Kathy known for her self-reliance

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The sports who stayed at Kathy Hegarty’s camps called her “Woodswoman.”

She knew carpentry and plumbing, electric wiring and auto mechanics. She was trained as a licensed practical nurse and a real estate agent. She could shear sheep. She made macrame and beadwork. She worked with computers.

But the woods were Hegarty’s passion. Sometimes she would hunt bear, sometimes she would watch butterflies. And when problems got her down, when her non-stop, 16-hour days finally tired her out, Hegarty went to her camp in the woods for sanctuary.

Hegarty drove from her home in Jackman to her camp in Dennistown on May 15, looking for one last night of solitude before she left on a cross-country trip to visit her relatives and eventually rejoin her husband at their motel in Florida.

Several hours later, three police officers shot her to death, one from her front porch, two coming through the door of her camp.

The reports first released by authorities sparked a statewide outcry, as people demanded to know what happened, why a woman alone in her camp was shot. Her husband, Jack Hegarty, has joined that chorus.

Jack Hegarty also wants to set the record straight on a more personal level.

“I want people to know what I know, and what everybody in this town knows,” Hegarty said from his home in Jackman. “She was an uncommon person. No woman could walk in this woman’s moccasins. No two men could.”

Kathy Hegarty grew up in Nashua, N.H., with 11 brothers and sisters. In high school, she met and started dating Jack. A raccoon hunting trip with Jack, Kathy’s brothers say, marked the beginning of her interest in the outdoors.

Near the end of Jack Hegarty’s tour in the U.S. Navy, where he was an official White House photographer for John F. Kennedy, Jack and Kathy married. Their honeymoon was a deer-hunting trip, sleeping under the stars.

In the years that followed, the Hegartys had two sons, Jack Jr. and Jim. They opened a string of sporting camps that eventually added up to 22 cabins spread over more than 50 miles, and operated the camps by themselves. For a time they also had a farm, where Kathy raised sheep and chickens.

The responsibilities of family, farm and camps often fell to Kathy alone as Jack’s career took off. A photographer for ABC-TV, Jack’s outdoor segments for “American Sportsman” often took him away from home for months at a time.

When the plumbing broke, Kathy fixed it. When the kitchen needed cabinets, Kathy made them. “If she didn’t know it, she’d get a book and learn,” Jack said.

Kathy’s self-reliance soon became well known to the people who stayed at the Hegartys’ camps. She was good with people, as well.

“She was very popular with the sports who went there. She was quite humorous, always joking with them,” remembered Bud Dilihunt, a friend of the Hegartys who lives in Jackman. “She seemed to get a big kick out of life in general.”

In a pinch, Dilihunt said, Kathy always came through. He recalled the time he looked out at a lake near his home and saw an overturned canoe and two men in the water. He ran to the Hegartys’ for help, and found Kathy. The two of them quickly launched a boat; while Dilihunt handled the motor, Kathy hauled the two canoeists out of the water, a rescue made more difficult by the cast on one of the canoeist’s legs.

When the Hegartys moved to Jackman 20 years ago, their work at the sporting camps kept them busy most of the time. But as her sons became more involved in school sports, Kathy became known around town as a tireless team booster.

Bill Murray, one of Kathy’s brothers now living in Hudson, N.H., said that she was absolutely devoted to her sons. Even as adults, he said, the boys turned to her for advice.

“She had one of the biggest hearts around,” Murray said.

Kathy had a willful side, as well.

“She’s an outspoken woman,” Jack Hegarty said. “My wife is a fighter. Nobody messed with that woman.”

Kathy’s last year had been a difficult one. She suffered chronic back pain from an old injury, and it was getting worse. A motel the Hegartys had bought in Florida — their retirement plan, according to Jack — was losing money. She tried, unsuccessfully, to sell it, and ended up running it by herself while Jack was in Labrador making a new film. The pressure began to tell on her.

When Jack finished his assignment, Kathy told him she wanted to spend some time alone in Jackman. He agreed, and returned to Florida to run the motel. It was not, he says, a rift in their marriage.

“She needed a rest, but there was never any doubt that this was my partner for life,” he said.

Her winter alone had mixed results. She exercised regularly and lost weight, a fact she gleefully told her boys about over the phone. The time away seemed to help ease the pressure, Jack said.

But there were also stories of wild moments and erratic behavior in town. One night in November, a confrontation that began with a traffic stop ended with Kathy in jail, charged with operating under the influence and four other violations.

Kathy insisted to Jack that the officers involved — state Trooper Gary Wright and Sheriff’s Deputy Rene Guay, two of the three men who shot her last week — had abused and provoked her. She said that several of the charges were false. Jack counseled her to accept a plea bargain agreement, and she pleaded guilty. “She never forgave me for that,” Jack said.

Spring had seemed to boost her spirits, however, and by May she was planning a circuitous trip back to Florida. She had made up itinerary cards and sent them to a friend in Maine, relatives in Massachusetts, and a sister in Wisconsin.

Early in the evening of May 15, she called her husband, and then her sons. She was thrilled about the trip, excited about her new physical fitness, eager to see her family. “She was bubbling with joy,” Hegarty said.

She told him she just had a few details to get together. And she had to pick up her pet cockatiel, which she had left at the camp in Dennistown. She thought she might spend the night there.

Kathy Hegarty had left specific instructions for what she wanted done when she died. She wanted to be cremated, and she wanted her ashes spread in the woods near her camp, with only her husband and sons present.

Despite the growing maelstrom of controversy that surrounded her death, Jack Hegarty made that his priority when his plane from Florida landed in Maine. After five hours of questioning at the attorney general’s office on Monday, he picked up Kathy’s remains and drove with his sons to the camp at Dennistown.

“I took her out and the bag was still warm,” Jack Hegarty said Friday, fighting to keep control of his voice. “We knelt down and we said a prayer. Then we spread her ashes.”