Students, colleagues and family are mourning a longtime Bonny Eagle Middle School teacher after he died unexpectedly on Thanksgiving.

Frank Damon, 57, died of a heart attack at his home in Standish Nov. 27. He had taught English, language arts and history at the middle school for 25 years.

“He was a very, very caring person,” said Damon’s widow, Sandra Damon. “He was a wonderful, wonderful husband and a great father and a wonderful grandfather.”

Damon’s death came as a shock to his family, as well as to staff and students at Bonny Eagle Middle School, where he was well loved and respected. Some colleagues and past students remembered how Damon combined compassion for students, humor and high standards.

“He really did hold us to higher standards,” said former student Jackie Gruber, who remembered Damon as a friend who could also be very strict.

“He was almost every student’s favorite teacher,” said Bonny Eagle Middle School Principal Ansel Stevens. Damon was an excellent role model to students and was proud of the school, Stevens said.

“He was probably Bonny Eagle Middle School’s biggest cheerleader,” Stevens said. “He was a man with a big heart.”

Damon was Gruber’s English literature teacher when she was in eighth grade during the 1999-2000 school year. Currently pursuing a master’s of Geography at the University of South Florida, Gruber said Damon was the only teacher she wrote to after graduating from college.

Gruber said she struggled during her eighth-grade year with the knowledge that her family was planning to move away from Standish before her ninth-grade year. She said Damon understood the struggles eighth-graders encountered and gave good advice.

“He always told us it was small potatoes,” Gruber said. “He’s one of those people who changed my life.”

Though Gruber said she didn’t really hear Damon’s advice in eighth grade, she remembered it later and wrote to him to let him know that what he said made a difference. Though Gruber has come back to visit Standish over the years, she never had a chance to see Damon.

“I never did get to visit,” Gruber said. “But at least I wrote.”

Sandra Damon said her husband received many letters from former students, including invitations to college graduations and weddings.

“He impacted a lot of lives,” Damon said, adding that hundreds of people attended his wake on Tuesday and she heard from parents of students whose lives were turned around by her husband.

Having struggled at times himself in school, she said her husband would try to help students overcome their own challenges. Though he got a master’s degree in administration, Damon said her husband never wanted to leave the classroom.

“Kids and education were very important to him,” Damon said.

Frank Damon also enjoyed basketball and spending time with family. His 2-year-old and 3-year-old grandchildren were everything to him, Sandra Damon said. The couple started dating at 15 years old when they were in high school together and were married for 37 years.

After graduating from high school in Portland, Frank Damon served in the U.S. Air Force for four years, which took the couple to Alaska. He studied education after his discharge, moved back to Maine with his wife and started teaching at Bonny Eagle Middle School.

Sandra Damon remembered her husband as a very funny man who had “coffee with the boys” every morning at TJ’s Sandwich Shop, where they named a stool after him.

“He took up a lot of space and filled it well,” Damon said. “He was interested in everybody.”

Bonny Eagle Middle School teacher Frank Damon sits with his grandson, Brendan.