In celebration of the Loring Commerce Centre’s 20th anniversary, we look back at the career of a longtime employee of the industrial park. Mary Saunders has recently announced she will be retiring from her position as caretaker administrative assistant at Loring Development Authority — one that she has held for nearly 21 years. Saunders was the very first employee to be hired at LDA, during a time when the former Air Force base was making the transition to the busy commercial hub that it is today.
President and CEO of LDA Carl Flora made a joint announcement with Saunders at an LDA board of trustees meeting on Sept. 3, where Saunders voiced a heartfelt thank you to all those who have worked with or around her over the last 20-plus years.
Saunders was hired at LDA in November of 1993, when the former Loring Air Force Base was still closing down and evolving into the Loring Commerce Centre. She has been working on the front lines at LDA, doing a number of vitally important tasks, as an administrative assistant, that Flora claims kept the LDA ship afloat for the past two decades.
“Over the years, Mary’s work has been instrumental to LDA’s success,” he said. “Mary has always been ready and able to take on nearly any task and she gets it done and understands intuitively why it’s important.”
Saunders spoke about her time at Loring and explained just how much the Commerce Centre has changed since she was hired over two decades ago.
“My very first job when I started at LDA was to inventory everything the Air Force had left behind. That meant basically taking a record of every nut and bolt still here, which was a pretty big task.” said Saunders. “At first, there were still quite a bit of Air Force members working at Loring. They were a sort of closure team, but working with them was very pleasant and it was fun.”
Saunders explained that her role at the Commerce Centre is not quite now as it was back in 1993, but at the same time much of the job has remained the same.
“At first, I was working for the Caretaker Cooperative Agreement, which was an agreement with the Air Force and the caretakers to do just that, to take care of the things left here that would likely be needed in the future, and to help make those decisions, like with plow trucks, which we, of course, needed to maintain. We needed to keep dump trucks for collecting garbage and just things like that. There were really a lot of decisions to be made.”
She admitted that when she first settled into her role as caretaker back in 1993, the former Air Force base was quite an eerie place to commute to at 7 a.m. every morning.
“I would be the first car to come into the lot in the morning and during the winter the snowbanks would get so high and the snow so heavy that I would be making my own tracks into the parking lot,” said Saunders. “Everything was deathly quiet back then, but when businesses like Sitel and DFAS and then Maine Military Authority arrived, that was when we started to see all kinds of traffic.”
Saunders said that after a certain number of years the agreement between the caretakers and the Air Force became null and void. She added that the Air Force didn’t put any more money into that project.
“We were transitioned over to the LDA because of that, and have remained so ever since. I did have to apply for the position though,” Saunders added with a smile.
Now, Saunders’ job as caretaker administrative assistant is still just as tasking, but she admits that no two days are ever the same. When asked to explain her job on a day-to-day basis, Saunders didn’t hesitate with her answer.
“They’re all different,” Saunders said. “It used to be that we did a lot of dig permits, because the cleanup was a major process. Sometimes I would have five or six dig permits at one time, so I had to make sure someone was sent to each one to make sure everything was safe. That was Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“I also transitioned into doing a lot of environmental jobs, because we at first had an environmental technician, but his job got phased out after most of the cleanup was done.” said Saunders. “However, we’re currently still doing cleanup.”
Along the same lines as her environmental tasks, Saunders explained she also has to keep track of all the numbers when it comes to things like fuel. Saunders is tasked with keeping track of how much fuel is used, and reporting that to both the state and federal levels, which can be a huge task in its own right.
Despite all the stress and hard work Saunders has had to exert over the last two decades, she admits she wouldn’t have changed a thing.
“It’s been an exceptional job. It’s run the gamut from fruit to nuts, but it’s mostly been great,” Saunders said with a smile. “There were wonderful people to work with over all the years, and other than the stress, I had fun.”
Saunders expressed her sentiments toward Loring and her hopes toward the Commerce Centre’s future, which she believes has great potential as an industrial hub for northern Maine.
“I’ve always known Loring could be more than an Air Force base and I still do believe that, but Rome wasn’t built in a day either,” Saunders added.
Flora explained that it would be a couple more months until a replacement is found for Saunders’ administrative assistant position. Saunders has set a target date of Oct. 31 to retire, but she said she will remain in her current position until a replacement can be hired and has had an opportunity to become familiar with the job. Flora said that LDA is currently “on the search.”
“We will miss Mary and we wish her the very best as she enters retirement,” Flora added.
Saunders, who currently lives in Limestone, expects to remain in the area.
