Ex-police chief remembered by family, peers

OLD TOWN – A former Old Town police chief who helped many officers get their start in law enforcement is remembered by those who knew him as a well-respected, caring individual.

Dale Gauthier, 63, died last weekend after a battle with cancer that had spread from his lungs to his brain. He served on the Old Town Police Department for 25 years, including 11 as chief, before moving on to a second career in substance abuse counseling.

“He gave a lot of young people the opportunity to get started in law enforcement,” Lt. Alan Stormann, an Old Town councilor and member of the University of Maine Public Safety Department, said Wednesday.

Funeral services were held Wednesday at the Old Town United Methodist Church, with many local law enforcement representatives in attendance.

Gauthier, who got his start with the city’s police department as reserve officer before moving up the ranks as a dispatcher, patrolman, lieutenant and then chief, was a “nice guy to know,” Stormann said.

“Leadership with a Father’s Touch” is written on one of the plaques given to him by the department, Gauthier’s wife, Sue Gauthier, said Thursday. “People who would talk to him kind of felt that they’d made a friend right away.”

Stormann agreed. The UMaine officer first met Gauthier when he was a junior firefighter. After Stormann got out of the Army, Gauthier began talking to him about becoming a reserve officer on the force.

“Finally one day I took him up on it,” Stormann said. “Thirty some odd years later, here I am.”

Gauthier’s relationship with many of his officers went beyond the workplace.

“A hard thing not to have developed for anyone who worked with Dale was a friendship outside the workplace,” Lt. Paul Paradis of UMaine Public Safety said Thursday. He also got his start in the field from Gauthier and worked for him for about 12 years.

Paradis recalled walking down Stillwater Avenue one day when he was in college when Gauthier stopped to give him a ride in the cruiser.

“He talked with me about my major,” Paradis said. “When he heard it was law enforcement, he talked to me about some of the equipment and urged me to pursue the career.”

After graduation, Paradis did just that at the Old Town Police Department working for Gauthier.

“I’ve had a number of different jobs in law enforcement,” Paradis said. “He supported me in those.”

In addition to being a dedicated police officer, Gauthier also was a devoted family man, according to Marcy Ouellette. She started as a dispatcher soon after Gauthier had been promoted to police chief.

“When I started working there, I didn’t know too, too many people in the area and I didn’t have any family there,” she said. “His family just really opened their hearts and their home to me.”

Dale and Sue Gauthier had been married 33 years to the day when Gauthier died Jan. 8 at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor.

“We put the ring on 33 years ago, and we took it off because it was cutting into his hand,” Sue Gauthier said. “That made it a little harder.”

A quiet man who was close to his three children, Gauthier was called a gentle teddy bear by his family, his wife said.

“If Marci [the Gauthiers’ daughter] needed pantyhose for cheering, she’d call and say she needed it, and he would bring it to her in a little brown bag,” Sue Gauthier said.

Gauthier enjoyed hunting and fishing with his son, Andy, near the family’s Pushaw Lake home. And his daughter Kristina followed her father’s footsteps and works for the Little Rock Police Department in Arkansas.

After retiring from the police force, Gauthier went back to school and got his associate degree in human services from University College in Bangor and began work as a substance abuse counselor. He later became office manager at Outpatient Chemical Dependency Agency in Bangor.

Although the cancer was spreading, Gauthier continued working until the end of December.

“He was remarkably in control,” Sue Gauthier said. “And he had hopes if he could just finish the radiation that it would buy him more time.”

Gauthier naturally attracted people to him, possibly because of the way he would always listen.

“He was well loved,” his wife said. “He truly was.”