Friends remember boat builder, wife

GOTTS ISLAND – The lives of Lyford Stanley and his wife, Norma, were intertwined in their family and in his boat-building business, speakers at a celebration of the couple’s lives said Saturday. Had the couple lived, they would have observed their 60th wedding anniversary this August.

More than 175 mourners traveled to the small island in Bass Harbor to celebrate the lives of the couple at their burial in the community cemetery.

“What a sight, to see the lobster boats coming in tandem across the water that Lyford and Norma traveled so many times in their life, both for pleasure, and for work,” said the Rev. Donald Ketcham, a retired Congregational minister who officiated at the service. Ketcham lives on Gotts Island in a house the Stanleys once owned.

“It was a lobster flyby,” he added in describing the four lobster boats coming across the 2 miles of water separating Gotts Island from Bass Harbor in the town of Tremont.

Lyford Stanley, 82, died Nov. 30, 2007, of cancer in a Bangor hospital, and his wife, Norma B. Stanley, 77, died April 17 at Woodlands Alzheimer’s Unit in Brewer.

As speakers at the service Saturday attested, the Stanleys were inseparable, living in a year-round home in Bass Harbor and a summer home on Gotts Island, where he was the summer mail carrier for the last three years of his life.

Lyford Stanley spent his life in boating, lobstering and fishing in the waters around Mount Desert Island, mainly in boats he himself had built.

He will be remembered for his boat designs, particularly the Stanley 36 and the Stanley 44.

More than 100 Stanley 36s, and 58 Stanley 44s were built since their inception in the early to mid-1970s, according to his obituary.

Two Stanley 44s he built for the Maine Department of Marine Resources were used as patrol boats by the Maine Warden Service.

John Williams, a boat builder from Hall Quarry, Mount Desert, shared some of his nearly 40-year-old memories and experiences of the couple.

“They were such special people, to me and to all of you,” he said. “It’s kind of an honor for me to be speaking to you.”

Williams talked about the way Norma Stanley managed to bring her husband into the fiberglass boat era, despite his commitment to building wooden boats.

“Our business relationship involved my wife, Debbie, Norma, Lyford and myself,” Williams said.

Stanley loved Gotts Island and hated to leave it, Williams said. “Whenever he went off the island, he was always looking back.”

The Stanleys often did things for other people, Williams said. Although not a hunter, Lyford Stanley would catch a deer and have it dressed to give the venison to shut-ins and people in need.

Scott Swann, a builder and teacher at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, had known the Stanleys for 20 years.

“When I met Lyford, he reminded me of a cross between Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison,” Swann said.

For the last three months of Stanley’s life, Swann said, he spent time with him and realized how devoted he had come to feel toward Stanley.

Swann pointed out how much Stanley liked machines.

“I marveled at how many motorized vehicles it took him to get through the day,” Swann said.

He thought it ironic that Stanley and Evel Knievel died on the same day, and Swann had a vision of Stanley and Knievel racing toward heaven to see who would get there first.

“Lyford was a full-throttle kind of guy,” Swann said.

Ketcham closed the service with a reading of Tennyson’s poem, “Crossing the Bar,” an appropriate poem for seamen and for the bar that separates Gotts Island from Little Gott. The bar is submerged at high tide, making it possible for boats to enter the harbor without having to go around Little Gott.

Three daughters survive the Stanleys: Emma Mitchell of Bass Harbor, Roxanne Lewis and her husband, Jamie, of Seal Cove, and Melinda Stanley of Ellsworth. The couple had four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

gchappell@bangordailynews.net

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