A month or so short of my 10th birthday in 1944, my mother took me to Winthrop Cottage on Page Terrace, now the campus of Good Will-Hinckley.

At the time, Mother taught nursing at Sisters Hospital in Waterville, and her job required her to live with her students. Her father, who had looked after me on his farm in Clinton, had died that spring, and the school was her only option if she wanted to stay near her son.

I graduated from Hinckley’s Averill High School in 1952 with an education that offered me my choice of three Maine colleges.

My every achievement since (all of them modest) has been a direct result of what I was taught and shown at Good Will-Hinckley. Most who’ve attended Good Will, the Hinckley School or Good Will-Hinckley have a similar story to tell — even though most of them didn’t have the luck to tend nine draft horses while getting through high school. The horses taught me at least as much as my housemother and teachers. And they were usually more patient with their teen attendant. To be fair, Mrs. Lawler and my teachers did have cause for concern.

For most of its life since 1889, the school has existed only because of the generosity of the many people who believe in its ability to give its children a backbone, a brain and an ethic. Most of these gifts for many years were $5 or less. A few people and families of wealth were able to contribute a “cottage” (actually a big farmhouse), which housed a family of about a dozen boys or girls, and their matron, or housemother.

The Moody sisters of Bath donated a school building and later the beautiful stone chapel; the Averill family of Waterville, during the Great Depression, donated a fine brick high school; Andrew Carnegie, a library building. More homes were funded by other families. The gifts often came in the form of a “widow’s mite,” no more than a dollar folded inside a note to Dr. Hinckley. I’ve seen them.

It dawned on me recently that if, instead of all of us rushing to judgment of the governor, the speaker or the Hinckley board — long before any evidence is produced — all the caring grownups in Maine each sent the school $5, just once a year, the school could look after far more kids, with far less noise and contention, which is what schools are meant to do.

If you doubt this, come watch its next graduation, the first weekend in August, and see for yourself.

By way of disclaimer: I’ve shaken hands with Gov. Paul LePage, but do not know him; I’ve never met Speaker Mark Eves, nor much heard of him before the last couple of weeks. And as far as I know, I’ve laid eyes on only one serving member of the Hinckley board or the Maine Academy of Natural Sciences board — three or four years ago.

My check is already in the mail; what about yours?

John Willey, a 1952 graduate of Good Will-Hinckley School, is emeritus board member and secretary of Good Will Home Association.

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