Dexter Stowell interviewed by Richard Ade - February 27, 2001

• Stowell, Dexter M. (Dexter Milton), 1928-2008

Richard Ade Interviews

WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

Dexter Stowell

AND WHERE WERE YOU BORN?

I was born in Andover, Maine.

AND WHEN WERE YOU BORN?

February 14, 1928

HOW MANY PEOPLE IN YOUR FAMILY?

I have three sisters and a brother.

WHAT WAS YOUR FATHER’S OCCUPATION?

He was mill manager in the forest.

AND YOUR MOTHER?

My mother never worked.

WHAT WAS LIFE LIKE AT HOME?

I grew up down in Bryant Pond and what life was like…I guess the usual. In what ways?

WHAT DID YOU DO…WHAT WAS IT LIKE?

Well, I played and when I was about 7 we moved to a new home in town and I started mowing the lawn and feeding the dogs. My father had fox hounds in the kennel in the back of the house which one of my jobs was to feed them. I guess it was typical life.

WHAT ARE YOUR GRANDPARENTS LIKE?

My father’s father was quite a lot older. He was in his 80’s by the time I was born. Dad was the youngest one in his family. He was 22 or 23 years younger than his younger than his oldest brother. I never knew my grandmother on the Stowell side. But I knew my grandfather and grandmother on my mother’s side…the Milton side. They lived in Andover and he was a farmer and they moved to Andover from New Brunswick, Canada. We used to see a lot of them. Go up for Thanksgiving, Christmas. But, the Stowell side of the family was so large we finally gave up going over there for Christmas because there were so many different families. So, I really do know my mother’s parents better than I knew my father’s. As I got older, I have a cousin who is three months older than I am and when we were about 12 we went in the barn one summer and helped with the hay and drove a horse rig, which is a big farm rig on two wheels. After the hay was cut you would go around and gather it up in wind rows with the horse. So, that was kind of different. It would be different today because they don’t use them anymore. And then, when they brought the hay in, we would go up in the halo and help move the hay around as they brought it in to the top of the barn. And, they were very good to us. That’s one thing I remember quite well.

WHAT ARE YOUR EARLIEST MEMORIES?

Some of the earliest things I can remember would be…sometimes its difficult to believe it…I remember the likes of 1932 and I was only four years old…and at that time, the people who were backing the candidates would have a picture of the candidate…like Roosevelt…the Democrats had Roosevelt in the window in their home. I don’t know who was for the Republicans…and, I’m sure I didn’t have any opinions of it or anything, but I really knew what was going on. I remember when the garage burned in Bryant Pond. The big fire we could see from our house. I also remember the fact that my father went out and took my red stocking cap and put that on. I thought that was kind of funny…boy it was cold winter night. I don’t have any…course, I remember going to school. I didn’t start school until I was six and half. My mother says she kept me back so I could play with my next sister to keep her entertained. So, I didn’t start school until I was six and a half. My aunt was living with us and she was teaching school and she came in one day..I had gone into the kindergarten…and I had probably been there for three or four months…and she came in and said if you can read this book, we are going to put you in first grade. I could read it all but a couple of words, so I moved along to the next grade. So, I was right where I should have been. I remember that year that I didn’t go to school, I used to copy stories out of the Saturday Evening Post and ask my mother to read them to me. So, I was ready for school before I got there.

WHERE DID YOU FIRST GO TO SCHOOL?

The Woodstock Grammar School. Well, I went from kindergarden through my freshman year in high school.

WHERE DID YOU GO AFTER THAT?

I went to Gould Academy for the next three years and graduated from Gould Academy in 1946.

WHAT WERE YOUR TEACHERS LIKE?

I guess they were like most teachers. Some you liked better than others, but, I think they were pretty well qualified and I got a good education there. The first year I went to Gould Academy, I rode my bicycle from Bryant Pond to Locks Mills to get the school bus. Gould Academy used to send a school bus out to East Bethel and down to Locks Mills and down through Route 26 and I think we paid something like $3.00 per week to ride on the school bus. It wasn’t free. As I recall, the tuition then, the first two years I went there was $100.00 for a day student and then when I was a senior it went to $125 or $150. I paid for that out of my own pocket. I felt pretty good about that. I worked summers in the factory my father was running down in Bryant Pond.

WHAT ARE SOME SPECIAL MEMORIES ABOUT YOUR SCHOOL DAYS?

Oh, let’s see. I remember we had a good football team my senior year but we didn’t have a very good one my junior year.

WHAT WERE YOUR INTERESTS DURING THIS PERIOD?

Well, I just said I was interested in football and sang in the glee club and used to ..I was business manger for the year book one year and I really liked school, so that was no problem for me.

DID YOU HAVE ANY HOBBIES?

I used to collect stamps. That’s probably the biggest hobby. I also took piano lessons going through grammar school.

WHAT WERE YOUR FAVORITE TIMES?

Well, I did like school. Probably, because there was a lot more going on since Bryant Pond was very small and there weren’t many kids there. I worked in the millyard from the time I was 15 on. I worked about three weeks when I was 14 and that was during the Second World War and they weren’t very concerned about how old you were to work.

