The Lamport family has long been associated with South Portland. The patriarch and matriarch of the family, George and Ida Lamport, were Russian immigrants who lived on Walnut Street.

Even today, one of the ponds at Hinckley Park is known by locals as “Jake’s Pond,” named for George’s son, Jacob “Jake” Lamport. We’ve written previously about Jake who once ran an ice cutting operation at that pond for his family’s business, City Ice & Coal. George and his sons ran the ice and fuel delivery business here for many years.

Jake Lamport lived on Broadway and also operated a small farm there. The farm is still there today and is known as the “sheep farm” – one of the few remaining traces today of our agricultural past.

We take a look this week at Jake’s son, Joseph “Joe” Lamport.

Born in 1918 in Portland, Joe grew up around the family ice and coal business. Like his family, Joe had a tremendous work ethic. In his early teens, during the Depression years, he worked in the summers on an ice truck to earn money. With his savings, he bought himself a used truck when he was only 15 years old.

He mounted a 300-gallon tank on the truck and used it to start delivering five-gallon cans of fuel to his own customers after school. Thus began this entrepreneur’s first business, Joe Lamport Oil Company. Rather than graduate from high school, Joe learned through hard work and the development of his own company. Over the years, he expanded his operation from one truck to four trucks. He also operated several gas stations around Portland and in South Portland. One of them was a Richfield gas station located on the South Portland side of the Million Dollar Bridge.

During this time with his Joe Lamport Oil Company in operation, Joe married Lillian Hoffman in 1938.

While World War II was going on in Europe, Joe Lamport was drafted into the Army in 1940. He had other people working for him at that time and his sister, Marcia Green, oversaw the business to make sure things were working smoothly while he was away.

After he was honorably discharged in September of 1941, the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor that December. Getting things in order for Lillian, he purchased the home at 89 Grand View Ave. in South Portland in April, 1942, before being called back into service by the end of the summer. Joe and Lillian’s daughter Irma was born on April 15, 1943, and Joe was honorably discharged from the Army on April 30, 1943, returning home to Lillian and Irma and his fuel business.

The year 1944 set in motion a new career for Joe. At an auction, the equipment from a bottling company came up for sale. In October, 1944, Joe and Lillian purchased a building at 2 Plum St. in Portland (corner of Fore Street). Joe’s dad bought the bottling equipment. With the help of Lillian’s father, Alexander Hoffman, who had previous experience as a bottler before immigrating to the U.S., they got the equipment set up inside and working. This next major business, Lamport Beverage Company, started bottling soda in 1945.

Also in 1945, Joe and Lillian sold their home at 89 Grand View Ave. and, in 1946, purchased their home at 34 Chase St., where they would raise their three kids – Irma, Marlene and Jay.

For a few years, Joe was busy building the bottling business and continuing to operate his oil business. Although he started Lamport Beverage as a proprietorship, he soon brought in his brother-in-law, Samuel Hoffman, as his business partner in that company. He finally sold the Lamport Oil Company to Phil Resnick in 1948, so that he could focus his efforts on his growing bottling operation.

Lamport Beverage, with its distinctive label that included an image of Portland Head Light, became a well-known local bottling company. In addition to bottling soda under its own label, it also bottled and distributed Fruit Bowl soda and it bottled other popular labels like Dr. Swett’s root beer and Berry Spring Mineral Water.

As often happens with successful businesses, larger businesses become interested. In the early-1950s, Joe and Samuel were approached by Morris and Henry Silver of Cott Bottling. Cott was based in New Hampshire and was interested in expanding its operation to Portland. Joe and Lillian sold the Plum Street plant to Cott Bottling in January, 1953. Joe continued to bottle Lamport Beverages in the plant for another year or two, but the building became home to Cott Bottling Company of Portland, Inc., and Joe Lamport was employed as its plant manager.

After about three years, around 1956, with Cott’s plant and operation in Maine now running smoothly, Joe finally walked away from the bottling business.

Now with no oil company or bottling company, Joe took a job working at a car dealership in Portland while he looked around to come up with a new business idea. Around 1957, he embarked on yet another new venture, the manufacture of polyethylene plastic bags for use in food packaging. Joe purchased a machine from New York and set it up in the basement of his home at 34 Chase St. in South Portland. He would purchase the plastic in long rolls; the plastic would be fed through the machine which could cut at varying lengths and seal the end. He called this company the See Product Bag Company (because you could “see” your product through the clear plastic bag).

To support his family while he was getting his bag business up and running, Joe also took an old 1948 Dodge truck that he had used in the beverage business, mounted an oil tank on it, and with a hose and meter, he made himself an oil delivery truck. With this truck, he restarted his oil business as the Lamport Oil Company once again (in 1959, Phil Resnick changed the name of the original Lamport Oil Company to Resnick Oil Company, so there was no confusion about who a customer was calling).

It was an easy side venture since Joe certainly knew how to successfully operate a fuel delivery service. He developed this business and eventually sold it off to Union Oil in 1966.

Meanwhile, the bag business continued to grow as he sought out new customers. Joe bought a second machine and also had that set up in his basement. He would sell a lot of clear plastic bags, but he also had the ability to make bags with designs by taking the customer’s artwork and having it preprinted on the plastic. With large trucks delivering plastic to his house on Chase Street, he finally decided that it was too much to have the trucks arriving on a residential street with kids, so he bought the old Dutch Cleaners & Dyers building at 35 C Street in Knightville and used that as his delivery point and warehouse.

Joe’s granddaughter, Sandra Schwartz, has fond memories of the bag business. “We used to love watching him make the bags and going on some deliveries,” she said. “It was a huge staple of my childhood and the memory will always live on.”

The Lamport family were Orthodox Jews and, starting with George and Ida Lamport and their children, belonged to the Bas HaKnesses Anshe Sfard synagogue at 216 Cumberland Ave. in Portland. According to Jay Lamport, “My father’s grandfather George was president of that congregation at one time, as was my father’s father, Jacob. My parents remained members of that synagogue until around the year 1955. When my siblings and I were in Hebrew school my parents became members of Shaarey Tphiloh Synagogue located at 76 Noyes St. in Portland.”

Jay described his father as a true family man. Joe worked hard, but Sunday was always a day for doing something together as a family – going to the lake or beach, going fishing, or doing some other activity together. “Aside from my father’s time in the service, and his work hours, he and my mother were inseparable. He was completely devoted to my mother, and together they were devoted to their family.”

Joe’s inquisitive and entrepreneurial mind never stopped. Even after Joe had “retired,” he still had the machines in the basement and if anyone needed bags, he could just go down and make some. The business didn’t really end fully until Joe sold the machines when he and Lillian sold their home on Chase Street in 2006 and moved to Malden, Massachusetts, to be closer to family. Even in Malden, Joe would always be thinking of ideas for a great business. Lillian died in 2015 at the age of 94. Joe died in 2019 at the age of 100. They are buried at Mount Sinai Cemetery in Portland.

My heartfelt thanks goes out to Jay Lamport for his help with information and photographs related to the Lamport family and his father’s many business ventures.

If you have photographs or other information to share about South Portland’s past, we would love to hear from you. South Portland Historical Society can be reached at 207-767-7299, by email at sphistory04106@gmail.com, or by mail at 55 Bug Light Park, South Portland, ME 04106.

Kathryn Onos DiPhilippo is executive director of the South Portland Historical Society. She can be reached at sphistory04106@gmail.com.

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