In the days when Richard “Dickie” Spofford was Boothbay’s fire chief, the firefighters under his command would refer to him in the reverential tones sailors might use for a particularly effective captain.

It is not so much what is said, but how it is said: the voice drops in volume, a spare few words are uttered – rarely is a full sentence necessary, and everyone in earshot nods solemnly, as if to say, “Yes, of course!”

It’s what respect looks like.

Recalling his career during an interview at his home on Barter’s Island, Spofford, who voluntarily stepped down as fire chief in 2023 after 22 years of service, said he appreciates the department members who followed his lead and said whatever credit coming his way rightfully belongs to them.

“Everything in the fire department I’ve done is not because of me,” he said. “We had such a good group. It’s just that everybody worked together. Think of it as one thing.”

Spofford is still an active member of the department, helping out with paperwork, advice, and issuing fire permits as needed. He said he didn’t fully realize how stressful the chief’s job was until he stepped down.

“I’m still the forest warden for Boothbay, so I do the burn permits, but I don’t have to deal with any other stuff,” he said. “There’s so much now with the fire department. You have to keep all your records up – all your training, all your fit tests – and it’s a big job. It really is. I got by with help. I don’t think I could have done it if I didn’t have good people helping me.”

Spofford first joined the department in 1980, he said, encouraged in part by the examples of his father, uncle, and the late Boothbay Fire Chief Stanley “Swing” Lewis, who was a family friend and Spofford’s longtime school bus driver.

At the time he signed up, Spofford was a seasonal employee traveling between Maine and Florida. Training standards at the time were not as time intensive as they are now, he said.

“I knew a lot of people in (the fire department) and it just was exciting and you could help,” he said. “When we were younger, even in high school, we’d go to brush fires. We weren’t actually on (the fire department), but then you could do something.”

In the mid-1990s, when Lewis was preparing to retire after 37 years as chief, Spofford was promoted to lieutenant and then to assistant chief, skipping over the captain’s rank. He worked with Lewis’s successor, Tom Nickerson, for about five years before the Boothbay Select Board appointed Spofford fire chief in 2001.

The same year Lewis retired, 1996, Spofford assisted with the construction of Boothbay’s current fire station at 911 Wiscasset Road (Route 27). He proudly noted the station was built almost entirely with donated labor and materials.

“That was an old hardware store, and we raised the whole building up 5 feet, poured a foundation under it, and put an addition on it,” he said. “The whole thing: volunteer labor. Every weekend, there was probably 15 to 20 people; electricians, masons, whatever. We had materials donated. It was incredible. Incredible fundraisers were going on and it was really neat. I don’t know if you could do that today.”

Spofford enjoys the distinction of being the fire chief in charge of the scene when the largest Lincoln County fire in living memory leveled the Washburn and Doughty shipyard in East Boothbay in July 2008. Ignited by sparks from a cutting torch, the fire destroyed the company’s 50,000-square-foot fabrication facility, temporarily put 65 people out of work, and caused more than $30 million in damages.

“We were there, on and off, for a week,” Spofford said. “I’ll never forget that day. I actually had the fire marshal come down to me, and he said, ‘You know, it’s very seldom a fire chief will have a fire of this magnitude, and this one of them’ … Jeepers, the help we had. We had everyone in Lincoln County I think, and a couple of others.”

Spofford recalled being at home working on something when the call came in. The smoke was visible long before responders reached East Boothbay, he said. The fire department had prepared for this exact scenario and Spofford said he knew the plan well, but the preparation did little to alleviate the stress of the occasion.

“We weren’t going in,” he said. “We already made the decision before the fire. They had a big hoist there in the middle. If it catches on fire, we’re not sending anybody in there, because if that comes down it will kill him, and I had the owner screaming at me. We wouldn’t send anybody in there and he screamed at me a couple other things. He was hot. He did kind of apologize to me a month later, but I understand.”

Spofford may be best known for his longstanding commitment to the fire service, but he is also well known locally as a musician and contractor.

