CALAIS – A member of Maine’s Republican old guard met a member of the party’s new leadership Saturday night when 98-year-old former state Sen. Clarence Beckett shook hands with an old friend’s granddaughter: U.S. Sen. Susan Collins.

Collins was in Calais to help dedicate the Unobskey School, an off-campus site of the University of Maine at Machias.

Beckett began his political career in the state Senate in 1947. At the same time, Samuel Wilson Collins was a member of the state House of Representatives. Two years later, Collins joined Beckett in the state Senate.

Beckett said he and Samuel Collins, who was from Aroostook County, shared interests in lumbering and fishing. They both served under Gov. Horace Hildreth. Samuel Collins died in January 1986.

In their weekend meeting, Susan Collins told Beckett her grandfather at one point had considered running for governor. “That was the year [1954] that Ed Muskie ran for governor, so our version is, “Who knows what would have happened?” she said with a laugh.

Collins, who was born in 1896, operated the Collins Lumber Co., which was incorporated in 1933. After time out for World War I training and a second lieutenant’s commission, Collins graduated from the University of Maine in 1919 and returned home to join the family lumber business. Collins died in January 1986.

Although they lived in separate counties, the two men had parallel careers.

“Beckett and Co., I was born into,” Beckett said. His father operated a wholesale grocery and retail confectionery. “They made Beckett and Co. candy. We had a small candy factory. When my father turned 94, he was the oldest active candy maker in the United States,” he said.

Beckett ran a Packard automobile dealership in the Calais area and later became president of Calais Federal Savings and Loan Association.

“Washington and Aroostook counties belonged to the same district [in that era] and I had contact with Collins, who was quite prominent in the Aroostook division,” Beckett recalled.

“In addition to working in the Legislature, we were interested in the same thing: lumber. They had a large lumber factory in Caribou and I had a small interest in … Calais Box and Lumber and Haley Lumber Co. in St. Stephen,” New Brunswick, he said.

He said one of his projects during his tenure in the Senate was improvement of Route 9, known as the Airline. He said he used to drive his Packard to Augusta when the road was in much worse condition than it is now.

A lifetime Republican, Beckett said he recalled meeting many dignitaries over the years, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the 1940 Republican presidential nominee Wendell Willkie.

Beckett told Susan Collins, who is serving her first term in the U.S. Senate, that he continued to see her grandfather after Beckett had left the Legislature “in connection with the lumber business,” he said. “We met on occasion to emphasize the best for both of our counties.”

Asked Saturday if he was concerned that the country does not yet have a president-elect, Beckett said he was too old to worry. But he cautioned that he did not believe the next president will be able to accomplish very much in the next four years, regardless of who wins.

And Beckett said he did not believe state issues had changed much. He said politicians still were talking about lumbering, fisheries and roads.