[BobbyB]

Merchant won't let fire, illness shutter store


Reader Comments (below)
By TESS NACELEWICZ, Staff Writer

Thursday, October 26, 2006




Staff photo by
Bussey, owner of Bridgham and Cook, Ltd., British Goods, and his wife laugh at an e-mail Wednesday. Anne and Bob Bussey, who has Lou Gehrig's disease, run the store from their Bath home by using a computer.


Staff photo by
Razed by fire, Bridgham and Cook has reopened in a new location, at 116 Main St. in Freeport.
LEARN MORE:

The National Institutes of Health has a wide-ranging page on ALS ao
The ALS Association has a collection of helpful links on the diseas

FREEPORT - Bob Bussey got his store, Bridgham and Cook, Ltd., British Goods, up and running this week just a month and a half after it was destroyed in a September fire. He ordered the gifts and groceries for the store, and helped design its custom-made wood display cabinets and an exterior that resembles a traditional British pub.
He did it all lying in bed at his Bath home, because a progressive illness has robbed him of the ability to move or breathe on his own.
"He designed the store, basically," said his wife, Anne, who met Bussey in 1988 while shopping at the store, which is in a new location at 116 Main Street. "It's still his store."
The store, which had been on Bow Street since 1987, is beloved by Anglophiles and British expatriates in Maine and nationwide. It was razed in a Sept. 10 fire involving electrical wiring in the attic, but Bussey determined he wouldn't let his illness -- amyotrophic lateral sclerosis -- stop him from starting anew.
Bussey, 62, who is 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighs about 190 pounds, used to walk two miles a day. But since he was diagnosed six years ago with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, he's had increased muscle weakness and paralysis and now he can't lift a finger on his own.
Still, aided by technology that lets him use a computer through head movements, and by nurses who type for him, he not only ordered the British goods he sells, but also decided where in the store they should be displayed.
Bussey said many people with ALS, for which the mean survival time is three to five years, choose not to use a respirator as the illness makes them unable to breathe on their own.
But Bussey decided he was going to be one of the 10 percent who live more than 10 years with the disease -- and that he was going to do it with gusto.
"If you're going to live, you want to live happy," he said this week, a tube in his throat and his respirator whooshing. "If you want to live happy, you want to be productive."
For Bussey, that meant re-starting the business he began as his dream second career.
Bussey is American and grew up in Bath. But his ancestors came from England and while studying history at Wesleyan University, he spent his junior year on the Isle of Wight and became hooked on Great Britain.
He embarked on a teaching career and became a headmaster at private schools, but decided when he turned 40 to open a store in 1985 selling British goods in Exeter, N.H., with his brother. The store's name -- Bridgham and Cook -- comes from family surnames.
That store closed in 1986, and the brothers ended up focusing on a Freeport store, which opened 19 years ago.
The store, which sells everything from teapots to tweeds to Marmite, a savory spread, developed a following of about 6,000 online customers. Other shoppers came to the store to stock up on British taste treats, such as Cadbury's chocolates and Scottish shortbread.
Then came the fire. It happened about 4 a.m., destroying all the merchandise and badly damaging the building.
The business was insured, and when Bob Bussey learned about a new, more visible storefront, he went for it.
On Tuesday, the second day the store was open, it was busy with both new and long-standing customers.
"It makes us feel at home," said Margaret Sutherland, 64, of Dresden, shopping with her friend Audrey Bradbury, 70, of Brunswick. Sutherland is originally from England, and Bradbury came from Wales. Both married American servicemen.
Bradbury was shopping for English treacle she'll use on a Christmas cake, and Sutherland was holding a bottle of Daddies, a brown sauce her son-in-law loves. "You put it on everything," she explained.
Eileen Messina, the store manager, said Bussey decided where everything would be placed in the store, from teapots and traditional clothing at the front to chocolate biscuits at the back. "Bob has a very, very strong hand in this," she said.
The Busseys went to China last year for experimental stem cell treatment. Anne Bussey believes it may have helped prolong his ability to speak, which many ALS patients lose.
But if that happens, Bob's computer is programmed with a voice that will speak sentences he points to on the computer, such as "I'm hungry" or "Please get my file folder."
And Bob has paid extra to have his computer voice speak in -- what else? -- a British accent. "We call him Charles," Anne said. "Charles can come on and say, 'My nose itches.'"
Staff Writer Tess Nacelewicz can be contacted at 791-6367 or at:
tnacelewicz@pressherald.com
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/ne...26british.html