WEST ROCKPORT — Vernon Barrows Hunter went home to his Lord and Savior, following a period of declining health, Friday, February 3, 2023, with his son keeping watch at Waldo County General Hospital. He was 91 and had been an active and involved member of the Midcoast community up until the last year of his life. Between his family, his work, and his activities, it was a rare trip out of the house when he didn’t meet someone he knew.

The son of Francis Leroy (F.L.) Hunter and Farolin Sophrona Barrows Hunter, he grew up in Rockville, a member of the seventh generation of his mother’s family in the village. He loved sports from an early age, and he happily remembered his teenage trips to Boston to watch professional basketball and baseball. He graduated from Rockport High School in 1949, served in the Korean War, and came home to marry his high school sweetheart, Nancy Mae Andrews, in 1954. They immediately moved to Orono, where he played semi-pro baseball and earned his teaching degree from UMO with the aid of a G.I. Bill scholarship.

His first teaching job was in Union, where he taught a variety of classes and coached boys sports, taking his first basketball team to the Class D Maine State Championship game, where they were the runner up. He and this team were honored by the Midcoast Sports Hall of Fame in 2019. In 1960, he took a job at Rockport High School and built the house in West Rockport that he and his family have called home ever since. His first basketball team there also went to the final Class D game, also coming home as runner up. To the end of his life, there were people who always called him “Coach.” When the Rockport and Camden high schools were combined, he stopped coaching and focused on teaching history and guidance counseling, for which he had earned his Masters, also from UMO. He spent three years in the late 1960s as the counselor in a Federally funded Title III rural guidance project that served students in Hope, Appleton, Lincolnville, and Islesboro, with follow-up at Camden-Rockport High School. When that ended, he went to work at Cony High School, in Augusta, where he was in the guidance department, eventually as head, commuting daily for over 20 years.

After his retirement from teaching at age 60, he continued the wild blueberry business that his uncle, Leman Oxton, had started and that had employed him every summer of his adult life. He raked his own berries on Mount Pleasant into his 80s. He was also a member of the Advisory Committee of the Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine.

A very social man, with a social conscience, Vernon belonged to many organizations and served on many boards. In the early 1970s, he was involved in the initial phases of Midcoast Maine Community Action in Rockland. He served as a deacon of the West Rockport Baptist Church for over 30 years. A proud veteran of the U.S. Army, he enjoyed the activities of the Korean War Veterans Association throughout its tenure, served on the Board of Directors for the Beals Hospitality House at Togus Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and was a member of the American Legion War Memorial Post 30 in Camden. In the late 1980s, he inherited from his uncle the Memorial Day tasks of putting flags on the veterans’ graves in West Rockport and Rockville, as well as arranging for the parades and dedication services held there each year until the Pandemic.

Over the decades, he served on a variety of town committees in Rockport, and he relished working at the polls and counting votes. With a deep love of history, he enjoyed belonging to the Sons of the American Revolution, researching and giving local history talks about the people who had lived in the villages where he spent his life, and serving on the Rockville Cemetery Association. He maintained personal connections through the University of Maine Alumni Association. He was the historian at the annual Rockport High School Alumni Banquets and served on the evaluation committee for the Alumni’s scholarship applications, as well as those for the Marion Weidman Scholarship, until he was 90. He had resigned from the board of the Camden Area Senior Assistance organization only the year before.

As a husband, he was a good provider and a man who regularly pitched in around the house. He was a very involved parent, and he did his best to nurture his children’s interests and to spend time with them. He supported his wife’s civic involvement, leading 4-H clubs, serving on the Rockport Zoning Board of Appeals, and her two terms on the Camden-Rockport School Board. He and Nancy made four cross-continent trips to see family over the years, with him driving almost every mile on three of those. They really enjoyed traveling together, and they visited her sister’s family in New York frequently. As their parents’ generation aged, Vernon was the man several family members called on for help, and he was a faithful caregiver. As Nancy’s health broke down, he cared for her at home until that was no longer possible. Then he became the husband who spent every afternoon with her during her final two and a half years of professional care. He missed her dreadfully when she was gone. The kindness of several family members and neighbors supported him through his own last couple of years, combining with professional aid to allow him to stay in his own home until four months before he died.

He is survived by his sister, Marjorie Payson (Maurice); his children, Julia Hunter (Tim Bodin) and Christopher Hunter; his grandchildren, Susan Van Breems (Lars), Heather Dillard (Sean), T.C. Bodin (Cia); and great-grandchildren Benjamin Van Breems, Connor Schnider, Gwendolyn Schnider, and Ada Bodin. His fifteen nieces and nephews, and their families, are scattered from coast to coast.

He was predeceased by his beloved wife of 64 years, Nancy Mae Andrews Hunter, and one niece, Pamela Barkalow.

A celebration of life will be held June 1, at 1 p.m., at the West Rockport Baptist Church, with a reception to follow. Memorial donations may be made to the West Rockport Baptist Church, P.O. Box 221, West Rockport, Maine 04865; or to Camden Area District Nursing Association, P.O. Box 547, Camden, Maine 04843.

To share a memory or condolence with the Hunter family, please visit their Book of Memories at www.bchfh.com.

Arrangements are in the care of Burpee, Carpenter & Hutchins Funeral Home, 110 Limerock Street, Rockland.