BANGOR – They save and sort and share. They’re the great collectors, the preservers of local history. Certainly one of the prime examples in this area was the late Kay Trickey, the retired librarian who was a pillar of organizations such as the Mayflower Society, Maine Old Cemetery Association and the Hampden Historical Society.

Countless people have found their forebears thanks to gravestone records Trickey transcribed, or town records she organized. The repository at Hampden Historical Society is called the Katherine Trickey Archives.

But the personal mementos she left behind are equally interesting – pictures and scrapbooks lovingly kept now by her younger sister, Dorrice Trickey Wetzler.

One of the items is a 1922 photo of students at the old Abraham Lincoln School on Palm Street – the boys in suits, the girls in pretty dresses.

Wetzler points out her sister, Kay, then in the eighth grade – fifth row up, fourth from the left.

Even as a high school student – Class of 1926 at Bangor High where their dad Harold taught, the very building where Wetzler now lives in one of The Schoolhouse apartments – Trickey was a saver.

Small scrapbooks show carefully clipped stories with headlines such as “Bass Park Gridiron Sea of Mud as High School Teams Meet,” and

“Bangor High Outplays Forest City Football Team But Score is 0-0.” Forest City refers to Portland.

The scrapbooks contain a variety of other souvenirs as well – more articles, bulletins, brochures, programs, tickets.

“Bangor Girls vs. Higgins Girls,” and “Columbia Street Baptist Church Girls vs. Essex Street Baptist Church Girls,” were titles of some of the local items. A newspaper headline from 1927 proclaimed, “Lindbergh Crosses Ocean Safely and Has Reached Paris.”

A ticket for a local event lists prices for a basketball game at 25 cents, and a dance at 25 cents, with “music by the Cohen Orchestra.”

A piece from an issue of The Oracle at Bangor High shows Trickey’s creative side, beginning:

1st of January, 67 BC. All Rome was excited, for that day in the forum was to be played the deciding game of the great basketball tournament between the Romans and the Conspirators…

Trickey went on to earn degrees from the University of Maine and Columbia University, to serve in World War II and to work as a school librarian in Massachusetts for many years before returning to Maine and volunteering in many organizations.

Wetzler belongs to many of the same groups, and spends much of her time doing the type of saving, sorting and sharing for which Trickey is remembered.

A member of the Class of 1931 at Bangor High School, Wetzler donated a class picture of that class and photos of several other classes to The Schoolhouse, where the 2-foot images hung on the wall draw the attention of residents and visitors alike.

She and husband Robert, who died in October, moved to The Schoolhouse 15 years ago. Wetzler had taken French in what is currently her living room, sitting right where her easy chair is now.

Moreover, she is indisputably the longtime historian of the Class of 1931, if the shelf full of notebooks at one end of her hall is any indication.

The volumes contain not just notices pertaining to the numerous reunions held at the Lucerne Inn, but letters and cards, newspaper clippings and pictures of weddings, births, obituaries, and records of all manner of achievements of class members and their offspring.

And like her sister before her, Wetzler is a family historian. A current project is compiling pictures of several generations of relatives in military uniform.

One photograph shows two Civil War veterans – Maj. William Henry Trickey, who later ran a veterans home in Tilton, N.H., and Wetzler’s grandfather, Joseph Charles Trickey.

Her grandfather’s father-in-law, Cyrus Bailey, made a beautiful chair table in the 1840s. It’s not in Wetzler’s apartment, however. She and her husband gave it to the Sangerville Historical Society.

The Wetzler and Trickey family also has given a variety of items to the Hampden and Bangor historical societies, and no doubt more things will find their way to appropriate homes as time goes on.

But Wetzler doesn’t forget her descendants. Here and there around her apartment are pictures and other mementos with notes attached, reminding her to make copies of this or that for her children and grandchildren.

And, of course, there are her memories, such as those of the ringing of the bells of independence in Hampden during the Fourth of July decades ago.

“First the bell in the Congregational Church was rung,” Wetzler wrote as one of several contributors to the first volume of “Echoes from the Past” in 2000.

“Then the [Hampden] Academy bell and finally, the Methodist Church bell. This was followed by the bell in Orrington,” she wrote. “My brother Philip, along with Ken Newcomb and one of the Emery or Rowell boys would be the academy ringers.”

Wetzler also presented “An Armchair Tour of Historic Houses of Hampden” years ago during a meeting of the historical society.

Saving and sorting and sharing. For the preservers of local history, the work goes on.