WERE THERE ANY UNPLEASANT MEMORIES THAT YOU HAD?

Well, you forget them over a period of time and you remember the good times and forget the bad times.

WHAT DID YOU LIKE ABOUT GROWING UP?

Oh, I don’t have any, I guess. No, I don’t have any real answers on that. What do you mean with that, anyway?

WHAT DID YOU LIKE DURING ANY GIVEN PERIOD WHILE YOU WERE GROWING UP…THINGS YOU LIKED TO DO AND STUFF LIKE THAT?

I guess sports and I really liked going to school. I liked to learn and I liked going to movies. They had a theater here in town then where the Bethel House is down on Main Street and my sisters and I were always anxious to go to the movies. Sometimes on a Saturday we might even take our bikes and ride from Bryant Pond to go up to the movies, which is about 10 miles.

WHAT WAS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT GROWING UP?

I hated to pick raspberries out of the garden. We had a garden, in fact, I was in 4H there for a while and you had to do some project and I had a garden for two or three years.

WHERE DID YOU FIRST WORK?

First I went in the Army in 1946 as soon as I got out of Gould Academy within about three weeks and I went to infantry training in Ft. McLellan Alabama and I was there I think eight weeks. And then I was sent to Korea over seas and that was before the Korean war (1946/1947). I was in the MP’s (military police) for about six mothns, maybe five and then I worked in the Division Chaplan’s office for the rest of my time. I was over there for a total of 12 months. I was discharged in November of 1947. I went to the University of Maine and graduated from there. In 1950 the Korean started and I was called to come back into the service and then I was stationed at Camp Redwoods at Cape Cod for a year. I worked at the training while I was there. I supervised that for most of the time…training projectionist and we released training films and reserved it for training programs and so forth.

HOW MUCH MONEY DID YOU GET?

Well, as a sargeant in the Chaplan’s office, the best I got was $120.00 per month.

WHERE ELSE DID YOU WORK?

When I go out of college I worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in training as a bank examiner. I worked there for a year and a half and then I worked as an accountant for Deweu and Omni Chemical Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1955, I moved back to Maine to do a little family business which was at that time was Stowell Silk Boot Company. About a year and half later my father died quite suddenly at age 52 and I ran the business for the next 28 years. I brought some samples of some kinds of things we made. You can look at them when the tape is over.

HOW DID YOU LIKE THE VARIOUS JOBS YOU HAD DURING YOUR LIFE?

Oh, you could say I always liked them. Some, well, I got out of the bank job cause I could see I didn’t want to be in banking as a future. Then, my second job, I decided I’d rather be up here in Maine rather than in Massachusetts. The family business was a good opportunity for me.

WHAT WERE SOME OF THE WORST WORK EXPERIENCES YOU HAD?

Oh, well, we had the fire in Dixfield which burned down one of the plants and part of the factory. And, um, I guess, eventually I had to give up the business when times got tough in the early 1980’s.

WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER ABOUT SOME OF THE GREAT EVENTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY?

Well, I wasn’t that directly effected by World War II because I wasn’t old enough. I remember being in the boy’s dormitory down here coming in from final exams and went in the dorm and everybody was huddled around the radio and they said the American troops had just landed on the beach in Normandy. I remember that. I remember the Japanese surrendering when the war was over. I was taking piano lessons at the time and I remember…it was down in West Paris. I remember the fire department was roaring around in the fire trucks and ringing the bells.

WHAT WAS THE GREAT DEPRESSION LIKE FOR YOU?

I don’t have much memory of that. It didn’t effect me that much. I was just starting in grammar school and we didn’t have any problems for one thing. We made thread spools…wooden thread spools to wind thread on and everybody started sewing so it didn’t effect that business all that much.

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE 1950’S?

Well, I got called back in the army …I don’t have much to add there.

WHAT US PRESIDENT DID YOU LIKE BEST AND/OR LEAST AND WHY?

I can’t give you a best or worst, really.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE MOST IMPORTANT CHANGES YOU HAVE NOTED IN YOUR LIFETIME?

You mean that happened around the country?

YES.

Well, I suppose the changes that happened with the atom bomb had the greatest effect. And, well, there have been a lot of changes. It doesn’t seem now like it’s changed all that much until you go down through them. You know, computers and dependancy on electricity for power and the factory when I first started working there ran off a steam engine which is virtually the same power that was used when the place was built in 1880. The use of electricity for power is quite a change. Not at night time, probably, well, yes, I guess in the factory it did. The thing that I really noticed too was that when I started back in the family business back in 1955, the big load of the wood on the truck was four cords. Now they probably put on three times as much on the trailer and haul it around. Plus the fact the lift trucks too made a big difference in the business.

WHAT DO YOU THINK WERE THE BEST CHANGES?

