Insights 52 p o r t l a n d monthly magazine courtesy photos novel in high school. For generation after generation, the inn was passed on to the first-born son. In 1925, Helen Bell Twombly, Trish’s great-grand- mother, was the first daughter to inherit the inn—the first time the name would change from Gooch. The second was when Trish’s grandmother, Virginia Twombly, later Vir- ginia Severance, took over in 1950. “We’re not putting any pressure on the kids,” Ken says. “If they go off for a career and want to come back later on, I’d be fine. But I want them to go out and experience things on their own.” That is, a choice is a choice on- ly when you choose it. “We don’t push the family history on them.” Before Seaside, Ken served in the U.S. Coast Guard as a chief petty officer at search and rescue stations. “I was in charge of running search and rescue boats. I al- so spent a summer in Africa teaching sev- eral nations boat operations and law en- forcement.” Today, he is the man behind the curtain at the inn. Though he married into the family, he’s never been shy to im- plement new ideas. “The first year we took over, I installed central air-conditioning, computers—everything was still done on typewriters—we didn’t even have an au- tomatic coffee machine,” he says. The ear- lier generation did, however, see the value of the world-wide web and treated viewers with photo updates of the beach every few minutes. Today it’s a livestream broadcast. “We at least brought it up to the 20th cen- tury, but we still try to keep everything as homey as possible. That’s why we have the ‘Welcome Home’ sign above the front desk. We have 82-percent return guests. That’s what they like.” Having a committed staff helps. “Our breakfast cook, Holly, has been here since my wife was a little girl. Up until this year, we had Holly’s mother here and her two sisters, her brother, and her nephew. It was kind of like a second family run- ning the business.” While Seaside Inn main- tains its familiar comforts, finding enough people to keep the wheels turning is always a challenge. Not as many people feel the calling “to do this kind of work anymore; be it housekeep- ing, laundry, or even maintenance,” Ken says. “It’s not a pay-scale issue, because we pay well. Trying to fill these positions now is much harder than it used to be.” A n even more surprising matter has been navigating the uncontrolla- ble. Take the riff over tariffs, for ex- ample. “I’m not going to get into politics,” Ken says. “We’ve had a bunch of Canadian guests who’ve been coming for years and years. They called us up and said, ‘We’re not coming this year.’ They were blunt about why. I tried to explain that we don’t rep- resent the government and that we’re just plain old people like they are up there. But a lot of them made a stand this year. They said they weren’t coming.” A hallway at Seaside Inn is lined with family photos of those who’ve overseen the grounds long before Ken and Trish. Know- ing so many before them have dealt with their fair share of change–as often as the “We’ve had a bunch of Canadian guests who’ve been coming for years and years. They called us up and said, ‘We’re not coming this year.’ They were blunt about why.”