Lydia Mailhot

LYDIA grew up in Waterboro, Maine, the fourth child and first girl in a family of six children. Her father, Percy Abbott, was the local doctor in the rural farming community. He received his patients in his office in their home if he wasn’t out doing home visits. His wife, Clara, was a nurse by profession, but also his secretary, receptionist, pharmacist, mother of an ever-growing family, and farmer’s wife; for although Percy was a doctor, his passion was farming. If his patients were unable to pay in cash, he would accept payment in farmwork and feed them at his table at noon. Sometimes there would be as many as 17 around the table and Clara cooked for them all. As the three older boys were sent out into the fields or the barn to do chores, Lydia’s mother was happy to have someone to help in the kitchen. Lydia learned early on that life was about giving and not “about you”.One of her oft repeated sayings was “when you see your duty, you do it.”—there must have been a lot of that in her household as she was growing up.

Lydia loved school. She graduated Valedictorian of her class of seven students from the Waterboro school. She continued her education at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where she majored in Latin—a far cry from anything that had to do with daily life in her hometown of Waterboro. Helen, her younger sister, tells of how her father had to slaughter a pig to pay for her tuition. Lydia also had a job waitressing in the Colby diningroom and boarded with a family in town to keep expenses down. While at Colby her extracurricular activities included the Pan Hellenic Council, the Classical Club and the Chapel Committee.

Her first teaching position was in Buxton, Maine. She went on to teach at Lexington High School in Massachusetts. (Perhaps in Acton, too.) Far from home, but there was the Boston and Maine Railroad, and after several years... a young soldier, home from the war who would travel in his car from Boston to Maine on weekends to stay at his sister’s lakeside cottage. His name was Otis, a handsome, gregarious, fun-loving man who must have made the sparks fly. They were married in 1951 and moved to a one-room apartment in Waltham. Many years later, when they were both residents at Blueberry Hill, she asked him: “Do you remember our love nest?”; and they reminisced about that apartment in Waltham.

With a second child on the way two years later, Lydia and Otis moved to Horse Pond Road in Sudbury where they would reside for the next fifty years. She was a dedicated wife and mother, and although the couple struggled financially, Lydia enriched her family with her strong set of values, her intelligence, her generosity and kindness, and her simple love of life. She never tired of reading to her three girls and she loved to sing—a car ride was seldom without song. Meals were simple, but always punctual and always with homemade dessert. Sunday dinners were special as often we would have a guest, whether grandmother, aunt , uncle, or one of her former teaching colleagues, college friends, and even the principal of the Waterboro School. Two times a week she reserved for herself: Sunday mornings when Otis took the girls to Catholic church, and Monday evenings which was for Bridge .

Lydia returned to teaching when Carol was near school age, first as a substitute and then as a Latin and English teacher at Lincoln-Sudbury High School. Upon her retirement twenty years later, one of her colleagues summed her up this way: “She’s the glue that holds the department together. She’s a friend to all. She feeds us tea and sympathy. I haven’t ever heard her say an unkind word—she’s a rarity, a jewel. As a grammarian, she’s our ‘higher authority’.” This anecdote reflects how at least one student felt about her: Several years after her retirement, Lydia answered a knock at the door. One of her students from several years before had come to express her gratitude to her for having helped her through a hard year, and also to introduce her to her baby girl. She had named her “Lydia”. She was supportive of her students not only in the classroom, but would take joy in attending their musicals, theatrical productions, basketball games, etc.

Lydia was never profuse in her advice, but she had a few little sayings that would reverberate gently like a mantra forever and ever in the heart and soul of whomever was receptive. Many a new teacher would remember her saying, “Let THEM (meaning the students) do the work.” Another: “Just do the best you can. That’s all you can do.”

Her all time favorite classroom books: The Good Earth, My Antonia, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Yearling.