NORWAY — Ed Damon is being remembered as a generous, hardworking and multi-talented man whose Main Street barbershop became an institution.

Damon, 81, passed away Nov. 15, leaving a void for those who knew him at the shop, on the dance floor and along the snowmobile trails.

He began barbering in the corner of a pool hall below Beal’s Hotel on Main Street in the 1950s. In 1958, he set up shop at 444 Main St., where he operated Ed’s Barber Shop for nearly 60 years.

Norway Town Manager David Holt said he got his hair cut by Damon “when I was about 10 or 12 years old.”

“I was a quiet and shy young man, and he was anything but quiet or shy,” Holt said. “It was quite an experience to go in there and listen to him fool around. It really was quite something.”

Since becoming town manager, Holt said he watched Damon continue his involvement in the community, including tending the Norway Trackers Snowmobile Club’s grant-writing program.

“He’s a very diligent type of person,” Holt said. “He filled in every space and put a dot on every ‘i.’ He did a great job representing his town.”

As skilled as Damon was at cutting hair and writing grants, he also had another skill, Lee Dassler, executive director of the Western Foothills Land Trust, said. It was dancing.

“He and his wife were extraordinary dancers,” she said. “They came to one or two of (our) Snowshoe Festivals in February, and they were our own little Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.”

Dassler said Ed and Beverly would sometimes split up in the middle of a dance to seek out struggling dancers who needed help with some moves.

“Their generation learned to dance in a way that newer generations never learned,” Dassler said. “In fact, I had heard that they actually met at a dance.”

She said Damon was “radiant,” and always had a “smile and a glint in his eye.”

“He was a generous, wonderful, warm soul,” Dassler continued. “I used to love walking across the street to get a coffee at Cafe Nomad, and he was already in his shop, making the world a more beautiful and handsome place as he worked on people’s haircuts. I was so saddened to hear that he passed away.”

Andrea Burns, a board member with Norway Downtown, said Damon has “had a steady Main Street presence,” to the point where his business is “virtually a landmark.”

“Ed has been a source of history and information for Norway Downtown through the years,” Burns said, adding that many viewed the shop as “welcoming and authentic.”

She said that in 2015 Downeast Magazine wrote a feature article listing Norway as one of the best places to live in Maine. The magazine turned to Damon for an interview, citing him as an example of the prosperity of independent businesses in Norway.

In the days following his death, the Facebook page of Ed’s Barber Shop was inundated with messages from residents and former customers, with many calling Damon a “wonderful man” and lamenting the loss of “an institution in Norway.”

mdaigle@sunmediagroup.net