Jacqueline Marie Maranda Dumas
RUMFORD — Jacqueline Marie Maranda Dumas left this world on Saturday, Dec. 12.
Jacquie was born in Rumford and was of French Canadian and Native Canadian decent. She graduated from Stephens High School and went on to proudly serve her country in World War II as a Navy Wave and also served as a member of the Army Reserve during the Korean conflict.
She married Paul R. Dumas Sr. in Rumford at the conclusion of WWII and had two sons, Marc Gerard and Paul Jr. She lived in the woods of northwestern Maine in the town of Coburn Gore, population 17, for many years after Paul Sr. retired from the peacetime Army to pursue his vocation of forestry engineer with Dumas Lumber Co.
While living in Coburn Gore, she wrote about life, nature, the woods, and her family in several books of poetry which she published in the 1970s and 1980s. She loved to paint and did so until her eyesight failed to the point, where she could no longer express her artistic intentions.
NOCTURNE TO A TEAR
No speech could pass
Your quiet lips.
Immobile hands
Could not respond
To the pressure
Of my palms.
I bent down to kiss
Your feverish brow
And tried to smile.
One warm tear
Slid slowly down
Your wrinkled cheek.
A good-bye
Without words.
During her life, she worked at Oxford Paper, was a translator and transcriptionist for the Department of the Navy in Washington, D.C., taught English to French speaking students in Quebec and was U.S. Post Mistress in Coburn Gore.
She was involved in numerous volunteer and charitable endeavors in the Gorham, N.H., area where she lived with her husband Paul in retirement. Most recently she was a resident at the Rumford Community Home, where she received loving and excellent care until the very end.
She was the last of her generation and is survived by three grandchildren, Desiree Dumas of California, Maia Lynn Dumas and Jarrod Paul Dumas, who both live in Maine; her son, Paul Jr. and her daughter-in-law, Cynthia Cummings Dumas, will miss the strength and faith that Jacquie always brought in times of family difficulty.
She was predeceased by her mother, Adeline Arsenault Maranda; her father, Napoleon Maranda; her sister, Lorraine Perry; her brother, Gerard J. Maranda; and her son, Marc Gerard Dumas.