This event has been cancelled due to weather.

Books will be available for purchase.

About the event

This evening's presentation by David Albee will highlight Maine high school basketball at tourney time and mark the 50th anniversary of Foxcroft Academy’s amazing run at winning the only state basketball championship in the school's history.  David's long-time friend, Jay Silverberg, will join him in conversation as part of this evening's program. 

David considers Jay Silverberg as his “Lifetime Editor.” He was Managing Editor when they worked together at the Rockford (Ill) Register Star from 1981-86.

This story began with a fifth-grade student in Monson dreaming of someday leading his high school team to a state championship who grew to be 6-foot-8 and instead led another town’s high school to a state title. There are funny and sad stories along the way weaved with a nostalgic look at high school basketball in rural Maine including the impact it has on the community that in this case inspired one jovial man to create a large plywood sign that became the title for this book.

David will show photographs during the event. 

About the book
One small town’s pain is another small town’s gain as a soul-crushing school consolidation connects a tall, star player from Southeast Monson to a young, driven coach that leads to Foxcroft Academy’s first and only Maine state basketball championship in 1975 in the school’s 200-year history. The dubious path to a coveted Gold Ball dribbles through a turbulent time in the 60s and 70s and a series of gut-wrenching decisions that ultimately create team chemistry and a plywood sign that capsulate a rural community starved for a winner. 

About the author
Dave Albee, a 1972 graduate of Foxcroft Academy voted “Most School Spirited” as a senior in the school yearbook, was an award-winning sportswriter and sports columnist for 35 years at five newspapers in four states from Maine to California.

Despite covering some of the world’s biggest sporting events, teams, and players during the past five decades, it is Foxcroft’s first and only state basketball championship season that Dave covered for his hometown Observer in 1974-75 that served as the inspiration for his book — “The Last One Out Of Town Turn Out The Lights.” That one season is deeply personal to Dave compared to all the college and professional sports seasons he has experienced. Dave was born and raised in Dover-Foxcroft and competed in football, basketball, and baseball at Foxcroft Academy. The bit of serendipity at the local grocery store provided the opportunity to witness and now write about the 1975 state championship season on its 50th anniversary.

For more information about this book and the author, visit the website. 

About Jay Silverberg

Jay Silverberg spent nearly 40 years in the communications field, reporting and editing for newspapers across the United States, and managing major corporate clients for public affairs agencies in San Francisco and Washington DC. 

During his 23-year agency career, he guided businesses and not-for-profit organizations through issues relating to crises and crisis planning, public policy, the media, employee and labor relations, mergers, corporate social responsibility, government and political affairs, executive communications, social activism, product liability, and community relations. 

He began working for his family-owned daily newspaper in Southern Louisiana as a teen-ager and after graduation from the University of Missouri in 1975, he moved on to editorial positions at increasingly larger publications in California, Florida, Oklahoma, New York and Illinois. Newspapers and staff under Jay’s direction were continually honored for their writing, photography, design and overall excellence. 

In 1993, he served as Media Coordinator for the Polly Klaas Foundation in Petaluma, CA, developing media strategies and media relations with the local, national and international media for what was the largest search for a missing child in United States history. He was a founding Board member and consulted with author Kim Cross as she researched and wrote “In Light of All Darkness: Inside the Polly Klaas Kidnapping and the Search for America’s Child.” (2023 /Hachette Book Group)

He received his Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Missouri in 1975. He and his wife, Janet, are the parents of two children, a son who is a graduate of Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, now the co-founder and CEO of an app-based firm in New York City; and a daughter who is a graduate of UCLA in aerospace engineering and Georgetown University, now working as a statistical analyst for the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, DC. He and his wife relocated to Northern Virginia in 2019 after living 33 years in Northern California.

He is a past president of the Southern Jewish Historical Society and serves on the board of the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience. He has published two articles about his ancestors in the academic journal, Southern Jewish History. His interests include working as a golf rules official for regional golf associations, reading historical non-fiction, cooking, listening to Jazz, one very spoiled cat, traveling with family, and spending time with his grandkids.