BANGOR – Alice Baker celebrated Labor Day by giving up her day job after working 43 years for Penobscot County.

Baker, 69, of Brewer went to work in the Registry of Deeds on Sept. 1, 1964. On Friday, she cleaned out her desk and retired after more than three decades as the assistant register of probate.

“I never thought about being the longest employee,” she said last week. “It must be an honor but we’re more like a family in this office – this is my extended family.”

The probate office handles adoptions, name changes, guardianships, conservatorships and the probating of wills for the county Probate Court.

Adoptions, which are completed at hearings held on Wednesdays, are her favorite, Baker said last week.

“They are such happy affairs,” she said. “Today, we have more adoptions through [the Department of Health and Human Services] with foster children being adopted more than we used to. That makes it really good for the little ones.”

When she started working for the county, Baker was single and in her 20s, and used a manual typewriter. Her tenure with the county included a revolution in workplace technology and a total revision of probate law.

Baker has worked under four registers of probate but just one judge.

“When I think about her leaving, I think how lucky we were to have a person with such great knowledge these many years,” Penobscot County Probate Judge Allan Woodcock Jr. said of her retirement.

Woodcock, 86, of Bangor was first elected probate judge in November 1962 and took office the following January. He was re-elected to his 12th four-year term last year.

Baker, he said, has worked with him for most of those years and her memory for the details of old cases is better than his own. It is her personality, the judge added, that has made her so good at the job for so long.

“She has an infinite amount of patience in dealing with lawyers and the public,” he said, “and she can quote probate law chapter and verse. Most of all, she’s such a fine person. It’s been a great joy and pleasure to work with her, and I’m sad to see her go.”

Susan Almy, register of probate since 1981, said she will miss Baker’s input daily.

“I bounce things off her every day,” Almy, 53, of Charleston said. “It not so much how long she’s been here that makes her such a valuable employee – she has such integrity. We will try to live up to her standards.”

Almy, who is married to Penobscot County District Attorney R. Christopher Almy, said Baker is so well-loved and respected in the legal community that it took just one day to solicit funds for the retiree’s parting gift – a laptop computer.

Although she won’t be going into the Penobscot County Courthouse five days a week, Baker is keeping her night and weekend job – running Speedway 95. She inherited a share of the Hermon raceway when her husband, Maynard “Red” Baker, died in 1991 at the age of 57 after a short illness.

But being retired from her job with the county doesn’t mean Baker plans to get behind the wheel of a souped-up car and get out on the track.

“I’ve never gotten into a race car,” she said. “You have to have that special no-fear gene to get into a race car. I’ll be there but not driving.”