Southport Fire Chief Gerry Gamage has devoted a lifetime to serving his community. Among his many roles, Gamage serves as the chair of the Southport Select Board, volunteers as a docent for the Southport Historical Society, chairs the Southport Cemetery District, represents Southport on the Boothbay Region Water District Board of Trustees, and serves as a trustee for the Southport Memorial Library. I’m not rich, but I’m happy, he said. (Sherwood Olin photo)
For almost all of his life, Gerry Gamage has made his living in and around his hometown of Southport. A builder by trade, Gamage has fished commercially and built houses and additions, but derives from tending to floats, boats, and cottages.
“I’m not rich, but I’m happy,” he said.
Gamage is a father of four and a grandfather of nine. When he is not working for himself, Gamage is almost certainly doing something for Southport.
Currently Southport’s fire chief and the chair of the select board, Gamage has held one municipal office or another for the town almost continuously since 1974.
Elected fire chief in 1976, he celebrates 50 years in the role next year, having already decided his current term will be his last. Gamage is the fourth chief in the department’s 100-year history, following Herbert Thompson, Cecil Price, and Herbert’s son, Stuart Thompson. Like Gamage, Price also served as fire chief and a member of the select board.
After Gamage was first elected to the select board in 1981, a group of residents raised concerns about the legality of him serving as both fire chief and a select board member simultaneously.
Ultimately, the town took the question to the Office of the Maine Attorney General, which determined that since both offices in Southport were elected by the public, there was not a conflict of interest.
“Most fire chiefs in the county are appointed, but I was elected by the citizenry, by the general public,” Gamage said. “They were my boss, as opposed to the selectman appointing me.”
The son of a career Coast Guard officer, Gamage was raised in Southport after his father chose to retire near his final and favorite duty station.
After high school, Gamage matriculated to Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, but he quickly determined he did not want to spend more time in the classroom at that point in his life.
“The first year was an extension of high school, and I was so glad to get out of high school. I didn’t want to go back again,” he said.
Returning to Southport in 1972, Gamage took a job as an assistant to Southport Water System Superintendent Stuart Thompson. Thompson stepped down later that year, and when his successor stepped down in August 1973, Gamage was given the job. He was 19 years old.
The following spring, when Southport’s road commissioner resigned, the select board asked Gamage to fill in on a temporary basis. As Gamage recalls, his tenure got off to a white knuckle start.
On April 9, 1974, just after Gamage had gone through the process of turning the island’s water on, a late spring Nor’easter dumped nine inches of snow on the Midcoast. It was a trial by fire, Gamage said, chuckling at the memory now.
“So I was out plowing, in a truck I had never set foot in until that day,” he said. “I had to bring a Bernzomatic torch with me, and I would stop at each hydrant, thaw it out, and open it up enough to bleed so it wouldn’t freeze up and break. That was my indoctrination.”
The following month, in May 1974, the town held a special election to elect a new road commissioner, and Gamage was elected unopposed. He continued serving as both Southport’s water superintendent and road commissioner until he stepped down in 1979. At that point, the select board voted to create a public works department and took over the road commissioner’s responsibilities.
When Gamage was first elected to the select board in 1981, he picked up the role right where he left off.
Gamage’s association with the fire department predates his public service career. He joined the department in 1971 and was promoted to captain in 1976. He had only been an officer for a couple of months before the fire chief at the time, Thompson, announced his plans to step down during the department’s annual meeting and dinner in January 1977.
“I remember sitting there at the table afterward and talking with a bunch of fellows and wondering where we’re going,” Gamage said.
A day or two later, as Gamage was clearing snow from a town monument, two of the department’s senior officers, both older men 1he greatly respected, stopped by and suggested he become the fire chief.
Gamage said he was flattered but very surprised. He knew the island very well, but he didn’t have any advanced training, and, at 23 years old, he was still one of the youngest people in the department. When it was clear the officers were serious, Gamage agreed and was elected unopposed.
Looking back on it now, Gamage said he thinks the department’s leadership had a plan when they made him a captain a few months before Thompson stepped down.
“I’m very active and gung-ho, so when I join something, I dive right into it,” Gamage said. “I’m not just standing in the corner. So, they saw that, and because I’d proven myself being the water superintendent and the road commissioner, I had proven to most of the people around that I was more than just a kid.”
Although he was willing to take on the job and was selected by the membership, Gamage said he still had to learn how to be a leader.
“I was brought up that my elders was, ‘Mr. So and So,’ and stuff, and here I am the boss, and I’ve got men under my control that are old enough to be my father and grandfather,” he said. “All good people, but it just was awkward for me to call someone who was old enough to be my grandfather by his first name.”
Gamage said he first ran for the select board in 1981 in part because of conflict with a specific board member. In 1984, Gamage lost a rematch by five votes in a three-way race for the board. More than 40 years on, Gamage speaks about the loss as though it’s still fresh.
“That was a big, big wake up call,” he said. “I mean, I felt so bad. … I just heard, ‘They don’t want you.’ I’d given them three years and done the best I could.”
In 1987, Gamage ran for the board again and won handily in a head-to-head contest. He has chaired the board since 2000.
“I have been here ever since,” he said. “From 1981 to 2025 with a three-year sabbatical.”
Among his other commitments, in 2020 Gamage was elected to the Southport Cemetery District, which he now chairs. He is a devotee of history; he volunteers for the Southport Historical Society and works as a docent for Southport’s Hendricks Hill Museum.
Beyond his formal civic roles, Gamage is a proud supporter of America’s military veterans and is closely involved with the Boothbay Region Veterans Banner Project. Organized by the Charles E. Sherman American Legion Post 36, the program is intended to honor all local veterans who served in America’s armed forces.
The project involves displaying 30-inch-by-60-inch banners featuring each veteran’s name and photo along major roads in Boothbay, Boothbay Harbor, and Southport between Memorial Day and Veterans Day each year.
Gamage feels so strongly about the project he bought his own bucket truck to erect the banners in Southport. At last count, Gamage puts up banners honoring 165 Southport veterans. Gamage said the banners play an important role in recalling the men and women who have served America. It is particularly important in that it keeps the names of the veterans in the public eye, Gamage said.
“The other towns use the public works people to do it, but it’s something I wanted to do,” he said. “Ninety percent of them, the people that I hang banners for, are people I knew and loved. So, it’s a real heartwarming thing.”
Gamage is also very proud of his work helping renovate and revive the Cuckolds Light Station, which marks the entrance to Boothbay Harbor. Beginning in 2006, Gamage and a group overseeing the project got the ball rolling. Monied interests that contributed to the effort early on eventually decided to take the project in a different direction, he said.
When the business interest subsided, Gamage formed another nonprofit that has just recently been awarded a lease on the property.
“I got over a million dollars in damages to repair after that last storm, but we’re going to make it happen,” he said.
Looking back at the start of his working career, Gamage said he didn’t feel right about dropping out of college and returning home. Gamage acknowledged putting pressure on himself to live up to what he thought his parents expected.
“I always felt I’d let my parents down by dropping out of that,” he said. “So I came back to Southport and took all this on to make my parents proud … They’re both gone, but I think they know.”
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