It was an eventful year.
Two mass shootings, a devastating wind storm, contentious referendum campaigns and more marked 2023 in Maine.
At the same time, several Mainers who figured large within their communities and professional circles died. They leave behind holes that won’t soon be plugged. The Mainers who died in 2023 include a witness who helped put Charles Manson behind bars, a pioneering punk rocker, a politician who promoted secession, and advocates of all stripes.
Along with these Mainers, the state lost 18 individuals who were killed in the Oct. 27 mass shooting in Lewiston. Their family and friends shared their stories with us in the days after the tragedy.
Here’s a look back at some of the most notable Mainers who died last year:
January
Richard Emery
Richard “Dickie” Emery died on Jan. 17 at age 65.
Emery, a custodian at Walker Elementary School in Liberty, is evidence that you don’t need to be a politician or industry figure to have an outsized impact in your community.
Emery worked at the school for 47 years, which had a student population of 55 when he died. Still, he was “beloved” by the community and remembered for going above and beyond. Emery helped with community events and even personally delivered food to students during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It was like he was the custodian of the spirit of the school, not just the bathrooms or wastebaskets,” Elise Brown, Liberty’s Emergency Management Agency director and a parent of former students, told the Bangor Daily News.
Linda Kasabian
Not all Mainers who died in the past year achieved their notoriety for good reasons.
Linda Kasabian, a Biddeford native who was present when Charles Manson ordered the Tate-LaBianca murders, died on Jan. 21 at age 73.
Kasabian drove Manson’s followers to Sharon Tate’s house where they murdered Tate, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski and Abigail Folger on the night of Aug. 8-9, 1969. Kasabian also was present on the night of Aug. 10, 1969, during the Leno and Rosemary LaBianca murders. She didn’t participate directly in the killings and didn’t report them.
Kasabian, who was 20 years old at the time of murders, provided key testimony that convicted Manson, who died in prison in 2017 at age 83, and four of his followers.
Afterward, Kasabian kept a low profile and very rarely made public appearances.
February
Kenneth Cianchette
Kenneth Cianchette died on Feb. 7 at age 98.
Cianchette was one of the founders of Maine construction giant Cianbro. The Pittsfield-based company now has about 4,000 employees in 40 states.
After he graduated from the Maine Central Institute, an independent high school in Pittsfield, Cianchette built bridges with his father until he went off to fight during World War II.
Upon his return, Cianchette founded Cianbro with his brothers Bud and Carl in 1949. (Their brother Chuck joined them in 1954.) The company was first known as Cianchette Brothers; it was later renamed Cianbro Corp.
Kenneth Cianchette loaned his brother Carl $5,000 to buy vehicles and equipment for the young company, and he and his brothers sometimes had to mortgage their homes to keep Cianbro going in the early years.
It proved to have staying power and has been involved in major construction projects across the state, including the Casco Bay Bridge and Cross Insurance Arena.
March
Pat Stevens
Pat Stevens died on March 6 at age 80.
Stevens came to Maine from San Angelo, Texas, when her father was stationed at Dow Air Force Base in Bangor. Her family decided to stay in the Queen City after Stevens’ father retired from the U.S. Air Force, according to her obituary.
Stevens would teach for a time in Bangor’s schools.
In the 1980s, she was elected to the Legislature and spent 10 years in the Maine House.
Toward the end of her time in the Legislature, Stevens earned a degree from the University of Maine School of Law and was admitted to the state bar. Stevens became an assistant attorney general, handling child protection cases until her retirement in 2012.
Chris Greeley
Christian “Chris” David Greeley died on March 9 at age 60.
Greeley spent his life in law enforcement, but his commitment to caring for his community went beyond patrolling the streets, according to his obituary, which noted his kindness, optimism and generosity were apparent to all who met him.
Greeley joined the Holden Police Department in 2007 and eventually rose to become chief in 2015, a position he held until his death.
He also spent stints working for the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office and Brewer and Veazie police departments.
Greely also represented his community in the Maine House from 2002 to 2010.
