Every day around 5 p.m., as she has for almost 60 years now, Maine’s most-acclaimed weather watcher checks her weather station and carefully records her observations in a book provided to her by the National Weather Service.
In precise handwriting, Newcastle resident Arlene Cole notes the temperature and conditions, measures the precipitation, if any, and records her general observations.
At the end of every month she makes a copy of her records and mails it to the National Weather Service office in Gray. Cole’s dedication to her mission has been recognized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who sent a letter of appreciation in 2010.
Since 1965, Cole has kept a NOAA weather station near her house on Academy Hill Road. According to Cole, her interest in the weather has been a lifelong habit, developed growing up on a farm in Jefferson.
“Weather was very important on the farm,” Cole said. “As I have told people, I remember my father; our kitchen would go to the north and then we would go out facing east to get out to the shed. As he would open that door and go out he would look off to the east, at the sky to get an idea of what the weather was going to going be. You didn’t get the weather like you do now. We did get it in on the radio. Just a quick pause, a quick glance to let him know what he was going to be doing that day. So I was interested in the weather. I started keeping a diary, and I kept it for quite a while.”
By the time she became the official NOAA weather observer for the area, Cole had been tracking weather for years. She inherited the job officially in 1965 after her predecessor in the role, Nancy Rollins, took a job in the Augusta area. Rollins’ departure also started Cole’s longstanding relationship with The Lincoln County News. At the time, the newspaper was still owned and operated by LCN’s legendary editor Dorothy Roberts.
“Nancy Rollins, her husband Charles was a writer, and she worked for Dorothy Roberts,” Cole said. “She had a weather station. I don’t know how she got it, but she had a weather station. She gave (weather reports) to the LCN so they had it nicely. For some reason she quit working and went out working in Augusta … and so Dorothy and whoever worked for her would try to come up with what they thought would good for the weather. So I went in and I talked to Dorothy and I said ‘I have better than that’ and I showed her what I had and she said ‘You’re hired. Every Wednesday morning call in and give me the weather.’ And I have been doing it ever since.”
Although Roberts had a fearsome reputation as one who did not suffer 1fools gladly, Cole said she always got along well with the Roberts matriarch.
“She had a reputation for being outspoken, but you know she really did an awful lot for this area,” Cole said. “She said what she thought, and of course (sometimes) she was wrong; we all are, but she did a lot for the area.”
She may strongly be strongly associated with Newcastle, but Arlene Cole was actually born in Damariscotta and grew up in South Jefferson. Her mother, Bertha McCurda, passed away when Arlene was 8, leaving her father, Elton McCurda, to raise Arlene, her sister Margaret, and Bertha’s two children from a previous marriage by himself.
Cole was educated in a one-room schoolhouse in Jefferson and attended the Jefferson Village School before her father sent her to Lincoln Academy for high school.
“When it came time for high school, that was during the Second World War,” Cole said. “He sent us to Lincoln but he had us board down here through the week. They didn’t have buses then, and so we boarded through the week. Essentially I’ve been here ever since.”
While she was at Lincoln, Cole was active in glee club, the school band, and the drama and science clubs. She played basketball and softball, and her athletic achievements earned her a spot in LA’s Sports Hall of Fame in 2014.
By the time she graduated as an honor student in 1947, she had already met the young man she would marry, George Cole, a member of the school’s class of 1946. In 1998 he was honored as Lincoln Academy’s Alumnus of Year, distinction Arlene Cole was awarded in 2005. There are a number of LA families with multiple honorees among them, but as far as she knows, the Coles are the only husband and wife to share the honor to date.
The couple married in June 1950, nine days before the Korean War broke out. Arlene Cole had completed three years at Colby College and planned to return for complete her degree, but the war interfered. George Cole expected to be drafted and Arlene Cole withdrew to be with her husband.
“The Korean War started and he knew he’d be drafted and I couldn’t go back to school and leave him, so I withdrew and I got my degree later from University of Maine,” she said.
Drafted into the Army in 1952, George Cole’s test results qualified him for more education and eventually a teaching assignment in Redstone Arsenal, near Huntsville, Ala.
“George was lucky,” Arlene Cole said. “He did well in his tests and they put him in guided missiles. They were trying to open up in Florida but they didn’t have anybody who knew anything about guided missiles, so they taught him and then he went on teaching for the two years he was there. So he didn’t go overseas, but he didn’t know when he was drafted. I could have been a widow when I was 21.”
