Features
Community
Profile:
The Donomar Inn
Rooms of Their Own
The Donomar Inn, Jeffersonville
by Euan Bear
It has been just about
a year since long-time sweethearts Moira Donovan and Mary Bouvier bought
the former Hapgood farm and began stripping wallpaper, painting, ripping
up shag carpet (pink!) and laying floors. And the Inn has been "unofficially
open" only since last September, when a local lesbian couple asked
them to make rooms available for their out-of-town civil union guests.
But it's definitely open now,
even though Bouvier calls it "a work in progress." She was the
one who took the lead on the renovation. Fortunately, there was no need
for extensive structural repairs to the building that had been a close-to-the-mountain
B & B before the two women bought the building (but not the business).
Just the (not-so) minor matter of creating roof where three skylights
alternately leaked into or overheated the breakfast area.
The other major challenge was
laying a new wood floor in the J. Timothy Donovan bedroom (the only masculine
room in the house) during which Bouvier found that some previous owner
had leveled the floor with cement. "I had to go get a masonry bit
and drill every nail hole for the [historically accurate] square-head
nails that weren't all that sharp," she remembered.
All the rooms are named for
the two women's female ancestors, except the J. Timothy Donovan room,
named for Moira Donovan's dad. Personal history touches create a family
atmosphere: a quilt made by Bouvier's grandmother hangs on the wall and
her treadle Singer sewing machine ("The only thing she ever owned.")
stands in the room named for her, the Mary McQuade room. In the Isabel
McAllister suite, the women have put a round couch salvaged from Donovan's
great grandmother's housed and restored, along with a scrapbook of early
20th century family photos and documents, and paintings of tugboats: Donovan's
family owned and ran tugboats in New York City and the ferry from Bridgeport,
Connecticut, to Long Island. In the hallway stand a chair that Mary McQuade
hand painted and caned and an easel she used.
The inn is just a mile or so
up Route 108 (south) toward the ski area at Smuggler's Notch, which is
another five or six miles along the road. Several of the six guest rooms
have killer views of Mount Mansfield over the lighted gazebo and across
expanses of field and forest. Other amenities include a whirlpool tub
or two, a hot tub on the deck, space for snowshoeing and cross-country
skiing, gas fireplaces in several rooms, a library, a formal dining room,
a living room with the only television in the house, a professional quality
kitchen in view of the breakfast area, decks on both floors, and the tasteful
Victorian (not a contradiction in terms!) decorating sense of the innkeepers.
Speaking of the
innkeepers, they met on a blind date 15 years ago, and both have been
teachers – Donovan still teaches high school English at People’s
Academy in Morrisville. Bouvier spent four years teaching multimedia studies
there. The spouses (civilly united on July 7, 2000) lived and raised their
three kids (Kyrie, now 19; Marnica, now 22; and Ari, now 26) in Waterville,
a small town of about 700 souls just across the Lamoille River from Jeffersonville.
Bouvier coached the local kids' basketball team for several years.
"Waterville just embraced
us," Donovan said. "Our kids went to public school." Bouvier
added, "I made the Jello for the deer hunter's supper. There was
never an incident" of name-calling or bullying related to the two
women's lesbian relationship. When it came time to move, "We made
one phone call and there were eight boys [from the basketball teams] on
our doorstep to help," Donovan said.
"The Inn really started
with the books," Donovan recalled. "I started collecting Virginia
Woolf, Vita Sackville-West," and other women authors of the late-Victorian
and early modern era. "Mary even worked at a used bookstore. We ended
up with several thousand books in a little tiny farmhouse.
"The irony is that when
we moved here, we got rid of a lot of the books. And we still have hundreds
of books in boxes that we haven't yet found space for," Donovan added.
Innkeeping is a bit like
teaching, the two women agreed. "You're on all the time," Bouvier
said. "But we're used to that. And we get breaks – we're pretty
booked on weekends, especially holidays, but during the week we have fewer
guests or none."
"We like people,"
Donovan added. "And we want to share the house. Throughout this [renovation]
process, the house has been a presence of its own." It was built
in 1865, Bouvier related, by George Holmes, who had also built barns and
covered bridges in the area. "We've got 3-foot-wide beams under here,
I'm sure," she concluded.
Fortunately, Bouvier loves to
cook, and Donovan declared, "I love to make beds. I love to do laundry
and set the tables," all repetitive tasks of innkeeping.
The Inn is listed on several
travel and B&B sites online, where most of their reservations originate,
including purpleroofs.com,
iloveinns.com, and
gayvermontinns.com
"We hope to be comfortable,"
Donovan said of their clientele, "so anyone who comes can be comfortable
here," whether they are gay or lesbian, bi, trans or straight.
The Donomar Inn B & B
Route 108 Jeffersonville
www.donomarinn.com
802-644-2937