MDI Loses a Local Icon
Remembering Jamie Gonzales
BAR HARBOR—For years Jamie Gonzales cheered.
He’d cheer the teachers and staff walking down the halls of MDI High School. He’d cheer the random reporters who needed help. He’d cheer the students and their parents. He’d cheer his family.
And he’d cheer at every MDI High School game he attended. Those were a lot of games. He spent 46 years working there. He’d even cheer on a stranger when they passed him in the hallways.
He could talk about anything.
He could tell a joke about anything.
And he could bring cheer to everything.
“Jamie was always upbeat and a caring individual who took great pride in making people feel good about themselves each and every day,” MDI High School Athletic Director Bunky Dow said Friday. “Regardless of what you may be dealing with, Jamie was always a ray of sunshine with his positive and caring comments. He will be missed!”
Talks and jokes and support were gifts that Jamie constantly gave to the people he encountered. He would see them, truly see them, and sometimes he would even drive students to away games, just so they could be there, so they wouldn’t miss anything, but also so they wouldn’t miss the chance to cheer their friends on, too.
“Jamie Gonzales passed away on Wednesday, July 5th. There wasn't a bigger supporter of MDI High School and a nicer man. I'm sure his blood bled green,” Chris Popper wrote for WDEA.
As the news spread around social media, the accolades rolled in. Jamie was "a dear, dear man,” “a sweet man,” “one of the best,” “fantastic,” “one of MDI’s finest,” “a sweet, dear, dear man,” and a “local icon.” The accolades aren’t quite enough to describe what a truly kind and generous man he was.
Jamie may have retired from the high school in 2015, but he was, and still is, a local icon. Death doesn’t change that and it doesn’t change the legacy of positivity that Jamie gave to everyone he encountered.
Jamie was one of the first graduates of MDI High School in the class back at the end of the 1960s. About 15 months later, he became the high school custodian, a job he held for 46 years.
His love for sports was definitely a feature of his own high school years. He managed the basketball and football teams.
“It was fun. It was a lot of fun,” he told Teddy Geary and Jimmy Carroll in an interview for the MDIHS oral history project back in 2014.
Though he was a ballplayer first, he didn’t regret the transition. He said, “Yeah, I was a ball player my junior year at Mount Desert High School. I knew when I came here: competition. I said, ‘Huh, I’ll get just as much out of this by being a manager than (as) I would a player.’”
That willingness to support and not have to be the star, but to help others shine was something Jamie brought to every human interaction and even every surface he encountered.
In a video on WDEA, Jamie is in the middle of the basketball court, standing on the polished floor, a green MDI Trojans jacket on his trunk, one hand holding a giant broom, smiling and waving to people in the bleachers as Dow announces Jamie’s retirement.
“Jamie always had a smile on his face,” Dow said on the video. And when you asked him how his day was? Jamie always said “excellent” or “great.”
Every basketball tournament in Bangor for decades? He sat through all the games. He was a fixture and if he wasn’t in the bleachers or standing by them or in the high school halls, it felt like something was wrong—something was missing.
He was the face of MDI basketball.
When Dow announced Jamie’s retirement at that event in the gym, people in the crowd collectively moaned, a haunting sound of loss and dismay. He was presented with his name on the high school’s service award banner for his above and beyond service. He also received a signed basketball and a lifetime tournament pass and lifetime MDI High School sports pass. And when every student presented him with something, they got a big hug. He bounced the basketball on the ground, smiling, but teary eyed.
“We wish you the best of luck,” Dow told him. “We love you. Take care.”
A visibly moved Jamie thanked him with a hug and as Dow asked him how he was doing, he said, “I’m fine. I’m doing fine.”
Making sure the staff, students, and building were also doing fine or better than fine was a big part of Jamie’s mission, and it was a mission of love that extended to his blood family, his adored wife Ida Mae, and an entire island community.
“This place here is beautiful. I’d say everything was for the best for the kids,” Jamie said of the high school in that old interview with Geary and Carroll.
And that’s what Jamie wanted: what was best for the kids. But Jamie was about more than just wanting it. Jamie was about making it happen. And he worked so hard to do that: creating community, mopping and cleaning and repairing and talking, smiling, telling stories, listening to your stories, too. He wanted to create a beautiful place. And he did. This island is better for having had him in it.
LINKS
https://sites.google.com/a/mdirss.org/mdihs-local-oral-histories/jamie-gonzales
A link to Chris Popper’s video of Jamie’s retirement.