"Nothing Fancy, Just Good"
Bar Harbor Mourns Tim Adelmann
BAR HARBOR—Tim Adelmann was the sort of guy who met you with a joke, a booming cheer, and a smile and that special kind of listening that made you actually feel heard.
Like one woman wrote on Facebook, “How can you not love, Tim?”
It was pretty hard not to.
As the owner of Adelmann’s Deli on Main Street for decades, Tim heard a lot of stories and fed a lot of people, and spread a lot of love as he expanded his business whenever possible, being there for his customers and his family.
“First, I added sandwiches and then it became a deli and then there was breakfast. Now, I am adding rental apartments and a Monday through Friday take-out,” Tim said in a Bar Harbor Savings and Loan ad back in 2020.
Tim was known for “bustin’ ass,” but more than that? He was known for being funny, kind, generous, and full of love for his family, which extended beyond just his own kids, but pretty much to everyone else’s kids, too.
Last fall, Tim was diagnosed with liver cancer.
He’d “been fighting the good fight in typical Tim fashion, complete with dad jokes that have Hannah’s eyes near lodged in the back of her head from rolling them so hard,” said family friend Tessa Irvin in a GoFundMe appeal just before his death, June 17.
Despite the dad jokes that made his daughter, Hannah, do that eye roll, Tim developed a difficult infection, which had complicated his cancer battle. He succumbed to that infection almost a month ago.
He’d been in the hospital for three weeks and had just been approved for a bed at Mass General.
Julie Veilleux called Tim “one of the kindest, most thoughtful people we know.”
That assessment is common.
“As I’m sure most people reading this know, Tim is an incredible person through and through. He’s a pillar of Bar Harbor community. For nearly 20 years, he ran the best deli in Bar Harbor. Simply, he’s someone everyone is happy to see around, whether you catch him at Hannaford’s or see him riding his dirt bike around town. He’s the first to crack a joke, to light up any room, and is always so generous. From the moment Hannah and I became friends in high school, I have always felt welcome in his home and a part of his family,” Irvin wrote.
When Timothy John Adelmann passed on June 17, it was his family who surrounded him, supporting the dad and grand-dad that put his heart into supporting them.
Larger than life, always full of adventures and jokes, his solid calves and open arms held up a community even as he was still “bustin’ ass.” Adelmann worked hard, cheered even harder (whether it was for his kids, local teams, or the Vikings), and made a difference in a community that adopted him as one of their own in the decades that he’d been here.
Tim and Steve Gilbert played hockey together for years in the men’s league in Brewer.
Sarah Gilbert said it was “always a spirited drive to and from.”
But it wasn’t just about playing for Tim. It was also about helping, supporting, promoting.
“His business sponsored a local hockey team, the Islanders. Their logo was the third jersey from the New York Islanders,” Gilbert said. “Tim’s business sponsored my son’s, Stevie’s hockey team as well when they needed jerseys. He was incredibly generous.”
Generous and fun.
“My favorite memory was in 2011 when he hosted a Game 7 Stanley Cup get together at his restaurant,” Gilbert said. The Bruins won the game.”
So, they made a championship cup and had their own little parade with that cup right down Bar Harbor’s Main Street.
One of eight children, Tim came to Bar Harbor by way of Alaska and Minnesota (where he was born). He seemed to be able to do pretty much anything except possibly get a Vikings win. Hike a mountain? Absolutely. Make you laugh when you were sad? Absolutely. Fix anything made with wood? Absolutely.
Love with his entire heart? You better believe it.
Tim went to meat-cutting school, the University of St. Thomas, and was a longshoreman all before 1996 when he moved from Alaska to Maine with his family. In Bar Harbor, he built Adelmann’s Deli on Main Street.
Tim would describe his food as “nothing fancy, just good!”
That’s a little bit how you could describe him, too.
“Tim was a fixture in the Bar Harbor community, and was beloved for his goofy wit and humor, and was often spotted cruising around town in the summer months on his road bike,” his obituary reads.
He was.
Tim is survived by his children, Greg Adelmann (Caroline Smith), Hannah Adelmann, Sophie (Shane) Martin; three grandchildren, Paige Martin, Gage Martin and Vivian Adelmann, and his siblings, Tom (Martha) Adelmann, Ruth (John) Rysted, Mike Adelmann (Cheryl Novins), Nort (Shareen) Adelmann, and Sarah (Jim) Spanos.
A celebration of life is being planned for the fall.
UPDATE: Part of the beauty of the format of the Bar Harbor Story is that we can update our stories—especially this sort of story—with more.
We’ve updated this story to include some of the Gilbert family’s stories of Tim. If you have something that you’d like to add. Please let us know. You can just email me here.
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My husband and I for many years had the best frozen custard ever tasted at Adelmann’s! He kindly told us from whence he ordered it but we could never find it anywhere else. He was a lovely guy.