The Cessna 172 single-engine plane that crashed at Knox County Regional Airport Nov. 16 brought down more than three young college students. It brought to an end a close relationship between Brazilian student Marcelo Rugini and the tightly-knit farming family that owns and operates Spear Farm.
“We had known he was flying over here that afternoon,” Dick Spear said Nov. 19. Spear said workers at the farm saw the plane fly overhead and wiggle its wings at approximately 4 p.m.
Two hours later, while watching the evening news, Dick and his wife, Andrea, learned that a plane had crashed at the Owl’s Head airport. Spear said he thought then it might be the one carrying Rugini but final word did not reach the Spears until the middle of the night, when a nephew who lived with Rugini received an official call.
The crash also killed William “B.J.” Hannigan III, 24, of Portland, and David Cheney, 22, of Beverly, Mass. All three were students at the University of Maine, where they were members of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity.
Rugini, 24, lived at the farm on Upper East Pond Road for seven years. He originally came to Maine on a farming internship and “happened to settle here,” Spear said.
The first couple of winters, the young Brazilian went home, but in time he determined that he wanted to study at the University of Maine at Orono. He and a friend, Lucas Bernardi, both received international scholarships at UMO. At the time of Rugini’s death, both men were maintaining 4.0 grade averages and were scheduled to graduate this coming spring.
Spear said Rugini was from a farming family in Muliterno, a small town in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
“He was just such a good kid,” Spear said. “I think of all the people who worked for us. They all have bad habits. Marcel never did. You’d ask him to do something and he’d just keep going.”
Spear said the farm is a large vegetable operation that hires 15 or more students to work in the summer, some from the local community and others, like Rugini, from countries such as Brazil and Moldova. When Rugini and Bernardi enrolled at UMO, their visa status changed to allow them to work summers while attending college.
Spear said he asked the Brazilian students what their plans were for after graduation.
“Marcel said, ‘You’re going to think I’m stupid. I just want to stay on the farm,'” Spear said. “Anything he didn’t know how to do was a challenge.”
Spear said Rugini took charge of the farm’s pepper crop at one point and was doing the same with carrots at the time of his death. Carrots are a major crop at Rugini’s home farm in Brazil, Spear said.
“We have 50,000 pounds in storage now because of him,” he said. “He was just a real good guy.”
The Spears said Rugini would cook Brazilian barbeque for the workers, even preparing a feast for Janet Spear’s 70th birthday. He shared his culture and worked hard to learn English, a language he only had rudimentary command of when he first came to the U.S.
“The foreign kids usually come here for two reasons,” Spear said. “They come to make money or they come to learn English. Lucas and Marcel came to learn.”
Spear said he enjoyed learning about the farm markets in Rugini’s home country and exposing the foreign workers to supermarkets and other American ways of doing things.
Visitation hours for Rugini will be held Sat., Nov. 24 from 1-2 p.m., at Hall Funeral Home, followed by a celebration of his life at 2 p.m. The Spear family has been working with the Consulate General of Brazil in Boston on arrangements to have Rugini’s body returned to his parents. An obituary appears in this edition of The Lincoln County News.
“His passport just got burned up,” Andrea Spear said. The bodies of the plane crash victims were so badly burned that they cold only be positively identified through the use of their DNA.
Dick Spear said an English-speaking cousin in Brazil has been facilitating communication between Rugini’s family in Brazil and those in Maine who have welcomed him as part of their community.
He said friends have been gathering in the evening to share stories and deal with the loss as best they can. Andrea Spear said she was happy that Rugini’s friends felt comfortable coming to the farm at this time.
“Marcel was just one heck of a good person,” Dick Spear said.
