MECHANIC FALLS – With a solid 60 years of municipal service between them, Bill and Gloria Diehl are retiring from elective office this week.

Their service ends Saturday, June 30.

“Bill and Gloria are prime examples of civic volunteers. Bill’s knowledge of town function has been a remarkable resource for me,” Town Manager John Hawley said. “You won’t find two more active people in town affairs.”

A mainstay of the Town Council since 1984, Bill Diehl is especially pleased with developments in two major areas: town water and trash disposal.

Shifting the source for town water from Waterhouse Brook to a drilled well off Winterbrook Road and subsequently adding a second storage tank on Pigeon Hill significantly improved the town’s development potential, he said.

“Bypassing the brook was a great move, no more periods of brown water, and then the new tank really opens up the area out by routes 11 and 26. I expect eventually a water line down Route 26 will help develop Poland, as well,” he said.

Efforts to streamline operations at the transfer station will continue to improve the town’s bottom line.

“The guys are doing a real good job up there. Recycling, and not paying to have stuff going into the waste stream, winds up saving us money – and for the long run, it’s the right thing to do,” Bill said.

His service to the town began in 1976 when he was appointed to the Planning Board, on which he served until moving to the Town Council.

Gloria is leaving her position as sewer district trustee after nearly eight years. Her service began in 1978 when she was appointed to a three-year term on the Budget Committee. Both have served on numerous volunteer boards throughout the past three decades.

Time for travel

Gloria grew up in Mechanic Falls where zoning was fairly nonexistent. Her father, Al Emery, kept horses right in the downtown.

“It was a quaint community. My father used to jog his horses, harness horses, right down the middle of Lewiston Street. There was a dirt strip there where they took up the tracks of the old electric cars that ran into Auburn,” Gloria said, noting that her father also used horses to plow the sidewalks.

It was, in good part, her fondness for old stories that brought her back year after year for 27 years, to serve as election clerk.

Elections are social events.

“I enjoy talking with people of the town, sometimes seeing people I haven’t seen in years. And now, its the kids of people I knew,” Gloria said.

Bill, a Lewiston native who moved to Mechanic Falls after four years in the U.S. Navy, has retired from Pioneer Plastics after 33 years. He and Gloria decided to pass on the demands of the monthly (at least) board meetings in favor of travel time. They have four grown and well-scattered children to visit: Valerie in Millinocket, Peter in Florida, Kevin in Arizona and Heidi in Wisconsin, plus grandchildren.

But they’re not giving up all of their community efforts.

“It’s just the elective offices that are done, I’m going to continue on as an election clerk,” Gloria said.

And there’s helping with senior meals at the American Legion and the Dwinal Chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star, Tyrian Masonic Lodge and, for both, the VFW Post 1603 in Auburn, to keep them around at least some of the time.

“But it does get to where you just get tired of those winters,” Bill said.