Mike Meehan interview, October-November 2009

Mike Meehan was born in 1949 on a dairy farm in Southwestern Pennsylvania. His grandfather was an engineer, and the farm was worked by a local farmer. Mike grew up traversing the property and observing the coal mining operations on his grandfather’s land and in the surrounding areas. He started his career as a science teacher, but soon got a master’s in geology and began working in the coal industry. After a successful career in coal exploration, Mike and his wife moved to Connecticut, where he opened up the Portland brownstone quarries for small scale restoration and repair. Mike has been working at the quarries since 1993. Where other interviews by our classmates focused on long-time Portland residents with recreational and historical connections to the quarries, Mike’s perspective is unique in that he works with the stone every day and is deeply knowledgeable of the geology of the Portland formation, of which the quarries are a part. Because his knowledge is so broad and our interviews touched on so many different topics—from geology, to history, to Mike’s life story and philosophy—we would like to refer interested readers to the complete transcript.