Hazel had been brought to Waldo County Hospital and knew that she was in her last days, suffering from cancer. She had lived a rich, full life with all of its joys and sorrows.

    Hazel was born in Belmont, the third child and daughter of John W. and Jennie (Levenseller) Morse, in the home of her grandparents, Moses and Susan Morse. The household was always hectic and busy. Gram was raising several motherless cousins, among whom were Gert, Maud, Fred, and young Charlie, children of her Uncle Fred whose wife, Cordelia, had died in Massachusetts. Her cousins, Bill, Frank, Georgie and Ruth were often in the home since their mother’s death. Also in the home were Hazel’s siblings, Susie, Bertha, Clarence, Everett, Amon and Lester. Each of the children had chores to do.

    Hazel recalled the day in 1902, when she and cousin Ruth were four years old. Grampa Moses Morse had walked home for lunch from the Chenery farm on a hot spring day. The children were all playing, laughing and talking around the kitchen table when Ruth called out to Gram that Grampa was asleep as he sat at the kitchen table. What the four-year olds didn’t realize, was that Grampa had died.

    Hazel remembered the summer day that two-year-old Amon was nowhere to be found. Mamma was expecting her eighth child. While they all searched for Amon, Hazel and Bertha found him next-door at Aunt Ada’s, asleep in the barn with a young calf.

    Mamma became ill, possibly from worry, or from getting wet, as they searched for the boy in the wet grass from a light rain. Eight year-old Hazel remembered that Gram, looking very worried, was busy with Mamma until Dr. Pearson came from Morrill. She remembered hearing the cry of her new-born baby brother. Soon the children were told that Mamma had been taken to Heaven. Gram hovered over the newborn, but two days later, he, too, went to Heaven with Mamma. Mamma was so pretty, and all these years later, Hazel realized that her mother was only thirty years old.

    All of the Morse siblings and cousins went to school at the one-room schoolhouse on Greer’s corner where her father, uncles and cousins had gone before them. Cousin Ruth lived in Waterville with her father, Frank. One school year, Hazel lived with them and attended the public school there.

    A year after Mamma’s death, Papa married his daughters’ friend, Mary Elizabeth Butler, who was fifteen at the time. She was called May, and only five years older than Hazel. Gram was in charge of the household. May, Susie, Bertha and Hazel became great friends, working together to do household chores for Gram. In 1910, May had a baby girl, whom she named Martha Faustena, who she called Faustena. The girls all loved and tended their baby sister.

    Cousin Charlie, who had been a baby when Gram brought him from Massachusetts, and ten years older than Hazel, developed tuberculosis. He told Gram that he had seen the leaves come out on the trees, but he doubted if he would see them fall. He died on 29 June 1910, three weeks after Faustena’s birth.

    Hazel recalled the fire that burned their home in 1914. Papa and May had taken a load of barrels, which he had built in his cooper shop, to Rockland. Four-year-old Faustena had begged to go, but they had decided to leave her at home with the other children and Gram. She was very angry at being left, and later told her siblings that she was playing with matches, dropping them down the cracks of the floor in the open chamber above the kitchen. The house caught fire, and in spite of the efforts of the neighborhood men, the house burned. Hazel recalled the shouting, pulling barrels from the shop across the road, throwing dishes and household items into them and throwing them out the windows. They brought buckets, and formed a bucket brigade, but the fire was too far advanced for the small amount of water to do much good. Not much of the house and contents survived.

    The neighbors brought their horses and oxen, hooked onto the shed, which joined the house to the barn, and pulled the shed out. In doing so, they saved the barn. Father, with the help of his neighbors rebuilt the house and shed.

    Most of the family became members of Mystic Grange down on the Back Belmont road. Centre Belmont was a close-knit community where everyone knew everyone else, and many of the neighbors were relatives. The Grange was the hub of activity, where the neighbors came together, at least monthly, sometime more often, for pot-luck suppers, meetings and entertainment, of which they were often a part of. The fellow-grangers were among the first to come out if there was a need amongst their neighbors. They helped Father in the rebuilding of their home.

    May had developed tuberculosis, sleeping on the porch, as it was believed at the time that the cold air was beneficial. Hazel spent many hours with May, talking, reading to her, and trying to cheer her. May died in June 1917, just ten years after Mamma’s death. May was twenty-three years old, leaving seven-year old Faustena motherless.

