By Amanda Estes

Staff Writer

South Portland residents and city officials remember former city councilor Robert Willard Fickett, Jr. as a man of the people.

“When people got stepped on, he came to their rescue,” said neighbor Stan Cox.

Fickett, 79, died Jan. 16 at Maine Medical Center in Portland. He was laid to rest on Tuesday.     

An active and well-known figure in the community, Fickett served on the
city council for 26 years before stepping down in 2006 due to health
problems. He also owned a roadside vegetable stand where he sold
produce grown on his Highland Avenue farm.  

South Portland City Manager James Gailey said after Fickett stepped
down from the council, a picture of his farm stand was donated to the
city and still hangs in city hall today.

“So everyone who entered the council chambers saw Fickett’s farm stand,” Gailey said.

Councilor and former mayor, Maxine Beecher, lived next door to Fickett and his wife for 16 years.

“Bob was Bob,” Beecher said. “He was the only person I ever knew who never had a mean bone in his body.”

Beecher said she and Fickett used to carpool to council meetings and
after one late meeting, they were driving home around 1 a.m. when the
truck Beecher was driving ran out of gas. Beecher said Fickett was
ready to get behind the truck and push, despite having recently
undergone heart surgery. She promptly discouraged the idea.

Though a member of the Democratic Party, Fickett’s fiscal philosophy was considered quite conservative.

“I knew he was sick when he stopped telling me about the gold
standard,” Beecher said, referring to Fickett’s advocacy for a monetary
system in which currency notes are backed by gold. “Sometimes when [a
councilor] does or says something that’s ultra conservative we all
think, ‘It’s Bob Fickett.’”

Cox, who also grew up on a Highland Avenue farm, said, “Bob grew up during the Depression and on a farm.”

“That in itself would make a lot of people conservative,” he said. “Bob
experienced the same elements of inflation that the dairy farms around
the state have experienced. Inflation was a major element in killing
the small farms of Maine because the cost of material and equipment far
exceeded the increase received for the produce they sold. That is
probably why the effects of inflation was so etched in his mind.”

Cox also recalled a time when Fickett went to “bat for me.”

“On a three day holiday weekend, I got a registered letter from the
city saying I had 30 days to get rid of my horses,” Cox said, adding
some residents had assumed droppings on the street were from his
horses. “[Fickett] went down and said, ‘If you take the horses, I’m
going to bring my oxen down to city hall and the city’s going to own
those oxen and I’m going to have the cable TV here too to televise the
whole thing.’”

Fickett was a member of the American Agricultural Association, the
Scarborough Grange and the Lions Club, according to his obituary. He is
also remembered as a history buff and an expert in British History and
the Civil War.

Born in South Portland in 1928, he was the son of Robert Willard and
Agnes M. (O’Neill) Fickett, Sr. He attended local schools as well as
St. Dominic Regional High School in Auburn and earned his high school
diploma through private tutoring, according to his obituary. In 1951,
Fickett married the former Maxine Ryan.

South Portland Historical Society Executive Director Kathy DiPhilippo
said Fickett had a piggery for several years and was one of the last
farmers in South Portland.

“He was growing pumpkins right there on that land right up until recent years,” DiPhilippo said.

She interviewed Fickett several times and said he loved to tell a story
about how, as a boy, he would ride his pony from Nutter Road into the
adjacent field where cows once grazed and where Sprague Energy’s oil
tanks now stand.

Ray Lee has lived in South Portland for 45 years and said Fickett
convinced him to step into the political arena so he ran four times for
a seat on the city council.

“There will never be another Councilor Fickett ever, ever, ever,” said Lee. “This is the biggest loss the city will ever see.”

Lee said Fickett was a “people person” who worried about taxes,
peoples’ homes and whether they were able to afford to live a quality
life. Though conservative, he believed in financing the city’s
essential services such as public works and public safety, Lee said.

“He was just one vote, but he tried for years and years and years to
make it better for us all,” Lee said. “Salt of the earth – that says it
all right there.”

Fickett is predeceased by his parents and a son, Frank William Fickett.
He is survived by his wife; son, Robert W. Fickett, III and his wife
Deborah of South Paris; sister, Margaret Ellen Fickett of Greensboro,
N.C.; five grandchildren, Michelle and Philip Brackett, Jr., Laura Ann
Pralicz and her husband Robert, Randy Couch, Amanda Lynn Fickett, all
of South Portland, and Andrew John Edgar Fickett of South Paris; two
great grandchildren, Philip Lloyd Brackett, III and McKenzie Elizabeth
Brackett, both of South Portland.

In lieu of flowers, donations in Fickett’s memory may be made to the
American Alzheimer’s Association, 170 U.S. Route 1, Suite 250,
Falmouth, ME 04105.