I lost an old friend last week, someone who has been important in my life for nearly half a century. His passing was not unexpected, and, in fact, not unwelcome, coming as it did at the end of a long and difficult decline from Alzheimer’s disease. But the finality of his death has prompted a period of deep reflection for me. Gilbert, and his family, have been very much in my thoughts, and in my heart.

A small convenience store in Locke’s Mills, Maine, might be one of the last places you’d expect to find a wise philosopher, a perceptive observer of humanity, a quick-witted, insightful, brilliant thinker.

But that’s exactly what I found there, back in the summer of 1978, in the person of Gilbert Dunham.

I was nineteen years old and had just landed my dream job—working behind the counter at Bob’s Corner Store. As a “summer person” from Connecticut for most of my life, I’d recently—finally!—moved to Maine to live full-time.

Rural Maine is notorious for being tough on “people from away,” but I couldn’t imagine a better path to acceptance in a small town than waiting on its inhabitants day after day, ringing up their beer, groceries, and cigarettes; pumping their gas; exchanging small talk and learning about their lives.

There was one problem, though: I was almost pathologically shy, and, except for Bob himself, I didn’t really know a soul in town. I’d never actually been good at small talk, and there were so many new names and faces to remember that I was too afraid of mixing people up to inquire after their kids, or their jobs, or to ask anything more than “Do you want a bag for that?”

I usually worked evenings—the store was open until 9 p.m. most nights, and until 10:00 on Fridays and Saturdays—and most of the coworkers I was paired with were somewhat taciturn. Or perhaps they were just suspicious of the clueless college student who’d been dropped into their midst and didn’t expect to find much common ground to talk about with me.

Gilbert was different. From our very first evening shift together, he asked questions and listened to my answers, drawing me out of my shell. Our conversations made me feel that growing up in Connecticut, rather than being a detriment, had given me a different perspective that he was interested in hearing about.

Gilbert was a master of self-deprecating humor, in the deadpan manner of Bob Newhart (who was a favorite of my mother’s. When she met Gilbert, she liked him immediately; she said he reminded her of Bob). His approachable, everyman persona made him a friend to all and a favorite among both customers and coworkers.

I watched and listened and learned from Gilbert. His easy rapport with customers and the good-natured banter they exchanged showed me, in time, that it wasn’t so hard to strike up a conversation, and I learned that most people were happy to get to know “the new girl” and share a bit about themselves.   

For more than a decade, Gilbert and I held the fort at Bob’s Corner Store together, usually one weekday evening, every third Saturday night, and every other Sunday afternoon. When we weren’t pumping gas, keeping the beer cooler filled, or waiting on customers, we would sit on the counter, or on the old Coke cooler behind it (where the Narragansett long-neckers were kept) and philosophize, reminisce, and solve the problems of the world.

Somehow, Gilbert had acquired the wisdom of an old soul and the insightfulness of an erudite scholar without ever leaving his hometown—all the more remarkable to me when I realize that he was still in his thirties when we met.

A lifelong resident of Greenwood (except for a brief time when he and Barbara were first married and lived in West Paris), Gilbert spent his entire life nearly within sight of the place he was born. He worked at Penley’s Mill, a few miles from home, for more than 40 years. He married Barbara two weeks after her high school graduation, and they were married for nearly 62 years.

One of the most memorable things he ever told me, during one of our many evenings together behind the counter, was, “I realized early on that I could either decide what I wanted to do for work, and go where I had to live to do it, or decide where I wanted to live, and figure out what I could do for work there.”

Gilbert’s full-time job was filing saws at Penley’s, and in addition to his part-time work at Bob’s, he shoveled camp roofs in the winter, mowed lawns in the summer, and filed handsaws and circular saw blades in his basement shop year-round, all to make the best possible life for his family. Even with all of his jobs, and all of his volunteer work—he served on the school board and the fire department, and was always quick to answer the call whenever someone in town needed help—he was, first and foremost, a family man.

There can be no better tribute to the kind of life Gilbert lived than the words his three kids used to express their loss, words filled with love and admiration, words that give a glimpse into the kind of man he was.

“He taught me so much by his example and he left such a wonderful legacy through his family and everyone who knew him,” his daughter, Tammy, wrote on the day he died. “My brothers are kind, gentle men because of him and I am stronger because of his example. My children have Papa stories that have shaped them, that have given them joy and fun and that will remain with them forever. We were blessed to have him in our lives.”  

Gilbert’s older son, Jeff, shared a Facebook post he had written for Father’s Day ten years ago, which read, in part, “[He] taught me to fish, how to play ball, how to saw, how to chop wood, how to treat a woman, how to never let yourself be treated, taught me compassion, taught me strength, taught me work ethic, taught me how to be a non-hunting pacifist in a backwoods rural town in Maine. My wonderful sense of humor? yep thank Dad for that. Taught me to love my town and heritage, yet want to leave it to find more, yet want to return always to a place that will always be home.”

During the years of Gilbert’s illness, his younger son, Chris, joined forces with Barbara to provide the caretaking that ensured that he would be able to remain at home, the only place he would have wanted to be. Over the course of those years, despite the challenges of caring for him as his Alzheimer’s disease advanced, stealing his memories, they spoke not of their exhaustion and frustration, but of their gratitude for the husband and father he had always been.

From Chris’s Father’s Day post last year: “My dad, Gilbert Elton Dunham. Taught me how to start a saw cut and straighten a nail. Let me keep all the nails I could straighten. Got us lost in the woods now and then, but never for so long my mom needed to know…Waited for years to buy his first new car, and it was a Ford Pinto. Taught me to drive a stick. Treated his clutch like a fourth child he maybe loved best. Told me all he knew of Greenwood and listened when I told him all I’d learned in quiet rooms he’d never entered. Hiked with me at the drop of a hat to find a cellar hole or a gravestone or a road not a road anymore. Modeled decency and hid his pride and love for his children poorly. His memories are mostly gone, but a good soul remains.”

I don’t believe there was ever a moment when Gilbert regretted his choice to stay in Greenwood, and our community has been far richer because he chose to make his living, and his life, here. In the words of one lifelong friend, upon hearing of his death, “All of Greenwood will feel this loss.”

Gilbert was kind, wise, funny, and philosophical. He was my dear friend; I will always miss him, but I will always be grateful for everything he meant to me.