KINGFIELD – For First Selectman John Dill, civil service started out with a desire to help his kids.
Now, 38 years after he and wife, Judy, moved to Kingfield, Dill has a lengthy track record, from starting a Farm Team with Neal McCurdy to teach their sons the ins and outs of baseball before they were eligible to play Little League, to joining a group of Kingfield parents trying to restart the ski program, to serving on the library board and working as treasurer of the Water District.
At Saturday’s annual town meeting, he was elected to his fourth term as selectman, a job he loves because “I enjoy seeing how the town operates and I enjoy meeting people.”
Prior to working full-time in the Town Office, Dill worked as an accountant, following in his father’s footsteps. “I can’t paint. I don’t write well. But I can add and subtract,” Dill said with a laugh in a recent interview.
Dill’s quick sense of humor may have come from the “terrific” childhood he enjoyed growing up in Houlton. His parents had a great sense of humor, he said. “I was always outside doing something. Houlton was almost the center of the universe.”
He met Judy when he was 21 and married her two years later. They enjoy traveling together, Dill said, and recently went on a Caribbean cruise.
“It’s nice to see people all dressed up,” he said. “Used to be when you went to One Stanley (restaurant), you had to wear a coat and tie.”
He said he’s had a nice, happy life, aside from a few major bumps in the road. Once, when he was “just a wee child of 12 or 13,” he was hit by a car with failed brakes. He fractured his skull and was in a coma for nearly 12 hours. It took him a year to recuperate. He suffered a heart attack in 1991, and says if he’d known he would “live this long” he would have taken better care of himself growing up.
Much of what he and Judy did in years past centered around their two sons, John and Jim. “We followed our kids and supported the things they did,” he said. In son John’s case, that meant flying to Oahu, Hawaii, in 1992, to take care of him when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. The treatment lasted “seven months and seven days.”
“It was expensive,” he said. “We thought we were going to be gone a couple of weeksWe just went.” For the first three weeks they lived in a hotel, then they brought their son to live on a friend’s sailboat for another three. They eventually found a rental house to live in for the rest of their son’s chemotherapy, and while Judy spent time on the beach, Dill, who hates the beach, spent hours reading.
“We spent a fair amount of time in the hospital, sitting and waiting, waiting and sitting, sleeping,” he said. The three played hearts so often they ruined three decks of cards.
When it was all over, the younger Dill was healthy and has been ever since.
Overall, the elder Dill said, “I’ve lived a fairly quiet life.”
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