HOULTON, Maine — The Shiretown lost another of its cultural icons this past week as Catherine “Kay” Bell died Friday, Nov. 25, at the age of 97.
Bell left a lasting legacy in the minds of many Houlton residents for her integrity and love for Houlton. She started work at the U.S. Border Patrol in 1957, during a time when the agency was dominated by men, and spent 32 years in that capacity.
Known for her frugality, thanks to living through the Great Depression, Bell was a member of the Houlton Town Council, during a time when few women served in that capacity; helped welcome back former German prisoners of war who had been interred at Camp Houlton from October 1944 to May 1946; and also served as curator at the Aroostook Historical and Art Museum thanks to her wealth of knowledge on all things Houlton.
And to many, she was known simply as “Ma Bell.”
“I served on the Town Council with Kay in the early 80’s,” said Leigh Cummings, who took over as curator at the museum. “She was a woman of unquestionable integrity and boundless energy. For years she and Mildred Madigan maintained a beautiful flower garden by the entry to the Post Office. She was the authority on Houlton’s history.”
Cummings said Bell was instrumental in welcoming returning German POW’s who had been interred at Camp Houlton. “German POWs worked on her family’s farm,” he explained. “Her brother had been killed in action in Europe, but she still said of the POWs ‘They were just boys, just like our boys.’ This story was picked up and covered by a number of media sources, including the BBC.”
The German POWs served as a labor force on her family’s potato farm. This association lasted a lifetime as some of the Houlton-based POW’s returned years later and re-connected with her. She eventually made a pilgrimage to the Baltic Sea with the aid of one of her German friends and paid her last respects to her brother, Louis, who was a tail gunner in a B-17 and was MIA over Rostock, Germany.
Bell was the only woman on the town council when Cummings served with her in the early 1980s. “She was not scared to state her opinions, but she had the rare ability to disagree agreeably,” he said. “We need more Kay Bells in this world.”
Born in Houlton on March 23, 1919, in the “Patty’s Holler” section of town to Frank Nicholas and Mary (Mahoney) Brown, Bell always remarked she was born the year women got the right to vote and lived until women got the right to marry each other, according to her obituary.
Houlton resident Lori Weston worked closely with Bell when Weston was employed as the executive director for the Greater Houlton Chamber of Commerce.
“My friend Kay Bell said, ‘For Heaven’s Sake, don’t waste valuable time not learning and doing! Life is too short!’ And, she is right,” Weston said. “I had the great privilege of working beside Kay Bell for nearly five years when she served as the curator of the Southern Aroostook Historical Museum.”
The two worked closely inside the White Building which houses both the Chamber offices and the Museum.
“At some point, every day, she would pop into my office and say, ‘Here’s your history lesson for the day!’” Weston recalled. “She would share some gem of history with such enthusiasm and heartfelt glee. Any new or unusual find would bring a yip of joy and a little dance jig! To say that history was a passion for Kay would be a major understatement. She was the ultimate sleuth and detective, finding those little details that contributed to the bigger story that brought it all home and made it real.”
As a tour guide through the museum, Bell brought many of the articles to life with her vivid descriptions. “Kay made it fun and instilled a desire to learn more,” Weston said. “She worried that today’s youth might never know the treasures held inside the museum. She was never happier than when giving tours to the local school groups or guests who simply stopped in on a rainy summer day. Kay’s enthusiasm was infectious and genuine.”
Bell knew the result of hard work and education. In fact, she earned a college degree at the age of 70, Weston said. But it was the personal touch Bell brought that impressed Weston the most.
“Kay made my life happier and more full each time we saw each other,” she said. “One day she popped in with a grainy old black and white photo that showed a group of tired men, kneeling in the snow having lunch. The picture was taken up on Harvey Siding in Monticello, a logging crew with logs ready for the horses. Kay pointed to a man in the photo and said, ‘that is your grandfather Jesse.’
Weston added one of her favorite pictures of Bell was of her in her bathing suit shoveling snow to show friends who were no longer brave enough to stay in The County for the winter.
“Kay knew how to live life and how to share what she had learned from it. Wear red, it’s a happy color she said, and so I will and think of her.
Jane Torres, the current executive director at the Chamber, also recalls Bell fondly.
“I remember one time she came in and asked if I had ever been through the museum,” Torres said. “Two hours later my head was spinning with all the information she shared. There were days I would call and ask if she would come and do a tour and in she would come, covered in dirt because she had been working in the garden. It was more important to her that people learned about local history than whether or not her clothes were clean. She was truly an extraordinary woman.”
A full obituary for Bell can be found under the obituary tab.