As a musician, Spofford started early taking up the drums before he was a teenager. He played saxophone all through school and into college and learned banjo, guitar, and bass. Banjo, however, is his primary instrument.

“I don’t really play anything that good, but my main thing, I think, would be banjo,” he said. “My grandfather Brown played banjo. I just had the passion for banjo, and I got a banjo at a fairly young age.”

He began his performing career accompanying his aunt, pianist Kay Brown, when she played locally in Boothbay area. Later Spofford and his sister, Sally, entertained guests of the North Star Motel, a lodging business their parents, Ron and Jane Spofford, owned on Route 27 in Boothbay.

“My father and his father and my uncle, they had a gas station right where the pot place is now,” Spofford said. “Before the industrial park was there, that was a gas station. So we all were there and they started with a little six-unit motel, and they kept building. Then we ended up, my sister and I and few others, entertaining bus tours.”

According to Dickie Spofford, Ron Spofford was instrumental in attracting bus tours to the area in 1960s and he went to become a driver for Trailways and also worked as a tour guide. Jane Spofford focused on running the motel and later oversaw the restaurant they established on the premises.

A three-sport athlete in high school, Dickie Spofford graduated from Boothbay Region High School in 1976. He went on to attend Maine Central Institute in Pittsfield on a football scholarship for a year before moving on to the University of Maine at Augusta, where he enrolled in the music program.

Leaving college after a year, Spofford spent the next nine years traveling with the seasons between Maine and Florida. He spent his summers in Maine, working in food service or construction and spent his winters near Pompano Beach, Fla., where he worked at the Hillsboro Club, a posh, private country club Ron Spofford worked for years earlier during his own tenure as a seasonal employee.

“He ended up working at this private club and then some people from Boothbay went down,” Dickie Spofford said. “Then I get in there. Both my sisters worked there for a time, but we always come back. We couldn’t wait to come home. We couldn’t wait to get down there, and we couldn’t wait to come home.”

In Florida, the Hillsboro Club’s seasonal help, including a healthy contingent of workers from Maine and New Hampshire, lived in dormitory-type facility, creating a collegial atmosphere. Spofford recalled those years as good times with good friends.

“At one time, I think there were 12 people from Boothbay working at the Hillsboro Club,” he said.

By the time of his final year working in Florida, Spofford had worked his way out of the kitchen and into the club’s lounge where he performed full time as a solo entertainer, singing, playing guitar and banjo, and using a drum machine to fill out his sound.

“I started out cooking, and then I ended up entertaining,” Spofford said. “I don’t know how I did it back then. Holy smokes.”

Tiring of the seasonal schedule, Spofford eventually stayed home in Boothbay during the winter. He worked for his parents at the motel and did some construction, working for local contractors before going into business for himself around 1988. Construction, like music, has been a constant in his life.

“I have always been in construction,” he said. “I’ve worked for a lot of guys around Boothbay, so that was kind of a mainstay you know? If it requires putting a nail in wood, I will do it. Just about everything. I’ve done cottage care too. I still got a few cottages to take care of, but we do build houses. I’m lucky to get maybe one house a year, maybe every two years, but a lot of other stuff in between, anything from a deck to a remodel. I’ve been fortunate my whole life to just work on this peninsula. I’ve never had to leave it, so it’s very lucky.”

Now 67, Spofford is busier than ever. He still has a house under construction in Boothbay. He fishes for lobster part time and he is a full-time grandfather. For space reasons, during the month of May, Spofford switched houses with his son, Jared, who lives next door with his wife, Nora, and two children Bristol, 8, and Beau, 1 1/2.

Spofford said having his family nearby counts among the greatest pleasures in life.

“I’ll tell you the best thing of everything I’ve done is probably having my grandkids next to me 30 feet away,” he said. “I mean, really, how lucky can you get? Jesus, I enjoy that so much, you know, just having the grandkids being close. I have got one daughter (Emily) that’s in Dexter. That’s a couple hours away, but not too far.”

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 This article appears through a content-sharing agreement with the Lincoln County News.