Longtime Houlton businessman recalls special relationships, lessons

    Editor’s note: The following are excerpts from an interview with Paul McGillicuddy of Houlton by his niece Barbara McGillicuddy Bolton of Brooklyn, N.Y. She interviewed her uncle in 2005 for a series of articles in Echoes Magazine. Bolton’s transcription creates a profile laced with poignant business philosophy — “Be a little early, work harder than anyone else and be there when you close down.” At 96, Mr. McGillicuddy “still sees possibilities all around” and wishes he were young enough to go into business again.
As a Houlton Trust Company director
I was on the boards of the hospital and the bank about the same number of years —thirty-three. Phil Tingley was the president of the Houlton Trust Company. He came to me once and he said, “You’re the manager of the Grange; so you know all the farmers. I’d like you on the board of the bank. You’ll have to buy some stock. It’ll be a thousand dollars.” I didn’t have a thousand dollars, but I borrowed the money, and it was the best thing ever happened.
I was refused in the First National Bank one time when I wanted to do some business when I was working for The Bay State Milling Company. I wanted to borrow 25 hundred to fix an apartment across from where Jimmy Skehan lived. They turned me down and said if I wanted to go to FHA it would cost another 18 hundred and they’d OK it. “Oh, I don’t want to do that,” I said.
So a few days later I was at the post office and Ned Joy was there — he was the manager of Houlton Trust — and he said, “What are you going to do with that building you’re buying on Smyrna Street?” And I said, “Well, I didn’t get the loan.”
So he said, “Well, come in and talk to me about it.” And I did, and I got the loan. Later I was on the board at that bank and it was the best thing that ever happened. That brings me to tell you there was the Houlton Trust Company, which merged with Merrill Bank and then with Fleet Bank. I don’t think I ever missed a meeting unless I was out of town. I enjoyed that.
Building a better hospital
I got involved in the hospital through Mother Elizabeth, a great friend of mine. She was a terrific woman too. Smart as all get out. I was very friendly with her. I admired her abilities. I used to go up there a lot of times to see her. She was very fond of Mary too, my sister Mary. Anyway she wanted me to get on the board,
One day, the two Jims in town — Jim Madigan and Jim Pierce — called me into their office. They wanted to put a wing on the side of the hospital. “We can’t ask anyone to put in any money,” one of them said. The two wealthiest men in town, see. “So we want to know if you’d do that.”
So I said, “Yeah, I’ll do that. But I don’t want a committee or anything. I’d rather do it by myself. It’s going to take some time, five or six months.” That was OK. We raised the money. Sixty-five hundred—it was all paid for. The carpenter was Briggs, and he was a first-class carpenter, too. The two Jims said they couldn’t have done it. I found it very interesting, and it was a tremendous help to me. So I was there all through Mother Elizabeth’s time.
I was on the board during the merger of the two hospitals. Mother Elizabeth retired after awhile and went down to Portland. From the religious angle it was hard work merging the Aroostook Hospital and the Madigan Memorial. But that happened after the young sister came, Sister Corinne. She said, “We want better health care for the town of Houlton, no matter what happens to us. That’s the primary thing for me, better health care.”
Sister stayed there about two years. When she resigned, I was the chairman of the personnel committee and it was my job to track those people down. We went through an agency in Boston. Twenty-five candidates we had, but it boiled down to 10. And it was my job to interview them. I was the one that hired Craig Bean.
Pulling St. Mary’s up from the ashes
About a year before our church burned down, Father Tierney had gone down to some little church on the coast that had just been dedicated, and he was telling me about it. I said, “How much insurance do they have? He told me how much they had. So I said, “How much do you have?” He told me not as much. So I said you have to do something about that. So he doubled what we had for insurance. I think it was something like $100,000. That was a lot of money back then. Well, in six to 10 months, something like that, our church burned down. The diocese made a loan, but that had to be paid back. The whole picture was $360,000. That’s how much it cost, not counting some of the gifts, like the baptistry. The insurance would pay $200,000.
The church burned down on Christmas, burned down flat. A few days later Father Tierney called me and said, “Would you come to the rectory and give an estimate about what you think people could do?”
“Well,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to do that. I’d meet people on the street who’d blast me right out.” But I got hold of a book that originally came from Court Street Baptist Church. Lawrence Burleigh’s father had it. Here’s what it said: We got 60 people together down at St. Mary’s School, sat them down. I was like the teacher. “OK now we start with the letter A right down to Z. Now, all the heads of the households are on it. Now,” I says, “No looking on, no talking. You go right down, find your own name, put down what you’d like to give — not what you have to give, what you’d like to give. So then you go up to the letter A. Now that’s Mr. Adams. He’s only got a part-time job. Well, based on what I said I was going to give and based on the fact that this man here has only a part-time job you should put much much lower than what I had suggested for myself. Now if you go down to the next letter and you don’t know the person you say so by putting a zero there. Then you go down to the Ps. That’s Mr. Pierce. Everyone knows Mr. Pierce. Sharpen your pencil.”
Well, by glory, then after that you draw a line and divide by the number of people who passed an opinion, and that is the figure you give, see?
Then we had pictures, showed pictures first of the new building and the number of people we had in confraternity classes and expenses that there were at the present time.
Then we called on people. I found a girl up in Caribou, a real artist, and she made me up a booklet that showed the picture of the church and the number of people belonged and so forth. And you keep turning that over. People will butt in and say, “Hey, what you got me down there for?”
But you say, “Wait, I’ll tell you later.” You keep flipping it over and flipping it over. Now you’re talking to a man, you’re talking to his wife. And everybody wants to know what the final figure is. Well, it seemed to work out pretty good.
One day I met John Watson downtown, and he said, “What the hell you got me down for $500?” I said, “John, I don’t have you down for $500 because I know you real well, you worked for me, and you’ve been a cheapskate all your life.” But I also said seriously, “In the opinion of 60 people that’s what they thought you’d like to give — not how much you should give — but how much you would want to give.” And he gave that, after all.
When everything was all accounted, we got $115,000 or maybe $110,000. The new church was opened in 19 hundred and sixty.