Colleen Oakes and Renee Buteyne were only 12 when they met in junior high at Old Rochester Regional. The two girls spoke for the first time after Buteyne (formerly Bussenger) watched as a girl at school asked to borrow Oakes’ lip gloss “and she intentionally jammed her finger in it and ruined it,” said Oakes, now 29 and living in Aspen, Colorado. The girls looked at each other in disbelief, laughed it off, and bonded over the adolescent act of unkindness.

Years passed since that encounter with the mean girl who launched the two on their journey in life as friends. Sometime that journey was a figurative one – two friends, both at UMass Amherst sharing a dorm room, their dreams, their plans … More recently, though, their journey as friends became a literal excursion as the two set out together from Portland, Oregon, and made their way home to Tri-Town peddling 3,624 miles on their bicycles during a two-month, two-week-long trip across the country.

It was something Buteyne wanted to do since she was around 20, she said. And now in 2018, suddenly Buteyne was about to turn 30.

“I think I realized that a decade had gone by and I hadn’t done it,” said Buteyne. I better get that done, she figured, “Otherwise, that dream is going to get further and further away.

“Something kind of clicked,” she said.

Buteyne was never really a biker, she admits. She had never done any long tours or overnights or anything longer than a daytrip. It was just one of those things Buteyne had always wanted to do, said Oakes, “And some day she was going to do it.” Buteyne decided that time would be this year and asked Oakes to join her.

“I wasn’t sure,” Oakes admitted. “I was out in Colorado: I wasn’t sure if the timing was right.” But then, just like that, it was suddenly the right time when the Tesla store she worked at closed down and, suddenly, Oakes was a free woman.

The two women, both facing another new decade of life together, chose the cross-country bike trip as their way to say goodbye to their twenties while pedaling into their thirties. After all, Oakes said, “My dad did it back in the 70s and he still has the stories.”

Oakes’ father is Jeff Oakes of Marion, an active advocate for the Marion Bike Path and a member of the Open Space Acquisition Commission.

The trip began on May 2, leading the two friends across the map, stopping along the way to visit friends and family in various states and checking off bucket list destinations along the way, like Yellowstone National Park, for example.

“We would sort of hit these hubs that were important to us … then try to get there by a certain time,” said Oakes.

But it wasn’t so much the places that left the impression on the two women along the way; it was the people they met and the acts of kindness they encountered from strangers all over the country.

“People are just way kinder to you than you can imagine,” said Buteyne. “When you show up on a bike like that it’s sort of like a red flag that you’re in need of something … and people want to give that so openly.”

Some people would simply leave money on the counter to buy the women’s meals, others would offer hot showers or a place to sleep. Some had simply experienced travelling on a bike long-distance or had kids who did and just wanted to pay it forward, so-to-speak.

“Real generosity from strangers, which I feel like is always a surprise,” said Buteyne.

People along the way made a lasting impact of them, said Oakes, recalling a funny outcome to a rather unpleasant experience.

“One night we ended up sleeping in a tent behind someone’s trailer in a really, really small town in Wyoming,” Oakes recalled. “It was, hands down, the worst dinner we had ever had in our entire lives.” Uncooked meat served by angry waitresses, said Oakes – “And you knew that nothing was clean in there, but it was the only place open so we knew we had to.”

Then a nice man with no teeth offered up a spot for their tent for a night that Oakes said ended up being one of the most memorable, fun nights of the trip.

“It’s some tough living in some of these places out west, but they’re the most generous people we met,” Oakes said.

Clearly, this part of the two friends’ journey was a lifetime away from that moment a mean girl and her finger globbed with Oakes’ new lip-gloss brought them together. And a trip like this one requires a companion with a good sense of humor and the ability to laugh it off, just like they did when they were 12, because the two had their moments in between Portland and Rochester, Buteyne recalled.

“Renee was the one who would push us through, and if I saw Renee struggling, I’d push her,” said Oakes.

“I don’t think I could’ve done it without her and her strength and also her humor,” said Buteyne. “You have to have someone to laugh about and Colleen was the perfect companion throughout the whole thing. It just sealed the deal on how much I love her.

“You see how strong somebody is,” Buteyne continued. “If my cup was empty she just had a little more to fill mine and hers.”

All she had to do was look at Buteyne and know what she was thinking by the end of the trip, said Oakes, like that time they climbed 3,000 feet in elevation in one day as they crossed the Continental Divide. Buteyne’s family had sent them off with some homemade brownies and at one point Oakes looked to Buteyne who was clearly stressed and said, “Here. Eat this entire brownie right now.

“Slowly she came back to life and we were just laughing on a chocolate high,” said Oakes. “It’s just those little things. We can read each other and turn it around.”

The two are certain the trip has changed them for the better. After all, they did what they said they were going to do, said Buteyne, “And I just think that our words are strong and if you want to do something or you say you’re going to do it, you should do it.

“At the end of the day, that’s the stuff that makes you, being true to your word,” said Buteyne.

For Oakes, “There was never a moment when either one of us didn’t want to keep going. It wasn’t an option for us. We can pretty much get through anything and we’re a lot stronger and more capable than we probably thought.”

