CUSHING - Evelyn Violet Kalloch, 91, passed peacefully away on October 10, 2018, surrounded by her family.

She will be dearly missed by daughter Victoria Levesque Hammond and son Phillip Kalloch, her grandchildren Mya-Lisa and Aaron King and Jonathan and Andrew Kalloch, Mark Levesque, Hannah Sirois, and Ben Schulz, and great grandchildren Tessa and Jack Condon, Will and Jake King, Justin Levesque, Cameron, Elliot, and Alexandra Schulz, Finleigh and Auguste Sirois, as well as many other family members and friends.

She was predeceased by her WWII veteran husband, Phillip Carroll Kalloch, who died in 1989.

The daughter of Finnish immigrants, Evelyn was born in Rockland on May 3, 1927, and lived most of her life in Owl’s Head and Cushing, before moving to the Portland area. Over the years, Evelyn embodied the Finnish
tradition of “sisu,” a word that typifies the Finnish spirit: grit, tenacity, and determination.

While raising her son and daughter, she obtained her GED, took college courses, did bookkeeping at Sylvania and the Trade Winds Hotel, and later ran a convenience store with her husband in Rockland. After obtaining her real estate license in 1975, she established and owned Town Line Real Estate, and continued selling real estate into her 80s. She was named Realtor of the Year in Knox County two separate times, in 1988 and 2011.

Of her many civic contributions to the Rockland-Thomaston area, she was President of the Thomaston Chamber of Commerce for six years, and served as Cushing Town Assessor from 1978 to 1984 and again from 2001 to 2017, on the Cushing Planning Board from 1997 to 2017 and the Board of Assessors from 2004 to 2013. Evelyn was honored by the town of Cushing in 2018 for 40 years of service.

After her husband’s death in 1989, she continued maintaining their 28-acre property on the Saint George River. She mowed multiple acres of lawn with a tractor, wielded axes and saws, and tended fruit trees and vegetable and flower beds. She complained occasionally about how much work she had to do, but clearly enjoyed the hard physical labor and loved walking the property and shoreline with her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Later, she downsized to a smaller house and property, but still kept her tractor.

Evelyn never forgot her Finnish heritage, traveling to Finland with her daughter Victoria, hosting her Finnish relatives in Maine, and even attempting to share the challenging and convoluted Finnish language with her
family but with little success. She took a sauna, a tradition established when she was a young girl, well into her late 80s.

A talented gourmet cook, she delighted in cooking and serving delicious meals from food plucked from her garden. She was a connoisseur of exotic olive oils, and an aficionado of canning and pickling. Plus, time in the kitchen led to enjoying a “short slurp,” as she called it, with family and friends.

Evelyn will be dearly missed.

The family will be holding a memorial service in June. Those who wish to remember Evelyn may make donations to Cushing Rescue Squad, 39 Cross Road, Cushing, ME 04563, or the Finnish Heritage House, P.O.
Box 293, South Thomaston, ME 04858.

To share a memory or story with Evelyn’s family, please visit their online Book of Memories at www.bchfh.com. Arrangements are in the care of Burpee, Carpenter & Hutchins
Funeral Home, Rockland.