BETHEL — The closing of the physical Bethel Citizen office marks the end of an era, said Danna Brown Nickerson, a member of the Brown family who owned and operated the newspaper for 57 years.

Her grandfather, Carl L. Brown, was owner and editor from 1927 until his passing in 1963. His son John then took the helm, joined by brothers Donald and Edwin, their mother Musa, and eventually their children. Together, the family kept the Citizen running until 1984, when it was sold.

Danna, along with her cousin Nancy Brown and Nancy’s mother Musa, recently reflected on life behind the scenes of the paper’s longtime home in the Cole Block building on Bethel’s Main Street.

Town, family hub

In the 1960s, the Bethel Citizen was the community hub. Children submitted weekly reports from area 4-H clubs. Older kids volunteered as interns. Nancy Brown recalls her own job as a Citizen proof reader helped her learn to love reading and writing. She said she and other children hung out regularly at the office, “My parents and uncles didn’t mind. Kids were always welcome at the Bethel Citizen.”

Her sisters, Laurie Brown Hickey and Rebecca Brown Crommett, helped proofread, too—sometimes from home. On Thursdays, the whole crew folded, labeled, and mailed the papers.

Thursday was publication day and was sacred.

“Nothing else could ever happen on that day,” Nancy said with a laugh.

Musa Swan Brown

Musa Swan Brown, now 97, originally of Locke’s Mills and a Gould Academy graduate, met her future husband Edwin Brown while working for veterinarian Dr. Greenleaf – whose office was in the basement of a Bethel funeral home on Vernon Street.

After marrying Edwin, Musa joined the Citizen staff, running the front office. She answered phones, wrote ads and news items, did the bookkeeping, and proofread the paper.

“She did just about everything except run the press,” said her daughter Nancy.

Musa recalled one particularly memorable obituary assignment. She visited the home of the deceased to gather details, and the widow shared an odd story: The night before her husband died, he had jumped out of bed at the sound of an ambulance.

“’I’ll be darned if the next day, he died,’” the widow told Musa. Then, she invited her to see him. “I didn’t want to say no,” Musa said, chuckling. “And there he was – naked in bed.”

Nancy Brown

Nancy was likely the Citizen’s first newsgirl. Every Thursday, a gaggle of neighborhood boys – including her classmates, Steve Hastings and Tom Davis – would wait outside the office on their bikes for the newspapers to roll off the press.

In 1962, at age 11, Nancy wanted her own route – but all the local ones were taken. Her father found her a delivery run along Route 26.

“Usually it was quite late after supper,” she recalled. “The paper cost seven cents. We earned two cents per delivery.”

One customer always tipped her a dime. “That just thrilled me,” Nancy said.

In time, she said, “there were other little women delivering papers, too.”

Danna Brown Nickerson

For the past 20 years, Danna Brown Nickerson has penned the Citizen’s Our Back Pages column, maintaining the family’s connection to the paper even after it changed hands – from Bernie Wideman to the Lewiston Sun Journal.

“The Bethel Citizen has always been an important part of my life,” she said. “I thought it was nice to be able to still have a connection to the Brown family in each issue, so when my uncle was unable to continue writing the column, I agreed to do it,”

Danna recalls the office vividly:

“Just inside the front door was a glass case filled with pens, pencils, paperclips. There was a tall shelf of cubbies stacked with editions of the paper. The back room, where all the printing was done, always felt dark and mysterious—belts running to the ceiling, a giant paper cutter, cases of type, and the table that held the forms for each page. It smelled of ink, hot lead, and smoke.”

She remembers the rumble of the big press shaking the building and the folder machine neatly trimming and folding each four-page sheet. One corner of the room held stacks of colored paper trimmings, which she loved to take home.

Job presses printed everything from invoices to Bethel Inn menus. In 1963, a Fairchild Scanagraver was added, allowing the paper to include more photos. By 1967, an offset press expanded their print work.

Still, the memories linger.

“The smells, sights, and sounds are long gone,” she said, “but they live on vividly in my memory. I’m glad I was born a Brown – and able to experience them.”