Radio’s Elliott donates home in Brooks to history group

BROOKS – When he was a child, Bob Elliott, of the 1950s radio duo Bob and Ray, happily endured the 10-hour drive from his home in Winchester, Mass., to enjoy a two-week family visit to Brooks.

The trip would be longer, Elliott said Thursday, when the family car suffered a flat tire, as would often happen, “usually between Belfast and [Brooks].”

Elliott, now 82, his wife, Lee, and their son Chris, now an actor seen most recently in the CBS comedy “Everybody Loves Raymond,” were in Waldo County to donate the old family home on Route 7 to the fledgling Brooks Historical Society.

The home belonged to Elliott’s second cousin Louise Pilley, who died at 99 last winter. The Elliotts inherited the house and decided to give it to the historical society, which plans to restore it as a headquarters and museum.

“We’re happy to do this,” Elliott said. “It’s certainly the right thing to do.”

Elliott remembers spending summer days wandering around Brooks, visiting his Great-Uncle Hiram Pilley’s store.

“I thought it was great to have a relative who had a store with candy and ice cream,” he said.

Elliott and his parents visited each summer through his high school years. After serving in the military, Elliott said, the visits resumed in the 1950s.

Brooks in those days “was bustling,” Elliott said. “I remember all the poultry businesses.”

On hearing his father reminisce Thursday, Chris Elliott said, “I’d love to do a video of him walking through Brooks, remembering.”

The house holds sentimental value for the Elliotts.

“My mother was born in this house, and her mother,” Bob Elliott said.

The old Pilley place, as historical society President Betty Littlefield referred to the house, also holds important significance in the town’s history.

It is believed to have been built before 1818 by a descendant of the town’s second settler. Littlefield said it was sold to one Phineas Ashman, who ran the town’s first post office in the house. Ashman also taught classes in rhetoric, arithmetic and writing.

In 1846 the house was purchased by Hiram Pilley, who was Bob Elliott’s great-great uncle.

Elliott and Ray Goulding started on radio in 1946. They spent four decades offering up their clever dead-pan spoofs and caricatures on the NBC, CBS and Mutual radio networks and on prominent New York City radio stations. They retired from comedy in 1987. Goulding died in 1990.

Elliott also appeared in TV specials and in some of son Chris’ movies.

Chris, 45, who most recently could be seen as the eccentric brother-in-law Peter McDougal in “Everybody Loves Raymond,” has appeared in such movies as “Groundhog Day” with Bill Murray and “There’s Something About Mary” with Cameron Diaz. He even starred in his own TV show, “Get A Life,” on the Fox network.

The younger Elliott also visited the Brooks home regularly. “We would come at least once a summer,” he said.

After Bob and Lee Elliott turned over the deed to the historical society, society members presented the Elliotts with official memberships in the group.

“We belong in a museum at this point,” the elder Elliott said.

Chris Elliott then presented the society with a framed watercolor portrait he painted of cousin Louise.

After the brief ceremony outside the house, people lined up to have their photo taken with Chris.

Bob and Lee Elliott purchased a summer home in Cundy’s Harbor near Brunswick in 1961, and now spend up to eight months there each year, dividing their time with an apartment in New York City.

Chris Elliott lives in Connecticut with his wife and two daughters.