The Portland Press Herald / The Maine Sunday Telegram

March 14

Feature Obituary: Woodrow Mercier, 91, longtime educator, enjoyed camp

By Emma Bouthillette ebouthillette@mainetoday.com
News Assistant

CAPE ELIZABETH — Summers for Woodrow Mercier and his family were spent "upta camp."

His daughter Sheila Wheeler can remember the first summer they spent at their camp in Weld. One Sunday afternoon, Mr. Mercier took his three daughters and wife for an afternoon drive. As they drove, following signs for Mount Blue State Park, Wheeler said they did not really think much of it.

"We went down a private camp road, then he turned right into this camp," she said. "We said 'Why are we stopping here, Dad?' "

When he and his wife Sylvia told the girls they had bought the camp, Wheeler said, "We couldn't believe it. We were so excited."

Mr. Mercier died Friday at the age of 91.

Unlike most men of his generation, Mr. Mercier was not called to serve in World War II, due to the polio he had suffered from when he was a child. Instead, he went to college and received a master's degree in education from Boston University. He spent more than 35 years as an educator in Maine, starting as a history teacher in East Millinocket.

Wheeler said it was his enjoyment of people and a warm, positive personality that led him to a career in education.

After teaching, he served as principal in Thomaston and Rumford and superintendent for Dixfield and Millinocket schools. Even after he retired in 1975, he continued to have a hand in education as a liaison between the Maine Department of Education and the Legislature.

"I was very proud," his daughter Ann Beaumont said of her father being superintendent where she went to high school. "He and my mother would always go to the proms. My dad would dance with my mother and I would dance with my father ... he'd dance me all around the whole floor for everyone to see. He was a great dancer."

The camp held many family memories and good times, Beaumont and Wheeler said. Beaumont said their father taught them how to drive on the one-lane camp road. Wheeler said he taught them all how to water ski on Webb Lake.

Beaumont was particularly fond of the time she spent with her father while her older sisters worked across the lake. Beaumont said that when her father came home from work, the two would go out in the boat and fish.

"After we'd get back in, we'd light a campfire and cook marshmallows or roast hot dogs, depending on how hungry he was," Beaumont said.

The times Mr. Mercier enjoyed most were when the entire family would gather at the camp. His three daughters, their children and his great-grandchildren would convene, usually the weekend of Independence Day, for a big clam and lobster bake.

It is a tradition the family has shared every summer.

"He just thoroughly enjoyed that," Wheeler said.

 

Staff Writer Emma Bouthillette can be contacted at 791-6325 or at:

ebouthillette@pressherald.com