“Through his words as well as his actions, Chris demonstrated his devotion to others, earning him the trust and admiration of his officers and the affection of the community,” U.S. Sen. Susan Collins said in a statement in March.
What may be Greeley’s lasting legacy is his 25 Days of Kindness program, which provides Holden residents with cash, food, gift cards, paper products and presents throughout the month of December. He grew that program from a few hundred dollars to more than $25,000 before his death.
Despite his passing, the Holden Police Department is keeping the 25 Days of Kindness alive, raising about $20,000 by the start of December.
“I know how much this meant to him and how much he believed in it and he loved doing it,” his wife, Donna Greeley, told the BDN in December.
Marshall Frankel
Marshall Frankel died on March 14 at age 83.
Frankel was born in New Jersey and lived for a time in California before he and his wife, Leiba, settled in Maine, first in Portland and later in Bangor, according to his obituary.
Frankel came to Bangor to open a location for G.M. Pollack and Sons Jewellers, which he worked for in Portland. Frankel later opened a location for the Mister Bagel chain near the Bangor Mall, running it from 1993 to 2000.
He also was an early supporter of the Maine Troop Greeters, who welcome U.S. servicemembers returning stateside after tours of duty overseas.
Frankel went on to serve four stints on the Bangor City Council in the 1980s and 1990s, even serving three one-year terms as the council’s chair, sometimes referred to informally as Bangor’s “mayor.”
Frankel’s biggest accomplishment while on the council was leading the movement to refurbish Cascade Park on State Street
April
Henry Joy
Henry Lee Joy died on March 29 at age 89.
Joy served 16 years in the Legislature in the 1990s and 2000s. While he may not be a household political name, you may very well remember his quest to split Maine into two states — “Maine” and “Northern Massachusetts.”
Joy served for a time in the U.S. Air Force, and later earned a bachelor’s degree from Ricker College — a now-defunct private college in Houlton — and a master’s degree from the University of Maine in Orono.
He went on to serve as a teacher, principal and superintendent for the Island Falls school system. He retired from teaching in 1992, according to his obituary. Joy also served as administrator of Milliken Memorial Hospital in Patten, now known as Milliken Medical Center.
After he left teaching, Joy was elected to the Maine House of Representatives 1992. It wasn’t until 1997 that he first proposed splitting Maine into two states. Part of that proposal would have frozen all construction and economic development in southern Maine for two years or until the state adopted a plan to improve economic equity between the regions. He would try again to split Maine in 2010.
“Nobody ever really knew whether it was tongue in cheek or how serious he was about it,” Bob Emrich, a Plymouth pastor and evangelical leader, told the BDN after Joy’s death. “But he really thought it was a good idea.”
Beyond the Legislature, Joy made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for governor in 1998. He served as a selectman in the southern Aroostook town of Crystal and was a member of the board of the Christian Civic League of Maine.
While his vision of secession never came to fruition, it tapped into a cultural divide between southern and northern Maine that persists today.
May
Mal Leary
Malcolm “Mal” Leary died on May 20 at age 72, according to his obituary.
Leary was one of the most-trusted journalists in Maine, and during his 45-year career, he worked in every medium from TV to print to radio.
His entry into Maine journalism began in the 1970s when he began working at WABI following his graduation from UMaine.
Leary went on to write for United Press International, a wire service, before he struck out on his own in 1983, starting an independent, one-man wire service covering Maine news. He would run that until joining Maine Public Radio as its State House bureau chief in 1995.
Journalists regarded Leary as a go-to source for information about Maine’s freedom of access laws. In a Portland Press Herald article chronicling his career before Leary’s retirement in 2021, he was noted for his “no nonsense” style and “fair and balanced coverage,” avoiding “sensational stories” for those with real, tangible impact on everyday life for Mainers.
U.S. Sen. Angus King praised Leary in a statement published in the Congressional Record in June 2021, noting Leary had a well of knowledge about policy and always kept the big picture in mind.
“[H]e was always dead set on getting to the truth and bringing that truth back to the people of Maine,” King said.
In an interview with the BDN before his retirement, Leary lamented what he saw as the decline of politics in the Pine Tree State.