There’s more than just one takeaway from this journey for the two women. But as Oakes summed it up, “There’s more kind out there than there is bad, especially for two girls – people worried about us, the warnings, the cautionary tales,” said Oakes. “It’s a great country and people are really, really nice. It’s actually not so bad out there.”

Buteyne turned 30 on July 10 during her trip. The two made their way across Massachusetts, down High Street, and onto Stevens Road on Monday, July 16, where family and friends greeted them with confetti, balloons, a homemade finish line, and lots of hugs.

“I’m excited for them and so proud,” said Lisa Bussenger, Buteyne’s mother. “They’re such good people. When they say they’re going to do something, they do it.”

By Jean Perry

Mattapoisett usually isn’t thought of as having a rich history full of icons and innovators. Sure, the little oceanside town maintains its fair share of wealthy visitors and whaling artifacts, but to the uninformed outsider, Mattapoisett is mainly a small New England town full of everyday people.

That being said, upon further investigation, Mattapoisett has been home to a number of influencers and creatives. This isn’t a very well-known fact, though, as Mattapoisett’s history of housing impactful difference-makers is often swept under the rug, forgotten and unacknowledged. The Mattapoisett Historical Society is trying to change this, one “mover and shaker” at a time.

Museum Curator Jeffrey Miller has prepared a new exhibit being shown at the Mattapoisett Historical Society Museum on Church Street titled “Mattapoisett’s Movers and Shakers,” and the intent is to highlight a number of distinct innovators coming from all different eras and accomplishing a variety of different things.

Miller places his emphasis the most on one thing with the exhibit: difference makers. Miller defined a “mover and shaker” as “someone who achieved something and made a difference.”

“The scale [of what the movers and shakers accomplished] varies, but the fact that they all accomplished something and made a difference is what links them all,” said Miller.

Whether it be toymakers, inventors, ship captains, or even basket weavers, the 12 movers and shakers all called Mattapoisett home at some point in their lives and accomplished something very influential.

The different innovators chosen are a broad miscellany of people, ranging from local, little-known figures like Gladys Sherman Ellis to more well-known Americans such as author and activist Huybertie Pruyn Hamlin. They all made a big difference in their own way, accomplishing both the little and the enormous along their life path.

One of the more unique pairs highlighted in the exhibit are the Atsatt brothers. Growing up in Mattapoisett 10 years apart, Isaiah and John Atsatt went on to invent a number of various apparatuses, including peanut roasters, chicken feeders, and much more. They earned a Bronze Medal at the 15th Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association for their Acme Peanut Roaster, which was manufactured at their self-run Mattapoisett factory on the corner of Pearl and Hammond Streets. The two went on to achieve even more in their adult lives, as Isaiah served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and John become a contractor in Los Angeles.

Another neighborhood creative included in the exhibition is Gladys Sherman Ellis, a lifelong Mattapoisett resident and basketry extraordinaire. Ellis made her hometown famous when she pioneered the Mattapoisett Basket, a type of completely-homemade basket that takes several years to entirely finish and is made using scrimshaw, thin strands of raffia, and coiled southern pine needles. The intricate and detailed baskets take an amazing amount of skill, dedication, and focus to complete, and Ellis even taught classes where she would instruct people on how to make her wildly complex basket design.

While Ellis and the Atsatt brothers were more local inventors than anything else, there were also some nationwide innovators — meet Charles Bryant and Huybertie Pruyn Hamlin.

Bryant grew up in Rochester and eventually retired to Mattapoisett, but accomplished his prominence in his middle years out at sea. Bryant became a whaleship captain, visiting remote regions of the Arctic and Pacific Oceans. His expertise led the U.S. government to ask him for help when deciding whether to buy Alaska from Russia. One thing led to another and Bryant eventually became administrator for the entire Alaskan Territory in 1868, developing the territory’s infrastructure and foundation. His efforts were very influential in the purchase and maintenance of Alaska, furthering our country’s reach and helping America become a global superpower.

Bryant’s accomplishments stretched far beyond Mattapoisett, but Hamlin used her countrywide clout for the establishment and betterment of the little town she loved.

After coming from a wealthy and politically well-to-do Albany, New York family, she married Charles Hamlin, assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Following Charles’ law practice being moved to Boston, the couple purchased a beat-up house adjacent Ned’s Point Lighthouse and fell in love with the oceanside town.

Hamlin went on to become president of the Mattapoisett Improvement Association for over 30 years, accomplishing a number of important necessities in the town in the early 1900s. From organizing the town’s first trash collection to maintaining the town beach to planting more than 400 shade trees, Hamlin kickstarted a lot of important town affairs. Until her death in 1964, Hamlin did a whole lot for Mattapoisett as a community, uniting its people and helping build it up to the strong, accomplished town that it is today.

Through all the movers and shakers, the exhibit accentuates the importance of believing in your town and its people, no matter how small or insignificant the little community may seem to the world as a whole. After all, big ideas can come from small places, and Mattapoisett’s Movers and Shakers proves this without a single doubt.

By Caleb Jagoda