PORTLAND – Ralph E. Lowell, 82, of North Hill Road, Buckfield, died Sunday, June 24, at Maine Medical Center.

He was born on Feb. 17, 1925, a son of John and Ruth (Ellingwood) Lowell. He lived his entire life within two miles of his birthplace. He attended Buckfield schools and enlisted in the Navy in 1944, serving on a destroyer escort in both the Atlantic and Pacific during World War II. His was among the first convoys to enter the Mediterranean.

He returned home and married Edith A. Gammon. After having his portable long lumber mill at several sites, he set up permanently on North Hill in 1954, founding R.E. Lowell Lumber. He ran the mill seasonally, sawing logs in the spring that had been cut in the winter. He cut and trucked wood in winter, and was a foreman for a state road building crew during the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the 1950s he also operated a small dairy farm, and in the 1960s, after most of the cows had been sold, he set out a 20 acre apple orchard.

By the mid-1970s, his lumber business had become a year-round concern. Over the next 20 years, along with his two sons and two of his daughters, he built R.E. Lowell Lumber into an employer of more than 20 people in its saw and planer mill and retail building supply operations. His was not a behind the desk management style; he worked hand-in-hand with his employees, expecting hard work from himself as well as others.

At heart what he loved most was to see things grow, whether it was his family, his vegetables or his business. He was a prolific gardener; in the summer, no one left his place without an armload of vegetables or a few quarts of berries. In his 70s, after retiring from full-time management of the lumber business, he planted a blueberry patch which, when fully mature, will yield over 6,000 quarts per year.

A fine husbandman, he carefully shepherded all his projects so that they could be passed on to the nest generation. His home on North Hill sits under a canopy of tall maples that he planted, flanked by new saplings he set out through last year. He loved his grandchildren, and was always ready with a tease, a joke and a bearhug.

Always on the move, he loved spending time with his family and friends at his camp in the Jackman area. He explored the terrain tirelessly, happy to hike miles to a remote pond in the hope of bringing home a good string of trout. Whether pulling salmon from the rapids of Moose River, or checking his trap lines for fisher and mink, he loved the out-of-doors and wanted to share it with those he cared about.

He is survived by his wife, Edith (Gammon) Lowell, whom he married on March 6, 1948, of Buckfield; two sons, Elwood Lowell, and his wife, Gloria, of Buckfield and Dana Lowell, and his wife, Seri, of Topsham; five daughters, Edith Pepin, and her husband, Douglas, of Buckfield, Loraine Lowell of Portland, Judy Riley, and her husband, Robert “Bob,” of Saco, Elaine Nault, and her husband, Gary, of Virginia, and Rebecca Lowell of Buckfield; two brothers, Frank Lowell of Bethel and Howard Lowell of Harpswell; two sisters, Elsie Gammon and Charlotte Warren, both of Buckfield; 12 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

He was predeceased by one daughter, Natalie Lowell March 28, 2006; and two sisters, Julia Cooper and Dorothy Heikkinen.