“I’m tired of the nonsense in politics. Politics is fun when you’re actually dealing with issues. When the clash is over, do we do this and we do that, do we invest in this or invest in that? But so much of it is picayune stuff, personality-driven stuff,” he said.
July
Harold Bickmore
Harold “Pete” Bickmore died on July 23 at age 65.
Bickmore was a longtime member of the law enforcement community, serving as the police chief in two Maine communities and as an FBI agent.
Bickmore earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland. He volunteered for the Cumberland Fire Department, and Bickmore later served six years with the Scarborough Police Department in the 1980s.
His longest stint was with the FBI, where he served for 26 years and became the head of the bureau’s domestic terrorism unit. Bickmore’s time with the FBI took him to Boston; Cleveland; Newark, New Jersey; and Washington, D.C.
In 2009, he earned the FBI Medal for Meritorious Achievement for saving the life of a teenage girl hit by a car in Boston.
Bickmore became chief of the Ellsworth Police Department in April 2016, but he abruptly resigned from that post in December of that year.
He went on to become chief of the Pittsfield Police Department in 2017. He retired from that post in October 2022 after receiving a lung cancer diagnosis in January of that year.
September
Jeff Powers
Jeff Powers died on Sept. 17 at age 61.
Powers founded Maine craft beer powerhouse Bigelow Brewing Co. with his wife, Pam Powers, at their Skowhegan farm in 2014. Jeff Powers began his craft beer journey in 1989 when Pam Powers gave him a home brewing kit for Christmas.
The Powers ran Bigelow Brewing out of a barn on their property. They built it years earlier to shelter their horses. But when they sold their horses, the empty barn found new life as home to a fast-growing craft brewery.
“It’s a unique structure. We tried to keep a lot of its past intact,” Jeff Powers told the BDN in 2015. “It’s not just a four-wall brewery. A barn lends well to comfort.”
Bigelow Brewing quickly became a top Maine brewery, with its beers available in more than 700 locations.
“Jeff’s spirit of generosity and kindness could be felt in everything he did. He always put others before himself, making sure that everyone was taken care of at Bigelow. His passion for serving his customers and community were unmatched,” Bigelow Brewing said in a Facebook post announcing his death.
Eugene Teevens
Eugene “Buddy” Teevens died on Sept. 18 at age 66.
While a native of Pembroke, Massachusetts, Teevens earned his place as an important figure within Maine sports.
After serving stints as an assistant coach at Boston University and DePauw University in Indiana, Teevens became head coach at UMaine in 1985. At age 28, he was at the time the youngest Division I football head coach.
Teevens posted winning records in each of his two seasons at UMaine, going 6-5 in 1985 and 7-4 in 1986. Those were the first back-to-back winning seasons at UMaine since 1964 and ’65.
He left UMaine after two seasons to coach at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Teevens later served as head coach Tulane University in New Orleans and Stanford University in California before returning to Dartmouth in 2005.
Teevens became well-known for his approach to improving player safety, banning tackling over concerns about concussions, The New York Times reported.
He posted a career record of 117-101-2 at Dartmouth.
In March, Teevens was hit by a truck while bicycling in Florida. That left him with spinal cord injuries and he had his right leg amputated. He died as a result of complications from that crash, according to a notice from Dartmouth.
Richard Davies
Richard “Dick” Davies died on Sept. 19 at age 76.
Davies is remembered as a tireless advocate for Mainers, spending decades working at different levels of state government to improve everyday life.
Davies came to Maine from Plainfield, New Jersey. He earned a bachelor’s degree from UMaine in the 1970s.
His lifelong advocacy work began during this time when he marched as a member of Students for Democratic Society in support of local millworkers. Davies also served a stint with Americorps in Minneapolis, where he helped start a bus line for a Native American community.
He was first elected to the Legislature 1974 while he pursued graduate studies at UMaine. He sponsored the nation’s first law to end mandatory retirement. Davies left the Legislature to serve as a policy adviser for Gov. Joseph Brennan; he also served as a policy adviser for Gov. John Baldacci.
