The following is a first person account of the memories of Judith Goodhue Hayes, now of Annapolis, Maryland, who was a 7 year-old living in East Waterboro  during the 1947 fire: 

The summer of 1947 is brutally hot and dry, creating the perfect condition for fires.  It happened 70 years ago this fall; a horrific fire that tears through my hometown of  EastWaterboro, Maine

The fire grows putting us in grave danger.  The flames leap over the mountain, licking the sky on this October evening.

I am so scared.  It is time to run for safety.  My Dad drives two brothers and me to relatives in Berwick.  We experience seeing the fire damage in South Waterboro.  Only stoic chimneys stand guard.  Thump, thump, thump as we drive over the fire hoses.  The air is acrid with smoke.

Would our home survive?  We will know when we return to East Waterboro.  That day comes.  Anxiety is an understatement within my family of eight.

As we pass through East Waterboro, we name people who are now homeless and those who are not.  The school is standing but the general store right next to it is gone. Another half-mile down the road, as we get closer to our house, we see one house burned, the next two are okay, the next house burned, and the next one is okay and then ours.  We round the last corner in the road and see a neighbor’s house standing on that corner and the pine grove between our neighbor’s home and ours is okay but all the trees behind the railroad track that runs behind our houses are gone.  We pass the pine forest, everyone straining to see if our house is there.  Yes! There is the roof and then there is the house.  The trees on the front lawn are safe. All the trees behind our house are burned and the tree roots are still smoldering.  We have big fields to the east and west of our house which probably helps save it.  Of course, it still has the old metal roof on it which helps too.

It is a historic time creating a life-long reference point.