Not all changes in 2014 were big and brash and visible to the naked eye. There was a lot going on behind the scenes, as well, as businesses employed new strategies, fundraisers were launched and general wheeling and dealing went on all over the place.

Some of it was good, some not so good. A mill closed but Lewiston once again will see junior hockey in its celebrated rink. Skiers rejoiced that their favorite slopes were saved and then grumbled for lack of snow. There were picket lines and evictions, layoffs and upgrades, sales and celebrations. Not all it was resolved by the frigid end of the year, so stand by for more in 2015.

The faces of our communities changed, as well. Some faded from the scene while others sprang up and demanded notice. The cycle of life and death continues, as always, into a sparkling new year.

Local business

* In October, Verso Mill in Bucksport announced that it would close by year’s end, a move that took many workers by surprise. In mid-December, a crowd gathered outside the mill to greet the workers as they walked outside after their final shift at the 84-year-old facility. Bob Mundy, Verso’s senior vice president and chief financial officer, said the decision to close the Bucksport mill would have no effect on Verso’s mill in Jay or on the company’s planned acquisition of NewPage, which has a mill in Rumford.

Later in October, Canadian paper company Catalyst Paper announced that it would buy the Rumford Paper Company and a second NewPage mill for $74 million in cash. The sale will be finalized once NewPage’s merger with Verso Paper is complete. The $1.4 billion sale was held up by the U.S. Department of Justice for an antitrust review.

* A winter without Lost Valley ski resort? To many, it was an unthinkable prospect. In the summer, owners Lincoln Hayes and Connie King went public with the resort’s shaky finances — they were said to have been losing up to $20,000 a season over several years — and asked the public for help. Help is exactly what they got as community members weighed in with ideas and money. An original fundraising campaign on Crowdrise by the Friends of Lost Valley gave the business a $26,000 boost. A variety of fundraisers followed. Bands played to raise money, further Crowdrise campaigns commenced and volunteers turned out en masse to help clean the grounds. Local businesses chipped in, too, and by the time winter was approaching, Lost Valley had been saved. The only real bad news to come along at the start of the new season: there was hardly any snow on the ground. Lost Valley postponed its season start because of the warm weather, in hopes that Mother Nature would kick in a little help of her own.

* Hockey at the Colisee: It’s on, it’s off. Guess what? It’s on again. Colisee owner Jim Cain announced in December that Junior Hockey will return to the Lewiston-Auburn area for the first time since the Lewiston Maineiacs folded after the 2010-11 season. The New Hampshire Fighting Spirit will call Lewiston home beginning next season. The team will be known as the L-A Fighting Spirit — a fitting name, to some, since the Twin Cities have fought so hard to keep hockey alive in the community. The move could mean a $1 million boost for local business.

* On April 1, an eviction notice was taped to the front door of Oxford Aviation’s offices, giving the company two days to vacate the space it had leased from Oxford County for 25 years. What followed was messy business, as owner James Horowitz had transferred the company’s assets to himself for $1 and filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection, temporarily stalling the county’s eviction effort. Cleanup of the Number Six Road site in Oxford continued all summer, as did legal wrangling on both sides. By the time all was said and done, county officials said legal fees associated with bringing a resolution to the matter cost taxpayers more than $750,000.

* For the final three months of the year, the sight of men and women with picket signs shivering in the cold on Bates Street in Lewiston was a common one. This was just a small number of the 2,000 FairPoint workers on strike in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. The strike officially began in mid-October, with FairPoint and the unions at odds over a company-imposed contract that froze the old pension plan and required workers to contribute to health care costs for the first time.

Other provisions allowed the company to hire contractors and eliminate retiree health care benefits for current workers. Negotiations between the company and the union in November went nowhere, and the following morning, the strikers in Lewiston returned to their post.

With the strike expected to continue into the new year, the community at large has been helping out. Union officials say they have received nearly $150,000 in donations to help support the workers who are no longer earning paychecks. People have also sent food, medicine, grocery store gift cards and other gifts. On Wednesday, the National Labor Relations Board dismissed charges by the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, ruling that FairPoint had implemented its final proposals lawfully.

* Baxter Brewing just keeps on growing. After expanding and adding three new 8,000-gallon fermenters in 2013, the company gained a foothold in the New York distribution market, just a month after securing distribution throughout all of New England. “Time to let New Yorkers in on what we’ve got going in northern New England,” Baxter Brewing owner Luke Livingston said. Baxter’s sales were reported at $3.8 million in 2014 and it brewed about 600,000 gallons. That’s projected to increase to $6.2 million and more than 1 million gallons next year.

* Say what? Chip Morrison, the man with the constant smile and enthusiastic outlook, announced in July that he will retire after nearly 20 years as president of the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce. Immediately after the news was announced, colleagues, business owners, city leaders and others joined a chorus singing the praises of all that Morrison had accomplished since taking over “Chip’s Chamber.” His retirement won’t be official until June.

