Mike Dostie looks over frozen Long Pond in front of his Somerville home. An Augusta native, Dostie fell in love with Somerville while enjoying summers at a camp his father purchased on Long Pond in 1962. In 1979, Dostie bought the land next door to his father’s lot and built the homes he shares with his wife, Margaret. (Sherwood Olin photo)
Somerville Fire Chief Mike Dostie has been such an integral part of his community for so long it might be hard to believe he ever lived anywhere else.
However, Dostie grew up in Augusta, moving to Frye Road in Somerville in 1978 with his new bride, Margaret “Peggy” Dostie. Mike Dostie fell in love with the area as boy enjoying summers at his father’s seasonal camp on the shores of Long Pond. While Robert A. Dostie, wasn’t quite ready to sell the property, he was willing to let the newlyweds make their home there while they winterized the place.
“I didn’t know whether she’d live out here because back then, nobody lived out here,” Mike Dostie said. “I mean, it was absolutely all camps. I asked her … if we could possibly live out here, and she goes, ‘Sure’ … So we came up. We stayed here for the winter. In the spring, I look over here, and the realtor is putting up a sign.”
As it turned out, the neighbors next door were selling their camp for what turned out to be something like $10,500, a figure that outraged his father, Mike Dostie said.
“I tell my father,” Dostie said. “He goes, ‘That’s highway robbery!’ He goes, ‘I bought this brand new camp. I paid $6,200, for it.’ I go, ‘Times have changed.’”
The couple purchased the neighboring camp. In a celebratory mood, they entered their new home for the first time and Mike Dostie promptly broke through the floor. Realizing they could not live in the camp as it was Dostie and friends began an extensive remodeling and renovation effort.
“That first winter we had aluminum windows on this building,” he said. “It was a lot smaller than this (today) so you’d be watching and the curtains would move when the wind blew. We had a wood stove. We burned, I think six cords of wood, and it still was freezing in here.”
Work proceeded on the new Dostie home, helped by family and friends and a retired carpenter who lived next door and kept an eye on the rank amateurs next door, jumping in whenever they threatened to run into some form of trouble.
“Nobody had any experience building,” Dostie said. “Somebody up there was on our side. I guess my neighbor on this side was a carpenter and he’d watch us. We’d start going. He’d come over, ‘Stop, stop, stop. You’re doing that all wrong.’ He’d take it all apart and do it the right way. ‘This is what you need to do. When you get to here, call me,’ and then he did that for the whole building.”
In their new Somerville home, the couple welcomed Timothy in 1982 and Thomas in 1984 and adopted Pat Woodside, around 1990. They also fostered more than 50 other children. Some were placed with the family by the state. Others found their own way to the family All of them received love, time, and invaluable attention.
Today Timothy Dostie is a happily married father of four who lives across Frye Road from his parents. Sgt. Thomas Dostie, who was attached the 133rd Engineering Battalion of the Maine National Guard, was killed in Mosul, Iraq on Dec. 21, 2004 when a explosive device was donated in the Camp Marez mess hall.
The following day, a hastily organized candlelight vigil at the Somerville fire station drew such a crowd, the overflow spilled onto Route 17, temporarily closing the road.
“There were so many people there, the sheriff’s (office) had to come and block to road off,” Mike Dostie said.
Thomas Dostie is recalled with a respectful display of photos and memorabilia on one wall of the family home. Twenty years of his passing the Dosties still meet soldiers who served with their son.
“When we went to The Summit Project, it’s just overwhelming, the people that carry the stones on that,” Mike Dostie said, referring to a nonprofit veterans memorial program. “We have met somebody new; two or three new people every year that were there with him. They’ll come up and they’ll say, ‘I finally got the nerve to do this,’ and then they’ll introduce themselves, and ‘I was with him when we did this;’ ‘when we did that,’ I get goose bumps just talking, because he’s not gone that way.”
