THOMASTON For the biggest and brightest Independence Day parade around, Thomaston is the place to be. On July 4, streets were full of festivities, including a foot race, chicken barbeque and live music. The theme was, "the Carnival is Back in Town!"

Henry and Lucy Carey served as Thomaston’s parade marshals for 2013. Henry ‘Hank’ Carey is well known in the Midcoast.  He started teaching in 1957, when the high school was still in what is now the Thomaston Academy building.  In 1962, he went to Penn State for his master’s degree.  Upon his return, he taught science for 15 years at Georges Valley High School, with one break for a sabbatical for doctoral study in science education in 1973.  Carey took the job of principal of the St. George School in 1978, and then became principal of the Thomaston Grammar School in 1986.  While he was involved in the world of academics, he coached girls’ basketball, softball, and cross country, and spent twenty of those years as a referee for both soccer and basketball.

Lucy Carey met Hank at the University of Maine in Farmington where she went after high school, and where Hank returned for his junior year, after leaving to serve in Korea for two years.  They both graduated from UMF in 1957, and did not see each other again until 1989.  Lucy got married while still at UMF, and two years after graduation, Lucy and her husband were hired by the Dept. of Defense Dependent Schools and sent to Germany.  From 1959 to 1994, Lucy was a world traveler.  She spent most of that time in Germany, where she raised three children, and took many family camping vacations throughout Europe. 

During those years, Lucy’s family also spent three years in Okinawa, Japan (where she taught adult ed classes, and earned her master’s degree), three years in Korea, and another three years in Syracuse, NY.  With three young children in the family, she was heavily involved in both Boy and Girl Scouting at each duty station.  Lucy remembers that on one of the scouts’ survival overnights on a beautiful beach in Japan, a bomb disposal unit had to be called in to diffuse a ‘leftover’ bomb found by one of the scouts.  Both of her boys became Eagle Scouts.

In 1989, Lucy was back teaching first grade in Germany, and traveled to Maine for a college class reunion.  Hank, who had recently lost his wife, attended the same reunion.  They met a couple more times over the next several years, and were finally married in Germany in1994.  They had both a civil service and a religious service, ‘So she could make sure it would take,” according to Hank. 

Hank and Lucy moved back to Maine and have remained active in their community, in spite of being officially retired.  Hank has been a Mason for 48 years, serves on the town’s Personnel and Budget committees, and has taken on the Chairmanship of the Trustees of the Thomaston Academy.  Hank and Lucy both work at the polls on election days, and are active members of the Thomaston Federated Church.  Lucy has gone on two mission trips to Guatemala with her daughter, and helps raise money as a member of the Kno-Wal-Lin Auxiliary Board.  Between them, they have nine children, fifteen grandchildren, five great-grandchildren, and now one great-great-grandchild.

“Hank and Lucy Carey are amazing assets to the Town of Thomaston, and it is our great pleasure to present them as our 2013 parade marshals,” said Julie Russo, speaking on behalf of the Thomaston Fourth of July Committee.