    Bertha, Hazel, and the many household siblings and cousins each had to find work, to support themselves, after finishing school at Greer’s corner. They did housework for others, and whatever work was available. The boys worked in the woods, and in the sawmill of Horace Chenery of Belmont. Bertha had worked for Dr. Simmons in Searsmont, and lastly working at a restaurant in Belfast.

    In 1918 the influenza epidemic was raging, taking it’s toll. It hit home when sister Bertha became sick, coming home for Gram to take care of. Hazel lovingly tended her sister, but Bertha died in November of that year, a victim of the epidemic.

    About that time, debonair Roscoe Hurd Dean of Northport, called Ross, came to work in the Chenery sawmill with the Morse boys. Hazel met him when her brothers brought him home.

    Ross had a new car, and quite handsome Ross, with his parents, Leslie and Lydia Dean, had lived next door to Lydia’s parents, J. R. & Eliza Hurd, on what was known as the Knowles farm. When Lydia became ill, Lydia and Ross moved in with her parents, who took care of her. Lydia died, following a lengthy illness in 1909, when Ross was ten years old. He was raised by his grandparents, elderly John Roscoe Hurd and his wife, Eliza of Northport. Ross’ home life differed from Hazel’s in that he was the only child of an only child. Lydia and her mother, Eliza, had both been schoolteachers. Ross had attended the one-room Brainard School in his neighborhood. His teacher, Miss Alice Pitcher, also a relative and neighbor, said that Roscoe Dean was the smartest pupil that she had ever taught.

    Ross’ father, Leslie Dean, had moved to Rockport. After finishing the eighth grade at Brainard School, Ross went to live with his father, graduating from Rockport High School in 1917.

    Ross began courting Hazel. On the nineteenth of August 1918, Ross and Hazel drove to Bangor where they were married. They went home to live with his grandparents, J. R. and Eliza Hurd.

    While Hazel was in a family way she took care of ailing Grandma Eliza Hurd, who suffered long with kidney disease. Grandma Hurd died April 5, 1919 at their home, aged seventy-six. Three weeks later, Earl Hurd Dean was born. They lived on with Grandpa Hurd, though they spent some winters in woods camps while Ross worked in the woods. In the next years, Kenneth Roscoe and John Leslie were born at the Hurd farm.

    Hazel recalled visiting at Aunt Ada’s home with Ross and the boys in their new car. Ross took Ada, Dudley and Susie for a ride to Searsmont village on an outing, leaving Hazel to tend to the young boys.

    On a cold snowy Spring day in 1924, Gram Morse died at Aunt Etta’s. Whatever had happened in life, Gram was always been the steady rock in Hazel’s life. Now, Gram, too, was gone.

    Grampa John Roscoe Hurd died in 1927, aged eighty-six, leaving the farm in Northport to Ross and Hazel.

    Hazel was expecting her fourth child. In June 1928, Ross’ horse died. That may not have been the most important thing in their lives, but a week after the horse died, Hazel lost her baby due to a premature birth. It seemed that her world was crashing in on her.

    There had been tremendous losses during Hazel’s lifetime, and there seemed no way to cope with them anymore. Early one morning she went for a long walk in the woods. She could hear the voices of family back at the house calling her name, but the voices in her head of all those who had gone before were calling her deeper into the woods. She was seeking someone who could offer some comfort and rest. Hazel was not aware at the time of the turmoil that her young sons felt when their mother could not be found. They were staying at Susie’s, waking early in the morning to an empty house with their mother gone and the family out searching for her. Earl was nine years old, Kenneth, aged eight, with baby John barely three years old. John was crying for his mother, while Earl tried to console him, find him something to eat, and change his clothes.

    Two weeks later, Susie went to Uncle Ed Howard, a selectman of the Town of Belmont, who gave an order to take Hazel to the big hospital on the hill in Bangor.

    Hazel’s memory at this point was hazy. The time spent at the asylum could have been weeks, months or a year. While Hazel was sick, the boys were at Susie’s for a time, being cared for by Faustena, Aunt Ada Howard and Susie. Kenneth went to stay with Hazel’s brother, Amon and Mary in East Searsmont. Earl and Kenneth attended school with the Buck boys, Wilbur and Arthur at the Greer’s Corner School.

    It was a time of financial turmoil in most of America. Ross was having some financial difficulties about this time. He sold Grampa Hurd’s farm on the Belfast road where he was born and always lived to Hazel’s brother, Amon Morse. They then purchased the Brainard farm across from the Brainard school, about a mile from the Hurd farm.