I think everyone is a lot better off than they were, economically. People have more, generally, course there are some who don’t have as much. But, even I think that people who are in worse shape are still better off than the people that were in the worst shape back 50 years ago. I think there’s more…they’re healthier. I remember talking to the football coach a couple of years after I came back up this way. Every year he said he has to buy bigger football pants because the boys are getting bigger. Have you seen all those big guys weighing 300 lbs, playing for the pros. My goodness.

WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER THE MOST UNFORTUNATE EVENT IN YOUR LIFE AND WHY?

Well, I think it as too bad my father died when he as so young…he was only 52. That’s probably what I would say is the most unfortunate thing for me, on a personal basis.

SO, DID YOU MARRY?

Oh yes. I married Janet Sutherland from Beamsville, Ontario, Canada. I met her in Boston. Met her on my 25th birthday. She was a nurse that had come to Boston to work and train and I met her my first weekend in town and her second and we were married about 14 or 15 months later. I met her on a blind date. A friend of ours had set me and another fellow up with Canadian nurses. I said I would take the tall one. That’s the one I got. We have three children. Three daughters. Nancy Stowell White…you know her..she was in admissions at Gould. She is the youngest. The two older daughters, Judy and Betsy (or Elizabeth ) and we have six grandchildren.

WHERE DID YOU LIVE AFTER YOU GOT MARRIED?

Right after we were married we lived in an apartment in Brookline, Massachusetts. Then we moved back to Maine and we lived in an apartment in South Paris for which we paid $6.00 per week plus we had to heat it ourselves. We used to have to stoke the coal fire. Then, we moved to Bethel in 1957 and we have lived here ever since. We rented a house on …in back of the Sudbury at the end of the street.. And then we built a home up on Paradise where we’ve lived for 39 years.

WHAT WAS YOUR SPOUSES EDUCATION?

She is a registered nurse.

DID YOU HAVE ANY OTHER HOBBIES BESIDES STAMP COLLECTING?

Well, I like to read. Oh, I used to collect matchbook covers a long time ago when I was a child. I guess reading has been the one I have enjoyed the most.

WHAT IS YOUR WIFE’S LIKES AND DISLIKES?

In reference to what? I don’t have any answer for that.

CAN YOU DESCRIBE YOUR CHILDREN A BIT MORE?

Well, my oldest daughter Betsy is a secretary in the Hampden-Windham School District in Massachusetts. Judy is married and lives in Auburn, Maine and works at JC Penney as a Customer Service Representative. I guess what we enjoy now is watching the grandchildren grow up. Judy’s boy is on the traveling hockey team and we just watchted the playoffs for the State in Biddeford last week. They came in second but they still are going to move on to a regional program.

HOW LONG HAVE YOU LIVED IN THE BETHEL AREA?

Well, all my life except for five years.

WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT THIS AREA?

Well, it’s home, for one thing. You grow up in a place like this and you’re quite familiar with it and know a lot of people…a lot of relatives in the area. I used to ski and the kids all learned how to ski. Do you like to ski?

YES. (laughs)

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE DISADVANTAGES OF BEING HERE?

I think it’s too far from Portland, for one thing. If you want to go down there for an evening it’s quite a job to get back again.

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE CHANGED?

I would like to see a Senior Retirement Community. We have been working on that but haven’t had any success yet, where we could get assistant living and independent living in a little community where you have an apartment or a little home. We wouldn’t have to move away.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO HAVE REMAIN THE SAME IN THE BETHEL AREA?

I don’t know if anything…I guess nothing really remains the same. I’m not uptight about people moving in and doing this and doing that. I think we’ve pretty well controlled the growth for the kinds of things that people would like to have.

WHO WAS THE MOST INFLUENTIAL CHARACTER YOU KNEW AND WHY?

I guess I’ll pass on that one.

WHAT KIND OF COMMUNITY SERVICES HAVE YOU PARTICIPATED IN?

I was the Chairman of School Board for seven years and we formed the school district.. I was on the Gould Board of Trustees for 19 years.

DID YOU PLAY ANY ROLES OR HAVE ANY CONNECTION WITH THE BETHEL HISTORICAL SOCIETY?

I have been Chairman of the Long Range Planning Committee.

WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER SOME OF YOUR MOST IMPORTANT DECISIONS AND WHY?

I think being part of forming the school district was quite important. I also…working on the as a Trustee of Gould Academy. When I was on it, to start with, we took all of the kids from the town, well not all the kids, but all the town kids the head master and the people thought could do the work.

WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE INFLUENCED YOU FOR MOST OF YOUR LIFE?

I don’t really understand that question. I guess, probably my parents did influence me the most to do the right thing.

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU THINK IS MOST IMPORTANT TO PROVIDE TO A YOUNG PERSON BASED ON YOUR EXPERIENCES?

I guess, do the right thing. I think we usually know what that is.

WHAT DO YOU THINK THE FUTURE IN THE 21ST CENTURY WILL BE LIKE?

I think things will change a lot faster than they have in the last century.

DO YOU SEE A GREAT FUTURE FOR THE BETHEL AREA?

Well, I think that times will go well. I don’t see any reason not to think that. I think we have people want it to be livable and they will make sure that it will.