumping and filtering water, where to buy seeds for growing crops, and the suggestion to follow NaturalNews.com for information. The site was the subject of a 2020 report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which describes it as a means of promoting “far-right and extremist ideology and its activities in relation to COVID-19 and the protests associated with the killing of George Floyd.” Potvin’s warning also suggests town residents go to the Wellness Company, which bills itself as offering “allopathic and naturopathic solutions,” for “an antidote for the spike protein in your body if you got the vaccination.”
Potvin is no fan of democracy, and explained via text to WAMC that he supports America becoming a constitutional monarchy. He believes in prophecy from Catholic mystics that foretells the return of the King of France, and that the quality of life in countries that have abandoned monarchal rule has plummeted since.
In the face of his staunch Catholicism, arguments around LGBTQIA+ rights are essentially a nonstarter.
“Well, at the end of the day, that polarizing issue comes down to faith, right?” he told WAMC. “I mean, there's no way around that. But outside of that, right, because the storm is approaching – and I'm going to call it that, the storm – we should be able to sheath our swords and help each other out, right? You and I could be, have completely opposite ideology on trans and LGBTQ, right, but if I've got extra seeds in the spring, I want to help you out, right, right? And I'm assuming the other side's going to want to help me out.”
In the meantime, Potvin is making his own attempts to bridge the widening gaps within Stamford through a resiliency conference set for October 19th.
“On our organizational group, I would say it's half and half,” he said. “We just had a meeting Monday night last week. It's like 10, 12 of us. Half are conservative, half are liberal. Everybody's excited. Everybody's into this. We're bringing in speakers and on different topics, right? Like, maybe somebody on canning, somebody on medical stuff, somebody on saving seeds, right? To build self-sufficiency in our town, so that when the shit does hit the fan, we pull together. It's kind of like, okay, you and I disagree on something, and we fight in there, left and right. We come out here. You're on the fire department, and tomorrow night, my house is burning down. And you're going to say, well, Dan's an asshole, I'm not going to show up at his house. No, you're going to come up there and you're going to help put the fire out! It seems to be the only thing we can- And I don't think it's a little thing, right? It's like, you're in trouble, I want to help you out. Okay, we might not agree on a bunch of different subjects, but I can help you out.”
Potvin thinks Lichtenwalner is blowing the nature of the conflict out of proportion.
“I was at all these meetings, I didn't see anything derogatory, or I saw a lot of derogatory stuff towards our side, right?” he said. “I was screamed and yelled at, like, up and down. I don't give a shit. I really don't. You can call me whatever you want. You want to make it personal, let's go outside. No, no, no, I don't like that. It just, it stirs a pot too much, and it makes something out of nothing. Did they hang an effigy of him up on the flagpole and burn it? Give me a break. I was on that select board for 10 years, and I used to tell the whole board, it's like, you got to have thick skin, right? If you're going to be in this, you got to have thick skin. People are going to call you names, people are going to do this, people are going to do that. And if you're, if you can't handle it, don't even be in here. If you are – Randy, whoever – don't make a mountain out of molehill. I don't, I don't buy that.”
CHAPTER NINE: ACROSS THE BORDERLINE
The situation in Stamford has made ripples in the broader Northern Berkshire and Southern Vermont community. North Adams city councilor Andrew Fitch tells WAMC that he was shocked and dismayed when he read Lichtenwalner’s letter.
“I have heard stories over the years since I've been in North Adams, of some of these kind of issues in Stamford,” said Fitch. “I've heard of these issues, and I've experienced these issues myself and other communities as well. What's so disturbing to me is that there is so much overlap between Stamford and North Adams. I mean, I don't mean to diminish Stamford, but Stamford is essentially a suburb of North Adams, and so, our suburb to the north is having some real struggles with homophobia right now, and that's a darn shame.”
Fitch, who is gay, was the top vote-getter in the city’s 2023 election.
