BANGOR (AP) – A Maine woman who drew national attention after revealing she spotted two Nazi spies after they arrived by U-boat on the Down East coast in 1944 has died at the age of 91. Mary Forni, of Hancock, died Dec. 16, a town official said.

Forni recalled her sighting in a 2001 story in the Bangor Daily News. She reported that on Nov. 29, 1944, she saw the two men on the side of a rural road as she drove home from a card game on Hancock Point peninsula.

Forni called a friend, who was the wife of then-Deputy Sheriff Dana Hodgkins. Forni and her 17-year-old son Harvard, who also reported seeing the strangers, were later questioned by authorities.

The two men, who according to published reports were trained in the use of explosives and spy cameras in German spy school, are believed to have rowed ashore from the submarine. One of the men, William Colepaugh, was born in Connecticut and became an admirer of the Third Reich.

Colepaugh had been recruited to help the other agent, Erich Gimpel, set up an intelligence-gathering operation in New York City.

In January 1945, then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover announced the capture of the two men as spies in New York City.

Richard Gay of Blue Hill, a retired National Security Agency and CIA official who has written a book that tells about the incident, said Forni and her friend Hodgkins were the first to sound the alarm that the Germans had landed, “and it was their alert that launched the FBI dragnet.”

“They are New England patriots, no less than Paul Revere, and deserve full credit for their place in Maine and U.S. history,” said Gay, who attended a 2004 event celebrating the 60th anniversary of the U-boat landing. He said similar spy operations came to light in other states, including Florida and Long Island, N.Y.

He described Forni as “a feisty woman with a quick wit and a keen sense of humor.”

A memorial service is scheduled for Jan. 12 at the Hancock Congregational Church. This summer, Gay plans to dedicate a plaque commemorating the event. It will be placed in Bar Harbor, a tourist town where more people will be able to see it than in Hancock.