CLARE DEVANE

AUGUSTA – Clare DeVane died on March 24, 2004, in Augusta, in a healthcare facility at which she had been a patient for the past few weeks. Born Clare McKenzie on Sept. 19, 1907, in Sunny Corner, New Brunswick, she was the youngest of six children of Thomas McKenzie and Agnes Murray Cassidy. Though her mother died when she was an infant, Clare had in her own words, “a wonderful, happy childhood in the care of a devoted father and loving aunts and uncles.” She graduated from provincial normal school at 18 and taught in one-room schoolhouses. In 1929, while visiting her sister Kathleen (Kane) in Portland, she met Harvey Moore DeVane. They married in 1931, and moved to Alaska, where he worked for Alaskan Airways. There, Clare became a U.S. citizen. They returned to Portland in 1934, but moved to Florida at the outbreak of World War II. When Harvey was sent to the Aleutian Islands with the Sea Bees, Clare returned to Portland where, with exception of two years in Ellsworth, and one in Gardiner with her son Harvey’s family, she lived and worked the remainder of her life. Until her death her mind was sound and her senses acute. When coaxed she would tell fascinating, often funny, stories of her simple, innocent childhood, happy adolescence and adventurous early adulthood. In telling of travelling an icy river on horseback, unpaved roads in a rumble seat or the continent by train, or of salmon-runs and sled-dog races in the Alaskan Territory, she would show photos of those events and of the people involved. She recalled names and faces, dates and places, everyone and everything. Her memory seldom faltered. Between 1929 and her retirement in 1979, she worked for 47 years on Congress Street. Unable to teach in Maine, she found a job with Keith’s RKO Theaters. Later she worked for department stores, including Smileys, Grant Knowles, Owen Moores and finally Lady Grace Shops. Clare was an energetic and constructive person. She liked the owners, managers, clerks and customers who peopled Congress Street when it was still “the commercial and style center” of Maine. She enjoyed the fashions and the foibles of the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s but she delighted in her family and friends. A devout Christian, she valued family first, foremost her sons, nieces and nephews. Upon retirement, she lived on Morning Street in Portland, with her long-time, dear friend, Viola Romano. Clare was predeceased by her brothers, Will, Rex and Roy; and sisters, Reba Young and Kathleen Kane; and by an infant son, J. Anthony. She is survived by two sons, James and his wife, Leona, of Freeburn, Ky., Harvey and his wife, Lynn, of Gardiner; and two granddaughters, Monique Driscoll and her husband, Brian, and their sons, Liam and Owen; and Maureen Blaufuss and her husband, Scott, and their daughter, Olivia Clare, all of Cambridge, Mass. She will be greatly missed by her many friends and by a large and devoted extended family. To Reba’s nine children, Agnes, Katherine, Carmel, Anne, Elizabeth, Loretta, Jim, Edward and Frank; Roy’s eight, Joan, Alma, Jim, Agnes, Patsy, Tom, Richard and Robert; and Kathleen’s four, Dorothy, Tricia, Vin and Harvey and their spouses, plus their 74 children and scores of grand and great-grandchildren, and to dozens of collateral relatives, she was their beloved “Aunt Clare.” Always available and helping in every way she could. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 10 a.m. on April 1, at St. Peter’s Catholic Church, 72 Federal St., Portland. A reception for family and friends immediately following the service is being arranged. In accord with her wishes Clare’s remains will be buried this summer alongside her parents and grandparents in St. Thomas’s Churchyard, in Redbank, New Brunswick. Funeral arrangements by Staples Home of Gardiner.