Davies worked for the Maine State Housing Authority from 1986 to 1990, advocating for the construction of affordable housing. He also served most recently as the treasurer for Kennebec County.
His most lasting accomplishment may be his work to create the Maine Office of the Public Advocate, which pushes for the interests of Maine ratepayers. He led that office from 2007 to 2013.
“There are so many people who benefited from him and his work who will never know his name or see his footprints,” Jim Tierney, a Harvard law professor who served as Maine attorney general and shared an apartment with Davies when they were students at UMaine, told the BDN. “His legacy is that we’re all living better lives because of him.”
October
Lucy Poulin
Lucy Poulin died on Oct. 14 at age 83.
Poulin was well-known for her work to help impoverished people in Maine, particularly through the organization she founded in Orland in 1970 and directed for 46 years, Homeworkers Organized for More Employment, also known as H.O.M.E.
Poulin grew up on a farm in Fairfield. To help support her family, she worked in domestic service, poultry processing and a paper mill, according to her obituary.
She eventually joined the Carmelite Sisters in 1957 in New Hampshire. But Poulin eventually found herself at odds with the order because of her work helping people in poverty, particularly through H.O.M.E. For that, the sisters expelled Poulin shortly after she founded the organization.
Poulin founded H.O.M.E. as a crafts cooperative where people could earn extra money, but over the years it expanded to help people meet other needs such as shelter, food, health care and human dignity.
Beyond H.O.M.E., Poulin helped found the St. Francis Community in East Orland in 1974, according to her obituary.
Poulin retired as director of H.O.M.E. in 2016.
“She impacted thousands of people over her four and a half decades of service,” Tracey Hair, who started as a client at H.O.M.E. and then took over as executive director when Poulin retired, told the BDN. “The hole she has left, it’s bigger than we realized.”
Lois Galgay Reckitt
Lois Galgay Reckitt died on Oct. 30 at age 78.
Reckitt was a tireless advocate for women in Maine, including sponsoring an equal rights amendment to the Maine Constitution four times, most recently this year.
She spent 36 years leading Family Crisis Services in Cumberland County, as well as 15 years on the board of directors of the National Organization for Women, which she helped co-found the first state chapter in Maine.
Reckitt also was a key figure in the founding of the Maine Coalition for Human Rights, Maine Right to Choose and the Maine Women’s Lobby.
For her years of advocacy work on behalf of women and LGBTQ+ people, Reckitt was inducted into the Maine Women’s Hall of Fame.
While she didn’t complete her work for an equal rights amendment in her lifetime, Reckitt saw success earlier this year when Gov. Janet Mills signed into law her bill partially decriminalizing prostitution despite vetoing a similar proposal two years earlier.
“Lois Reckett has not only been an inspirational leader for women and girls in Maine, but also nationwide,” Eleanor Smeal, the president of the Feminist Majority Foundation and former president of NOW, told Ms. magazine in November.
November
Donald Paul Martel
The news of the death of Brother Donald Paul Martel at age 66 on Nov. 1 came as a shock to Greater Bangor.
Martel was well-known for his food and beer served at various eateries he operated with his fellow Fransician friar, Brother Kenneth Leo Soucy.
Martel was a member of the Franciscan Brothers of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and he and Ken came to Maine from Lynn, Massachusetts, in the 1990s. They moved into Bucksport, where they set up a friary.
In 1999, they opened the Friar’s Bakehouse on Central Street in Bangor, a lunchtime staple in downtown until its closure 18 years later. After shuttering their bakehouse, the friars opened a taproom in Bucksport.
The taproom has closed since the death of Martel.
Dennis Pike
Dennis Pike died on Nov. 1 at age 85, according to his obituary in the Daily Bulldog.
Pike was a longtime member of the law enforcement community within Franklin County. He started with the Farmington Police Department in 1966, and he later became the county sheriff in 2001, a post he held until 2012.
In announcing his death in November, the sheriff’s office noted that Pike was well-known for his “kind demeanor” and “generous” smile.
