Jacqueline Mae Sorenson

The following are her own words.

My soul goes on with God and I will be buried alongside my parents in South Portland. I was born on April 29, 1929, at 3 p.m., on a sunny day.

I was born to my wonderful parents, my father George Lloyd Barstow Sr. and my mother Lillian May (Griffin) Barstow, on the corner of 387 Sawyer St. and Barstow Street, in a small rose-covered home, with a large porch on the front, large gardens out back, and a couple of acres on the side of the garage. On the Barstow Street side were two huge old blossoming apple trees each spring. Theodore Stevens M.D delivered me.

I was watching tiny green garter snakes one morning on my way to Roosevelt Elementary School, which made me late. The principle was not as fascinated about the snakes as I was so I was punished with a very long ruler…I disliked school ever since, I left Roosevelt and took myself to Henley School.

I studied the music of Hawaiian guitar. I skated on Old Joe's Pond, where local Army men tied up my skates. My parents moved the family to Gorham's White Rock Farm on Barstow Road. There I rode my pony, practiced shooting my single shot 22 gun, fished, walked in the woods and rode my new bike. I learned to be an avid hiker of mountains, and avid reader of books. I wrote my first poem when I was about nine or 10.

On my father and mother's farm, they hired farm hands to do many kinds of work. Some was for war work, crops, and we had milk cows. My father sold tens of thousands of fruit trees as well as flowering bushes and ornamental trees to farms along with his salesmen and women during the war from Michigan to South Carolina, along the East Coast and into Canada.

I studied Mezzo soprano voice, music and piano. I sang for radio, high school Christmas programs, weddings and our churches every now and then. I slowly became a published poet as well as an author of my first book, “Sammy Skunk and His Midnight Adventure.” I was married to Richard Henry Sorenson in Dade County, Miami, Fla. We came back to Maine to live on Barstow Road in a cabin, then into a new home.

We had three beloved children, a son and two daughters. We took our children to church at the Gorham Congregational on Fort Hill Road. Mr. Sørenson was a brick mason, then a history teacher. We had a large vegetable garden, which I canned and froze for our family of five. We raised one piggy each year, and had some chickens until I saw a white rat in the grain. I worked off and on as a PBX telephone operator; mainly I was a stay at home wife and mother, who gardened.

I am predeceased by my parents, George L. Barstow Sr. and Lillian M. Barstow; my half brother, Melvin A. Heath, and my half sister, Marion H. Heath Adams. I am leaving my three children in good health: Aaron George Sørenson and his wife Patti Marie Sørenson, Shelley Arn Sørenson Nickerson and her husband William Nickerson, and Colleen Sørenson Peterson Woods and her husband Franklyn Woods; my sister, Ann Louise Barstow Allen Lange of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., and my younger brother George Lloyd Barstow Jr., now of Portland. My grandchildren are Aaron E. Miller and his son Brady Edward, who live in Bonita Springs, Fla., my grandson, David R. Peterson and his wife Tracie LeBlanc Peterson, and their baby girl Araia Belle of Casco, and my granddaughter, Holly Peterson Dodge and husband Joshua Dodge, and their baby boy Elliot David, who live in Newton, Mass. I have nieces and nephews who I can count on my two hands.