ST. ALBANS – While an investigation by the Somerset County Sheriff’s Department is expected to wrap up this week, St. Albans is reeling over last Thursday’s loss of one of its most respected residents, Newman Gee.

“This town was just so important to him,” Doug Spalding, who had known Gee for 30 years, said Sunday. “Newman was the quiet person in the background, always doing what he believed was right.”

Gee, 50, was found fatally injured in a woodlot on his property off the Hartland Road Thursday afternoon by a family member who had gone to check on him. Despite being airlifted to Eastern Maine Medical Center, Gee died.

Because he was alone when he apparently was struck by a falling tree, Gee’s death sparked an investigation by Deputy Kris McKenna and an autopsy by the State Medical Examiner’s Office.

McKenna was off-duty Sunday, and no information was available on that investigation.

Meanwhile, local residents were remembering Gee with fondness.

“What a tragic loss,” said former town clerk Barbara Musmon. “He was the first person I met when I came to St. Albans and one of the most kind.”

She said she was at first taken aback when Gee appeared wearing chaps and a cowboy hat, a trademark outfit.

“Newman was a healer,” Spalding said. “He spent the last two months struggling with how to heal St. Albans. He was such a genuine, good, honest person.”

“He was such a very nice, gentle man,” friend Doug Bane said, “with a good sense of humor.”

Gee was a kneelogger, likely the only commercial kneelogger in the country. Knees are the right-angle root of the Eastern larch, also known as a tamarack tree, and to many local folks, a hackmatack.

It’s a bog tree, fast-growing with shallow roots, that became prized because of its strength and durability to create braces in wooden shipbuilding.

Gee became an expert in carving and shaping knees and was part of the re-creation of the famed slave ship Amistad at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut. He supplied 30 hack knees for the $5 million re-creation project and was often the source for knees for Maine’s coastal wooden shipbuilding industry.

Recently he had been gaining notoriety for his artistic wooden furniture. He, Bane and Spalding were planning to open an art gallery on Route 7 in Newport this spring.

“We will go on with the gallery,” said Spalding. “Our first show will prominently feature Newman’s work.”

Gee was a former St. Albans selectman, former town firefighter, past member of the planning board and current chairman of the town’s budget committee. He was also a founding member of the Sebasticook Valley Arts Alliance.

In a Bangor Daily News interview in 2000, Gee spoke of his love of the land. “I want to leave the land in better shape than I got it,” Gee said of the 285 acres he owned in St. Albans. “I grew up here. This is where I want to be.”

Gee is survived by his wife of nearly 25 years, Christina Gee, and two sons, Brannen and Devin, all of St. Albans.

Funeral services for Gee will be held at 11 a.m. Wednesday, March 15, at the St. Albans Town Hall.