Windham’s oldest resident dies at 106

By Ed Pierce

The Town of Windham’s oldest resident has died at the age of 106.

Hazel P. Gilman, who was born July 20, 1918, passed away Oct. 9 in Gorham.

Hazel Gilman, Windham's oldest resident,
died Oct. 9 at the age of 106. She was a
1935 graduate of Windham High School and
was married to her husband Ken for 55 years
until his death in 1996. 
PHOTO BY LORRAINE GLOWCZAK

She was the daughter of Harry M. Plummer and Mildred Lord Plummer and graduated from Windham High School in 1935.

When Hazel was 2 years old, her parents moved in with her grandparents to help take care of them.

“My grandfather was deaf and blind, so my mom and dad wanted to be there and help them out in any way they could,” Gilman told The Windham Eagle in 2021.

After high school she stayed in Windham and in 1941 she married Kenneth Gilman, and they enjoyed 55 years together until his death in 1996. The couple did not have any children of their own but helped to raise Hazel’s three younger brothers in the family’s home.

“My mother died at the age of 50, leaving my father a widower, so Ken and I stepped in to help raise my younger brother,” she said.

Her father remarried and together, he and his new wife welcomed two more sons into their lives. But tragedy struck the family a second time when Gilman’s stepmother died from cancer in her 50s. Once again Gilman and her husband stepped up to raise the two young sons.

Gilman was employed by Universal Watkins and National Medical Care and upon her retirement she served as a volunteer at Brighton Hospital.

In 2018 at the age of 100, Windham Town Clerk Linda Morrell presented Gilman with the town’s Boston Post Cane, for her being the oldest living resident of Windham.

She was reticent about receiving that distinction, saying “It’s nothing I’ve done to deserve it. I just happen to be the oldest person alive in Windham.”

The Boston Post Cane originated in 1909, when replicas were sent to the selectmen of 700 towns in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island. Made of ebony imported from Africa and featuring a 14-carat gold head two inches long, decorated by hand, and with a ferruled tip, the canes came with instructions to be presented to the community's oldest citizen. When the recipient died, it was to be given to the successor to the title. This tradition was the idea of Boston Post Publisher Edwin Grozier and continues in Windham and many towns across New England to this day.

When Hazel was young, community and neighborhood gatherings would often happen spontaneously, she told the newspaper in 2021.

“I remember one of our neighbors was a piano teacher,” Gilman said. “In the evenings, he would practice and when he started playing, music came through the windows and the whole neighborhood would hear it, gather around, sitting on his lawn, listening, and singing to the songs we knew. We’d experience a concert right then and there.”

Modern inventions she witnessed during her lifetime made life more convenient but detracted from the community’s dependence upon one another, she said.

"I put laundry in the washing machine the other day and it dawned on me that I can have my clothes washed and dried in a couple of hours,” Gilman said. “It would have taken my mom two days to do the same amount of laundry by the time she boiled the water, soaked the clothes, hung them out to dry and then ironed them. I think we were much better off when we had to work together to get things done. It created a sense of community among families and neighbors that doesn’t seem to happen today. It felt as if we were all in the same boat and we simply had fun, despite the challenges and hard work it took to live.”

Along with her parents and husband, Hazel was predeceased by her sisters, Murial Forbes and Idolyn Plummer, and a brother, Harry Plummer Jr. She is survived by her brothers Richard Plummer and wife Nancy, David Plummer and wife Mary, and sisters Neola Brown and Janice Morrell. She is also survived by many nieces and nephews; grandnieces and grandnephews, including her nephew Peter Forbes, who visited her often.

A memorial service for Gilman was held Wednesday, Oct. 16 at the Dolby, Blais, and Segee Windham Chapel with private interment at Arlington Cemetery in Windham. <