Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Kevin Freeman

Today I ventured to the home of “Jakey” Raymond Weare (1921-2016) and Iris Weare (1923-2015), husband and wife who live in Cape Neddick. I intended to ask Jakey if I could interview him for a book that I am helping to write on Cape Neddick. He agreed and I came away with the following.

Jakey’s family was one of the first to arrive in Cape Neddick. His first European ancestor to arrive in Cape Neddick did so via Massachusetts, New Hampshire and finally Georgiana. Peter Weare died in an Indian attack in the 1690’s. His homestead was located someplace on the north side of the Cape Neddick River, perhaps the home on Shore Road in which Jakey grew up.

I have known Jakey only slightly during my life. He hauled some boards out to my home in or around 1985. My driveway is almost a half mile long and at the time it was riveted with stumps. For some reason I was at odds with my father whose tractor I often borrowed and I asked Jakey to help me get them home. I intended to pay him but once he dumped the lumber from his 4×4 pickup he declined any payment.

He is very easy to talk to but doesn’t always speak clear. He didn’t mind me saying “what” until I understood what he was saying.

Jakey sat in a chair opposite his entry door right next to a large cookstove. To the right was a table and further was a counter and the kitchen. The wood stove was hot. He told me to pull up a chair. I was very unprepared to interview him and only intended to ask him if it would be possible, so I just started asking the basic questions.

He was born in 1921. His father was Raymond Weare. His father, Raymond owned the York Beach Fishmarket. He bought the fish market from (Otis) O.W. Avery. Jakey said O.W. could not read or right which helped facilitate his father’s purchasing of the business.

Jakey went to school at York Beach, where the the police station is now. It is the same school I went to for K, 3,4,5,6. Jakey’s classmates were Frank Hancock, Russel Philbrook, Herman Chase, John Garfield, Virginia Freeman and Gloria Eldredge. His teacher was his aunt, Mrs. Belmont. I have heard through other sources he was of particular interest to her when it came to discipline and likely had more than his share of the ruler.

When I asked what it was like growing up in Cape Neddick, if the economy was robust he said it was the way it was. They were busy all the time. I asked him if the Passaconaway Hotel was open when he was a kid. He said it was not in business but he and his friend Arthur Philbrick would go into the building and collect the urinal pots which were supplied to each room and cary them to the top of the elevator shaft and drop them all the way down. He took much delight in sharing this with me and mimicked the loud crashing the pots made on impact.

After Jakey graduated from York High School, in 1940, he moved to Dexter, Maine where he took a job in a machine shop. He worked on a milling machine. Jakey became very homesick and wanted to go home, which he did.

Once he got back to York he worked at Kidder Press and shared rides with his best friend Leonard Freeman, the son of Abbott Freeman. Leonard got placed on the night shift and did not like it. He intentionally took something which he had to purchase from the drug store that caused him to vomit. He did this enough times on the nightshift that his foreman allowed him to go back to working days. Leonard and Jakey resumed commuting together.

Iris Hilton moved to York in 1941 from Andover, Maine. Her father worked at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Iris worked at Garfield’s in York Beach, next door to the fish market where Jakey worked for his father. Jakey joined the Navy in 1942. He studied at Wentworth Institute in Boston before being commissioned on an amphibious carrier. At Wentworth Institute he learned to work on steam engines. The boat he was commissioned to was USS Sumter APA-52. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Sumter_(APA-52)

While in the Navy Jakey and Iris married. Jakey didn’t see his first daughter Pam until she was 18 months old.

After leaving the Navy Iris and Jakey settled in a cottage near Shore Road. Iris said when the wind blew the linoleum on the floor would lift right up. She added, “We didn’t care, we were young.” Jakey had saved $2,000 while in the Navy and built the house on Old County Road where he lives today. The total cost was $8,000 which included furniture, in 1948.

As I was standing near the door and ready to leave Iris told me that she and Jakey already had their headstone. The graveyard in which the stone was waiting was across their lawn in a family plot which contained Jakey’s father and grandfather. As I looked out the window across the yard and toward the headstones there was an old stone out of place. It was on the outside of the plot leaning inward on an iron rail. I couldn’t imagine how it got there but quickly realized it was for Iris and Jakey. Iris said, “this way the kids don’t have to figure out what to do.”