GORHAM – No one in Gorham knows more about town transportation, roads and history than Bernard P. Rines.

As a farm youth growing up in Gorham, he drove oxen, horses and a milk delivery truck. He never walked the three miles to school, as he always had a ride from his family’s farm near the Westbrook line to school in Gorham Village.

The history of his family and its farm is interwoven with that of the town. He’s one of Gorham’s most widely recognized and influential figures. He’s been a professor, engineer, farmer and a Gorham political figure.

“In this day when we are generally so very short of citizens worthy of the public trust, Bernard stands as an iconic figure in Gorham,” Dr. Burleigh Loveitt, a local legend himself, said Tuesday.

On Monday, Rines turned 90.

Rines has witnessed Gorham evolve from a largely agricultural town with dirt roads to one with miles of paved streets and housing developments.

For decades, Rines relentlessly advocated a new road that would ease traffic congestion in Gorham Village, and served years on study committees. When it was finally built, Gorham and state officials named it the Bernard P. Rines Bypass, and it opened in December 2008.

“Bernard’s tenacious quest was to do one last deed which would benefit our town and its people,” said Loveitt. “The years that Bernard spent in the search of a ‘traffic relief route’ (not a bypass) around Gorham are simply innumerable.”

Looking robust, Rines on Tuesday easily climbed into the driver’s seat of a restored antique Oliver tractor in the yard at his Walnut Crest Farm. The 1940 tractor still sees some service in the summer hauling hay from fields.

“I was here before it was,” said Rines with a smile from behind the steering wheel.

Through the years, he’s also been a familiar figure on another kind of transportation.

“He used to be known for riding his motorcycle around,” his wife Priscilla Rines said Tuesday.

Rines was born in 1923, the son of Clinton and Marion Rines, in a house on Walnut Crest Farm. He and his wife live in another historic house on the sprawling property.

In the 1950s, Rines founded Ag Engineers Inc., a company that has designed agricultural facilities and irrigation systems along with repairing pumps. Rines’ son, Dale Rines, 60, now carries on that business. Dale’s brother Steve Rines, 57, is a full-time Gorham paramedic and firefighter.

Rines is descended from Gorham’s first settler, John Phinney, who paddled his way in 1736 over Gorham’s first highways, the Presumpscot and Little rivers.

“My mother was a Phinney,” he said.

Rines was clutching birthday cards as he recalled earlier days in Gorham and on the farm.

His grandfather, J. Henry Rines, bought the property in the 1890s.

It was once known as the Smith Farm and later as Walnut Hill Farm. James Phinney Baxter, whose son, Percival Baxter, became a Maine governor, once lived in a long-gone mansion on the property’s hilltop.

Priscilla Rines said her husband’s grandparents lived there, and the huge house had 14-foot-high ceilings. She has a painting of the mansion, and said the artist was the mother of Gov. Baxter.

The farm raised cattle and sheep and had “lots of horses,” Rines recalled.

The farm had a stable with numerous saddle horses that stocked summer camps. There were at least two horse teams when haying, he said. In earlier times, horses hauled wagons loaded with loose hay to the barns.

“This was before any baler,” Rines said.

Rines’ forebears switched their milk herd from purebred Holstein cows to Guernseys.

“You couldn’t market Holstein milk,” he said. “Guernsey milk had more cream color to it.”

Clinton Rines installed one of the region’s first milking parlors in the 1930s.

“They had a production line,” Dale Rines said.

Rines attended grammar school across School Street from the Gorham Academy on the university campus. He went to high school in a building on what is now a vacant lot next to Robie Gym on South Street. But his senior year was spent in the school that was transformed in recent years to Gorham Municipal Center.

He recalled the corn canning factories in Gorham and buying ice cream cones at the drugstore owned by Edgar Carswell.

“I’d been in that store time and time again,” he said. “Everyone liked Edgar Carswell, it wasn’t put on, it was real.”

Carswell had been a town meeting moderator for years under Gorham’s selectman form of government, which changed to a council-town manager form in 1968. The town’s first chairman of its first Town Council was Bernard Rines.

Loveitt, who worked as a youth on Rines’ farm, said Rines has also served on many town boards and committees.

“I can recall Bernard’s dedicated service while on the Gorham School Committee and throughout the last 40 or so years when we served on town councils, charter commissions, and comprehensive plan committees,” Loveitt said.

Loveitt said in any conversation about Gorham, Rines’ name is part of the discussion.

“There is not a page in our books, nor a street in our town which does not reflect Bernard’s care and dedication to Gorham and its people,” Loveitt said.

Still robust, Bernard Rines, who celebrated his 90th birthday on Monday, sits atop a vintage tractor at his Walnut Crest Farm in Gorham. “I was here before it was,” he said. Staff photo by Robert Lowell

Bernard Rines, who turned 90 on April 22, is known around Gorham for his love of motorcycle riding. 
Staff photo by Robert Lowell