Former Maine writer dies at age 85

Jane Gerow Dudley, formerly of Alexander, died at her Iowa home Saturday, Oct. 25. Dudley was a well-known writer and naturalist who lived in Maine from the mid-1960s until the early ’90s.

The lengthy list of publications she contributed to as a journalist, columnist and poet includes the Machias Valley News Observer, the Maine Times and the Calais Advertiser, as well as Yankee Magazine, Reed Poetry Annual of Maine, the Maine Pine Cone and the Boston Post.

She also was longtime editor of the Schoodic chapter of the Maine Audubon Newspaper. She wrote a variety of columns over the years appropriately named “Cabin Kitchen Receipts,” “Nature Path,” “Cabin-in-the-Woods,” “Garden-in-the-Woods” and “After 70.”

“Everything she started grew and grew and got bigger and bigger,” niece Deborah Reese of South Strafford, Vt., said Monday. An avid historian, Dudley was president and founder of the Alexander-Crawford Historical Society, and also wrote its newsletter.

Dudley loved the outdoors and held informal classes at Lake Pocomoonshine for area children “to help them appreciate the natural beauty around them,” Reese said.

In a 1986 Maine Times article, Dudley wrote, “It’s strange that I had to wait until I was a mature adult to live in the kind of place I should have been born to. But then, maybe I appreciate it better this way.”

The New Jersey native appreciated her beloved Maine community in many ways, from founding the Pocomoonshine Cake Walk to benefit the historical society, to participating in Fourth of July festivities each year.

“She used to ride in her red Volkswagen – a little bug – and headed the Fourth of July parade up in her area,” Reese said. “She was always right in the front.”

But being in the front was nothing new to Dudley, even though Reese described her as being shy.

“She made herself be outgoing,” Reese said of the aunt she considered to be her mentor. “She was very brave and very gutsy.”

As Reese recalled one of her favorite stories about her aunt, she chuckled.

“One of the greatest things about her, I think, is that when she was in high school she very secretly, unknown to anyone else, took flying lessons.”

Fascinated by Amelia Earhart, Reese secretly sold her sister’s dollhouse and other family items to afford flying lessons in Caldwell, N.J., near her home.

“The story goes that one day she was sitting around the family dinner table and said, ‘You just don’t know how beautiful it is around here until you see it from the air.'” This was the first inkling her family had of the flying lessons.

Dudley loved Maine, but illness forced her to leave the state to be closer to other family members in 1992. After her departure, she wrote, “I was reborn by the state of Maine, and am sustained by the remembrance.”

Contributions in Dudley’s name can be made to the Maine Audubon Society Schoodic Chapter, 20 Gilsland Farm Road, Falmouth 04105.