George Lehigh, a popular Eastport educator, beloved father, and committed public citizen, passed away on October 1, 2022, in Biddeford with his family close. He was 94 and had been in declining health for several months.
George taught English for many years at Shead Memorial High School, where many students considered him a favorite teacher, one who sparked in them a lifelong love of reading and literature.
The second of Glenn and Helen Bartholomew Lehigh's three children, George was born in Watertown, NY on December 29, 1927, and raised in Gouverneur, a dairy-farming river community in northern New York. An industrious kid by necessity, he started earning pocket money at age eight by selling pussywillows, dandelion greens, and scrap metal, and returning bottles to the drug store to pay for things like the Saturday western matinee at the local movie theater (Gralyn Theatre). When he was older he sold snow shoveling contracts for $5 a season, and worked as a farmhand on the Overackers Farm during the summer and at Mr. Toon's shoe repair shop during the school year. As a high schooler, he was on the payroll at Kinney's Drug Store. His book-worthy boyhood with his brothers, Glen and Alan, and his best buddies (Bill Scozzafava, John Scozzafava, and Don Foster) was one grand adventure, he said, and he wished every boy could have reveled in the freedom of small town America.
He enlisted in the Army at age 17, and was called up in March 1946 to report to Fort Benning, Georgia. He was back home in 1948, attending St. Lawrence University and mucking underground for St. Joe Lead at night. After earning his bachelor's and master's degrees, he began his professional career at North Syracuse Junior High School teaching English. Ten jobs (mostly in education) and nearly twenty years later, after living in Dallas, TX, Cortland, Hermon, Dryden, and Potsdam, NY, Deer Isle, ME, Port Orchard, WA and Coeur d'Alene, ID, George and his wife, Bobbie, and their four children moved to Eastport.
Determined opponents of the Pittston Company's hope to site an oil refinery in Eastport, he and Bobbie played important roles in the fight to defeat that plan. In fact, the lawsuit that finally forced the Pittston Company to abandon its 250,000-barrel-a-day oil-refinery scheme was filed in George's name as George Lehigh et al vs. The Pittston Company.
He taught English at SMHS and then served as principal. A major difference in opinion with the superintendent caused him to resign in protest in 1983. George spent the final six years of his career at WCVTI, sharing administrative duties with Director Ron Renaud, who became a close friend. An earlier bout with cancer led him to take early retirement because he and Bobbie, also a cancer survivor, wanted to get out on the road and see what was happening in the U.S. During his retirement he 'shunpiked' across the country several times, fished, gardened, made prize-winning home brew, traveled to Iceland for the second time, wrote long letters to his family and friends, and read. He loved rowing his Peapod, built at WCVTI's Boat School, off Eastport's waterfront.
Devoted to Eastport, he served on the city council and various city boards and committees.
George will be missed by his immediate and extended family, countless former students, friends and South End neighbors who were always welcome to share a beer, a piece of pie, camaraderie, conversation and laughter in the Lehigh kitchen.
George is survived by his wife of 67 years, Bobbie Lehigh (Biddeford ME); daughter, Holly Lehigh and husband, Jeff Davis (Hermon NY), son, Scot Lehigh and wife, Marcia Crumley (Cape Elizabeth ME); son, Brett Lehigh and grandson, Kyle Johns (Pittsburgh PA); daughter, Kim and husband, Harold Crabill (Biddeford ME); granddaughter, Maren and husband, Tyler Madison (Leominster, MA); granddaughter, Anna Crabill (Portland ME); grandson, Steve Lehigh and partner, Nicole Davis and Steve's sons, Jan and George (SLC UT). George will also be remembered by six nieces and two nephews.
His family is very grateful for the care and relief that Hospice of Southern Maine provided in the last three weeks of George's life.
There will be a get-together to remember and celebrate George in Eastport next spring. The George Lehigh Memorial Scholarship will support Shead students pursuing teaching or environmental studies in hopes that they, too, can contribute to the way of life that George found so meaningful in small towns. Anyone wishing to donate can visit gofundme.com/GeorgeLehigh or send a donation to Kim Crabill, 6 Cranberry Lane, Biddeford, ME 04005.
