With much love and gratitude, we remember J. William “Bill” Worden and Charlene J. (Landerkin) Worden, who passed away just two months apart — Bill on Jan. 26, 2026 and Charlene on March 28, 2026 — at Lakes Crossing Memory Care in Kingsland, Ga.
Bill was born on Oct. 28, 1931 in Dexter to Frederick J. Worden and Mildred Hewett Worden. Charlene was born on July 27, 1932 in Augusta to Charles F. Landerkin and Nellie Shute Landerkin.
After graduating from Morse High School in Bath, Bill joined the U.S. Navy. He attended radar and electronics school and then served as fire control technician on the newly commissioned Destroyer Leader USS Mitscher (DL-2) out of Boston.
Bill was honorably discharged in 1955, turning down the promise of advancement because, as he told his superior officers, he needed to get home to the woman he intended to marry, even if she didn’t know it yet.
Charlene grew up in Greenville and graduated from Greenville Consolidated School. She worked as a switchboard operator and clerk for the New England Telephone and Telegraph Co., first in Greenville and then in Bangor.
Bill and Charlene were married in Greenville on June 20, 1959, after Bill graduated from the University of Maine Orono with a B.A. in mathematics. Their adventures took them from the halls of Mt. Kineo House on Moosehead Lake, where Bill was a short order cook and Charlene was a hostess, all the way to Stanford University, where Charlene worked as a secretary in the university’s research lab to support Bill’s pursuit of a post-master’s degree on a Carnegie/U.S. Office of Education Grant.
Back in Maine, Bill’s positions as math teacher, high school principal, and then superintendent of schools took them to Lincoln, Thorndike, Caribou, and then Damariscotta, where they welcomed their two daughters, Amanda Elizabeth and Elisa Anne. When the girls were old enough for school, the family settled in Guilford, where they stayed until both girls left for college.
Later, as empty-nesters, Bill and Charlene moved back to the Maine coast and were especially blessed to live next door to two of their four grandsons, actively involved in their upbringing from birth through high school. One of Bill’s favorite treasures was a box-framed set of knots he’d taught their oldest grandson to tie before leaving as a Navy recruit. Charlene’s was a cookie jar she somehow always kept full for “her boys,” bottomless even when all four grandsons came together.
Bill and Charlene lived life on their own terms. They were fiercely independent and deeply capable. They loved camping and fishing but were most content working the land to raise animals and grow the food that fed their family. Charlene often joked about life dominated by the “Three P’s” — pulling weeds, picking rocks, and piling wood — but even those chores became cherished moments in their life’s story.
They were devout Catholics. Their faith sustained them through every season of life and is their greatest legacy passed onto their children. Despite what dementia/Alzheimer’s disease took from them both at the end, they stayed together, often holding hands in Memory Care as if meeting for the first time but still being drawn to the other. We find comfort in that they left this life as they lived it, together.
Bill and Charlene are survived by their two daughters, Amanda Armstrong and her husband, Richard, of Brunswick, and Elisa Worden-Kirouac, of Fernandina Beach, Fla.; four grandsons, Austin Armstrong and his wife, Alyssa, Caleb Armstrong, Davin Kirouac, and Reilly Kirouac; and five great-grandchildren, Aspen, Aaliyah, Ezra, Josie, and Theo Armstrong.
A funeral mass for Bill and Charlene will be held on June 9, 2026 at 10 a.m. at St. Patrick’s Church in Newcastle. They will be laid to rest on June 10, 2026 in the Maine Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Augusta.
