LEWISTON — It seems right that cigarettes, the things that helped kill former City Councilor Mark Paradis, should be banned in the park named in his honor, his widow told city councilors Tuesday.

“My husband died of lung cancer and the complications of lung cancer,” Ronella Paradis, of 82 Prospect Ave., said. “He was a smoker for 40 years and he quit in 2006, but he’d had a heart attack even before he stopped smoking. I’m asking you for the kids. This is an athletic park and a children’s park. We need to be role models.”

Councilors agreed, voting 7-0 to ban smoking in Paradis Park.

The park, formerly the Pierce Street Park, is between Birch, Bartlett and Blake streets downtown. The city renamed the park in Paradis’ honor in 2012.

Paradis served three terms as a Lewiston city councilor, and spent years serving on other boards and committees, including the Planning Board.

He ran for the mayor’s chair in 2011, and was one of the top two vote-getters in that November election. He and Robert Macdonald were scheduled to face each other in a December runoff.

Paradis later said he was diagnosed with cancer soon after the election and he died Dec. 9, five days shy of the runoff vote.

Paradis said Healthy Androscoggin has agreed to provide free “no smoking” signs for the park.

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