WILLIAM LAMSON SOULE, JR.
ORONO, MAINE
Our beloved Bill Soule died at home September 29, 2023, following a brief hospitalization. He was born August 31, 1931, in New York City, and grew up in Brooklyn. The son of William Lamson Soule, Sr. (age 60 at the time) and Florence Olive (Smith) Soule (age 40), he joined two sisters (8 and 10), and once was shocked to overhear himself referred to as the “little surprise.”
As a child, Bill spent many happy summers on a farm in Redding, CT, and always regretted that his family had had to sell the property. As a youth, he did his part for the war effort by collecting scrap and saving string, habits that never left him. Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without!
Bill graduated from Brooklyn Tech (’49) where he particularly enjoyed blacksmithing, described by his teacher as “beating the tripe out of a hunk of iron.” Despite a longstanding family tradition of Colby College grads, he was “allowed” to attend Harvard University (’53). While there, his parents retired to Belfast, ME. After graduating, Bill worked for Boeing with the Bomarc project in Seattle, WA and then transferred to Cape Canaveral, FL. In Florida, he performed in the local Hospital Follies and bought a 30’ boat which he later sailed up the inland waterway to Washington, D.C. where his sister Jane and her family had settled. In DC, living aboard his boat with winter coming on, he fortunately met Chuck Miller, who would become a lifelong friend. Chuck had space for a roommate in his apartment and Bill gladly moved ashore. He worked for electronics firms: RCA (where he launched the facility’s internal newsletter) and then Page Communications. When Chuck and Bill invested in a small house together and prepared to vacate, Miss Lois Dane appeared, responding to an ad, to view the apartment. She immediately caught Bill’s eye. They soon were dating and had a ball doing shows with the American Light Opera Company and the Hexagon Club. They were married on July 21, 1962, at Lois’ home in New Jersey, and spent their honeymoon sailing the Maine coast. Daughter Helen was born in 1965.
In 1966, Bill finished a master’s degree in engineering at George Washington University and changed course. Yearning to return to the Soule family’s Maine roots, and having discovered a passion for statistics, he accepted a teaching position in the Math Department at UMaine. He was offered the job by phone and accepted it sight unseen. He would go on to serve as Math Department Chair, Chair of the Faculty Senate, and longtime Parliamentarian of the Senate. He became a charter member of the University Faculty Club, and joined the Spectators’ Club.
In Orono, Bill and Lois purchased a home on College Avenue and began to put down roots. For more than five decades they worked, played, and volunteered with a vast network of friends, raised their two daughters (Nancy was born in 1969), and completely spoiled a succession of memorable cats. Bill was a devoted father, willing to change diapers and pull a 2 am feeding shift, prepare breakfasts, and pack school lunches. He was an expressive reader and raised his daughters on ALL the Oz books and Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series.
The family first attended church at the Episcopal chapel in Orono, where Father Ted Lewis served as chaplain. When the chapel closed, the family went to St. James Episcopal Church in Old Town and later made St. John’s Episcopal Church in Bangor their church home. Bill enjoyed the Men’s Breakfast Group, and he and Lois volunteered on various committees, projects, and fundraisers, and enjoyed their “ABC” dinners. The entire family had the great good fortune to join “Fred’s choir,” and Bill and Lois loved singing, training, and traveling abroad with the incomparable Dr. Frederick G. Jones over the course of nearly 30 years.
Bill loved listening to classical music, particularly opera, and enjoyed singing camp songs, barbershop, and show tunes. He and Lois were regular supporters and attendees of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra and a wide range of concerts, galas, lectures, plays, and musicals. They had great fun performing in the Orono AFS Follies together, and Bill appeared in numerous Bangor Community Theater shows, where Nancy joined him on stage in Kiss Me Kate! and The Music Man (twice). For decades, Bill and Lois delighted in dancing the night away at weddings, formal occasions, and monthly dinner dances with the “Saturday Nighters”.
