Presque Isle hails ‘determined’ council woman

PRESQUE ISLE – The city’s first woman councilor and longest serving council member died on Saturday, causing both local residents and the governor to stop and remember “the most determined woman” they could remember.

B. Jean Harding, who served on the Presque Isle City Council for 18 years, died from a malignant brain tumor, according to family members. She was born in Mapleton on Jan. 24, 1932.

“She’s the most determined woman you’d ever want to meet,” Linda Dunn, Harding’s daughter, said Tuesday.

Dunn said her mother, who did not graduate from high school, received her GED when she was in her late 30s, and then went on to two years of college.

“That took courage,” Dunn said. “Most women didn’t do that up here back then. But that was how she did things. We always called her ‘the court from which there is no appeal.’ When she makes a decision, that’s how it is.”

Harding is best remembered for her long career as a city councilor, though she never served as chairwoman – a position councilors generally served in rotation.

“It kind of got to be a joke,” Dunn said. “[Her feeling was]’It doesn’t matter if I’m chairman or not, I’m still going to do what the people of Presque Isle want me to do.'”

Town officials remember Harding as a dedicated municipal officer.

“She was an active councilor who was always interested in serving her constituency,” City Manager Tom Stevens said Tuesday.

Dave Griffiths, who served on the council with Harding in the 1980s and nominated her for council chair, remembered her as a woman who “had quite a network of people in the community who contacted her and felt comfortable in contacting her.”

Rev. Thomas Blackstone, the pastor at Grant Memorial United Methodist Church in Presque Isle, said Harding was a lifelong Methodist who always looked out for others’ well-being.

“Even when she was facing treatments, she was very concerned to reach out and visit other patients at the rehabilitation center where she was recovering,” Blackstone said. “She would go from room to room as her strength permitted and visit other patients.”

Floyd Harding, her husband and a former state senate majority leader, remembered a feisty woman who wasn’t afraid to tell anyone – even the great – the flat-out truth.

“I remember Sen. Muskie speaking at a dinner once and we were at the head table,” Harding remembered. “When he finished, he said, ‘Jean, how did I do?’ And she said, ‘You talked too damn long, senator.'”

Gov. John Baldacci, who knows the Harding family as a “Democratic institution” in Aroostook County, remembered Harding as a political force unto herself.

“She was always fighting for people who didn’t have a lobbyist. She was always there to represent the people who needed to have their voices heard in town hall, in the legislature, even in Washington,” Baldacci said Tuesday. “She was there where people were struggling – that’s where Jean would show up.”

Gov. Baldacci directed that the United States flag and the state of Maine flag be flown at half-staff in Presque Isle from sunrise to sunset today.

Funeral services will be held at 1 p.m. today at Grant Memorial United Methodist Church.