While George Cole was in the Army, Arlene Cole followed his postings, first to Baltimore while George went through basic training, then to Long Branch, N.J., then ultimately to Hunstville. That two-year period was the only time she has lived outside of Maine.
Arlene Cole said she enjoyed Alabama, but there is no place like home. Back in Newcastle the Coles threw themselves into the community while raising three children. George Cole served on many town boards and committees, including nine years on the school committee and the building committee for what is now the Clayton V. Huntley Jr. Fire Station on River Road.
Both Coles were longtime members of the Grange. Arlene Cole joined the junior Grange at the age of 7 and was elected the first master of the Jefferson Junior Grange when it was formed in 1938. She was then a member and officer of the Lincoln Pomona Grange, serving with the state and national Grange.
It was while representing Lincoln Pomona Grange that she won the first-ever Union Fair Blueberry Pie state championship in 1960, becoming the fair’s very first blueberry queen. Her picture remains on the wall today at the Union Fairgrounds.
“I didn’t get a crown,” she said. “I had to wear a baker’s hat … You know I hope I never have to judge a contest like that. There is almost nothing different. There are a lot of good cooks.”
Arlene Cole also served as a ballot clerk for 50 years and as a deputy warden and deputy registrar of the voters. In 2016 she was surprised and honored to have the annual town report dedicated to her for her contributions to the town. While her husband was very active in local affairs, she never wanted to get involved in politics.
“I’m not a great politician,” she said. “I always vote. I always vote, but I don’t get involved like a lot of people do.”
When the town decided to found the Newcastle Historical Society 1998, both George and Arlene Cole served on the founding committee. Arlene Cole started as the committee secretary, a role that gradually morphed into semi-official status as Newcastle’s town historian.
Her interest in local history has spawned three books, beginning with “Between Two Rivers,” written in 2003 and written for the town’s 250th anniversary.
Cole has contributed the Newcastle history column to the LCN for more than 20 years. In 2012, 130 columns were compiled into the book “History Tales of Newcastle, Maine.” In 2019, she produced a companion book, “More History Tales of Newcastle.”
For many years together George and Arlene Cole operated Cole’s Woodcrafts as partners. George Cole inherited the business from his father a mechanical engineer who arrived in Midcoast Maine after the Great Depression closed his business in Massachusetts.
“The boats were very popular,” she said. “You’ll never believe it. One summer day this couple walked in and they were from Hawaii and they wanted to put it in their shop, and we said what do you sell Maine boats in Hawaii for? Well, they had a shop, Maine items. They didn’t last too long. I don’t think it was too popular.”
Well into his 70s, George Cole decided to retire, but his plans to wind the business down as customers fell away was foiled by the fact his customers kept buying the products, Arlene Cole said.
“When he got ready to retire he said I’ll promise to sell my gifts to the ones that I have … but nobody dropped out,” she said. “No they didn’t. They liked the stuff.”
George Cole passed away in 2012.
Today, at 93, Arlene Cole still lives independently in the house she and her husband began building together in 1950. At the time, George Cole did not want to go into debt so they built half of the house while they lived at a camp on land the couple owned on Damariscotta Lake in Jefferson. They completed the house after George Cole returned home from the Army.
“My house is full of stuff. It is,” she said. “When my father died, my sister and I cleaned out and saved all the what I thought was important. Then when George’s folks died we did the same thing, and what I have collected is all here. I feel sorry for my kids. They are going to throw a lot of it away. As times goes by a lot of it becomes less important.”
Arlene Cole said she is comfortable in her own home and is pleased her three children all live nearby and she sees them regularly. Cole said she plans to remain in her own home as long as she can. She has to renew her driver’s license next year, which she has concerns about, she said.
She plans to continue driving as long as she can, although her world reaches her church, the historical society museum, and the grocery store, all within three miles of her home.
“I am fine,” she said. “I can see. I can’t hear but that doesn’t affect me really, too much. My body is quite OK and I haven’t any illnesses and I have my license … I take it a day at a time and I don’t worry about it. So far I have been very lucky.”
(Do you have a suggestion for a “Characters of the County” subject? Email info@lcnme.com with the subject line “Characters of the County.”)
