YMCA Honors Peacock, MacLeod During Annual Celebration.

Carrie Jones

Jul 17, 2026

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Restaurant Barn.

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BAR HARBOR—For Olympic bobsledder Frank Del Duca, the lesson that best defines the YMCA had nothing to do with athletics.

It came years ago, when he was a young employee wondering whether he should remove his earrings before work.

His supervisor’s answer has stayed with him ever since.

“Do you want earrings or not?” Del Duca recalled being asked. “We value you as you are.”

They valued him as he was.

The earrings didn’t matter.

Frank Del Duca mattered.

“That really stuck with me,” he told the crowd at the Mount Desert YMCA’s annual dinner at the Bar Harbor Club, July 16.

For him, that advice represented the essence of the YMCA and what YMCAs do.

The MDI YMCA in Bar Harbor does a lot. It offers a pool, a gym, a number of free swimming lessons for four- and five-year-olds, wellness programs, youth and senior programs, daycare, camps, athletic programs. It is a gathering space.

According to its website, “The mission of the Mount Desert Island YMCA is to develop community, character, personal growth and wellness in spirit, mind and body for the greater MDI community.”

“You have to put yourself out there,” Del Duca said.

That goes for in athletics and in life.

According to his Team USA profile, Del Duca “became a Maine high school state champion in alpine skiing and walked on to the University of Maine track and field team, specializing in sprints and the long jump.”

After college was when he went to a bobsled event. He joined. He’s been to two Olympic games in 2022 and 2026 on that bobsled team.

“At the 2025 IBSF World Championships in Lake Placid, New York, Del Duca piloted his team to a fourth-place finish in two-man and four-man bobsled events on his home track,” his site bio reads.

He’s also a U.S. Army sergeant, a husband, and a dad.

It sounds easy. It hasn’t always been. He’d moved around a lot. He’s been injured. He looks back and takes it all in stride, using it as encouragement.

“I think we all need a little adversity,” he said, “to figure out who we are.”

He said he’s been lucky throughout his life to have the support that he’s had, the communities that support him. The YMCA exemplifies that community and togetherness, he said. It’s a pillar of the community. It helps give purpose.

“Everyone here has the opportunity to be the purpose for someone else,” he said.

“Every child deserves someone else who believes in them,” he said. “We all have a chance to leave a legacy.”

That might be teaching a child to swim.

That might be investing in people through the YMCA.

That might be volunteering.

The important part is the legacy.

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AWARDS

Each year, the MDI YMCA presents awards to community members. This year it presented its Community Advocate Award to Valerie Peacock and its Triangle Award to Kathy MacLeod.

Presenting former Town Council Chair Val Peacock with her award, former councilor and past state representative Jill Goldthwait spoke to how she used AI to help define the qualities that make a community advocate and how Peacock reflects those qualities. She also spoke to the community nature of the event itself.

“I love this event because most of the people I see here tonight might be the same people I see in a random night in February,” Goldthwait said.

The town’s estimated 5,200 year-round residents, she said, are the slender stalk that holds up an estimated 20,000 in the summer, she said.

She spoke of the year-round residents’ humor, capability, loyalty, talent, and occasional cantankerousness.

“For better or worse we are a community,” Goldthwait said.

Since Peacock arrived in Bar Harbor as a resident 10-years ago, the former COA student and University of Maine graduate made an impact, she said.

“For Val, community comes first,” Goldthwait said before she directly addressed Peacock. ”You’ve been nothing short of heroic.”

Val Peacock thanked Goldthwait for her mentorship and her steadfast guidance. She likened that guidance to a lighthouse.

“Thank you for keeping me off the rocks,” Peacock said.

She cofounded a small nonprofit that looks at the connection between rural schools and community vitality. Linking that work to being Town Council chair, she emphasized that for change to happen, “one has to believe that change has to be made.”

The real work is to get others to believe it too.

