Goodbye, Reverend Stanley
Former Somesville Minister and Maine Coast Sea Mission field representative has died
SOMESVILLE—Reverend Victor Stanley passed away peacefully in his sleep, December 2, his obituary reads. He was 70. He spent those decades before his death spreading a legacy of love and understanding. Some of that came from his hard-scrabble beginnings. Much of that legacy came simply from his heart.
“Most will wait until the way is paved for them, making the journey to the future easier and minimizing their risk,” he wrote in a 2009 letter to the editor in the Mount Desert Islander about the good that he felt the congregation of his progressive Somesville Union Meeting House, United Church of Christ did.
But he could have truly been writing about his own self, his history of leading the way, of embracing others, of making the world know about the challenges that other face.
He was a man of god, but also a man of words, and a man of positive actions.
In an email released to the congregation at the Somesville church, Pastor Vicki Reeser wrote, “It is with deep sadness that I share that Reverend Victor Stanley died in the early hours of Monday, December 2.”
She went on to write that Rev. Stanley, “impacted so many lives over the course of his ministry here and in the MDI community.” She mentioned both his love of life and generous hospitality in the email.
When Victor C. Stanley was just a child, his life, he said was like a Steinbeck novel. In a Down East farmhouse he and his siblings would sometimes shake snow off their blankets in winter. When their dad picked them up from school, they’d immediately go out to dig clams.
“In Down East, you went day by day with whatever the doctor gave you,” Rev. Stanley is quoted by the Mount Desert Islander as saying at a Martin Luther King Jr. service at the Maine Sea Coast Mission’s Colket Center in 2014.
Rev. Stanley knew what it was like to take just one bath with hot water every year. He knew what it was like to make due. He remembered then-President Lyndon B. Johnson declaring a war on poverty and knew that war was about something his family was enduring.
“Times were tough in the mid-1950s in Down East Maine,” Rev. Stanley wrote for Down East Magazine. “Jobs were scarce, and people were desperate. My parents came down with California Fever, lured by the promise of work at a new Westinghouse manufacturing plant near San Jose. So, in the summer of 1955, they canned as much mackerel as they could into quart-size Ball jars, packed all of their worldly possessions into an old pickup, and headed west with their three sons, my aunt and uncle and their two boys, and the family dog, Rowser. I was 10 months old.”
That, however, didn’t keep Rev. Stanley from being a gift to the world, a beacon of optimism. He was also one of Maine’s first openly gay ministers.
Rev. Stanley was passionate about helping people who needed help and loving them while lifting them up.
That childhood he wrote about in Downeast began in Gouldsboro. He was one of nine siblings. And while his family may have come down with California Fever, Reverend Stanley came up with a fever of his own, spending his life in service to others as a minster and serving congregations throughout Maine after his graduation from Bangor Theological Seminary. He represented Maine Seacoast Mission, serving aboard The Sunbeam. And he was chaplain for the Charleston Correctional Facility.
It was actually scholarships from the Maine Seacoast Mission that allowed him to go to college and then Bangor Theological Seminary.
For almost two decades—the last two decades of his official ministry, Reverend Stanley served as the pastor of the Somesville Union Meeting House UCC. He had a bit of Florida Fever after he retired in 2019 and headed there.
Religion took hold of him via his mother decades ago.
He wrote, “In 1957, my mother became a Christian at a Billy Graham Crusade at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, and her family lived out her commitment. Every week, we dressed in our Sunday best for church and Sunday school. Christmas took on a new significance in our household, with my parents celebrating not only their newfound faith but also their liberation from childhood poverty. Weeks before, my mother would shop for all the children in our extended family back in Maine. She filled huge boxes with toys and shipped them east. At our house, Christmas morning was an exercise in overindulgence. All those children, so much food, and presents filling the room, flowing out from under a tree — a postcard picture of success and happiness in post-war America. Then, in the summer of 1968, everything changed.”
His maternal grandfather received a cancer diagnosis. The family moved back to Maine.
“Arriving Down East was like going back in time 13 years, to when my family had left. We stayed, mostly, with my father’s father. There were still no jobs. Without his Maine master’s license, my father couldn’t do electrical work. The money my parents brought back was spent quickly, and before long, we were digging clams in Frenchman Bay. The price was $6 a bushel, and we could double our money if we shucked them. My family settled into a pattern of digging the tide, then heading to the processing shop to shuck well into the night,” he wrote.
When a woman arrived at his door with a Thanksgiving basket, he realized that they were poor.
