A 1966 view of Charles Dwyer’s farm with the Maine Turnpike in the upper left corner. The pig farm and trash/recycling operation was located along the “new” Payne Road (now called Maine Mall Road) in South Portland from the late 1940s through the mid-1960s. Contributed / South Portland Historical Society

One of Charlie Dwyer’s trucks, at top of photo, loaded up with trash in Biddeford in 1947. Contributed / South Portland Historical Society

Information about the history of the Maine Mall area has been very scantily documented over the years. The history of the Maine Mall is often reduced to a sound bite: “The Maine Mall was built on the site of a pig farm.” After many years of attempting to document some of the pre-mall activity in that area, I was thrilled recently to talk with Bill Willette, who has helped us to have a much better understanding of the pig farm, owned by Charlie Dwyer, and his trash disposal and recycling business that was also conducted on the site.

Charles F. Dwyer was born in Rockland, Massachusetts, in February 1891, the son of Thomas and Annie O’Donnell Dwyer. Thomas had immigrated from Ireland in 1883 and worked in a shoe factory in Rockland; Annie was the daughter of Irish immigrants. Charlie grew up in Rockland and lived there for much of his early adult life, as well. By the age of 19, he was working as a shoe cutter in the factory with his father. In his youth, he was an amateur boxer, and when he was in his 20s while still working in the shoe factory, he was also coaching the Rockland High School football team. In 1913, he founded the Rockland All Stars, a semi-pro football team. According to an article written by a former player, Walter Fihelly, that appeared in the Rockland Standard in 1955, “The founding genius of the great Rockland All-Stars was Charles ‘Duly’ Dwyer … Duly was a close associate of both the Harvard and Boston College coaches and often directed those teams’ plays from their respective benches.” According to Fihelly, after a challenge from another coach who wanted to raise money for an injured player, Dwyer handpicked a team of both current and alumni players from the Rockland High team to form the Rockland All Stars and coached them on to victory. He considered the team of All Stars that played from 1913 to 1919 to be the best team to have ever played in the football-loving town of Rockland.

Charles Dwyer holding his granddaughter. Contributed / Bill and Julie Willette

Dwyer began working as a salesman for Compton Brothers, a magazine subscription agency based in Findlay, Ohio, around 1917, and took a break from that job when he served in the U.S. Army during World War I, from December 1917 to July of 1919.

He married Martha “Mattie” Worster Wiggin in 1920 and they made their home in Rockland for many years and had a daughter named Jean. They reportedly moved to Portland, Maine, around 1935, where they lived at 131 Spring St. He was still working as a magazine subscription salesman at that time. In March of 1945, he bought two properties on Pearl Street (later renamed Sea Rose Lane) in Pine Point in Scarborough and moved his family there.

Bill Willette and his wife Julie both described Dwyer as “quite a character!” and in his career as a salesman, his entrepreneurial and social skills served him well. He was a promoter for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus when they would come and set up near Clark’s Pond. According to Bill, when the circus came to town, Dwyer showed up with a dozen lobsters to give to the circus master.

During World War II, Dwyer went into a new line of business, establishing the Dwyer Trucking Company and running trucks to the shipyard in South Portland to pick up and dispose of trash. In an interview in the Portland Press Herald in 2004, Jack Gibson shared this memory of his time working in the shipyard: “At 13 (years old), a school chum named Joey McKeon asked if I would like a job with him working on a rubbish truck. This sounded like an adventure and I immediately said yes … The boss, Charlie Dwyer, had several trucks working at the shipyard and drove there every morning to make certain all drivers showed up for the first shift. As it turned out, one driver was a no-show. Charlie looked at me and asked if I knew how to drive a truck. I replied yes … I did survive my first day without injuring anyone … The whole experience was hugely rewarding and I learned a lot about people and about truck driving in a very short time.”

We’ll take a look next week at the pig farm and the expanded trash/recycling operation that Charlie Dwyer created in the area that would become the Maine Mall.

South Portland Historical Society offers a free Online Museum with nearly 17,000 images available for viewing with a keyword search. You can find it at sphistory.pastperfectonline.com and, if you appreciate what we do, feel free to make a donation by using the donation button on the home page. If you have photographs or other information to share about South Portland’s past, we hope you will reach out to us. 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 the executive director of the South Portland Historical Society.