Lubec mourns loss of its ‘protector’

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LUBEC – As word spread of Dennis Lewia’s death, the whole town stopped to mourn the loss of the longtime medical provider and friend.

Lewia, 62, died unexpectedly Tuesday of complications from heart surgery.

“I think he was really the protector of the community,” Town Administrator Maureen Glidden said Wednesday of the town’s only physician’s assistant. “So many of us relied on Dennis. He didn’t just take care of people’s physical ailments; he really truly cared.”

Around town many people knew Lewia by his first name. It was not unusual to hear someone say, “I’ve got an appointment with Dennis.” A native of Dexter, Lewia was a corpsman in Vietnam before arriving in Lubec.

Dennis Lewia began his medical career in Lubec nearly 40 years ago with then-country doctor Robert MacBride at his office on Washington Street, MacBride’s wife, Leona, said Wednesday. The MacBrides first met Lewia when he was part of a physician’s assistant program at Dartmouth

College in the late 1960s.

MacBride was Lewia’s preceptor. The two men liked each other immediately.

“[MacBride] had a receptionist, a recordkeeper, nurse and Dennis down there,” Leona MacBride said of her husband’s first office.

Dr. MacBride died in 1999.

The two men along with the community undertook the building of the Regional Medical Center at Lubec, which opened in 1971.

“Dennis was in on the planning for the medical center along with all the townspeople,” Leona MacBride said.

In April 1984, Lewia and his wife, Maureen, who is a nurse, were honored at an open house given by the staff of the medical center.

Town Clerk Betty Case fondly remembered Lewia on Wednesday as a man who put his patients first and even made house calls.

“He was almost like one of those old-fashioned doctors where you felt comfortable going to his house, too,” she said. “Especially on weekends.”

Lewia, she said, would open up the medical center to “stitch someone up” if they needed it.

“He really was there for the people,” Case said.

Paula Frost, director of the medical center’s substance abuse treatment program, said she had known Lewia for 22 years.

“If I had one word to describe Dennis, he was passionate,” she said. “He was passionate about his patients, the medical center, his friends … and his family. Everything that he did, he did with a great deal of passion.”

But there was more, she added. Lewia cared a great deal about the area. “He’d do anything to help anyone out,” she said.

Frost, who also is the chief of the Perry Fire Department, said Lewia was an honorary member of the department. Lewia provided paper medical exams for firefighters so they could wear airpacks.

Maureen Lewia’s cousin Anne Seavey praised Dennis Lewia on Wednesday as someone who “always gave 100 percent to everybody.”

“Dennis was the most remarkable caregiver that I think we ever had,” she said. “He took care of so many people and saved so many lives, but nobody could save his. It was so sudden and so quick, and, God love him, he was there for all of us, and he will be greatly missed. He was a present from heaven. God sent him from heaven to take care of us, and he did a wonderful job.”

But aside from Lewia’s medical persona, there was a fun side to him, too, she said, recalling a humorous moment.

“I went [to his house] one time. I had an allergy reaction. He gave me a shot. I walked in one door to get the shot and walked out the other door, and his dog bit me on the ass and I had to get a tetanus shot. He said, ‘I didn’t mean to give you two, just one,'” she said with a chuckle.

Carol Carew, the center’s CEO, said Lewia’s death was a great loss to the medical center.

“He took great care of his patients. They always came first,” she said. “He was available day and night. His door was always open, either here at the clinic or at home.”

Lewia is survived by his wife and two children from a previous marriage.

Funeral arrangements were not available.

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