“This is homophobia,” he told WAMC. “It is homophobia. There is no getting around that. And you know, homophobia is learned, and it is learned through childhood experiences, whether it be somebody's family who has taught them these things, whether it be somebody's church that has taught them these things, or somebody's school who has taught them this way of thinking. But we need to break out of this. We need to get with the program.”
He says it’s imperative to fight back against age-old narratives about the LGBTQIA+ community that Lichtenwalner had sounded the alarm on in Stamford.
“There's no conversion of people to becoming gay or to becoming trans,” said Fitch. “This isn't how it works. This is just not how it works. One cannot just be suggested that they become gay and then all of a sudden, they become gay. They become gay or LGBTQIA+ because that's who they are. And our society, in a large sense, has moved forward in many ways, so much so that a larger percentage of people feel comfortable coming out and being honest about who they are, and so, there's no indoctrination. That's just a made-up concept.”
Stamford select board chair Nancy Bushika told WAMC that she had no comment on Lichtenwalner’s departure and that she does not consider it the body’s business. Bushika did tell WAMC that prejudicial or homophobic treatment was not representative of the Stamford community “as far as she knew.”
School board chair Erika Bailey told WAMC she had no comment on this story, and directed all queries to recently instated Windham Southwest Supervisory Union Superintendent Bill Bazyk, who began in the district on July 1st.
Asked if he felt the Stamford School offers a safe environment for LGTBQIA+ staffers and students, Bazyk responded that he had “not received any information about a safe environment not being provided at the Stamford School,” and that “it is an expectation of [his] that every student and staff member feels safe in our schools and if [he] [encounters] information to the contrary swift action will occur to address issues.” Asked if he had read Lichtenwalner’s letter to the Stamford community, Bazyk said that “there were some serious concerns expressed by the former principal that [he is] taking the time to learn more about.” WAMC also asked the superintendent about what moves the district is making in the wake of last year’s intense school board meetings. Said Bazyk, “I will be present at each school board meeting to ensure the board can conduct business so students can receive an excellent education.”
The office interim Vermont Education Secretary Zoie Saunders told WAMC on August 15th that she is aware of the situation in Stamford, and that she intends to work with the superintendent on managing the situation and preventing future staff turnover due to the conditions Lichtenwalner identified.
CHAPTER TEN: THE END
For Lichtenwalner, the situation remains painful and unresolved.
“I'm concerned for the kids of Stamford because I'm concerned for kids growing up who may feel that they're less than, or they may feel like something is wrong with them for even having questions about who they are,” he told WAMC. “I think that the adults there, and there are staff members, without talking again about specifics, there are our staff members who – or at least one anyway – who's still there that identifies as a member of the LGBTQ community. Some others have left, and I don't know if it's partly because of the sentiment of the community or not, but I worry for the kids, and that's the reason why I why I felt like I needed to also share that with parents, because you don't know what lies ahead for your child, right? And we just want them all to be able to be who they are, and to have as few obstacles, a path as free from pain and strife as possible.”
The sour nature of his departure is made even more complicated by Lichtenwalner’s complex feelings about Stamford, both positive and negative.
“It is a small community, and I'm not looking to create any more fractures than exist,” he said. “And I'm not looking for there to be any kind of a witch hunt and go after individuals or things like that, because the reality- It's not about holding somebody accountable, because in a community, like in a school, we're all accountable, and like in a school, when a kid makes a mistake, we talk about interdependence. And when a kid makes a mistake, yeah, they have to correct it, and they have to address the harm that they caused, and they have to work to be better, but we also have to look at, what are the conditions that allowed that to happen, and what did not just the bully, but what about the bystanders, and what about the witnesses, and what about the systems that allowed it to happen in the first place?”
Potvin has no time to look back. His eyes are fixed on what’s to come.
“I mean, this was a blip on the scale,” he told WAMC. “What's coming now is like- When it starts, people are going to think it's the end of the world.”
