JONESBORO – Theone F. Look, a feisty businesswoman and legislator for some 50 years, died Tuesday from a brain hemorrhage she suffered after the annual town meeting in her beloved hometown.

She was believed to be 79. Look was flown to Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, but was pronounced dead on Tuesday afternoon with her family at her side. The family had asked that she be taken off life support Tuesday morning.

She served as the town’s clerk and treasurer for about 24 years, and had been characteristically blunt among questioners at the town meeting Monday.

When selectmen noted that Jonesboro was switching to a fiscal year starting July 1, Look replied that the annual town meeting should stay in March because that’s how the original town charter read. “Theone raised points and questions on several items,” Town Clerk Wendy Schoppee said Tuesday.

Kevin Raye, a fellow Republican from Perry, said Look “was an institution in Washington County. She was devoted to this county and her community.”

In the 1940s, Look became the first secretary of the Jonesboro Parent-Teacher Association. She served as town clerk and treasurer of Jonesboro. Elected a Washington County commissioner for 10 years, mostly in the 1970s, she spent eight of those years as commissioners’ chairwoman. She also was a past president of the Maine County Commissioners Association.

She sought a state Senate seat in 1982, losing that race to the incumbent. She ran for the state House of Representatives in 1986, eventually serving multiple terms and becoming a leader on marine fisheries issues. In the early 1990s, she paid her own way as part of a trade mission to Japan, where a colleague at the time said she “was a nonstop promoter of Washington County sea products, wood products, blueberries and granite.” She continued to run the family business, Carroll Look Construction, with her sons after her first husband died.

Raye, who is running for a state Senate seat, recalled seeing Look’s husband, John Bagley, on Monday evening at a gathering of Washington County Republicans in Calais. Raye asked where Theone was. “Theone Look and town meeting – you can’t get between them,” Bagley replied.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete at press time.