It’s with a heavy heart I note the recent passing of Dean Shea, an old friend and Wiscasset neighbor. I’ll miss his charm, wit, story-telling and commonsense advice. Dean was a great deal of help to me when I was researching and writing my three books of Wiscasset history and folklore. He shared with me many colorful memories of growing up here in Maine’s Prettiest Village in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. 

It was Dean who first told me about the legendary Wiscasset Athletic Club and their baseball team called the “AC” which became a great story. Dean and his younger brother Chuck Shea both played on the team when they were teenagers. Hard to believe but my interview with Dean on that subject took place 10 years ago. It was over a fine breakfast of bacon, eggs and homefries washed down with strong black coffee at the Alna General Store. Roy Barnes, Wiscasset’s former road commissioner and selectman, joined us that morning. Dean began by telling me the AC’s ballpark was intown alongside the elementary school off Federal Street. I was surprised to hear there used to be a small wooden grandstand there painted green that stood behind home plate. Fans of all ages would gather here to watch the ballgames, buy hot dogs and enjoy a Coca-Cola. The AC didn’t have what you would call a regular schedule, or so Dean told me. Instead the team played pick-up games against teams made up of guys from Bath, Woolwich, Westport, Boothbay, Waldoboro and Richmond.

“If you wanted to play another town team you just got in touch with them ... Everyone would meet down at the ballpark on a Sunday afternoon. We’d find somebody brave enough to umpire, and play until it got too dark.” Dean said the Wiscasset Athletic Club had been around since he was a boy and a lot of years even before that. He put me in touch with Walter Sherman and other senior Wiscasseters who could tell me more.

Dean and brother Chuck were standout athletes at Wiscasset High School in the 1950s; Dean lettered in four sports, cross-country, track, baseball and basketball. Both went on to have respectable athletic careers, too, at rival Maine colleges. Chuck went to nearby Bowdoin College in Brunswick while Dean attended Colby College in Waterville. Two young men from Wiscasset, one a Bowdoin Polar Bear, the other a Colby Mule, you’ve got to love that.

One summer day a few years back Dean arrived at my home with a shoebox containing dozens of pocket journals dated from 1880 to 1933. He told me they’d been kept by Wiscasseter Charles E. Knight. “Did you ever hear of him?” he asked. I told him no, I hadn’t. “Well … he was quite a fellow. I think you ought to read through these and see for yourself.” Dean said he’d inherited the books from his older brother Roy who had bought them for a dollar at an auction in Fairfield. Excerpts from the journals became a chapter in my first book describing in detail the life and times of Charles E. Knight – Bowdoin graduate, attorney, magistrate, grocery store owner, musician in the town band, church elder and, at age 86, a Wiscasset selectman. Another great story thanks to Dean.

When I was doing research for my second book of Wiscasset stories Dean joined me in hiking over Cushman Mountain, a part of Cushman Preserve, owned by the Chewonki Foundation. It was a warm spring day, sunny too when we set out on the old Indian trail, our goal being to look for evidence of a wooden observation tower that had once stood high on the summit overlooking Back River. An earlier Wiscasseter, Erastus Foote Jr., had had the tower built in the 1890s or early 1900s for nothing more than to enjoy the view. After wandering around the summit we found four fairly large, crumbling cement blocks that had been used as the tower footings. I photographed Dean, a stick in each hand, arms outstretched, to show how wide the tower had been at its base. The following winter Dean was kind enough to proofread an advance copy of my book that included his picture at the site of Foote’s Tower. Dean, having been a career English teacher, saved me endless embarrassment by catching a number of grammatical mistakes before the book was published.

Up until just a few years ago Dean stayed pretty active hunting, fishing, hiking and cross-country skiing. For a few years he and Chuck were part-time school bus drivers for the Wiscasset School Department driving the teams to the away games. Dean also served several terms as a trustee of our Wiscasset Water District.

Judy Flanagan told me the family planned to spread some of her brother’s ashes on top of Langdon Mountain behind his home on the Gardiner Road, as well as on Mt. Katahdin. My deepest sympathies to Sandra, Dean’s wife, and their three children Laura, Paula and Denny, along with Judy and her husband Tim Flanagan, Chuck and Faye Shea and also to Harry Shea and his wife, Yang who reside in Missouri and all the others who make up Dean’s family.

Dean took great pride in his Irish roots. A few years ago he fulfilled a longtime dream when he and Sandra traveled across the ocean to visit the Emerald Isle for their 50th wedding anniversary. It’s fitting therefore to end with an old Irish toast, “Those we love don’t go away, they walk beside us every day, unseen, unheard, but always near, Still loved, still missed and very dear.” 

Phil Di Vece earned a B.A. in journalism studies from Colorado State University and an M.A. in journalism at the University of South Florida. He is the author of three Wiscasset books and is a frequent news contributor to the Boothbay Register-Wiscasset Newspaper. He resides in Wiscasset. Contact him at pdivece@roadrunner.com