James “Jim” Lewis Pearson, age 82, died on December 15, 2019 and those who remember him are still mourning the loss of someone who Gorham High School (GHS) Spanish teacher Deborah Roy said “was a wonderful teacher.”
“He liked people and, consequently, people liked him,” said retired GHS teacher Jean Davis.
Pearson graduated in 1954 from Bessey High School in Scarborough with his future wife and high school sweetheart, Nancy Simpson. After working several craftsman-type jobs, and joining the Navy Reserves, he recognized his passion for teaching and enrolled at Gorham State Teachers College (GSTC), now known as University of Southern Maine (Gorham), to study teaching, industrial arts and drafting.
While in college, he served as a “special officer” for the Scarborough Police Department in the summer months to help pay for it.
Pearson began teaching at GHS in 1962 and retired in 1987 after 25 memorable years and many roles. He first taught in a facility that has since been removed, which was located beside the former Shaw Junior High School (now home of the municipal center and Shaw Gym).
He taught traditional woods, metals, residential construction, and drafting. Pearson was also instrumental in the preparation of many future teachers for the then GSTC. He supervised many student teachers and was always available to assist when asked, doing a lot to promote the profession.
Photo courtesy of Jean DavisPearson shown in 1972.
In addition, Pearson often stayed after school to teach female students who expressed an interest in industrial arts (I.A.), despite the school not offering I.A. classes for females at the time.
Another retired GHS teacher, Roger Lord, started teaching with Pearson around 1973. During that period, Pearson and the third I.A. teacher, Bob Stevens, had just moved into a new facility at GHS. Pearson switched roles and taught graphic arts and drafting, while Lord took over teaching manufacturing and construction classes.
“Jim was one-of-a-kind and was always ready to help his students. He had an uncanny ability to patiently explain difficult concepts and make them understandable for his students,” said Lord.
“Pearson expected students to do their best, and held them accountable,” said Roy. “He did so in a way that made students feel confident. They knew that they were important to someone.”
Roy remembers the I.A. department being its own little community all its own at the time. “While there visiting, one could: have work done on a car; do some work with wood products; have printing done; raise or purchase seedlings for gardens; and have a pleasant lunch, sing a song, and laugh until it hurt,” said Roy.
Lord remembers Pearson as someone who “loved a good joke, and, when needed, he had the best poker face until he couldn’t hold it any longer and then he would start to lose it and break out in great laughter.”
“Jim loved to kid with everyone,” said Davis. “He treated all of us (teachers, students, other staff members) with warmth and kindness, and there was always a twinkle in his eye. It would have been unusual for Jim to pass you in the hallway without first stopping to acknowledge you and say something witty.”
“Jim was encouraging, kind, and had a fantastic, dry sense of humor. Many of his jokes would be called ‘Dad jokes’ these days, I suspect,” said Roy.
A former student, Viola Pope Marcussen, who now lives in Denmark (Europe), after hearing of Pearson’s death, looked up his message to her in her yearbook.
“It was typical Jim,” said Davis, “ ‘Viola, don’t drool. It’s unbecoming of a lady.’ ” Viola got a chuckle when she went back to her yearbook and found this comment. She asked me to pass this message on to his family, and I did. I hope it gave them a light moment.
Pearson was always ready to lend a hand, help you figure out a problem, and stand up for what was right. And, surprising to many, said Lord, Jim loved to sing.
“As luck would have it, a young Spanish teacher, Deb Roy, came on the scene (in 1975) and a quartet made up of Jim, Deb, Bob and myself spent many enjoyable hours playing and singing,” said Lord. “When a school-wide talent show appeared on the horizon we became a rag tag group called Three Boys and Roy.”
Photo courtesy of Roger LordThe teacher quartet “The Boys and Roy,” featuring (left to right) Jim Pearson, Bob Stevens, Deb Roy, and Roger Lord, during a talent show performance at Gorham High School in the mid- to late-1970s.
Roy remembers having lunch every day with “the boys.” Lunch was 45 minutes then so they would eat then hang around or play the guitar and sing.
“We were amateurs at best,” remembers Roy, “singing folk songs that Roger knew how to play. We did sing in public together a few times. I remember a talent show or two, a concert that we organized when one of the faculty lost her house to fire, and Gorham’s Bicentennial.”
“Jim had a beautiful, resonant singing voice. His favorite song was ‘A Daisy a Day,’ by Jud Strunk and Mike Curb, and it was Jim’s solo. He always said that he sang it for his ‘lovely’ wife. He would slow down, and tear up at the last line of the chorus: ‘I’ll love you until the rivers run still, and the four winds we know blow away.’ How he loved to sing that song,” said Roy.
“As a young teacher, I was in awe of ‘JP,’ said Roy. “He was dedicated to his wife, his family, his farm, and the students at Gorham High School.”
Pearson would travel to work from Pine Point to Gorham each day and pass “The Halfway House,” an old farmstead on Beech Ridge Road, which in its earlier days was a stage coach stop that was “halfway” between Saco, Westbrook and Gorham.
When the farm became available, Pearson and his wife decided to purchase it.
“As a rookie teacher I was eager to learn all that Jim had to offer. So, as he was refurbishing his barn, he offered me the opportunity to help him out and said he would only charge me $5 an hour,” said Lord. “Of course, he was just kidding but I do have imbedded memories of hanging on to his belt as he would reach out and crawl much further than he should, just to get that one last nail in the metal roof.”
In 1969, after two years of hard work, the Pearsons, and their daughter, Mary, then four years old, made Beech Ridge Farm their home. Their son Robert was born in 1974.
Pearson first raised a few beef critters, spent summer haying, and eventually opened a feed store with his wife. He even experimented with a cross country skiing adventure for a short time.
As Pearson approached his retirement from teaching, the idea of raising Christmas trees took hold, which he and his wife did up until his death.
“The Christmas tree business was right up his ally because he loved people and once you had a conversation with Jim you knew you had just met a special man,” said Lord.
“There will never be another like him,” said Roy.