Longtime South Bristol Select Board member Chester Rice stands by his race car in his Walpole shop on Monday, Feb. 6. After 26 years of service on the board, Rice is not running for reelection this March. (Evan Houk photo)
South Bristol Select Board member Chester Rice has seen some changes in the area during the 63 years he has devoted to community service.
During his lifetime in the area, Rice has seen the construction of the municipal parking lot and public boat ramp in Damariscotta, the expansion of the town’s commercial district, an increase in South Bristol’s summer population, and the recent surge in the building of multi-million homes on the peninsula’s waterfront.
“Damariscotta then (1960s) was a lot like South Bristol is now,” he said. “It was pretty simple. There wasn’t so much going on.”
During his public service career, Rice has served as a member of the Damariscotta Fire Department, and served lengthy tenures on Damariscotta’s Board of Selectmen and school committee. He served a term in the state legislature between 1994-96 and, since 1997, he has been a sitting member of the South Bristol Select Board.
Rice’s current term on the board will be his last as he has declined to run for office again.
His willingness to serve in any capacity has been driven by a desire to simply give back, Rice said. “The community was always pretty good to me and I thought it was time to give back,” he said. “When I had time, I thought it was time to give back.”
Rice likes to stay active. In addition to his endless volunteer work, Rice still lobsters every summer and works on a race car that his grandson, Alex Waltz, drives at the Wiscasset Speedway.
“I’ve always said, ‘when my time comes, I hope I fall over doing something I enjoy doing,’” Rice said.
Chester A. Rice was born at the Sproul homestead in South Bristol in 1937, on the chicken farm where his father, Mervin Rice, was working. Mervin Rice worked on farms and was in the lumber business for 40 years, Chester Rice said. He was partly inspired to give back by his father’s example.
“My father was always giving back to the community. He looked after neighbors, cut their wood, sawed their wood,” Rice said.
His near 60-year experience with the Lion’s Club International also showed Chester Rice the fulfillment community service can bring. Rice was King Lion of the Damariscotta-Newcastle Lions Club for a time and was given the Melvin Jones Award, the club’s highest honor for community service, about five years ago.
“I was always pretty proud of that,” Rice said.
After three-and-a-half years at Lincoln Academy, Rice and the principal had a “falling out” and he left to join the U.S. Army at age 17.
“The day he told me, and I’ll never forget it in my life, he said ‘I don’t know why we try because you’re going to be a clam digger anyway,’ and I never forgot it,” Rice said.
Rice served in the Army for six years, learning welding, automobile body work, and clerk typing. He said he worked on tanks in the Second Armored Division when he was stationed in Germany.
“I learned a lot there,” Rice said.
Returning home in 1960, Rice married his sweetheart, Katherine, and the two settled in Damariscotta. Rice joined the Damariscotta Fire Department that same year, and he remained an active member for about 35 years. He also began working for the excavating crew of Howard Wright, where he learned many valuable skills.
“He showed me how to run a bulldozer. Sometimes he just left me and let me learn by myself,” Rice said with a laugh.
In 1967, Rice started his own excavating business, Chester A. Rice Inc., and ran it for 30 years before selling it to his employees.
He said what he liked about excavating was that the job was always challenging and every job was different. “I enjoyed running equipment for a long time,” Rice said.
His company shop is located on Rice Lane in Damariscotta, where The Garage auto repair business is located now.
Lobster fishing has always been a big part of his life, growing up in South Bristol. He has always had a hobby boat since he was young. He built his own lobster boat at one point, and he continues to fish the Damariscotta River for lobsters every summer.
In 1966, Rice said the Damariscotta Select Board was “pretty old” at that time, so he decided to try his hand at town government. It wasn’t much of a stretch as his grandfather, father, and brother all served on the South Bristol Select Board at one time or another.
“I’ve always been interested in town hall,” Rice said.
Rice also served on the school committee while in Damariscotta, to help oversee and fund the education his three daughters received in the Twin Villages.
In the early 1970s, Rice remembers being on the sewer committee that led to the formation of the Great Salt Bay Sanitary District—which now provides safe drinking water in Damariscotta and Newcastle and wastewater treatment services Damariscotta, Newcastle, and Nobleboro.
Rice said his excavating company did a lot of work pro bono for Damariscotta, including all the work for the fire department.
“There were a lot of things like that, we just did,” he said.
Rice also was involved with the founding of the Central Lincoln County Ambulance Service Inc., and was serving as chair of the board of directors for Damariscotta Bank and Trust when it merged with Bangor Savings Bank in 2020.
Rice said that when he retired from his excavating business and moved back to South Bristol in 1992, he set out to serve in Augusta to fight back against rules and regulations that were stifling small excavating businesses.
“It was really difficult to get a permit,” Rice said of the stringent gravel pit restrictions at the time.
Rice served as a Maine State Representative from 1994 to 1996. During that time, he helped get the gravel pit laws changed to reduce the burdens on small businesses like the one he used to run and was able to pass a law to protect lobstermen. The law, among other things, established trap limits and different regional lobster zones, each with its own Zone Council, to give lobstermen more control over the industry.
“It made it a lot easier,” Rice said. “Those things are still in place today, probably changed a little bit over the years, but there is still pretty much that baseline.”
In 1997, one of the South Bristol Select Board members retired and Rice stepped up yet again.
“There was a term that needed to be finished so I ran for that and been there ever since,” Rice said.
Rice fills in most of the gaps in town and on the select board, as the other two members have always held full-time jobs. He estimates he has shoveled 200 tons of tar patch, fixing town roads, in his 26 years serving the town.
“I didn’t mind, I had the time,” Rice said.
The most memorable moment from his career as a South Bristol Select Board member seems to be when he found out about the approximately $9 million gift from the estate of summer resident, Ann Wilder Stratton, in 2004.
“I was in the town office the day that the lady called, she was the administrator of this estate. I’ll never forget the words she said … ‘Your town’s just inherited $9 million,’” Rice said.
Rice initially asked if the phone call was a scam, he was so surprised. He said the money from Stratton has been invested wisely and allowed the town to make about $6 million in improvements, including the construction of the first public boat launch, Eugley Landing. There is over $12 million currently in the account, he said.
“We made a policy when we got that money that we’d never spend more than 70% of the interest earned,” Rice said.
Now, it is time for some younger people to step up and serve in town government, Rice said. At 85 years old, he is ready to step back, but doesn’t seem quite ready to slow down.
“It takes a lot of time,” Rice said of the select board work.
His nephew, Adam Rice, will be on the ballot for the select board this March, looking to carry on the Rice family tradition of serving in town government.
Rice said he loves the town of South Bristol and has had some of the best neighbors one could hope for. He also likes how newcomers to the town settle in first before trying to make changes.
“I’ve not seen any of the people that have moved here try to change the town from what it was. That’s the part, for me, that makes South Bristol special,” Rice said. “It’s a friendly community.”
“It’s been an interesting life, I guess you might call it,” Rice said. “It’s been fun.”
