Paul Leeman Jr. holds the white Bristol fire chief helmet. A longtime Bristol firefighter and Bristol’s first full-time fire chief, Leeman also has been an instructor of shotokan martial arts, as well as a popular cook at restaurants on the Bristol peninsula like The Anchor Inn and Samoset Restaurant. (Photo courtesy Paul Leeman Jr.)
Paul Leeman Jr. has worn many hats during his life: Bristol’s first full-time fire chief, a shotokan martial arts instructor, and owner and cook at New Harbor’s fabled Samoset Restaurant, to name a few.
But of the many hats Leeman has worn and titles he’s held, he said his favorite is being a father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. He has four children – Paul, Heather, Charles, and Sara – as well as six grandkids and one great-granddaughter.
“Not to sound cliché, but that’s my favorite role,” Leeman said. “I don’t want to be defined solely as a chief, I want to be defined as many different things.”
His family has a long local history, particularly in Round Pond, where he and his wife, Jessica, live in a home he built in 1973. Leeman is the 10th generation of the family to reside in Lincoln County and his found out recently that his great-great-great-great grandfather was buried in Round Pond.
“To go visit sites like that is good for the soul,” Leeman said.
Leeman grew up in Round Pond, attending Longfellow School from kindergarten through second grade, Bristol Consolidated School for third grade through sixth grade, and then when the town turned Longfellow School into a junior high school, he went there for seventh and eighth grade. He graduated from Lincoln Academy in 1970.
Leeman lobstered as a kid and a teenager, and earned an associate’s degree in applied marine biology and oceanography from Maine Vocational Technical Institute, now Southern Maine Community College. According to Leeman, the cost of each academic year was around $700, including room and board.
“It was probably some of the best two years of my young life,” Leeman said.
After graduating from college, Leeman became a marine technology technician at the Ira C. Darling Marine Center for Research Teaching and Service, now known as the Darling Marine Center, in Walpole for a couple years. Although brief, his time at the marine center served Leeman well as it helped foster a connection he would revisit more than 25 years later.
Leeman’s next professional venture was with his father, when they got the idea to transform the former laundromat on Bristol Road into the Samoset Restaurant, with Leeman running the kitchen.
The origins of Leeman’s familiarity with food may have taken shape at The Anchor Inn in Round Pond, where he worked for his grandparents when he was 11, picking lobsters and doing dishes. He returned to The Anchor seasonally for a number of years before jumping into business with his father.
“It was so good working with my grandparents,” Leeman said. “My parents were always around, and all the locals, it was quite a place.”
Leeman owned and cooked at the Samoset until 2001, when it shut down. He then made a return to an old stomping ground to head the kitchen and cook at the Darling Marine Center.
“I’ve always loved doing paperwork,” Leeman said of the business side of things. “But (at the Darling Marine Center) all I had to worry about was providing good food, and that was better than trying to run a restaurant.”
Leeman recalled meeting and cooking for thousands of students from all walks of life while he ran the kitchen down at the Darling Marine Center in Walpole.
“I met people from all over the world down there (at the Darling Marine Center),” Leeman said. “Food brings people together.”
On more than once occasion he’d look out of the kitchen and see folks from different backgrounds, people from countries at war, sitting across from each other be laughing and eating.
“I would look out there and see these people becoming best friends,” Leeman said. “Just science, eating, camaraderie, and I never forgot that. If we could get religion and politics out of these things, we’d never have wars.”
Leeman balanced his duties at the marine center with his responsibilities to the town as a member, and later chief, of Bristol Fire and Rescue, another venture in which his family has deep roots. Clifford Leeman, his grandfather, helped start the Bristol Fire Department. Leeman’s father Paul Leeman Sr. served as assistant fire chief at the Round Pond Station for 20 years. Leeman’s son, Paul Leeman III, has over 30 years of service with the department.
“Managing both was really time consuming,” Leeman said. “On your days off you’re doing paperwork, and I really loved it, absolutely loved it, but I realized I couldn’t keep doing both.”
Leeman went to the membership of Bristol Fire and Rescue and asked if anyone wanted take over as chief. According to Leeman, that’s when they came up with the idea to have a full-time fire chief.
After residents approved the creation of the position during the annual town meeting, Leeman left the Darling Marine Center in 2018 and worked as Bristol’s full-time fire chief until 2021.
Leeman said he’s proud of many of the accomplishments that occurred during his tenure as chief, but that the town’s Safety and Healthy Award for Public Employers, awarded by the Maine Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Standards, is one of his favorites.
“Safety has always been a priority for me,” Leeman said.
The public sector award recognizes employers who meet a high standard of safety and health policies. According to Leeman, all of Bristol’s municipal departments earned the award during his time as chief.
Leeman was also excited to help facilitate the installation of blue reflective address numbers so first responders could locate addresses with less difficulty.
“We are part of the community, we are the community. It’s not our job, it’s our calling,” Leeman said. “We have to get paid for doing that, which we would do for nothing, and we did for a long time.”
Leeman’s cooking career may no longer sit behind the line of any of the restaurants he’s worked for or run, but, in his retirement from the fire department, he has found his way back to cooking while also interfacing with the community.
“I didn’t cook too much after I left the Darling Marine Center, but when I retired as fire chief, I bought a pellet smoker,” Leeman said. “And I felt excited again about cooking.”
Leeman started a Facebook group called “Paul Leeman’s cooking again: let’s share” to keep track of and share his cooking adventures, as well as for others to do the same.
The Facebook group has over 1,300 members posting their own daily culinary adventures, sharing recipes and photos.
“It’s a place without politics, just good people supporting each other and enjoying the community of good food,” Leeman said.
Additionally, while Leeman was running restaurants, working for the fire department, and being a father, from 1975-1986 he was earning his second degree blackbelt in shotokan martial arts and teaching the art at Lincoln Academy, Bath, and Rockland.
These days, Leeman works Sundays as security at LincolnHealth’s Miles Campus in Damariscotta and has recently taken a couple shifts a week picking lobsters at Muscongus Bay Lobster in Round Pond now that student workers have headed back to school.
When he started at the dock, his only ask was to be kept away from the heat of cooking on the line again.
“All I asked was not to see a ticket,” Leeman said, laughing. “But it’s fun. I get to look at the harbor I’ve looked at all of my life.”
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