Needing a place to sail (and to store excess furniture), in 1967 Captain Bill and First Mate Lois bought a rustic camp in Hancock, their “silk purse out of a sow’s ear” project. Summers found Bill working on structural improvements or endlessly puttering with a series of boats, beginning with a decrepit old lifeboat, moving on to a wooden sloop, an O’Day daysailer, and finally a 26’ Bristol cruiser. Family sailing excursions were always an adventure. One particular “short sail” resulted in Bill, Helen, and some startled guests being swept over the reversing Tidal Falls. Unharmed, they nevertheless were stuck waiting at anchor for the turn of the tide as Lois and Nancy anxiously scanned the cove for the vanished vessel and crew. Bill was an early conservationist and he and Lois supported environmental groups such as the Frenchman’s Bay Conservancy and the National Resources Council of Maine, with which the family shared some memorable outings.
In the summer of 1977, a family wedding in Idaho inspired an 8-week cross-country family road trip. Bill and Lois took turns at the wheel of a Winnebago camper and navigated the circuitous course Lois carefully mapped out from Maine to California and back, visiting friends, relatives, national parks, and famous landmarks. (Along the way, in Billings, Montana, they felt pressured to see the new sci-fi movie everyone was talking about: Star Wars!)
In 1979, the family went along on sabbatical while Bill earned a Master’s in Statistics at UMass Amherst. It was an impressionable year for all; Bill caught model train fever! The consummate recycler and DIYer already prone to spending long hours taking apart and/or cobbling things together in the garage, now happily began tinkering with trains in the basement and at the local model railroaders club (EMMRC). He attended train shows, set up a repair booth as “the Train Doctor, RRx”, and volunteered with Operation Lifesaver to spread public awareness for safety around “real” trains. He was proud to be a volunteer copy reader listed on the masthead of the National Model Railroader Association Bulletin.
When Bill retired in 1996 after 30 years at UMaine, he and Lois maintained a busy social calendar, enjoyed the exploits of their four grandchildren, and traveled extensively as a couple and with dear friends. For fun, Bill designed and built a human-powered 8-foot locomotive, which he was able to push from inside, dressed as the engineer. It was christened the Private William Lamson in honor of his lateral ancestor who fought with the 20th Maine during the Civil War. He and Lois deployed it in holiday parades locally and as far as St. Albans, VT, often with family members as “crew”.
In 2014, the family began the hard work of downsizing and Bill and Lois moved to independent living in the Dirigo Pines retirement community where they enjoyed events at the Inn and socializing with their neighborhood “Gazebo Geezers” circle of new and longtime friends.
Bill was a true gentleman, a smooth dance partner, kind and generous, quick to smile, a lover of puns, a certified philomath who was a stickler for proper grammar and precise prose. He slowed a bit in his later years, but never lost his sense of humor. In July, Bill and Lois enjoyed time relaxing on the deck that he built at their camp in Hancock and celebrated an impressive 61 years of marriage and mutual devotion.
His family is deeply grateful for the years of devoted care “Mr. Bill” received from the Visiting Angels who made it possible for Lois and Bill to stay together in their cottage at Dirigo Pines, and for caring support from the team at Beacon Hospice.
Bill was predeceased by his parents and by his beloved sisters, Jane Engert and Betty Thelin. Bill/Dad/Gumpy is loved and missed by his wife and favorite dance partner Lois, children Helen Soule Donahey and Nancy Soule Marks, sons-in-law Rich Donahey and Alan Marks, and by grandchildren Jamie, Charlie, and Josephine Marks, and Samantha Soule Donahey. Jane Engert, William Engert, and Jamie Engert (Lise Coderre, Catherine Engert) mourn their Uncle Bill. He is survived by many dear friends, near and far, who enriched his life immeasurably.
A funeral service will be held at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Bangor, on Tuesday, November 21 at 1:30 pm. Following the service, the family invites relatives and friends to share memories and refreshments in the Kenduskeag Room at Dirigo Pines, 9 Alumni Drive in Orono, from 4-6 pm. Those wishing to attend the service remotely may do so by visiting https://m.youtube.com/@stjohnsbangor/streams. Interment in Riverside Cemetery, Orono will be private. Gifts in his memory may be made to a project dear to his heart: the steam locomotive restoration project currently underway through the efforts of the nonprofit New England Steam Corporation. Gifts may be mailed to PO Box 302 Winterport, ME 04496 or online at NESC (https://new-england-steam-corporation.square.site/product/donate/13?cs=true) - Bill Soule.
Please share your memories of Bill online at BrookingsSmith.com.
