Former University of Maine at Farmington professor joins Margaret Chase Smith Library in Skowhegan as new director (2025)

SKOWHEGAN — A Cold War historian who taught for more than a decade at the University of Maine at Farmington has taken over the top job at the Margaret Chase Smith Library.

Chris O’Brien started as the Skowhegan research library’s director in September, after former director David Richards retired earlier this year.

The Margaret Chase Smith Library, at 56 Norridgewock Ave., is an archive, museum, educational facility and public policy center devoted to preserving the legacy of noted Maine politician Margaret Chase Smith. The library is owned by the Margaret Chase Smith Foundation and operated under its auspices by the University of Maine.

A member of the Republican Party, Chase Smith was the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and the first woman to be placed in nomination for the presidency at a major party convention. She was born in Skowhegan and lived in the town for much of her life until her death in 1995. Her former home is attached to the library, which opened in 1982.

For O’Brien, who was a professor of history at UMF for 15 years, the job allowed him to return to Maine after a two-year stint as director of the Theodore Roosevelt Center in Dickinson, North Dakota. While there, O’Brien traveled back and forth from North Dakota to his Farmington home, where his wife, who teaches at UMF, was still living.

“When the opportunity came up to come back home, that sounded really good to me,” said O’Brien.

O’Brien, who grew up in Iowa and holds a doctorate from the University of Kansas and a certificate in higher education management from Harvard University, was familiar with the Skowhegan library, having attended events during his time in Farmington.

O’Brien served as the chair of the history department and the division of social sciences and the president of the faculty during his time at UMF. He was previously a visiting professor at Beijing University of Technology and a visiting lecturer at the University of Kansas. For more than a decade, O’Brien served on the Maine Historical Records Advisory Board, a state board seeking to digitize and preserve state and local history.

As a scholar of Cold War American culture, O’Brien has written several articles and book chapters on the topic and has conducted grant-funded research at the Hoover, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy presidential libraries.

O’Brien’s interest in the Cold War era, he said, aligns with the history of Chase Smith, who served in the House from 1940 to 1949 and the Senate from 1949 to 1973.

The Republican’s famous 1950 speech, “Declaration of Conscience,” criticized the tactics used by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in his anti-communist campaign. She also had an interesting relationship — close, yet sometimes contentious — with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, said O’Brien, who had come across that relationship while conducting research on another topic.

“She’s just one of those figures who has been in and out of my own research work,” O’Brien said. “Certainly, once I moved from Kansas and started teaching at UMF, she became a bigger player in my Cold War classes.”

In his first weeks on the job, O’Brien said he has been learning, both about Chase Smith and the library itself.

It is too soon to make any changes, he said. The library’s technology may be an area to improve, O’Brien said, including updating search functions for research.

O’Brien said he intends to continue the library’s mission of focusing on education and outreach. The library, for example, provides funding to cover the cost of transportation for school groups and organizes several educational events, he said.

“It’s beautiful here on the grounds,” he said, “and we invite people to come visit.”