By Amanda Estes
Staff Writer
South Portland residents and city officials remember former city councilor Robert Willard Fickett, Jr. as a man of the people.
“When people got stepped on, he came to their rescue,” said neighbor Stan Cox.
Fickett, 79, died Jan. 16 at Maine Medical Center in Portland. He was laid to rest on Tuesday.     
An active and well-known figure in the community, Fickett served on the city council for 26 years before stepping down in 2006 due to health problems. He also owned a roadside vegetable stand where he sold produce grown on his Highland Avenue farm.  
South Portland City Manager James Gailey said after Fickett stepped down from the council, a picture of his farm stand was donated to the city and still hangs in city hall today.
“So everyone who entered the council chambers saw Fickett’s farm stand,” Gailey said.
Councilor and former mayor, Maxine Beecher, lived next door to Fickett and his wife for 16 years.
“Bob was Bob,” Beecher said. “He was the only person I ever knew who never had a mean bone in his body.”
Beecher said she and Fickett used to carpool to council meetings and after one late meeting, they were driving home around 1 a.m. when the truck Beecher was driving ran out of gas. Beecher said Fickett was ready to get behind the truck and push, despite having recently undergone heart surgery. She promptly discouraged the idea.
Though a member of the Democratic Party, Fickett’s fiscal philosophy was considered quite conservative.
“I knew he was sick when he stopped telling me about the gold standard,” Beecher said, referring to Fickett’s advocacy for a monetary system in which currency notes are backed by gold. “Sometimes when [a councilor] does or says something that’s ultra conservative we all think, ‘It’s Bob Fickett.’”
Cox, who also grew up on a Highland Avenue farm, said, “Bob grew up during the Depression and on a farm.”
“That in itself would make a lot of people conservative,” he said. “Bob experienced the same elements of inflation that the dairy farms around the state have experienced. Inflation was a major element in killing the small farms of Maine because the cost of material and equipment far exceeded the increase received for the produce they sold. That is probably why the effects of inflation was so etched in his mind.”
Cox also recalled a time when Fickett went to “bat for me.”
“On a three day holiday weekend, I got a registered letter from the city saying I had 30 days to get rid of my horses,” Cox said, adding some residents had assumed droppings on the street were from his horses. “[Fickett] went down and said, ‘If you take the horses, I’m going to bring my oxen down to city hall and the city’s going to own those oxen and I’m going to have the cable TV here too to televise the whole thing.’”
Fickett was a member of the American Agricultural Association, the Scarborough Grange and the Lions Club, according to his obituary. He is also remembered as a history buff and an expert in British History and the Civil War.
Born in South Portland in 1928, he was the son of Robert Willard and Agnes M. (O’Neill) Fickett, Sr. He attended local schools as well as St. Dominic Regional High School in Auburn and earned his high school diploma through private tutoring, according to his obituary. In 1951, Fickett married the former Maxine Ryan.
South Portland Historical Society Executive Director Kathy DiPhilippo said Fickett had a piggery for several years and was one of the last farmers in South Portland.
“He was growing pumpkins right there on that land right up until recent years,” DiPhilippo said.
She interviewed Fickett several times and said he loved to tell a story about how, as a boy, he would ride his pony from Nutter Road into the adjacent field where cows once grazed and where Sprague Energy’s oil tanks now stand.
Ray Lee has lived in South Portland for 45 years and said Fickett convinced him to step into the political arena so he ran four times for a seat on the city council.
“There will never be another Councilor Fickett ever, ever, ever,” said Lee. “This is the biggest loss the city will ever see.”
Lee said Fickett was a “people person” who worried about taxes, peoples’ homes and whether they were able to afford to live a quality life. Though conservative, he believed in financing the city’s essential services such as public works and public safety, Lee said.
“He was just one vote, but he tried for years and years and years to make it better for us all,” Lee said. “Salt of the earth – that says it all right there.”
Fickett is predeceased by his parents and a son, Frank William Fickett. He is survived by his wife; son, Robert W. Fickett, III and his wife Deborah of South Paris; sister, Margaret Ellen Fickett of Greensboro, N.C.; five grandchildren, Michelle and Philip Brackett, Jr., Laura Ann Pralicz and her husband Robert, Randy Couch, Amanda Lynn Fickett, all of South Portland, and Andrew John Edgar Fickett of South Paris; two great grandchildren, Philip Lloyd Brackett, III and McKenzie Elizabeth Brackett, both of South Portland.
In lieu of flowers, donations in Fickett’s memory may be made to the American Alzheimer’s Association, 170 U.S. Route 1, Suite 250, Falmouth, ME 04105.