Editor’s Note: Over the next few weeks we would like to introduce our readers to the correspondents who faithfully write town news each week.

WOODSTOCK — Talk to Linda Hathaway Stowell about the important facets of her life and it quickly becomes obvious there are three: music, family and telephones.

Linda grew up in Woodstock in the family that ran the Bryant Pond Telephone Co., the hand-cranked system that endured until modernization took over in 1983.

The company was based in the family’s house on Rumford Avenue in Bryant Pond, where Stowell lives today.

“This is where the switchboards were,” she said last week.

She and her sister worked as operators beginning as teenagers, and while Linda said her sister loved it, she was less enthusiastic. But it was the family business and a source of income in high school and on college breaks. Linda also worked for the New England Telephone Co. at their switchboard office in Norway, where she said she enjoyed the company of the other operators.

When she got married and had children, she lived a few houses down from her childhood home. She often worked the night shift on the family switchboard, bringing her daughters with her and sleeping on a foldout couch next to the switchboard. Calls during the night were rare, but when they came they set off an alarm that would wake the operator up.

Another family-centered activity was music. Linda’s dad, Elden, played the drums. After graduating from Telstar in 1970, Linda majored in music in college, playing the oboe and piano. She went on to become a music teacher in SAD 44.

The musical talent and interest runs deep in the family. In addition to her father, her sister, brother, his daughter and son-in-law and other relatives all sang and/or played an instrument.

“We had the configuration of a Dixieland band,” she said, and they have played together on some occasions, including family memorial services. They go by the name “Crank Telephone Dixieland Band.”

Linda worked a couple of years teaching music before having her children, at which point she took about a dozen years off to be home with them.

Then she went back, describing her re-entry into the teaching world as “very scary.” At that time she was the only music teacher for SAD44, and traveled to all seven schools – including the elementary schools in Newry and Locke Mills — on a two-week rotating schedule.

But she “stuck it out,” she said, and ended up teaching for 28 years.

“There were so many things I enjoyed,” she said. “I met so many good people and students.”

She retired in 2017. Still, she said, “I can’t go anywhere without someone saying, ‘You were my teacher!'”

“The good thing is they don’t run away from me,” she joked.

Today Linda enjoys time with friends and family, and working in her flower garden. She also loves to sit on her patio behind the house, overlooking the water body known locally as the bog, and watch for wildlife.

Her two daughters and their families live in central Maine, close enough for regular visits back and forth. She also enjoys going on the occasional ocean cruise, particularly one that took 22 family members to Bermuda.

And she hasn’t completely retired from music — she still serves as organist for the Locke Mills Union Church.

Linda has written the Woodstock column for the Bethel Citizen since shortly after she retired. She likes gathering the information, and once in a while there’s a unique entry.

For example, a few months ago she revealed in the column the identity of a homeowner in West Paris who had an old hand grenade in her home for years until it occurred to someone it might still be live. A report to authorities prompted a visit from the fire department, police and the bomb squad. While reported in the newspaper, the owner’s name wasn’t disclosed – until the Woodstock column.

“It was my sister!” said Linda.

She expresses her thanks to people who faithfully email her local news to include in her column.

“I’m very appreciative,” she said.