NORWAY – Keith Wilson is not one to ask for help, even in tough times.

Like his father, Leland, who died in February, he is a hard worker.

“Work is his life,” said family friend Pauline Timberlake.

So Wilson, a Norway man, is not asking for help. But Timberlake is asking for him, with Wilson’s permission.

Family deaths

Recent months have been tough enough.

Keith’s father was 75 when he suffered a heart attack Feb. 26 while driving and died when his car hit a tree. The son and his father were very close, she said.

Wilson was still grieving his father’s death when he learned that his mother had been in an accident. On April 15, his mother, Betsy Cummings Wilson, 71, and her sister, Lillian Cummings Sowersby, 78, both of Stoneham, were being chauffeured by Debra Brown, 42, of Fryeburg when the car hit a tree near the golf course on Route 118 in Norway.

Brown had acted as Betsy’s caregiver as well as driver, Timberlake said. Wilson’s mother suffered right-side paralysis resulting from an aneurysm in 1994 and was on her way to an early morning appointment to get her leg brace adjusted when the accident happened.

It happened only five minutes from Wilson’s house. He was on his way to work and had no idea the ambulances he met were on their way to pick up his mother and his aunt. He learned of the accident from an answering machine when he returned home at 2 p.m., Timberlake said.

Wilson’s Aunt Lillian died at the scene and his mother, Betsy, died that evening. Brown is still hospitalized and only now beginning to emerge from a coma, Timberlake said.

Wilson still can’t believe his mother is dead, she said. He is the oldest of five children.

On the sidelines

Then Wilson got some bad news about his own health. A recent medical exam determined that he won’t be able to work at all until he has surgery to remove a blockage from his carotid artery. Surgery is scheduled for next week, Timberlake said, and it will be six to eight weeks after that before he can resume work in his landscape business.

In the meantime, he has no income. At this time of year, when people are calling his landscape business for help in creating lawns and gardens, stone walls and ponds, he has to tell them he can’t schedule anything for two months.

So Timberlake has decided to step in and try to help by letting the community know Wilson needs some help. She arranged for donation cans at AJ’s store and diner in Stoneham, The Lake Store in Norway and the Market Basket and Village Tie-Up stores in Harrison.

Timberlake said she has known the Wilson family for a long time. “Betsy and Leland were like family to me.”

In addition to the donation cans in stores, Timberlake may be reached at 743-3987.