Bangor manager from 1966-76, Merle Goff, dies

BANGOR – The former city manager who led Bangor during some of its most turbulent but exciting times – including the conversion of the former Dow Air Force Base into the economic engine now known as Bangor International Airport – died Friday at the age of 82.

Merle Goff, who served as Bangor’s city manager from 1966 through 1976, died at a local health care facility. His former colleagues at City Hall said he recently had suffered a stroke.

As word of Goff’s death circulated through the community, he was remembered as a man who led by example and whose passion was development.

“It was because of him that we had the [level of] success that we did,” said Thaxter Trafton, whom Goff hired as parks and recreation director, a post that then also included overseeing Bass Park and Bangor Raceway. “The city of Bangor was darned lucky to have him when it did.”

“He was strong and honest and fair and a great leader. People loved working for him,” Trafton, who now is director of the state’s office of business development, said.

Trafton said Goff had been a role model for him.

“I was young and he was a mentor of mine. He was always very levelheaded. He wasn’t real outgoing, but he had the qualities you like in people,” Trafton said.

It was during his tenure that the city took on the herculean tasks of redeveloping the former military base, pursuing urban renewal and moving City Hall from the corner of Columbia and Hammond streets to Harlow Street, Rod McKay, the city’s community and economic development director, said Friday.

Goff’s wife, Linda, is employed as an accounting clerk in the city’s community and economic development department.

Goff also took on the restructuring of several city departments, helped lay the framework for the development of the Bangor Mall, and oversaw the construction of Kenduskeag Stream Recreational Parkway, McKay said.

“From a staff perspective, he was always coming up with ideas, and we as staff would have to keep up with him,” said McKay, who was hired by Goff. “He was very development-oriented, and he was conscious of the need to expand the tax base.”

Goff also was at the helm when General Electric began scoping out a site for the manufacturing plant it eventually would build in Bangor, and it was Goff who started up the public bus system, now known at the BAT Community Connector, said City Councilor Peter D’Errico, who served as economic development director and then airport director under Goff.

“He was a terrific guy,” D’Errico recalled Friday. “He was very easy to work with, and he worked very closely with his department heads. Sometimes, you’d forget he was your boss.”

Goff entered the public service arena after serving with the U.S. Army’s 44th Infantry Division in 1944 and 1945 as a member of a platoon specializing in intelligence and reconnaissance. He was wounded in action near Strasbourg, France, and was awarded the Purple Heart.

A Westbrook native, Goff studied civil engineering at the University of Maine in 1942 and 1943 before serving in the Army. Afterward he returned to UM, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in public management in 1948. He did graduate work in public administration at Wayne State University in Detroit, Mich., in 1948 and 1949.

He first joined the Bangor staff in 1949 as the city’s first purchasing agent, and then used that post as a steppingstone to managerial spots in Boothbay Harbor, Brunswick, Westbrook and Orono before being hired as city manager here.

Funeral services are scheduled for noon Sunday at Brookings-Smith Funeral Home at 133 Center St. in Bangor.