FARMINGTON – Kenneth E. Marks liked to share stories with friends and colleagues.

His stories, his friendship and his community leadership will be greatly missed say those who knew him. The former assistant superintendent of SAD 9 died of cancer Tuesday at Franklin Memorial Hospital.

“He’s in a better place and not suffering anymore,” said Harvey Hayden, Marks’ successor as assistant superintendent.

Hayden said the transition between Marks and himself was smooth and that Marks had spent time getting things in place and explaining the status of the teacher certification project that he was working on prior to his retirement.

Hayden described his predecessor as a quiet individual who understood what it meant to be in the classroom. He made his decisions based on the effect it would have on students and teachers.

“He was an awfully good person,” he said.

Marks began his career in education in 1953 as an eighth-grade teacher at the Cunningham School in Presque Isle and went on to become principal of Pine Street School and then of the Skyway Junior High School when SAD 1 was organized in Presque Isle in the early 1960s.

According to former colleague Gerald Libby of Farmington, Marks never lost touch with his roots.

Libby and Marks shared an office at W.G. Mallett School for a few years when the educator came to serve as assistant superintendent of SAD 9 in 1966. Libby was the principal of the elementary school at the time.

The two became good friends, sharing a common interest in education.

“We chatted and talked and solved the problems of the world,” said Libby of his Marks.

He enjoyed regaling friends and co-workers with stories of Presque Isle.

“He never talked about the work in the potato fields, only their beauty,” said Libby.

Libby went on to describe Marks as a “real gentleman, a fine educator and a really good friend. One lost sight of the fact that he was a boss, he was simply a colleague.”

He also had a saying that Libby quoted: “Nothing is colder than Presque Isle in the winter. There’s a two-strand barbed-wire fence between it and the North Pole, and one strand was down.”

jhausen@sunjournal.com

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