In our schools

* In late November, the University of Southern Maine announced that it planned to lay off 14 staff members and delay or seek different sources for some capital projects as part of a plan to close a $16 million budget gap. The move followed a long season of budget woes as the school was tasked with cutting 10 percent of its budget for fiscal year 2015. The cuts are part of a $36 million budget shortfall across the system’s seven campuses that administrators have said is caused by flat funding from the state and frozen tuition rates, paired with rising costs and a shrinking student population. Students and faculty protested the proposed cuts but as the year wound to a close, programs were still being cut and the prospect of layoffs loomed.

* In August, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection announced that recovery of the remaining heating oil spilled at the Hebron Station School last winter had ceased, with more than 1,000 gallons recovered. Environmental groups had been on site since December 2013, when oil spilled from the school basement tank as it was being filled by a driver from a Paris oil company. The spill closed the school for a week while the gymnasium remained closed into early 2014.

* On Dec. 3, the public was invited to tour the Lewiston Middle School. Why the fuss about a building that’s been there for so long? The aging school was completely renovated, thanks to a $9.2 million bond being paid by local taxpayers. Students were able to move back into the school in September, and all major construction was done by Halloween.

Improvements include new science labs, a new library, extra classroom space, a front office that is more welcoming to the public and more secure for students. The bathrooms, which were built in 1931, have been updated. Walls are new and bright. The new front section of the building offers more natural light with large windows and scenic views of the neighborhood. Renovations also include a new, efficient heating system and a new electrical system with wires and pipes that are no longer visible on walls and ceilings. The building, which previously had no ventilation at all, has ventilation in every room.

* On Oct. 17, a group of academics lined up with shovels in hand on an empty patch of land near Central Maine Community College. They didn’t do much digging, but the gathering marked the official groundbreaking on a $7 million project to erect an academic building on the school grounds. The building, scheduled to open next fall, will completely transform the face of the school, officials told the public. In addition to construction, CMCC also developed a new official seal used on school documents. The four-story, modern building now under construction will be on that seal. “It’s going to be our signature look,” CMCC President Scott Knapp said. “It will be what you see when you drive on the campus. It’s going to change the whole complexion of the college. It will be the dominant feature.”

Health and medicine

* Franklin Community Health Network became the 13th member of the state’s largest hospital system when the independent health network, parent to the 65-bed Franklin Memorial Hospital in Farmington, joined Portland-based MaineHealth, effective Oct. 1. MaineHealth, the parent organization to Maine Medical Center and a dozen other health care entities, plans to invest at least $2.25 million into FCHN, according to documents filed with the state’s certificate of need unit, which regulates the expansion of health care facilities in Maine. Over the next four years, the money will fund implementation of an outpatient electronic medical records system, also adopted by MaineHealth.

* Maine Community Health Options in Lewiston took on a titan and came out on top. Despite being a startup competing against longtime insurer Anthem, MCHO captured 83 percent of the 44,000 Mainers who signed up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act on the marketplace in 2014.

* St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center, Maine’s first Catholic hospital, was rededicated in April, celebrating 125 years of service to Lewiston and Auburn. At the ceremony, visitors were encouraged to view some of the artifacts from St. Mary’s history, including its original articles of incorporation on display in the Lepage Conference Center. In November, it was announced that the hospital had shut down its Behavioral Intensive Care Unit and that it will make other changes to its mental health services, in part, to save money. The six-bed BICU had been established 10 years prior, with the goal of providing intense supervision to people who were suicidal, intrusive to other patients or otherwise would have needed one-on-one support in the larger psychiatric ward. In announcing the closure, hospital officials said the unit was not fulfilling its promise.

People we know

* That’s the spirit — Maine’s Catholic diocese sold the century-old St. Louis Church to a group of investors aiming to fix up and reuse the New Auburn landmark rather than allow it to be demolished. A group of five investors, led by Lewiston architect Noel Smith, bought the church from the diocese for $75, diocese spokesman Dave Guthro said. And if that wasn’t cool enough, in mid-December, city leaders announced that $12,000 in private donations had been raised to buy the church’s historic bells, cast in Annecy, France, in 1915.

* One of our community members has gone where few have gone before. A Maine mother used social media to have her son’s ashes scattered all over the world. In October, he was sent to the most amazing place of all: outer space. Using her Facebook page, Hallie Twomey mailed hundreds of packets of her son C.J.’s ashes to strangers worldwide so they can be scattered at the many places he wasn’t able to see before he died more than four years ago. In October, a rocket containing a vial of his ashes was launched into space from the desert in New Mexico. The rocket spent a few minutes in space before landing in the nearby White Sands Missile Range. Twomey called it the perfect send-off for her adrenaline-loving son, who was 20 years old when he shot himself after getting into an argument with his parents.

* Amanda Dempsey died in March after a long battle with cancer. The mother of actor Patrick Dempsey, she was the inspiration for The Patrick Dempsey Center for Cancer Hope & Healing, established at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston in 2008. Months later, the Dempsey Challenge celebrated its sixth anniversary and is said to have raised $6 million for the cause in that time.

* In September, a grim irony — the founder of a Maine facility that cares for circus elephants after they retire was found dead in the animals’ barn in the town of Hope. Police said James Laurita, founder of Hope Elephants, appeared to have fallen and struck his head on a cement floor before he was crushed to death by a pair of the elephants. The animals were moved to an Oklahoma facility where they had resided before Laurita brought them to Maine.