Rolland F. Perry, for whom Bangor City Forest is named, died Thursday at the age of 89.
Perry was the city’s forester for 42 years and was responsible for planting many of the trees lining Bangor’s streets today. By the time he retired in 2006 when he was 70, he had planted 812,809 of them. His goal was 1 million, he told Bangor Daily News reporter Dawn Gagnon at the time.
But Perry’s legacy has far outlived his career. Visit the 654-acre Rolland F. Perry City Forest, the 28-acre Brown Woods, the 35-acre Prentiss Woods or the 70-acre Essex Woods and you can still enjoy what he worked so hard to build for Bangor.
Perry established tree nurseries to replace the 7,000 to 8,000 trees in the city devastated by Dutch elm disease, and replaced thousands of trees along residential streets.
“While natural occurrences and time have shaped some of the work Rolland has done, such as Dutch Elm Disease, the ice storm of 1998 and natural aging, Rolland has bestowed the city of Bangor with shady, mature tree-lined streets, as well as left his legacy behind in many of the city’s parks, cemeteries and municipal properties in the form of planted and pruned trees,” Ben Arruda, the city’s current urban forestry manager, said on Monday.
Perry was born on a farm in Lincoln and earned a degree in forestry after a three-year tour in the U.S. Marine Corps. He began his forester career at Sewall Co. in Old Town, but took the job with Bangor when Dutch elm disease was taking its toll on the city.
Kevin Perry, a retired corrections officer, described his father as ambitious and hard-working, and said he didn’t like meetings because they took him away from his work.
But he also spent a lot of time hunting and fishing, Kevin Perry said. He kept some of those connections after retirement. His former crew member and fishing buddy Joe Gibbons visited him just hours before Perry passed, his son said.
“He was the right man at the right time in the right place,” Kevin Perry said of his father.
Perry’s only regret about his career was that the city didn’t follow through with the forest management plan it paid for, his son said. The plan called for making strip cuts in the forested areas of the city, which would have kept the remaining trees healthy and provided food for wildlife.
Perry’s former co-workers described him as a steadfast person who had a near perfect attendance record and always wanted to plant and care for the trees in Bangor, Arruda said.
He was responsible for ornamental street and park plantings, as well as the reforestations visible in Essex Woods, Prentiss Woods and City Forest, he said.
Perry’s work left an indelible mark on the city, Aaron Huotari, director of Bangor Public Works, said on Monday. Bangor recently received the Tree City USA designation for the 20th year, which Huotari saw as a recognition of Perry’s career.
“The Rolland Perry City Forest is a wonderful tribute to his 42 years of service, but I don’t need to be in the forest to remember Rolland. I see his good works each spring, when I drive through neighborhood streets lined with vibrant, green trees,” Huotari said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of the company where Rolland Perry’s forestry career began. It is Sewall Co.