Walter Sturtevant Foster, 89, of Friendship, died on April 13, 2023. He was born May 28, 1933, the second child of Katharine (Condon) and Frank Clifton Foster. Both Walter and his brother, Randall, were born in Waterbury, Conn., where their father’s brother was a physician.
He grew up to be a kind, considerate, patient, professional, and responsible person.
During Walter’s childhood and adolescence, his family lived in Tusculum, Tenn., Asheville, N.C., and Berkeley, Calif., where his father held positions in college education and administration. For most of his childhood, Walter and his family spent the school months where his father was employed, and spent summers in Friendship, where his maternal grandmother lived. He also spent some years with his grandmother during World War II and attended the Friendship Village School.
Walter graduated from Orono High School in 1951, earned his bachelor’s degree from Colby College in 1956, and received his master’s degree in zoology from the University of Maine in 1958. From 1958 to 1961, he served in the U.S. Air Force as an air traffic controller with posts at Sioux Lookout in Ontario and at Brunswick Naval Air Station in Maine.
During summers in his high school years, Walter harvested Irish sea moss, which led to his being hired by the Maine Department of Sea and Shore Fisheries to conduct seaweed surveys during summers in his college years. Those months spent exploring the Maine coast with truck and skiff, surveying seaweeds, and boarding with local residents formed some of his fondest memories.
In the mid-1960s, he worked on Cape Cod in commercial aquaculture and developed an interest in shellfish science, a field he worked in for the next 30 years. While there, he met Carolyn Chesebrough, a colleague. In 1967, the couple was married in Friendship, where they spent the rest of their lives together. They raised two children, in the same house that Walter’s family built in 1857, surrounded by the fields, woods, and water that they all enjoyed.
During Walter’s first few years back in Maine, he worked as an independent contractor for the Maine Department of Marine Resources and started his own European oyster cultivation business, receiving the state’s first license to do so, before licenses were given numbers. In 1977, he accepted full-time employment as an area biologist with the Maine DMR, where he worked until he retired in 2000 as director of industry services.
While working for the state (sometimes in Boothbay Harbor and sometimes in Hallowell), he made time to serve the town of Friendship and the Midcoast region in many ways. Within months of returning to live in Friendship in 1967, Walter became president of the Friendship Village Society. He served as president for several years before the society became inactive in the late 1970s. As president of the Friendship Village Society, he oversaw the dedication ceremony for the Hahn Center in 1971, and for a few years before and after the dedication, he served on the Hahn Center Building Committee. In 1970, he became president of the Roadside Cemetery (the burying ground of many generations of his Condon ancestors), retiring in 2016 after 46 years!
In 1974, Walter became the founding chair of the Friendship Planning Board. He encouraged members of the fishing community to join who would be mindful of the preservation of Friendship’s working waterfront, which they were. Walter stepped down from the planning board in 2014 after 40 years of service. He served as chair of the comprehensive plan committee, when the plan was drawn up and adopted in 1987, and again when it was revised in 1995.
During the 1970s, Walter represented Friendship on the Knox County Regional Planning Commission and the Knox-Lincoln Time and Tide Resource Conservation and Development Council, serving terms as chair of both organizations. For 10 years prior to the opening of the Friendship town office in 2005, Walter served on its building committee. Walter became an active member of the Friendship Museum, following its reorganization in 2005, and served as president during Friendship’s bicentennial celebration in 2007. In retirement, Walter was employed part time as Friendship’s code enforcement officer and plumbing inspector.
Walter was a creative man who constantly impressed his family with his ability to design and build a range of things including his wharf, simple electronic gadgets, and home improvement projects. While he used vintage trade skills that he learned in his youth from Friendship elders, he also enjoyed learning new technology. He became a scuba diver. He was an early adopter of the home computer and programming in the 1970s, learned ham radio in the 1980s, and taught himself how to use geographic information systems in the 1990s. His favorite leisure activities included photography, reading, ham radio, maintaining his family home, working in his woods, and hiking on the Appalachian Trail, often with his children.
Walter’s final years were challenged by Alzheimer’s disease. It limited his engagement with Friendship but not his enjoyment of his home and family. Walter was honored by the town’s featuring him in its bicentennial annual report, hanging a framed poster of him in the town office, and naming him as a marshal of the 2017 Friendship Day parade. The Maine Municipal Association included an article about him in the April 2011 edition of the Maine Townsman.
Even as his health declined, he constantly found ways to be helpful around the house and property. Walter never lost his pleasing, uncomplaining manner, and he will live forever in our hearts.
Walter was predeceased by his brother, Randall C. Foster. He is survived by his wife, Carolyn; son, Benjamin; daughter and son-in-law, Lauren and Christopher Gosster; and niece, Sarah Blasius. According to his wishes, there will be no services. His burial will be private at the Roadside Cemetery. Anyone who wishes may make a donation in his memory to the Roadside Cemetery Inc., c/o Elizabeth Crabtree, 57 Back Pasture Lane, Hope, ME 04847.
As Walter often remarked, it’s nice to be remembered.
