LEWISTON — As a teen, Brenda Fontaine worked hard. She pumped gas, sold Avon, modeled clothes at her mother’s home shopping parties and sanded cars at her father’s body shop.

She wanted to be a nurse out of high school in 1970, but the money wasn’t there for classes.

Instead, Fontaine married her husband, Claude, in 1971 and after their three girls arrived, ran a day care center to be home for them.

Five years later, she looked around and wondered what else there might be.

Claude suggested real estate.

She studied during naps and after the children’s bedtime. Fontaine found the career that fit, the one that would lead to a fleet of vehicles, to ads all over town, to accolades.

After passing licensing exams, “I was so excited, I wanted to shout on top of the rooftop,” Fontaine said. “At the time, I thought real estate was going to be this glamorous job.”

The first home she sold was a four-unit on Elm Street, to her cousin. Her first listing came from day care parents who wanted to sell their Lisbon Falls mobile home. 

“I knew I had found my passion,” Fontaine, 61, said. “One year (in the 1990s) my goal was to sell 100 houses in Lewiston-Auburn.”

She remembers Claude telling her, no way.

“You didn’t tell me I can’t do something,” she said.

So she and two assistants sold 102.

It’s not always a happy event to sell a house. Sometimes there’s been divorce, death or loss of a job.

“We have to be counselors, make it less stressful,” she said. She’s worked with clients through a short sale, only to have them come back and “buy again after they got back on their feet. It’s a good feeling. To be able to do that is very gratifying.”

Ten years after he suggested real estate to her, she suggested it to Claude.

“The first six months she fired me six times — since then, it’s been good,” he joked.

Their twin daughters, Melissa Field and Angie Larochelle, and youngest daughter, Crystal Bergeron, all work at the Fontaine office on Center Street, along with two sons-in-law.

For six months of the year, when they’re not on Tacoma Lake, the couple lives feet from Field, across the street from Bergeron and a mile away from Larochelle.

“Family first, always,” Fontaine said. “We agree to disagree — it usualy doesn’t last more than five minutes.”

Last week, she and Claude celebrated their 42nd wedding anniversary. On Friday, they’ll celebrate her 30th year in real estate.

Not so long ago, she said, the office got together to buy Powerball tickets and each staffer started daydreaming, what would they do if they won?

“I’m going, ‘Jeez, do you mean there would be no more Fontaine Team? I didn’t even want to win this,'” Fontaine said. “Isn’t that terrible? I love what I do.”

Know someone that everyone knows? Contact staff writer Kathryn Skelton at 689-2844 or kskelton@sunjournal.com