LOUISE S. LIBBY

NORTHEAST HARBOR AND ISLESFORD – Louise Sawtelle Libby, 100, matriarch, librarian and historian, died of old age Nov. 22, 2007, among her beloved caregivers at Sonogee Health and Rehabilitation Center, Bar Harbor. She was born Jan. 20, 1907, in Cambridge, Mass., the second of five children born to Louise (Burpee) and William Otis Sawtelle. She was raised in Haverford, Pa., where her father was a physics professor at Haverford College, and in her family’s summer home on Islesford. She was a 1925 alumna of Agnes Irwin School. As a teenager, Louise helped her father research and write several of his pamphlets and papers on the history of French Acadia and the history and genealogy of the Mount Desert Region. She helped him build and develop the Islesford Historical Museum, now a part of Acadia National Park. She lived her early-married life on Philadelphia’s Main Line, where her life of privilege was brought to an abrupt end in 1929 by the Wall Street crash. She was fond of saying that she went from having a cook and a maid to peddling farm fresh eggs to the back doors of houses, where she had previously played bridge, and that she hated playing bridge. Louise was a survivor. When hard times hit her in Searsport, she worked as a waitress in a restaurant. When she went off to her first PTA meeting in Searsport, she declared that she was not going to get involved. She returned home as their new president! She served as librarian at Carver Memorial Library, Searsport and as assistant librarian at Northeast Harbor Library after moving there from Searsport with her husband, Ernest Libby. After she retired from Northeast Harbor Library, she served for 10 years in the National Park Service as curator of the Islesford Museum. As a flapper in the 1920s, she tried to smoke, but quit because it interfered with her knitting. She had learned to knit in 1914 after her tonsils were removed as she lay on the ironing board in the kitchen of her parents’ summer home. More than 90 years of plying her needles, she knitted countless sweaters, socks, caps, mittens and scarves. In her later years she knitted baby sweaters, caps and blankets for the Maine Seacoast Mission. Louise’s keen wit was as long as her life. Once, pushing her walker up to the airline ticket counter in Bangor, she gestured to her bags and said, “I’d like this one to go to Salt Lake City and that one to go to Atlanta.” “I’m sorry, ma’am, we can’t do that,” the ticket agent replied. “I can’t imagine why not,” she quipped. “You did it the last time.” Louise was a Christian of deep conviction, always active in the Congregational church and serving in one office or another. With Lydia Lyman, she co-founded Acadia CFO, an annual retreat in Southwest Harbor affiliated with the Christian Fellowship Organization. She was a member of Union Church of Northeast Harbor for nearly 40 years and at the time of her death was a member of Southwest Harbor Congregational ChurchLouise Sawtelle Libby was predeceased by her daughter, Louise Godfrey Choate, in 1946; her first husband, Edward C. Choate; her second husband, J. Wesley Pyle; her third husband, Ernest Libby; and her four siblings, Egerton Burpee Sawtelle, Janet Sawtelle Peake, Eleanor Otis Sawtelle and Margery Sawtelle Biscomb. She is survived by sons, Edward C. Choate Jr., and his wife, Joan, of Flagstaff, Ariz., the Rev. William S. Choate and his wife, Gretchen, of Coarsegold, Calif., Nathaniel Choate and his wife, Dorothy, of Springfield, Va., and Searsport, David M. Choate and his wife, Judith, of Wellsville, N.Y., and Searsport and Robert R. Pyle and his wife, Miriam, of Northeast Harbor. As befits her age and fecundity, she is also survived by 11 grandchildren and 26 great-grandchildren. Beloved friends, Lydia Lyman and Sandra Haggett, both of Bar Harbor, also survive her. Friends are invited to a celebration of Louise Libby’s life 11 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 8, at Union Church of Northeast Harbor. For family members, a service of committal will take place in Islesford in the summer. In lieu of flowers, friends are invited to contribute to Hospice of Hancock County, 14 McKenzie Ave., Ellsworth, ME O4605. Arrangements by Acadia Burial & Cremation Direct, 248 State St., Ellsworth.