‘Retired’ man keeps on rolling

PITTSFIELD – “I’m retired, you know,” Leroy Starbird says as he climbs up the ladder and begins rolling primer on a newly sheet-rocked wall. He works in silence, no radio or distractions, just the swoosh, swoosh of the roller punctuated now and then by the scrape of the ladder on the floor.

Far from a rocking chair type of retirement, Starbird still paints local homes and businesses on a daily basis – even at 78 years old.

“I guess I’ve painted a good part of [Pittsfield] over the years,” he said. Some of those buildings, now considered landmarks, were painted by Starbird when they were first constructed.

Born and raised in Pittsfield and Burnham, Starbird said he worked as a young man in shoe shops and woolen mills. “But I always painted off and on,” he said.

After serving in World War II, Starbird returned to Maine, deciding not to leave for Connecticut and other states where his friends and relatives were emigrating for high-paying jobs.

“I didn’t want to leave. There was good hunting and fishing here then,” Starbird said. “I wanted to stay right here.”

But painting has changed over the years, he said, with the most noticeable difference being the paint itself. “There’s no body to it today,” he said.

Starbird is proud of his ability to paint a crisp, clean edge with no taping. “I don’t want to waste time with that,” he said.

For many years, Starbird hired a crew of high school students for summer work, but the insurance got to be too much for him. “It all became too complicated,” he said. Now he paints all summer and slows down in the winter.

He recalls painting the interior of the Pride Manufacturing Building when it was Ethan Allen Furniture. “We went through a couple of thousand gallons,” he said. “They had five-gallon pails piled high.”

Starbird said he painted the town office when it was first built and three times since. He’s painted nearly every bank in town – inside and out – but his most challenging job was painting the historic J.K. Wright car dealership. The building is a vintage gambrel-roofed barn, and Starbird didn’t have a ladder tall enough.

He finally bought a second-hand 55-foot wooden ladder and used a block and tackle to get it high enough.

“I worked and worked and finished all underneath the roof edges,” he said, “and when I climbed down I looked around the corner and there was this huge black cloud.” A fast-moving thunderstorm washed every bit of paint off the building.

“It looked like a puddle of milk on the ground,” he said, shaking his head. “I had to climb back up there and do it all over again.”

That huge wooden ladder is now the railing around Starbird’s deck at the Clinton home he shares with his wife of “35, no 38, no 40, oh, I lost track” years, he said.

Why does he continue to climb those ladders and paint? “I don’t want to depend on someone else,” he said. “You never know what kind of needs you’ll have when you get older. The extra money may come in handy.”

The Bangor Daily News is profiling people age 70 and older who choose to remain in the work force. We welcome suggestions for people to profile. Contact us at 990-8138 or e-mail bdnnews@bangordailynews.net.