Buxton – Harold Clifton Smith, 102, passed away on April 28, 2025, at his home in Buxton. But for the three years he served in the Army during World War II, he was a lifelong resident of the Saco River Valley.
Harold was born to Zenas M. Smith and Florence (Brown) Smith at the homestead of his grandparents, Andrew Jackson Smith and Mary (Martin) Smith, less than half a mile from the house where he spent the last 49 years of his life. Though his parents suffered the devastating loss of their home twice, by fire, during the dark, early years of the Great Depression, Harold’s stubbornly positive view of life was not a casualty of the flames. He worked hard on the family farm, attended the one-room Shadigee and Dearborn Hill Schools, and graduated from Buxton High a year ahead of his contemporaries, in 1939.
On July 1, 1941, he joined Company D in the 103rd regiment of the Maine National Guard in Westbrook. On March 11, 1942, three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the regiment was activated for federal service and left Portland by train destined for Camp Blanding, Florida. The soldiers would complete their rigorous training there, and in North Carolina and Louisiana before being deployed to the Pacific Theater.
The men departed San Francisco on Thursday, October 1, 1942. Over the next three years, they would see action in New Zealand, New Caledonia, Guadalcanal, the Russell Islands, and New Zealand. As they embarked upon war, the regiment was united under the motto “To the Last Man.” Harold could not have guessed that, in the fullness of time, he would live to become that man.
On January 19, 1945, while they were both on leave, Harold wed Lavon Jackson, of Carthage, Mississippi, a member of the inaugural cadre of Navy Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, the “WAVEs.” They had met during Harold’s training in the South. After they were discharged, later that year, they established their home in Buxton. They remained married for more than half a century, until her passing in May, 1998.
In the first, scuffling years of the young couple’s life together, as their children were born, Harold took work with a State Highway Road Maintenance crew and then tried his hand at chicken farming, raising birds for Cohen Brothers, a Massachusetts company.
But on October 1, 1951, he landed permanent employment as postmaster of the West Buxton Post Office, then located in the historic Moderation Falls section of town, straddling the Saco. He would serve in that position for the next 34 years.
A meticulous carpenter and craftsman, he devoted much of his spare time over those three decades to restoring the house he and Lavon acquired in 1949, the former home of the Elder Abner Flanders, first minister of the Buxton Center Baptist Church, of which Harold was a member.
After he retired from the post office, on March 9, 1979, he augmented his pension for a few years as a salesman at Wickes Lumber Company and Hillside Lumber Company, both in Westbrook, retiring for good in 1985. He spent his retirement years enjoying a wide range of hobbies. He was an avid reader, seldom spending a day without his nose in a book for at least a few hours. He loved puttering in his well-equipped, if cluttered, workshop, producing all sorts of things, from the practical to the eccentric. He was also an inveterate collector, who took enormous pleasure in restoring old machines to functionality.
It was often said of Harold Smith that to know him was to have a friend. A highly gregarious man and noted raconteur, he was, indeed, quick to engage others wherever he went.
Over the course of his long life, he was a member of many organizations. As a young man he was active in the Knights of Pythias and the Buxton Grange, and he was a founding member of the Men’s Garden Club of Buxton. He was a lifelong member of the Buxton High School Alumni Association. And even as he neared the end of his life he maintained his memberships in the Maine Antique Power Association and Post 130 of the American Legion, in Bar Mills. In recent years he was a colorful – and competitive – participant in weekly cribbage competition at the Buxton Center Baptist Church’s Monday Senior Social.
As self-effacing about his personal achievements as he was quick to applaud those of others, he was nonetheless deeply proud of his military service, his family and what he had made of himself after a very modest start in life. As the years passed and he could look back on his life with the sagacity of autumn, he derived comfort from having been a member of what Tom Brokaw called “The Greatest Generation,” people of “towering achievement and modest demeanor” whose character was forged “in their formative years when they were participants in and witness to sacrifices of the highest order.”
Harold is survived by his daughter, Rebecca, of Buxton; son Jim and his partner, Sue Mullaney, of Rockfall, Connecticut; grandson Ryland Charronsmith, of Bangor; sister Sylvia Allen, of Westbrook; and numerous cousins and friends.
There will be no services at this time. A Celebration of Life is planned for later this year.
Memorial contributions can be made to Buxton Center Baptist Church, 938 Long Plains Road, Buxton, Maine 04093; and Northern Light Home Care and Hospice Foundation, P.O. Box 679, Portland, Maine 04104.
Arrangements have been entrusted to Chad E. Poitras Cremation and Funeral Service, Buxton, www.mainefuneral.com
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