OXFORD – A standing-room-only crowd elected Lois Pike as selectman by four votes over Caldwell Jackson at Thursday’s special town meeting.

The 55-51 vote was read after ballot clerks counted, and then recounted, the blue slips of paper in the secret ballot.

“That was close,” said Pike, a former selectman who lost in her last two tries for a board seat after serving one term from 1998 to 2001. Both of those losses were also by narrow votes.

Pike will fill the eight months remaining in the term of Mike Thompson, who quit the board last month in anger over residents’ criticism of the board’s choice of a new town manager.

Jackson had been asked by some residents to serve after Thompson quit. He served from 1993 to 2002, including three years as chairman of the board.

Resident Adrien Giroux said after the vote that a lot of phone calls were made to bring out the vote for Pike. He also wrote a letter to the editor, printed in the local weekly, that characterized Jackson as not “listening to the will of the people who elected him” when he served on the board.

Jackson left the meeting after the election, along with most of the other residents. Pike took her place at the board table as the regular selectman’s meeting got under way.

“Do any of the selectmen have a comment … or the select board?” asked Chairman Floyd Thayer, deferring to Pike’s presence on the formerly all-male board.

Pike said the term “selectman” would do, saying it referred to a term of office.

“Oh, right. We’ve been through this before,” Thayer said.

Tom Cushman announced that the Welchville dam gates will be opened starting Friday, which will lower the water levels in Whitney and Hogan ponds. It is an annual drawdown.