Obituary in Penobscot Bay Press
Ernest S Hildebrand Jr.
Ernest Seeley Hildebrand Jr. died at his home in Brooklin, Maine, on November 9, 2020, under the care of his loving family and Northern Light Home Care and Hospice. He was born in Schenectady, New York, on December 29, 1919, to Ernest S. Hildebrand Sr. and Dora (Loweree) Hildebrand. He grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut, graduated from Avon Old Farms School (Avon, Connecticut) in 1938 and from Washington and Lee University (Lexington, Virginia) in 1942.
After graduation, Ernest enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, where, in addition to becoming proficient in military skills, he taught himself shorthand, improved his typing, and became an NCO. While stationed at St. Juliens Creek Annex of the Portsmouth, Virginia, Naval base, guarding the ammunition depot, he met his future wife, Edith M. Hettema, a commissioned United States Public Health Service Nurse Officer. He went to Quartermaster School at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and then was stationed at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in 1944, where he became a Transport Quartermaster, learning to load a troop ship for military operations. He went from there to Guam and finished his service as a Sergeant with the United States Occupying Forces in Qingdao, China, where he was present at the surrender of the Japanese armies in Northern China.
In 1946, he was honorably discharged and entered graduate school in English Literature at Columbia University, receiving his M.A. in 1947. He and Edith married in 1949. Their daughter, Alice A. Hildebrand, was born in 1951, when the couple were living in Greenwich Village, New York City. Moving to the suburbs as Alice reached school age, Ernest and Edith settled in Briarcliff Manor, New York.
Ernest spent his working life in publishing, first at the James T. White Company, publishers of the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, then at Grolier Publishing, and American Heritage Publishing Company where he worked on the Gallatin Business Annual and the American Heritage Dictionary. During the 1970s Ernest worked in the education division of Reader’s Digest, developing a curriculum on the Civil Rights movement.
In 1986, Ernest and Edith moved to Brooklin, Maine, where Ernest’s family had summered at Flye Point since the early 1900s. Ernest was active in the local Democratic Party, volunteered at Blue Hill Memorial Hospital, the Blue Hill Consolidated School, the Bagaduce Music Lending Library, Friend Memorial Library in Brooklin, Meals for Me, and the First Congregational Church of Blue Hill. He moved his church membership around, following his daughter and son-in-law Allen Myers as they served various United Church of Christ churches in the area, enjoying friendships and worship at the First Congregational Church of Deer Isle, the Sunset Congregational Church, the West Brooksville Congregational Church, and the Union Congregational Church of Isle au Haut.
He was an avid gardener, hiker, and swimmer. Ernest was an accomplished pianist during the first half of his life, and a lifelong lover of opera. He was deeply knowledgeable about the composers, conductors, and the great singers of the twentieth century, most of whom he had heard in live performance, starting with SRO seats and moving down to the dress circle. While living in New York, he and his wife and daughter attended many operas, museums, ballet performances, symphonies and shows, a pleasure he pursued in Maine at the Surry Opera Company, the Grand Theatre, and his grandson’s jazz band concerts at George Stevens Academy. The advent of the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series was a special delight for him. Throughout his long life, time spent at the family cabin at Flye Point was one of his greatest pleasures.
At 90, Ernest mastered the computer sufficiently to re-write entries on many subjects in the arts and humanities for Wikipedia, and discovered YouTube, through which he explored and compared opera singers’ performances through the years. He was also a scholar of films and filmmakers, and read and re-read James Joyce’s Ulysses. He read the New York Times on the internet every day, along with other news sources and commentators, and as many biographies of political figures as local libraries could supply. One of his greatest pleasures was any activity involving his great-grandchildren, including board games and card games with fluid rules which he said reminded him of the croquet games in Alice in Wonderland. He is remembered for his genuine interest in everyone he met, and his encouragement to young people to read widely and think deeply. In 2019, he was given Brooklin’s Boston Post Cane as the town’s oldest citizen.
Ernest is survived by his daughter Alice and her husband Allen Myers, of Brooklin; his grandson James Hildebrand, and wife Emily, and their children Jack and Kate, of Orono; his step-grandchildren Eben Myers, and wife Laura, and their children Lucy and Sadie, of Pittsburgh; and Justus Myers and partner Juliet Squire, of Washington, D.C.; his sister Patricia Jencks, of Surry; many nieces and nephews, grand-nieces and nephews, and great-grandnieces and nephews, with whom he kept in touch by phone, U.S. mail, and email, learning how to use an iPad in his 99th year. He was predeceased by his wife, his parents, his sister Inez H. Robotham of Connecticut, and his brother Arthur S. Hildebrand of Indiana.
The family wishes to express their thanks and appreciation to Hospice staff Nancy and Marge for their humor, inventiveness, compassionate care and support during Ernest’s final days.
Donations in Ernest’s memory may be made to the Good Shepherd Food Bank of Maine, (3121 Hotel Road, Auburn, ME 04210), and St. Joseph Hospital (St. Joseph Healthcare Foundation, PO Box 1638, Bangor, ME 04402-1638).
In keeping with Ernest’s wishes, there will be a dessert party and celebration of his life next summer, or whenever the pandemic allows.