    In 1930, Hazel gave birth to her first daughter, Bertha, who was the same age as Amon’s daughter, Janette. The two girls were close cousins. Earl went to live with his grandfather, Leslie Deane, in Rockport to attend high school as his father had before him. Hazel wrote him letters, informing him of family happenings. Earl graduated from Rockport High School in 1936.

    In 1938, Barbara Carol, the youngest of Ross and Hazel’s children was born. Barbara was their baby, and the apple of the family’s eye.

    Hazel’s kitchen in the old house, typical of the times, had an old black cast-iron sink, with a hand-pump which froze in the winter, having to be thawed and primed with water heated on the Home Comfort cook stove. The sink drain which went out the side of the house, also had to be thawed. The home-made pantry cupboards had shelves and drawers, across one end of the kitchen. The house was unfinished upstairs, making it very cold in the winter.

    Ross had worked as a woodsman, as well as being a trucker for a company in Belfast that sold Home Comfort stoves. One winter Saturday he was sent out to repossess a stove. His employer told him that he would not have his week’s pay until the next week, but he could keep the gray-enameled stove with warming ovens at the top as his pay if he so wished.

    Hazel hummed as she worked in her kitchen, rolling out biscuits, cookies, making gingerbread and getting meals. Try as she could, her biscuits never seemed to measure up to her sister’s. Perhaps one reason was that Ross, as a woodsman, sold firewood, which was their livelihood, the customers getting wood first. Hazel would keep fires burning with whatever wood was in the shed. She would often send Barbara and her nieces out to the shed to ‘pick up chips’ to get the fire hotter.

    All the while the neighborhood children ran in and out, pestering her for gingerbread or whatever she had. They thought that she never knew that they chewed the gingerbread, spitting it out, mimicking Ross chewing tobacco.

    Her neighboring nieces, Isabel, Annie and Sylvia spent many, many happy hours in her home with Barbara. Hazel told them stories of her growing-up years, about the grandmother who raised her, and tales about the War effort of World War II as they bounced on the bed behind her as she sewed at her treadle sewing machine. They were usually too busy being children to take note of the tales that she told them.

    Hazel lived when food staples, flour and crackers were bought by the barrel, molasses was bought by the gallon, pumped from a molasses barrel at a country store, and most of the vegetables were raised on the farm. The apple trees provided fruit for the winter, as well as for pies. They raised a hog for the cooking lard, and meat, and kept cattle for milk. Most of the neighboring farms at the time were self-sufficient, supplemented by the meat from venison, rabbits, wild game which the boys regularly brought in. .

    She was frugal, versatile, and resourceful raising her family of hungry boys and family. She made heavy quilts with dyed white flour sacks for the backing, using printed grain sacks for quilt pieces. She made striped cotton ticking featherbeds, and mattresses stuffed with straw, renewing each year. She heated bricks on the wood stove, wrapped in flannel to keep the family’s feet warm at night. She made tiny professional-looking doll clothes for Bertha and Barbara and later for her grandchildren.

    During World War II, Hazel’s sons, Earl and John went into the Armed Forces to serve in the War. Earl serving in the Army Air Force, was sent to the South Pacific. John served in the U. S. Army was sent to Germany, where he was wounded, receiving a Purple Heart. A mother’s heart breaks while her sons are far away, not knowing if they are hurt or even alive. Hazel proudly hung her Service stars in the front window until the boys came safely home.

    The children married, raising families of their own. Earl lived in Camden with his wife, Dolly and six children. Kenneth lived nearby with his wife, Ella and son Jimmy. Bertha lived nearby with her husband Bob, raising seven children. Barbara married Pete Reilly, who was in the Air Force. They, with their two sons, moved around the country. John brought his wife, Marilyn, home to live with Hazel and Ross in 1949. They had seven children, the first, Johnny, died in 1953, aged one year, and six-year-old daughter Katherine, later died in a tragic automobile accident in front of the house.

    Ross, the love of Hazel’s life, suffered a massive stroke at their home in 1955. He was taken to Waldo County Hospital where he died, aged fifty-six years old.

    Hazel loved to hear the grandchildren and their friends playing and laughing in their home. When she became tired, she could go into the bedroom off the kitchen that she shared with Ross for many years, enjoying the quiet.

    Now, at the age of seventy-two, in her bed in Waldo County Hospital in Belfast, she recognized the voices of those that she had dearly loved, welcoming her into the realm that mortal man cannot see. Peace filled the room at the hospital as Hazel Ada (Morse) Dean entered into the Kingdom of Heaven.