HOPE – Eleanor Hook Lacombe, 89, passed away peacefully on Sept. 6, 2021 with her daughters, grandson and dog by her side. Born in Boston in 1932, she was the daughter of Swedish parents, Edith Anna and Harold Gunnar Hook. Eleanor was an only child, learning a love of the hills from her mother and a love of gardening from her father. Her father’s railroad career took them throughout New England, eventually settling in Cape Elizabeth. At the University of Maine in Orono, Eleanor studied biology and animal husbandry and met her husband, Vaughn A. Lacombe.

Eleanor lived her life with a sense of adventure and great curiosity. In the first years of marriage she lived in Patten, in a farmhouse on the Happy Corner Road overlooking Mount Katahdin. With small children, she planted extensive gardens, picked berries, and made dandelion wine. Later, the family moved to Cumberland then North Yarmouth, where they had horses and raised Irish Wolfhounds.

She was a brilliant scientist, who in 1960, joined the Maine Medical Center’s newly-created Research Department with Dr. Peter Rand, exploring the chemistry and flow properties of blood. Later, when research was focusing on environmental health, they worked on the health threats of radon in Maine. In 1988, with Dr. Rob Smith, they helped establish what is now the Vector-borne Disease Laboratory. Over the next three decades her expertise in identifying ticks, examining them for Lyme bacteria and designing and carrying out multiple lab and field studies on tick ecology, contributed important new knowledge to both colleagues and the public. This research took her throughout Maine from deer tagging stations to remote coastal islands. She co-authored over 60 research articles and resulting papers were presented at academic conferences throughout the country and Europe. She acted as an insightful mentor to young professionals who came through the lab, with humility, humor, and a rigorous attention to detail. Few who met her, were able to resist her enthusiasm on the topic of tick-borne diseases that affected people and their companion animals.

During Eleanor’s professional career, she was also raising her family with the same adventurous, creative, and festive spirit. In 1970, she took a trip across the country with her three daughters, an Irish Wolfhound, a guitar and a tent. They spent the summer visiting national parks, exploring, camping, and hiking through the Northern United States and Canada. The family built a ski camp on the Carrabassett River and when spring skiing at Sugarloaf, she made trailside fondue. There were weekend canoeing and fishing trips, boating picnics to coastal islands, swimming and skating at Sabbathday Lake, and horseback riding.

On her farm in New Gloucester, she had organic vegetable gardens, fruit trees, raspberries and grapes. She made wines and often had hard cider bubbling. She kept dogs, cats, horses, sheep, chickens, and also raised pigs, goats, geese, and turkeys. She served on the of board of Maine Audubon, the New Gloucester Conservation Commission, and was active in the zoning and comprehensive planning for the town. She enjoyed taking her grandchildren on camping and hiking trips to the White Mountains. She attended the Durham Friends Meeting.

When presenting papers in Europe, Eleanor also hiked in Switzerland, Germany, Scotland, Wales, Norway and her ancestral country of Sweden. She traveled to Hawaii, Fiji, New Zealand, and Iceland, where she bought herself an Icelandic Horse for her 75th birthday! She enjoyed riding her horse through the mist in evenings after work.

In 1995, Eleanor bought property in Hope, surrounded by rolling hills and blueberry fields. She designed her own passive solar house, had gardens, fruit trees, dogs, cats and horses. While living in Hope, she was active in the Unitarian Church in Rockland. An avid reader, she was a part of book groups but always read stacks of scientific journals and environmental magazines as well. She continued to drive from Hope to Portland for work at the Maine Medical Center part time until she was 82. For her 85th birthday, Eleanor bought an Australian Shepherd puppy, who has been a great comfort, and named her after her grandmother.

Eleanor is survived by her dog Alfrieda, her cat Alice, her horse Gletta; her daughter, Anne Huntington and husband Jon of Wayne, daughter, June LaCombe and her husband Bill Ginn of Pownal, and daughter, Katie Folsom and her husband Scott of Hope; her beloved grandchildren are Nicholas, Ethan and Adrian Huntington, Eliza and Will Ginn, and Collin Crowley. She was proud to have two great-grandchildren, Clayton and Olivia.

She lived these words…

“I shall pass this way but once; any good that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any living being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

An outdoor celebration of life for her family will be in Hope this Autumn.

In Eleanor’s memory, please be kind to people, animals, and the

natural world.