Richard Everett Mitchell | Obituaries

Richard Everett “Dick” Mitchell of Baton Rouge, La., Died on February 18, 2021 after a period of dwindling health.

He was born on October 9, 1933 in Avon, Maine, to Hazeline Hunter and Floyd Mitchell and the youngest of seven children. His father did logging work for Old Town Canoe and once logged the top of the mountain. Blue, pulling the wood down the slopes with chains and workhorses. Hazeline was a housewife. After graduating from high school, Dick moved into a pension alone and without money and spent the summer working in the weaving mill of a local wool mill. The noise was so loud that he temporarily lost his hearing at the end of each shift.

He joined the US Air Force with a childhood friend, Don Weston. After basic training in Biloxi, Miss., Richard became a radar technician and served at Caswell Air Force Station, the northernmost radar outpost on the US-Canadian border in Maine. One day he heard a commotion and ran out of the radar building to see fighter jets zooming so low on him that he ducked for cover. Jets from a Canadian air force base “buzzed” the base as part of an ongoing rivalry. The Americans responded and the incident drew the military’s attention to the tiny air base.

After his discharge from the US Air Force in 1956, he worked for AT&T in Boston for some time. Ma Bell built a new system that enabled direct dialing, and his job was to test the new cabling that was being laid in huge racks in the central offices.

Richard met Joyce Lowell on a bus in Portsmouth in 1957 when he was returning home from visiting his brother Franklin in Biddeford, Maine. When the bus stopped in Portsmouth, he got off to “smoke” and when he got back on the bus, Joyce, who had been visiting her sister in Eliot, Maine, was in his seat. They started a conversation and talked as far as Boston. On her first date, he took the train to Worcester, Massachusetts, where she lived, accompanied her to a movie, and stayed at the local YMCA.

Enthusiastic about Joyce, he left AT&T and enrolled at Clark University (conveniently located in Worcester) on the GI bill. During his school days he worked part-time at Raytheon Missile Systems as a radar specialist.

A year after meeting, Dick and Joyce were married in a small ceremony on June 28, 1958 in Dexter, Maine. Their first child, Robert Mitchell, was born in 1960, and their daughter, Susan Mitchell, was born in 1965.

When Dick graduated with a degree in math, the family lived in Bedford, Massachusetts. He got a job as a software engineer at Digital Equipment Corp. and moved to Acton, Massachusetts, where he bought his first home. After a job transfer, he moved the family to Hollis in 1975. He worked at Digital until he retired at the age of 59 and took advantage of a generous early retirement package. He and Joyce went to Florida that winter, stayed with his daughter’s family in Baton Rouge, La., Attended many Mardi Gras parades, and took two cruises with Susan Mitchell, husband Jerry, and son Dylan. They celebrated their 50th anniversary on a cruise with the whole family. In 2004, he and Joyce moved to Swanzey to be closer to his son’s family and spent many happy years there.

Dick was an avid gardener and enjoyed having vegetable and flower gardens. He spent many vacations when his children were young hiking with his family in New Hampshire and Maine, always carrying a trowel and baggies in his backpack in case he saw an interesting plant to bring home. His gardens at Acton and Hollis were full of examples of these trips. At his home in Swanzey, he built a garden on the fertile soil of his sunny backyard, which used to be a farm pasture. He grew a lot of vegetables, including broccoli, which his son noted was “bigger than your head”.

He was a dedicated husband and provider, and when Joyce was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he cared for her for more than a decade, first at home, then at an assisted living facility in Baton Rouge. When the disease took its course, he even moved to a memorial ward to be with her and act as her attorney – he was the only spouse to do so at the facility. As a dedicated husband, Dick gave her every last measure of his love and support.

Richard passed away from his wife Joyce and his siblings Marion Bubar, Franklin Mitchell, Dot Gorman, Helen Meserve, Gertrude Gervais and Harold Mitchell. He is survived by his daughter Susan Mitchell, her husband Jerry Gilbert, and a grandson, Dylan Gilbert, of Baton Rouge, La; and his son Robert Mitchell, wife Janet Fiderio and granddaughter Holly (Mitchell) Smith and her husband Earl Smith of Charlestown.

A memorial service is planned for this summer.