But still, despite those hard times, he believed in love, in the power of love, in the power of humans, and according to those who loved him, that belief became a mantra that he sang into the world throughout his entire life.
His obituary writes, “As a minister, he not only believed in a higher power, but was convinced that it had to be one of eternal love. He shared that love with so many, always gentle and supportive. He provided his congregants and his community of friends with the hope and understanding they needed to cope with life’s many challenges. He inspired them with his gift of oratory, filling the church weekly with those who were moved by his words. His sermons of support and love commemorated many families’ milestone moments - from births to weddings - to being there as their loved ones moved onto the everlasting life.”
In that Downeast article he wrote, he put it simply, “Life has been good to me.”
And he has been good to life.
“Victor loved many other things as well, including family, friends, food and fun,” his obituary reads. “An invitation to his home for dinner guaranteed an evening of gourmet cooking, great conversation, and always meeting new friends. He masterfully developed a legendary fundraising Wednesday Pie Sale for the Somesville Union Meeting House UCC that routinely sold out within the hour. His love of people was behind it all.”
He also loved his family. He was predeceased by life partner, Howard Monroe. He is survived by his children, Jonathan and Elizabeth and grandchildren, Kaitlyn, Emily, and Abbie.
A memorial service will be held the summer of 2025. Date and time to be determined. Donations in his memory are gratefully accepted by the Victor Stanley Family Support Fund; First National Bank, 102 Main Street, Bar Harbor, ME 04609.
REVEREND STANLEY’S OBITUARY
Reverend Victor Stanley, a beacon of optimism and hope to so many, passed away peacefully in his sleep on December 2, 2024. He was 70 years old.
Victor’s life journey began in his boyhood home in Gouldsboro, Maine where he was one of 9 children. He became a minister, graduating from Bangor Theological Seminary and served congregations across Maine including Ashville, Baring, Gardiner and South Gouldsboro. He was a Field Representative for the Maine Seacoast Mission aboard the Sunbeam. He also served as Chaplain for the Charleston Correctional Facility in Maine. For the last 19 years of his ministry, he was the beloved Pastor of the Somesville Union Meeting House UCC. Upon his retirement in 2019, he relocated to Florida.
His lifelong mantra was to believe in the power of love. As a minister, he not only believed in a higher power, but was convinced that it had to be one of eternal love. He shared that love with so many, always gentle and supportive. He provided his congregants and his community of friends with the hope and understanding they needed to cope with life’s many challenges. He inspired them with his gift of oratory, filling the church weekly with those who were moved by his words. His sermons of support and love commemorated many families’ milestone moments—from births to weddings—to being there as their loved ones moved onto the everlasting life.
Victor loved many other things as well, including family, friends, food and fun. An invitation to his home for dinner guaranteed an evening of gourmet cooking, great conversation and always meeting new friends. He masterfully developed a legendary fundraising Wednesday Pie Sale for the Somesville Union Meeting House UCC that routinely sold out within the hour. His love of people was behind it all.
Earlier this year, he was predeceased by his life partner Howard Monroe, with whom he shared many years of love. Together they nurtured a diverse circle of friends and acquaintances that live on as testimony to the bonds they created.
Victor is survived by his children, Jonathan and Elizabeth, his beloved granddaughters Kaitlyn, Emily and Abbie, his sister-in-law Cyndi Stanley, and his daughter-in-law, Lori; his partner Howard’s family: Scott and Anne Monroe and their daughters Caitlin and Elizabeth Monroe and their wives Batlle and Natalie; Victor’s siblings Louis, Ronald, Barbara, Darryl, Matthew and Kent. He was predeceased by his parents Edward and Maxine Stanley and brothers Joseph and Travisse. He also leaves behind his cherished canine companion Stella, predeceased by the inimitable Fred.
To those who knew him, there will always be a place in their hearts for the man who gave them so much hope and love. It is often said someone will be missed, but in Victor’s case, there are no truer words.
A memorial service will be held the summer of 2025. Date and time to be determined. Donations in his memory are gratefully accepted by the Victor Stanley Family Support Fund; First National Bank, 102 Main Street, Bar Harbor, ME 04609.
Correction: There was a small error in Rev. Stanley’s obituary that was sent to us. We’ve corrected that!
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Does anyone know where that obituary was published and by whom it was written?
Victor was a dear friend and I’m so sorry that we’ll miss the pleasure of being neighbors again.
I will miss him always.