Both Mike and Peggy Dostie said they still intimately feel the loss of their son, but life moves on and they have moved with it as best they can.
“You never truly get over it, but you learn to live with it,” Peggy Dostie said. “That’s how I have to look at it.”
“I think I am (OK),” Mike Dostie said. “It’s what you got. It’s there and you know what? I’ve accepted it, and you know, it’s fun to have people talk about him. Don’t forget. When we go to this Summit Project, we go to learn to live with it.”
When he originally entered the workforce Dostie’s plan in life was to be a business owner. His father owned and operated Quality Shoes on Water Street in Augusta, which Dostie bought from him around 1979. Over the next decade, the reality and restrictions inherent in owning a small business weighed on him so he sold the business in 1989.
Within the month he saw a newspaper ad for Spurwink advertising for educational help: work with kids, no college degree required.
It took three interviews and bit of luck, but Dostie got the job and spent the final 34 years of his working career there, retiring in 2024. Spurwink specializes in serving children with emotional or behavioral problems and Dostie welcomed the challenge.
“That job was the world to me,” Dostie said. “I loved that job. It was a challenge every day. My father told me when I had bought the store from him. He says, ‘You know, if you got to get up and you hate going to work every day; I don’t care what amount of money you made, it’s not worth it.’”
Dostie especially enjoyed working with the students who were troubled and/or required extra care.
Somerville Fire Chief Mike Dostie shares a story while sitting in the sun room of his Frye Road home. A resident of Somerville since 1978, Dostie said he couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. “I really enjoy living here and I love the people,” he said. (Sherwood Olin photo)
“I used to tell my boss, ‘Don’t give me all the depressed ones,” he said. “Give me the ones that are a challenge’ and that’s what I took.”
During his tenure with Spurwink, Dostie was instrumental in organizing an industrial arts shop on Spurwink property across Hillcrest Street from the school in Randolph. He also started organizing summer programs where he would bring the small groups of students to a fire station or public venue in need of a little maintenance. The kids would do their required academics and then spend their time physically working on a project.
“It was great,” Dostie said. “It was a challenge every day at some of the students that we had on there once, once you won their trust, there’s nothing they wouldn’t do for you, but you had to get there. You had to break that cycle that they were in, and that’s what made it so interesting for me.”
Much of the building skills Dostie shared with his charges at Spurwink he taught himself working on his Somerville home.
“I didn’t know much about (the trades) until we bought this,” he said. “This was four old camps: sheds put together. Somebody had moved them together. There were four outlets in the whole thing. It was just a little tiny thing. There was no running water, no septic, no nothing.”
Next to his family and his home, Dostie’s longest local commitment is to the Somerville Fire Department. He joined the department in 1983, and was elected Somerville’s fifth fire chief in 1990.
Agreeing roof assaults on structure fires are the kind of thing best left to younger hands, the 71-year-old grandfather acknowledged he would prefer not have to climb onto the roof of a burning building, as he did just a couple weeks ago.
Unfortunately, in Somerville, like many rural towns, there is a pronounced lack of younger hands available. Dostie noted this is not a problem unique to Somerville as community engagement is down across Maine and across the country
In 2005, the year Somerville received the Lincoln County Fire Chief’s Association Fire Department of the Year Award, the department was at a peak with 13 firefighters fully certified to use a self-contained breathing apparatus. Now the department is down to just four.
“It’s hard because nobody is coming up,” Dostie said. “That’s the scary part. I look at this and I go, ‘What is this town going to do?’ I have four SCBA certified people, and I’m one of them. At this point, I’ve got two new guys training, but I should still have at least eight.”
While the future of community service and rural fire departments are a concern, Dostie said he is just going to continue doing what he does, serving his community, and lifting people up. He doesn’t feel like he has to be the fire chief, but he has no plans to slow down anytime soon.
“I really enjoy living here, and I love the people,” Dostie said. “The people are so friendly. Everybody would do anything for anybody.”
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