FARMINGTON — The community is remembering the efforts of Stan Kuklinski to help start a tennis program at Mt. Blue High School.

He is also being remembered as a supportive husband to Maine Attorney General Janet Mills, and devoted father and grandfather.

Kuklinski passed away Wednesday after facing several health challenges in the last few years and a stroke last fall, his brother-in-law Paul Mills said.

“He faced them with courage and optimism,” Mills said. “He was always positive and looked on the good side.”

He faced other challenges in life with courage, including the loss of his first wife. He became a widower with five daughters ages 5 to 19, Mills said.

“He was devoted to his daughters and supportive of Janet’s accomplishments,” he said. “He was a good brother to all of us. We’ll miss him.”

A developer and businessman, Kuklinski was also internationally recognized for his tennis performance, Mills said.

Prior to his marriage to Mills and their move to Wilton, he owned and was a professional instructor at the Central Maine Racquet Club and Andy Valley Racquet Club in Lewiston.

“Stan owned Central Maine tennis,” Russell Dillingham, a tennis enthusiast who lives in Lewiston, said.

Kuklinski ran the club for most of a decade, getting to know just about everybody involved in the sport.

“He was a very knowledgeable guy,” said Richard Courtemanche, who used to play either against Kuklinski or with him in a game of doubles. “He was a tennis bum. A good player.”

Mills was district attorney working in Auburn when the couple met and married 29 years ago.

Kuklinski continued teaching tennis locally and served as the coach for the boys’ tennis program at Mt. Blue High School for eight years, Judy Upham, girls’ tennis coach, said.

When each had a daughter in high school, they went to the school board in 1997 with a plan for a tennis program, she said. The plan was not well organized and was not accepted, she added.

A couple years after their daughters graduated, someone else got the board to accept the program.

“He was the face of tennis for the school district,” said Michael Cormier, RSU 9 superintendent at the time the program started. “Kuklinski and Upham were both passionate about tennis and had many successful seasons.”

“Kuklinski loved teaching tennis,” Upham said. “He had a good rapport with the kids.”

He was able to attend the dedication of the new tennis courts on the Mt. Blue campus in May, she said. 

“When his former players approached him, his eyes lit up,” she said.

He taught them how to do good strokes — all by the book. He shared knowledge about teaching that he gleaned from United States Tennis Association conventions with Upham, she said.

“He was a very encouraging and helpful coach,” she said. “He was not a dictator, nor a yeller. He’d go over the roster and call his captains over to ask them ‘what do you think about this?’.”

A neighbor and friend to Mills and Kuklinski, Margaret Gould Wescott realizes the foresight he had.

“I really respect the energy it took to start the tennis program at Mt. Blue,” she said. “It serves a lot of kids.”

She also remembers the competent businessman, good storyteller and good neighbors they both are, she said.

“He was a wonderful man, father,” Renee Blanchet said. “He was really engaged in his daughters’ lives.”

Growing up in Wilton, Blanchet and his daughter, Tammy, became friends, she said.

He was well known in Farmington in those early years and was often seen at the tennis courts. She remembers seeing him often in his “tennis duds,” she said.

Maybe his daughters and Janet helped influence how supportive he was of the abilities of women in society, Paul Mills said.

Active in the Farmington Rotary Club, Kuklinski sponsored Janet Mills’ membership in the club in 1987. She was one of the first female members of Rotary in Maine, he said.

A construction supervisor in New York before he came to Maine in the late 1970s, Kuklinski worked in land development and construction enterprises after selling the clubs in Lewiston, Mills said.

He also served on the state Boxing Commission and the Maine Harness Racing Commission, he added.

abryant@sunjournal.com

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