“I call it optimism,” she said to chuckles and defined optimism as a fundamental belief that things can be changed for the better.

Optimism, she thinks, came for her from people who saw and loved her even as she made mistakes.

If optimism is related to privilege, for some it’s harder to achieve because of various psychographics. Supporting institutions in the community—institutions like the YMCA that are actively finding spaces for youth and giving individuals a place to be seen and grow—hold spaces for optimists who step up, who rise and protect the processes for resolving differences, and who can realize that you can disagree with someone and still hold space for them.

The challenges are real and thorny, she said.

Organizations like the MDI YMCA are so so important to building this belief that change can be made, she said.

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TRIANGLE AWARD

Lila Miller presented Kathy MacLeod the Triangle Award, calling MacLeod a “tireless advocate for this community” and someone who embodies the YMCA values.

Teaching kids to be safe and confident in the water is the greatest gift to give kids growing up in the island, Miller said.

MacLeod gave that gift establishing the MacLeod Fund for swim lessons in 2023.

The scholarship fund “aspires to drown proof and teach essential water safety and swim lesson skills to the children of our community,” according to the MDI YMCA’s website.

The program covers several free swim lessons for four and five years olds. It’s meant to save lives and help families and kids feel more confident in and around the water.

“Participating in formal swim lessons can reduce the risk by 88%,” the YMCA website states.

“I was a teacher of young children and know how ready and open they are to learn new skills,” MacLeod said.

It’s a cause that MacLeod is devoted to.

“What can be more important on an island?” she asked.

It’s also one of many focuses for the philanthropist who grew up on Mount Desert Island. Another focus has been on the Jesup Memorial Library.

”Kathy really understands Bar Harbor,” Miller said, adding that MacLeod has a certain mantra where she talks to others.

That’s “I believe in this cause. Let me tell you why.”

And then she’ll tell you why you should join in her efforts.

“Thank you to everyone at the YMCA,” MacLeod said when receiving the award. “You’re a dedicated group of individuals who love the Y and the community.”

Her parents, MacLeod said, where pillars of the community. She is where she is in life, she said, because of them and because of the Y.

“I learned how to swim, bowl, and play pingpong at the YMCA,” she said. “I have a lifetime of cherished memories of times spent with friends at the Y.”

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PADDLE RAISE

The annual event is also meant to raise money for the YMCA. Jon Simons of the DBD Group, a long time friend of YMCA CEO Anne Tikkanen lead the paddle raise.

“Ann just puts her heart and soul into this,” Simons said of Tikkanen’s work at the Y and in planning the gala. “I’m going to ask you to rock this house for Ms. Anne Tikkanen.”

He also spoke of AI tips and of how to lead a moving, emotional, and slightly humorous paddle raise for the Y, which he likened to the most diverse front door of any neighborhood.

“What an opportunity we have tonight to all be a part of their story,” he said.

The Y is a place were kids aren’t tolerated. They are celebrated.

“We do need your help,” he said.

Earlier in the evening Steve Gurin, MDI YMCA Board president spoke to the importance of volunteers, community, and the people behind them.

“Strong communities begin with strong people,” Guerin said.

Community, character, wellness, and growth are part of the YMCA’s mission. That mission is one for the community and one that the Y, which has been slowly unrolling what could potentially be a $13-million plan to expand and update its Park Street building and its offerings is working toward.

“We have ambitions for an exciting future,” Gurin said.

When Gurin spoke of the qualities of a true olympian like Del Duca, he spoke of integrity and responsibility.

“His story is one of resilience, discipline, and determination,” Gurin said.

That story, too, is one of a community, and one of a YMCA.

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All photos: Carrie Jones/Shaun Farrar/Bar Harbor Story

UPDATE: If you read a version of this article with two bolds, that’s because there was a hitch in the revision process. Those bolds have been taken out and sentences tweaked (once we noticed it happened) at 3:08 p.m.

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