By Terry Karkos,Staff Writer

BETHEL – Named after a character in a Zane Grey novel, Nesta Littlefield of Bethel will say goodbye today to the job she’s had for nearly 30 years.

As Bethel’s bookkeeper since 1977, Littlefield, 68, has outlasted five town managers doing what she loves to do – crunch numbers.

“I didn’t take bookkeeping in high school, but I did enjoy numbers. Math was my favorite subject, that and music,” she said Wednesday afternoon.

It was necessity, and the federal Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of the 1970s, that prompted her to apply for an office clerk’s position in January 1977.

Littlefield’s self-employed husband, Richard, a Korean War veteran, had been disabled three years earlier and was undergoing knee operations, she said. At the time, of their five children, two were in college, two were in high school and one was in grammar school.

“We didn’t have a lot of income, and it was difficult then. They say, Life begins at 40,’ and I was 40 when I started working here, so that was a complete change for me because I didn’t really work,” she said.

“I was busy raising the kids, playing the piano and organ for church choirs, and was the bookkeeper for my husband’s plumbing and heating business,” she said.

When Bethel’s bookkeeper, Linda M. Sharp, resigned on Oct. 1, 1977, Littlefield, a Gould Academy graduate, took over.

“It was a godsend to us when I started here, and they kept me. I learned a lot about running a municipality and keeping it solvent,” she said.

Town Manager Scott Cole, the sixth town manager Littlefield has worked with, recognized the bookkeeper’s “amazing contribution” to Bethel for the past 28 years at last month’s annual town meeting.

“From my own 15 years in municipal work, I can attest to townspeople that there is an enormous amount of unseen time, dedication, perseverance, organization, intelligence, and most important, integrity, required to assemble accurate financial information for consideration by the voters,” Cole said.

“You have truly delivered the product for town meeting, and that product has been good.

“Beyond that, for many years, you have been the underpinning of a system that keeps the grass cut, the snow plowed, the ditches ditched, the firetrucks fueled, the garbage hauled, and a thousand other things that just sort of happen, season to season, and year to year,” he said.

“A foundation is, for the most part, unseen. Yet, it is what allows the greatest structures to remain standing. Nesta, you have truly been the foundation of government in Bethel, Maine, and it is most appreciated,” Cole added.

That “foundation” said the time had come to step down.

“I’m tired,” said the soft-spoken woman, described by co-workers as motherly, nurturing, confident and reliable.

She and her husband, who celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary three weeks ago, are now looking forward to “spending leisure time together doing things we like to do,” Nesta Littlefield said.

That includes working their small apple orchard, camping, gardening, and visiting grandchildren.

Littlefield, who still plays the piano and organ every Sunday at West Bethel Union Church, also wants to resume sewing, and Eastern Star Grange work.

“I also want to get up in the mornings and just walk. I haven’t had the time to do that,” she said.