ORIENT – Harold “Dick” Dickinson passed to the New Jerusalem on July 9, from the shore of the East Grand lakescape, which was an integral part of his life.

He was born May 11, 1940, in Caribou, the only child of M. Jerome and Marguerite L. Boyne Dickinson.

He attended Houlton public schools, from which he graduated with highest honors in 1958. He was valedictorian of his Ricker College graduating class in Houlton in 1962.

His educational expertise and passion was for music, speech and theatre activities. His one-act play productions often appeared in the state finals of the Maine Drama Festival and on three occasions, plays which he directed represented Maine in the New England Drama Festival. He was an organizer, founder and first president of the Maine Drama Council, which administers the festival for the State Principals’ Association.

He also served on the New England Drama Festival Board and was festival chair in 1970, when the event was staged at Muskie Auditorium in Rumford. In 1968, he also founded and served as first director of the Rumford Association for the Performing Arts (RAPA), a community theatre and music group which thrives today. He also served several times as director of the Houlton Community Chorus.

From 1962 until 1980, he taught in public secondary schools in Mars Hill, Rumford, Old Town, Danforth (as a long-term substitute) and Dyer Brook. He moved back to Aroostook from Rumford in 1970 to help with the family business, as his dad’s health failed and he remained closer to home.

In 1980, he was hired as UniServ director for Maine Teachers Association, a staff capacity in which he provided program education, negotiations assistance and grievance arbitration representation to local teachers in Penobscot, Piscataquis and Aroostook Counties. He left this position in 1986 to care for his mother. Following her death, he and his partner, Tim, assumed responsibility for the family business, Sunset Park Marina on East Grand Lake, and they continued to operate his mom’s CANUSA Kennels, taking over the care of a family of Pomeranians.

Dick was selected by residents of the town of Orient as a school committee member and selectman. In recent years, he was elected town clerk, tax collector and treasurer, posts he held until he could no longer continue.

He was one of four founders of the Chiputneticook Lakes Int’l Conservancy (CLIC) and was elected president of its board of directors. As a consequence of this position, he was also selected as the chairman of a Stakeholders’ Association for the entire St. Croix Watershed and represented these interests before the International Joint Commission as it reviewed its orders of approval for operators of dams on the waterway.

He had a long association with church music, liturgy and governance, beginning as organist at Good Shepherd in Houlton in 1959. For the next 40 years, he alternately shared this ministry with his good friend, Larry Hutchinson. At Good Shepherd, he also served his congregation as lector, lay reader, Eucharistic minister, vestryman and senior warden. He was also a member of the Diocesan Council of the Episcopal Diocese of Maine, as an appointee of the Bishop. He was briefly organist and/or choir director at St. Paul’s (Fort Fairfield), St. Athanasius (Rumford), St. Barnabas (Rumford) and St. James (Old Town).

He assisted with the music program at St. Mary of the Visitation in Houlton in the early 1960s; was recalled to ministry as music director and organist in 1999; and continued with great joy until his final illness. He was particularly touched by the nurture and support from this faith community as his health failed from metastatic bladder cancer.

He is survived by his devoted companion and partner of 18 years, Tim Lewit of Orient, whom he adored; by Tim’s parents, Lorna and John Child of Carthage, and Theodore Lewit of Auburn; by Tim’s extended family; by paternal aunts, Elizabeth McConnell, and Edith Weber, both of Augusta; by maternal uncle, J. Philip Boyne of Loma Linda, Calif.; by a special aunt by marriage, Frances Boyne Marsh of Corpus Christi, Texas; and by close friends, Ron Leonard of Mapleton, and Harry Gordon of Bangor.

He was predeceased by his parents; by a paternal aunt, Leah (Dickinson) Magurn; and by a maternal uncle, Charles Boyne of Richland, Wash.