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Jeff Dow
Jeff Dow knows how to tell a story.
He leaps up from his chair during his birthday dinner and his voice gets louder. His brown eyes grow wide and big.
“So, I’ve got the pig by his back foot and all of sudden he’s all…” Jeff starts pounding on his own chest with his right hand. “Boom. Boom. Boom. Like a machine gun with his foot, just smashing into my chest. I just about fell over. No. I did fall over.”
He finishes the story, sits back down and cuts up his ham.
Everyone at the table is laughing.
That should be enough to make Jeff my hero, that ability to make people roar with laughter, to snarf water out their nose, to drop their forks and just smile.
But Jeff Dow is more than that.
Jeff is an accountant. Forget your ideas of accountants. There’s not a pocket protector in sight when you talk to Jeff and he’s just as comfortable talking about boats, or guns, or clearing land, or chainsaw buying as he is talking about numbers.
Jeff is more than that, too.
One of my favorite memories of Jeff is during a cross-country race at Whitney Field in Ellsworth. All the runners were trucking in, having made it through the three-mile course. Lacey, Jeff’s daughter, was a brilliant runner, fast, determined, but she’d been battling a leg injury. All the Ellsworth runners were zipping to the finish line, but Lacey? Lacey wasn’t there.
Jeff set out looking for her, jogging across the large field full of spectators, heading to the woods.
“Have you seen Lacey?” he’d ask people. “Have you seen Lacey?”
He found her in pain, crying. Lacey’s a tough girl, a beautiful girl, but she was hurting. Jeff lifted her up and carried her in his arms all the way back to the big field. She clutched her dad’s neck, hid her face in his chest and just held on.
Sometimes I think that’s what we all do with Jeff: We just hold on.
His wife, Alice Dow? She’s the same way. You need someone to help you figure out how to hem a medieval costume for the seventh-grade medieval fair at the absolute last minute? Ask Alice. Don’t know how to sauté Brussels sprouts? Ask Alice.
You can bet Jeff does.
Every weekday morning Jeff Dow has breakfast at Sylvia’s, talking, listening, caring. People need a favor? Jeff’s the one who does it. Jeff and his son, Cam, have cleaned more trees from the back trails at Woodlawn Museum than people can imagine. He was also the board chair at Maine Coast Memorial Hospital, volunteering countless hours trying to ensure the hospital ran smoothly. But it’s more than high-powered volunteering that makes Jeff the man he is.
You need a guy to haul your Subaru out of a ditch? That’s Jeff. You need someone to haul your cow manure? That’s Jeff. You need someone to tell you a good story? That’s Jeff.
He’s a man with heart.
He’s a man who cares about people, not just their finances, but also their families, their lives, their children. That caring extends to this community.
He is easily one of Ellsworth’s greatest heroes.