To order memorial trees or send flowers to the family in memory of William Soule, please visit our flower store.
ORONO, MAINE
Our beloved Bill Soule died at home September 29, 2023, following a brief hospitalization. He was born August 31, 1931, in New York City, and grew up in Brooklyn. The son of William Lamson Soule, Sr. (age 60 at the time) and Florence Olive (Smith) Soule (age 40), he joined two sisters (8 and 10), and once was shocked to overhear himself referred to as the “little surprise.”
As a child, Bill spent many happy summers on a farm in Redding, CT, and always regretted that his family had had to sell the property. As a youth, he did his part for the war effort by collecting scrap and saving string, habits that never left him. Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without!
Bill graduated from Brooklyn Tech (’49) where he particularly enjoyed blacksmithing, described by his teacher as “beating the tripe out of a hunk of iron.” Despite a longstanding family tradition of Colby College grads, he was “allowed” to attend Harvard University (’53). While there, his parents retired to Belfast, ME. After graduating, Bill worked for Boeing with the Bomarc project in Seattle, WA and then transferred to Cape Canaveral, FL. In Florida, he performed in the local Hospital Follies and bought a 30’ boat which he later sailed up the inland waterway to Washington, D.C. where his sister Jane and her family had settled. In DC, living aboard his boat with winter coming on, he fortunately met Chuck Miller, who would become a lifelong friend. Chuck had space for a roommate in his apartment and Bill gladly moved ashore. He worked for electronics firms: RCA (where he launched the facility’s internal newsletter) and then Page Communications. When Chuck and Bill invested in a small house together and prepared to vacate, Miss Lois Dane appeared, responding to an ad, to view the apartment. She immediately caught Bill’s eye. They soon were dating and had a ball doing shows with the American Light Opera Company and the Hexagon Club. They were married on July 21, 1962, at Lois’ home in New Jersey, and spent their honeymoon sailing the Maine coast. Daughter Helen was born in 1965.
In 1966, Bill finished a master’s degree in engineering at George Washington University and changed course. Yearning to return to the Soule family’s Maine roots, and having discovered a passion for statistics, he accepted a teaching position in the Math Department at UMaine. He was offered the job by phone and accepted it sight unseen. He would go on to serve as Math Department Chair, Chair of the Faculty Senate, and longtime Parliamentarian of the Senate. He became a charter member of the University Faculty Club, and joined the Spectators’ Club.
In Orono, Bill and Lois purchased a home on College Avenue and began to put down roots. For more than five decades they worked, played, and volunteered with a vast network of friends, raised their two daughters (Nancy was born in 1969), and completely spoiled a succession of memorable cats. Bill was a devoted father, willing to change diapers and pull a 2 am feeding shift, prepare breakfasts, and pack school lunches. He was an expressive reader and raised his daughters on ALL the Oz books and Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series.
The family first attended church at the Episcopal chapel in Orono, where Father Ted Lewis served as chaplain. When the chapel closed, the family went to St. James Episcopal Church in Old Town and later made St. John’s Episcopal Church in Bangor their church home. Bill enjoyed the Men’s Breakfast Group, and he and Lois volunteered on various committees, projects, and fundraisers, and enjoyed their “ABC” dinners. The entire family had the great good fortune to join “Fred’s choir,” and Bill and Lois loved singing, training, and traveling abroad with the incomparable Dr. Frederick G. Jones over the course of nearly 30 years.
Bill loved listening to classical music, particularly opera, and enjoyed singing camp songs, barbershop, and show tunes. He and Lois were regular supporters and attendees of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra and a wide range of concerts, galas, lectures, plays, and musicals. They had great fun performing in the Orono AFS Follies together, and Bill appeared in numerous Bangor Community Theater shows, where Nancy joined him on stage in Kiss Me Kate! and The Music Man (twice). For decades, Bill and Lois delighted in dancing the night away at weddings, formal occasions, and monthly dinner dances with the “Saturday Nighters”.