Carl Bruce Farnsworth
Carl Bruce Farnsworth died on Nov. 6 at age 76.
Farnsworth, the scion of the Pat’s Pizza family, helped build his family’s restaurant into a well-known chain from Aroostook to Washington to Cumberland counties, according to his obituary.
Pat’s Pizza was founded in Orono in 1931 as Farnsworth Cafe by C.D. “Pat” Farnsworth. He originally didn’t sell pizza, but burgers, hot dogs and ice cream. He added the iconic pizza to the menu in 1953. It proved so popular that Farnsworth rebranded his restaurant as Pat’s Pizza.
The elder Farnsworth died in 2003.
December
Jerry Goss
Jerry Goss died on Dec. 7 at age 76.
Goss was a longtime educator and city councilor in Brewer, and many remember him for his strong sense of community and civic commitment.
Goss graduated from Brewer High School in 1965 and went to UMaine. He taught at Joseph A. Leonard Jr. High School in Old Town, where he later served as assistant principal. Goss eventually returned to Brewer, where he took the job as high school principal, a post he held for 15 years before retiring in 2002.
As principal at Brewer High School, Goss emphasized building trust among students and making himself accessible to everyone. He believed schools should care for “the whole child,” not just educate them.
“We’ve lost someone who cared more about helping people rather than advancing their own interests. He was Brewer through and through,” Superintendent Gregg Palmer told the Bangor Daily News.
At the time of his time, he was serving as deputy mayor of Brewer and as a city councilor. He was sitting for his fifth term on the City Council and had served as the city’s mayor four times, according to his obituary. He was first elected to the City Council in 2009.
The community will continue to feel the loss of Goss as the Maine high school basketball tournament approaches. He was a key figure who kept the tournament running since 2012 and was a court-side fixture at the Cross Insurance Center.
Harold Osher
Harold Osher died on Dec. 23 at age 99.
Osher spent a long medical career caring for Mainers, particularly those suffering from cardiac problems.
He came from a family of Russian and Lithuanian immigrants, and growing up, he spent his time after school working alongside his parents and four siblings at the family’s Biddeford hardware store, instilling values of education, hard work and philanthropy, according to his obituary.
Osher earned degrees from Bowdoin College in Brunswick and the Boston University School of Medicine. Later in life, he would earn faculty appointments at Boston University School of Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine and the University of Vermont College of Medicine, according to his obituary.
Osher returned to Maine to open a private practice, and would go on to become director of Maine Medical Center’s division of cardiology, a position he held for 16 years.
Osher also served as president of the Maine chapter of the American Heart Association and as the association’s vice president.
Osher’s impact in Maine goes beyond health care. As he wound down his medical career, Osher rekindled his interest in maps after a visit to the British Library in London in 1975.
Soon he became a prolific collector, building “one of the finest map collections in the world.”
Osher gifted his map collection to the University of Southern Maine in Portland in 1989, providing a significant contribution to the school’s stock of maps, globes and atlases.
By one estimate, the Osher map collection is worth millions of dollars.
Robert Farrington
Robert Farrington died on Dec. 26 at age 70.
Farrington helped found Portland’s punk music scene in the 1980s before spending a spell out on the West Coast. Before long he came back home, where Farrington developed a reputation for his ferocious left-handed guitar playing.
But he was more than just a musician; Farrington also was a symbol of the old Portland.
“A sideways-witted prankster, he inhabited Portland stages and barstools for decades, enduring, unchanged and undomesticated, while the city morphed around him, from gritty seaport to gleaming tourist destination,” BDN photojournalist Troy R. Bennett noted in his memorial profile of Farrington.
Farrington played in several bands, including Skull 69, Rodeo Jesus, The Donner Party, Big Meat Hammer and Cowgirls of the Damned. Those who remember him saw him as a “musical genius” and noted he was a role model for younger musicians.
Farrington relished his “scumminess.” Although he was somewhat imposing in his leathers, his daughter Lakisha Green will remember him as warm and supportive.
“He knew how to love unconditionally,” Green told the BDN. “He was an angel disguised as a punk rocker.”