By Suzanne Hodgson
Staff Writer

South Portland is feeling the loss of a beloved member of the community with the death of Michael Eastman, who died Monday night after working nearly all his adult life in and around the South Portland area as an educator and volunteer.  
“The community will never know the good he did, because he did it silently,” said his wife, Linda Eastman.
At the time of his death, Eastman had served six years on the South Portland School Board and was unopposed in his bid for re-election in November.
Eastman, 69, began his 20-year tenure as principal of Lincoln Middle School in South Portland in 1968 after graduating from the former Gorham State Teacher’s College ­– now the Gorham campus of the University of Southern Maine – in 1963, then earned his master’s at the college in 1965.
  That same year he and Linda married and moved to Scarborough, where he taught for a year before moving to Sanford to teach for another  for another year. The Eastmans then returned to South Portland, where he lived and worked the rest of his life.
Eastman worked at Lincoln School, now the Christian School, from 1968-1989, when he left to work with his longtime friend, Alan Hawkins, at Memorial Middle School, also in South Portland.
Hawkins, who worked with Eastman at Memorial Middle School in South Portland for a decade until 1999, said he lost a close friend when Eastman passed.
“Michael was someone I considered a very dear friend,” said Hawkins, who met Eastman in the early 1970s. .
 Hawkins and Linda Eastman both spoke about said Eastman’s ability to relate to children.
 “He gave so much to his job. He not only loved the children, but respected them. In the middle school he was the disciplinarian but now, as adults, they still approach him telling how much he helped them with their lives,” said Linda.
“I was the principal and he was the assistant, but I saw us as two people who worked very hard for the kids,” said Hawkins, now the superintendent in Cape Elizabeth School Department.    
Hawkins said, “We stood at the door in the mornings (at Memorial) we looked and spoke with each kid.”
If anything happened that needed Eastman’s attention, Hawkins said Eastman would deal with it right away.
“He would ask the student right away, ‘Why did you do this?’ Hawkins recalled.
“At the end he would put his arm around the child or the child would put his arm around Mike and say, ‘Thank you.’”
Eastman retired from education in 1999 after 10 years at Memorial, but was not done working or taking care of people.
For more than 30 years, Eastman worked as an inspector for immigration and naturalization offices at Portland Harbor, where he and Hawkins met in 1972. At the time Hawkins was working in customs.
 “One night during a busy tourist season, some people came off a boat and they were stranded.  Mike brought them home, telling them ‘ we have plenty of beds,” said Linda.
In 2004 Eastman retired from immigration and the following year began working as an officer of the Maine Judicial Court.  
Rosemarie De Angelis, who worked alongside Eastman in court, said, “Judges and magistrates just adored him.  He was friendly and welcome to everyone who came through the doors.  I never heard this man say an unkind word about anybody. I don’t know people like that.”
Linda, who had been married to Eastman for 42 years, said she lost her best friend and a “gentleman in the truest sense.”
Eastman leaves a son, Chad Eastman and  a daughter, Lynne Eastman Joys, both of South Portland, and five  grandchildren.
The family is expected to soon announce the date of a celebration of Eastman’s life, which will be open to the community.

Staff writer Suzanne Hodgson can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 233.