Needing a place to sail (and to store excess furniture), in 1967 Captain Bill and First Mate Lois bought a rustic camp in Hancock, their “silk purse out of a sow’s ear” project. Summers found Bill working on structural improvements or endlessly puttering with a series of boats, beginning with a decrepit old lifeboat, moving on to a wooden sloop, an O’Day daysailer, and finally a 26’ Bristol cruiser. Family sailing excursions were always an adventure. One particular “short sail” resulted in Bill, Helen, and some startled guests being swept over the reversing Tidal Falls. Unharmed, they nevertheless were stuck waiting at anchor for the turn of the tide as Lois and Nancy anxiously scanned the cove for the vanished vessel and crew. Bill was an early conservationist and he and Lois supported environmental groups such as the Frenchman’s Bay Conservancy and the National Resources Council of Maine, with which the family shared some memorable outings.
In the summer of 1977, a family wedding in Idaho inspired an 8-week cross-country family road trip. Bill and Lois took turns at the wheel of a Winnebago camper and navigated the circuitous course Lois carefully mapped out from Maine to California and back, visiting friends, relatives, national parks, and famous landmarks. (Along the way, in Billings, Montana, they felt pressured to see the new sci-fi movie everyone was talking about: Star Wars!)
In 1979, the family went along on sabbatical while Bill earned a Master’s in Statistics at UMass Amherst. It was an impressionable year for all; Bill caught model train fever! The consummate recycler and DIYer already prone to spending long hours taking apart and/or cobbling things together in the garage, now happily began tinkering with trains in the basement and at the local model railroaders club (EMMRC). He attended train shows, set up a repair booth as “the Train Doctor, RRx”, and volunteered with Operation Lifesaver to spread public awareness for safety around “real” trains. He was proud to be a volunteer copy reader listed on the masthead of the National Model Railroader Association Bulletin.
When Bill retired in 1996 after 30 years at UMaine, he and Lois maintained a busy social calendar, enjoyed the exploits of their four grandchildren, and traveled extensively as a couple and with dear friends. For fun, Bill designed and built a human-powered 8-foot locomotive, which he was able to push from inside, dressed as the engineer. It was christened the Private William Lamson in honor of his lateral ancestor who fought with the 20th Maine during the Civil War. He and Lois deployed it in holiday parades locally and as far as St. Albans, VT, often with family members as “crew”.
In 2014, the family began the hard work of downsizing and Bill and Lois moved to independent living in the Dirigo Pines retirement community where they enjoyed events at the Inn and socializing with their neighborhood “Gazebo Geezers” circle of new and longtime friends.
Bill was a true gentleman, a smooth dance partner, kind and generous, quick to smile, a lover of puns, a certified philomath who was a stickler for proper grammar and precise prose. He slowed a bit in his later years, but never lost his sense of humor. In July, Bill and Lois enjoyed time relaxing on the deck that he built at their camp in Hancock and celebrated an impressive 61 years of marriage and mutual devotion.
His family is deeply grateful for the years of devoted care “Mr. Bill” received from the Visiting Angels who made it possible for Lois and Bill to stay together in their cottage at Dirigo Pines, and for caring support from the team at Beacon Hospice.
Bill was predeceased by his parents and by his beloved sisters, Jane Engert and Betty Thelin. Bill/Dad/Gumpy is loved and missed by his wife and favorite dance partner Lois, children Helen Soule Donahey and Nancy Soule Marks, sons-in-law Rich Donahey and Alan Marks, and by grandchildren Jamie, Charlie, and Josephine Marks, and Samantha Soule Donahey. Jane Engert, William Engert, and Jamie Engert (Lise Coderre, Catherine Engert) mourn their Uncle Bill. He is survived by many dear friends, near and far, who enriched his life immeasurably.
A funeral service will be held at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Bangor, on Tuesday, November 21 at 1:30 pm. Following the service, the family invites relatives and friends to share memories and refreshments in the Kenduskeag Room at Dirigo Pines, 9 Alumni Drive in Orono, from 4-6 pm. Those wishing to attend the service remotely may do so by visiting https://m.youtube.com/@stjohnsbangor/streams. Interment in Riverside Cemetery, Orono will be private. Gifts in his memory may be made to a project dear to his heart: the steam locomotive restoration project currently underway through the efforts of the nonprofit New England Steam Corporation. Gifts may be mailed to PO Box 302 Winterport, ME 04496 or online at NESC (https://new-england-steam-corporation.square.site/product/donate/13?cs=true) - Bill Soule.
Please share your memories of Bill online at BrookingsSmith.com.
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