Amid a flurry of family members and friends, the town of Limestone presented its Boston Post Cane to the town’s oldest living resident Tuesday afternoon.
Ninety-seven-year-old Dot Phair, a longtime Limestone citizen and bookkeeper at the community school, received a replica of the cane to take home and held onto the original — which is typically kept in a safe — for the afternoon.
“It’s an honor, a big honor,” Phair said. “I’ve done a lot of things, I’ve lived a long time, I’ve seen a lot of things, but I never thought it would end up like this.”
The cane, fashioned out of ebony wood and topped with a 14-karat gold head, is one of 700 given out by the now-defunct Boston Post newspaper in 1909 in an attempt to boost circulation of the paper.
The canes were only given to towns — no cities — in four of the six New England states, excluding Connecticut and Vermont. At least 227 Maine towns received a cane, according to the Boston Post Cane Information Center.
In many towns, the tradition has died out or the cane has gone missing, but Limestone has diligently kept the award going. The cane’s previous holder, Avis Cantafio, died in October at 97 years old.
“Limestone does a lot of things right,” Town Manager Edward Pocock III said. “This is one of them.”
Those who spoke at Tuesday’s ceremony described Phair as a force in the community.
“What a blessing it has been to see this woman,” said Eleanor Cleaves, the former pastor of Limestone’s United Methodist Church. “When I grow up, I want to be just like Dot. I want to be sharp witted and kind and generous and grace-filled and faithful.”
