Ida Susan Hosmer Wilfong

FRYEBURG — Ida Susan “Pinkie” Hosmer Wilfong died on Saturday, July 7, in Fryeburg, of cancer.

Pinkie Wilfong was born at home in South Weymouth, Mass., on Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1924. She was the eldest daughter of Allen Fearing and Esther Anna Thompson Hosmer. Mrs. Wilfong was a descendant of British settlers and Revolutionary War soldiers who came to North America during the Great Migration (1620 to 1640.) Her nickname of Pinkie was given to her by the mid-wife who delivered her, because her mother dressed her in pink; the name stuck.

Mrs. Wilfong was raised on a dairy farm and helped her parents to bottle and deliver milk to their neighbors in South Weymouth. She was a 1942 graduate of Weymouth High School, where she was an honors student, the art editor of the yearbook and a drummer in the marching band. Mrs. Wilfong had a lifelong love of art and attended art college in Boston.

An enduring patriot, Mrs. Wilfong withdrew from college to join in the war effort. She went to work at Bethlehem Steel’s Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Mass. Mrs. Wilfong worked on many ships, including the aircraft carriers Wasp and Lexington. She never missed a launch. She often said to her children, “We were all in this fight together, and I needed to do my part.”

In 1942, Pinkie Hosmer met her future husband at a USO dance before he left for the Pacific Theater. When he returned in 1945, she married Marine Corporal Finley Bickford Wilfong, a combat veteran of the FirstMarine Regiment of the FirstMarine Division. They had seven children with six surviving. Mrs. Wilfong insisted they raise their children on a farm in Maine. In 1957, they bought an old farmhouse in Stow and soon after they moved to Western Maine. Mrs. Wilfong could not have been happier. It was where she knew she was meant to live. She loved the people, the mountains and the farm community life of the Cold River Valley.

In later years, she worked for the Fryeburg Shoe Shop and for many years as a teacher’s aide for SAD 72 at the Sadie Adams School in North Fryeburg. It was as a Title 1 aide that she met and mentored a new generation of friends. Mrs. Wilfong was always entrepreneurial. Over the years, she owned a gift shop, sold ice to campers in Evan’s Notch, vegetables from a card table on the front lawn and Christmas ornaments that she designed and crafted. She was a wonderful mother, a self reliant, liberal minded and decent member of the community and she will be missed.

Mrs. Wilfong leaves behind sons, James and wife, Valerie, Gary and wife, Joan, Scott and wife, Eileen, Allen and wife, Roberta and Russell and wife, Denise; a daughter, Susan Stetson and husband, Mark; several grandchildren, Amy, Andy and wife, Snow, Joshua and wife, Deana, Kimberly, Liza, Gregory and wife, Michele, Christian, Timothy, Tess and husband, Cam, Stephen and Abbe; great-grandchildren, Wyatt, Garith, Kaitlyn and Piper; and a niece, Robin Brennan Wiley.

She was predeceased by her parents; her husband; a son, Richard; her sister, Esther Hosmer Brennan; and great-grandchildren, Hannah and Rock Star.