LEWISTON — At Bates Manufacturing, William “Bud” Lewis tied together the power systems for the Bates, Androscoggin and Hill mills to save $50,000 a year on the electric bill. He twice navigated cave-ins, brick crumbling under the wear of rushing canal water. On quieter days, he oversaw new construction, shipping and the installation of new weaving machines.

He spent nearly a half-century as chief engineer of Bates Manufacturing, based out of the Bates Mill Complex.

He had his hands full. And he loved it.

“You can’t imagine what a wonderful thing it was back in the ’40s,” said Lewis, 100. “The biggest manufacturing concern in the state of Maine, the biggest moneymaker in the state of Maine.”

When he started in the engineering department in 1949, he estimates that companywide, between the three mills here, one in Augusta and one in Saco, there were about 6,000 employees.

“I stuck with them until there were less than 100 employees and it closed,” he said.

He and his wife, Joyce, raised three children in Auburn. Even as the company shrank, Lewis did not want to leave.

“I’ve led a charmed life — I don’t know why, but I have,” he said.

Lewis grew up in Portland. His parents had two children, and his older brother gave Lewis his lifelong nickname the day he was born.

“He was 5 1/2 years old,” Lewis said. “He came in to see his mother and new baby, he said, ‘Oh, he looks just like a little bud.’ I became Bud immediately.”

Lewis studied mechanical engineering at Yale University and that is also how he met Joyce.

“She was my college roommate’s girlfriend,” Lewis said.

Several years after graduation, he found himself on the planning committee for a dance celebrating veterans when another organizer told him he would need to bring a date.

“I called up Burt and I said, ‘Would you mind if I asked Joyce to go to the dance with me?'” Lewis said. “And he said, ‘Be my guest.’ He never had another date with her.”

Joyce represented Auburn in the Maine Legislature from 1973 to 1980. Their daughter, Harriett, served in the seat after, from 1981 to 1984.

Lewis said he and his wife were friendly with the Snowes — Peter and Olympia.

When Peter, a fellow state legislator, died suddenly in 1973, “My wife and other friends . . . said, ‘Olympia, you should run for Peter’s seat,’ which she did, and she won it,” Lewis said.

The rest is Maine history.

He and Joyce were married for 52 years when she died in 2000. About that same year, Bates Manufacturing officially closed.

Lewis started with the company in 1949, first hired in the engineering department.

“(It was) in its heyday when I came here in ’49, and it stayed that way until about 1956,” he said. “That’s when an out-of-state management bought all the stock and took over. It was an unfriendly stock takeover.”

He points to that as the start of five decades of decline. After three years at the Edwards Mill in Augusta, Lewis in about 1954 was named chief engineer for all of the company’s mills.

“Lewiston was a large, important textile center, and at the same time Auburn was a shoe center, so it was a thriving industrial area,” Lewis said.

“As the mill shrank, I took on more jobs. Originally, it was engineering and then I took on traffic — shipping, trucks. I was a jack of all trades at the end, loving it.”

He retired in 1985, but stayed on as a consultant until 2000, and “they didn’t replace me, so still the chief engineer,” he said.

Back in 2008, when the city debated the future of Bates Mill No. 5, Lewis weighed in to knock it down. He still stands by that and calls it “the horrendous saw tooth building.” It has been great seeing the rest of the complex come back to life, he said. He is interested to see what happens to Mill No. 5.

Lewis turned 100 in February and threw a “big blowout” at Schooner Estates in Auburn, where he has lived in an independent living apartment for four years.

“I invited everyone,” he said. “All of Schooner and everyone else I could think of.”

He walks the complex for exercise, inside and out. Other than being active, the secret to hitting 100?

“No onions, that’s what I tell them,” Lewis said, laughing. “I hate onions.”

He still drives and can be seen around town behind the wheel of his Volkswagen Passat with a two-digit license plate, 48, his mother’s original plate.

People You Know is a regular feature on faces in the community. Know someone we ought to feature? Contact staff writer Kathryn Skelton at (207) 689-2844 or kskelton@sunjournal.com.

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