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Thursday, December 23, 2004
News of Freedom soldier's death in Iraq stuns family, friends
Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. | ||||
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Neighbors and acquaintances were deeply saddened by the loss of someone they described as resourceful, hardworking and quick to tease or make people laugh. "He was quite a character," said Felicia Frost, who was working Wednesday at Freedom General Store. He always joked around. He was quite friendly." Several miles away in the wooded neighborhood where Poulin grew up on North Palermo Road, Dot Waterman sat at her kitchen table remembering the 47-year-old welder for Bath Iron Works who spent 23 years in the Maine Army National Guard until he was killed Tuesday in an explosion at a mess hall in Mosul, Iraq. He had been in Iraq nearly a year, coming home once for a two-week leave in October before returning to the war. He had always made it clear he would not want to be injured to the point where he was wheelchair-bound and could not work on his cars or go into the woods with a chain saw, Waterman said. "He said, 'I don't want to come back in pieces -- I want to come back in one piece or not at all,' " she recalled. Just down the road from Waterman's home, officials of the Maine Army National Guard were inside Poulin's mobile home, where his wife of about five years, Jeanne, was dealing with the loss in private. At a late afternoon press conference held outside the home, her sister, Barbara Worthley of Oakland, summed up the widow's state of mind: "She's in shock," Worthley said. "She's basically lost her best friend. All things considered, I think she's doing pretty good. She has her up times and her bad times and that's going to be expected for some time to come." Poulin is survived by two adult sons, Michael and Lynn Robert Jr., and two step-children, Ryan and Cindy, Worthley said. A FREEDOM CHILD Poulin grew up with three sisters in a log home where his mother, Therese, still lives, about seven miles from Freedom Village on the Palermo town line. On Wednesday, red-white-and-blue flags draped the front porch and Christmas lights twinkled around the front door. No one was home. Dot Waterman said military officials came to her (Waterman's) home Tuesday night. Her husband, Jim, the town fire chief, accompanied them to Crowe Rope Co., where they notified Jeanne Poulin of her husband's death. They also notified Poulin's mother. The women took the news hard. "She was just agonizing," Dot Waterman said of Therese Poulin. "She's really suffering. She just continued to talk about him over a period of time. She called him, 'My little boy -- my little blue-eyed boy.'" Now a foster parent, Dot Waterman was a few years older than Poulin. She grew up just down the road from the Poulins and had known Lynn from the time he was in diapers. She taught him how to speak English, as French was his first language. She also taught him the alphabet. As children, they climbed apple trees, romped through the woods together and were terrifically good friends. His mother drove the children to catechism in Augusta every Saturday, Dot Waterman said. They went through Mount View schools and into high school. Dot married and moved away with her husband, who was in the military. In 1989, the couple moved back to the neighborhood. Shortly after their arrival, she was standing in her old driveway one day and an old truck came barreling past her up the road, billowing smoke and spitting gravel. Suddenly, the driver, who would turn out to be Lynn Poulin, slammed on the brakes, backed up, stuck his head out at her and grinned. "He said, 'Hi teach -- have I changed?' " she said. "We hugged each other because we missed each other. We hadn't seen each other in 20 years." FIX-IT MAN Poulin was known throughout the neighborhood as the man who could fix anything, and would drop everything to help out someone who needed something repaired. He was self-sufficient and resourceful like his mother, according to Dot Waterman. He would patch things together with metal, string or duct tape -- whatever it took -- to make something work, she said. She was sure that in Iraq, he made use of those skills. "If he had a truck, it would have had the most armor on it," she said. "Nothing was impossible. He never wasted anything." Outside his mobile home Wednesday, old cars, snowmobiles and trucks were parked around in the woods. Scrap metal lay beside a garage. A rusted wheelbarrow sat in the snow. A black cat and Maine coon cat wandered among the bevy of reporters who waited for the press conference to begin. Earlier at the Waterman house, Dot Waterman remembered a time she gave Poulin an old freezer she was going to replace. He told her he would use it, but then gave it away to a food pantry because the pantry lacked one, she said. He was generous like that, and would rush to the aid of someone in need. "He would have to have a broken leg to not show up," Dot Waterman said. "He'd have to be incapacitated to not show up to help you." As a child, he struggled in school, she said. He didn't particularly like to read or write, but loved anything mechanical. "I think of him as a late bloomer," Dot Waterman said. "They didn't have enough spare parts in school to catch him early. If they had a class like flea-market, he would have aced the course." He was a hard worker and took direction well, she said. "He's a gung-ho guy and not a complex thinker. If you tell him this has to be done he would do it before you finished the sentence. He's not a leader, but, boy, you wouldn't want somebody else out there, you'd want him. He's like a one-guy survival kit. He was the MacGyver of the neighborhood." Poulin's father, Bertram, who is 80, was in Canada when his son was killed, according to Dot Waterman. His parents have been divorced some time, she said. 'A GREAT, GREAT GUY' Poulin was a fun person to be around, according to Dot Waterman. She described him as "like an imp," who, when not in military uniform, would come into a room "hair all askew, wood chips in it, unshaven, smelling of chain saw oil and cigarettes and happy -- totally happy." The memories are all friends and family have left of Poulin, she said. "It's terrible for the whole town," she said. "It's just devastating." Last winter, he was at home and able to help plow his mother's driveway and help her around the house. This winter was difficult for her without him and will be tougher for her in the next few months, Dot Waterman said. "He was the light of her life and I know the light will really go out of her now. February is dark and spring isn't here yet and the fun of Christmas is over and people have gone on with their lives and you're not the center of anyone's life anymore." As she spoke, her phone rang. Her son was on the other end of the line. "Lynn Poulin died," she said softly into the phone. "Yes, that's right. It's terrible, son. His mother's devastated. He was a great, great guy." Maj. Peter Rogers, director of public affairs for the Maine Army National Guard, visited Jeanne Poulin Wednesday, as did Mark Houdlette, chief warrant officer 4, and Sgt. Ronald Kneeland, casualty assistance officer. It was cloudy and cold in the woods next to Poulin's mobile home, where Rogers said funeral arrangements have not been set. He said there was a lot of anxiety among guardsmen Tuesday, when the names of the dead had not been announced. "Today, it was more of a guarded mood because people just feel bad. It is a loss. Everybody's feeling the loss right now." Amy Calder -- 861-9247 acalder@centralmaine.com |
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