BANGOR and MAPLE VALLEY, Wash. – John Fitch, a long-time resident of Bangor and founder of The Fitch Company engineering firm, died May 6, 2012. He was 75. John was born May 4, 1937, the second of six children, in Earling, W.Va. His parents were Guy Fitch, who worked in the coal industry, and Louise Wheeler, the daughter of a Tennessee judge. The couple raised John and his five sisters in a three-room house in Parlett, Ohio, a small town with a population of less than a thousand people.
John died of complications after a long struggle with frontotemporal dementia at a care facility for patients with dementia and Alzheimer’s diesease in Enumclaw, Wash. He had been splitting time between his home in nearby Maple Valley, Wash., and his lake house on Chemo Pond in Bradley. His condition forced an end to his annual trips home to Maine in 2011.
Though trained as a technician in the Navy, John never sought a college degree and was never granted a professional engineering license. However, he won the respect of the engineering community in Maine’s pulp and paper industry. He was a longtime supporter of the Pulp and Paper Foundation of the University of Maine. John was past president of the Maine Chapter of ISA. He was a strong advocate of ISA and encouraged young engineers to become members. John founded his engineering consulting company as a two-person firm in Bangor in 1986. He initially specialized in electrical and process control systems for the pulp and paper industry. His firm expanded steadily, weathered a painful recession in 1990 and opened offices as far away as Alabama. In 2003, when he retired, he sold the firm to one of its longtime employees, senior engineer Mark Bolduc. Under Bolduc, the firm has continued to thrive and now employs more than two dozen people. In 1955 John graduated from high school and enlisted in the Navy. He entered one of the service’s technical training programs and became an electronic technician, second class. He was honorably discharged in 1958. In 1962 John was working for Industrial Nucleonics, an Ohio-based instrumentation firm, when he was ordered to travel to Trois Rivieres, Quebec, to work on an expansion in a paper mill there. There, he met Nicole Parent, a scheduling clerk for the mill’s superintendent and manager. The two fell in love and were married at St. Patrick’s Church, Trois Rivieres, Quebec, Oct. 23, 1965. The couple decamped to Maine, where they were to spend most of their lives together. In 1967 they had their first child and John took a job in the engineering department at St. Regis Paper Mill, Bucksport. Two other children arrived in 1968 and 1970. A passionate outdoorsman, John discovered competitive whitewater canoeing in the mid-1970s. He and a friend, a salesman named Bruce Gurall, competed in numerous races, including four editions of the annual Kenduskeag Stream Canoe Race. The pair tried to win races, but became better known for the amusement they provided onlookers. They once broke a canoe in half in training, while attempting to run the rapids at Flour Mill Dam, Bangor. In the late 1970s, hockey became a Fitch family obsession. Two of the Fitch children joined the local youth league. With Ronald St. Pierre, a Bangor High School business administration teacher and a good friend, Mr. Fitch coached hockey teams in Bangor for several years. He ceased to coach after the family relocated to Waterville in 1981, to accommodate a new job. In 1983 John co-founded Systech, his first engineering firm, with a partner, a garrulous engineer and skilled jazz pianist named Michael Tabone. The pair specialized in process control engineering. They parted ways amicably in 1986, and John founded his own firm, The Fitch Company. In 1987 he purchased a small camp on leased land on Chemo Pond. It had no running water and a Franklin stove for heat. Undeterred, he set out to make it his dream home. He enlisted his friend Ron. St. Pierre, his employees, his nephews, his children and his exasperated wife to help. By the time he retired in 2003, the camp had been modernized, insulated and expanded by several thousand square feet and converted to a beautiful lakeside home.
He is survived by his wife of 46 years, Nicole Fitch; and three children, Stephane Fitch his wife, Mandy, and their daughter, Isabella, Molly Fitch and her partner, Shawn Dahl, and Mischa Swanson and her husband, Scott, and their children, Benjamin and Sophie. He is also survived by his sisters, Pat, Ruth Ann, Marion, Martha and Phyllis of Ohio. His cat, Lilly, has also seemed despondent since John’s passing. John will be missed dearly by his family, his many friends and his former employees.
A celebration of John’s life will be held 11 a.m. Saturday, July 28, at Brookings-Smith, 133 Center St., Bangor. The family invites relatives and friends to share conversation and refreshments at the Family Reception Center of Brookings-Smith, 163 Center St., Bangor, immediately after the service Saturday. Those who wish may make gifts in John’s memory to the Alzheimer’s Association, care of The Fitch Company, 631 Hammond St., Bangor, ME 04401. Condolences to the family may be expressed at
www.BrookingsSmith.com.