Leon Maynard Woodbury

   FamilySearch ID: 2C19-QR6. Find a Grave ID: 119305330.

  Events

• Census, 3 Apr 1930, Monroe, ME. ²

• Census, 4 Apr 1940, Monroe, ME.

• Census, 14 Apr 1950, Monroe, ME. ³

• Newspaper Article: Bangor Daily News, 12 Mar 1970, Bangor, ME.
"Questions Are Filed In SAD 34 $100,000 Suit"
BELFAST -- The third round in a legal suit against School Administrative District 34 Board of Directors, opened in U.S. District Court at Bangor Tuesday with the filing of seven-pages of 103 question interrogations by the plaintiff.
Leon Woodbury of Belfast is suing the board for $100,000 and seeks to clear his son, Erroll's[sic:read Errol's] record of suspension after he was sent home for sporting a beard in class.
The interrogatories were filed by Attorney Paul Zendzian of Rockland, associated with Pine Tree Legal Assistance, and were co-signed by Wayne R. Crandall, a Rockland attorney.
The questions require a reply within 14-days of filing, or March 24.
Covering a broad spectrum, the questions seek answers to such questions as, whether any members of SAD 34 staff or faculty wear beards. They request an answer upon what specific statute the directors are authorized to enter into executive sessions.
Spelled out specifically, Question 44 asks: State upon what reason the board of directors relies on calling an executive session in response to the questions asked of the board by the plaintiff at the board of directors meeting, Oct. 8, 1969.
On that date, Woodbury's attorney Zendzian had requested the board to answer a series of questions. After two questions were asked regarding the boy's suspension, the board called an executive session. Upon its return, Woodbury and Zendzian stated that the board told them it couldn't answer any more questions.
Other questions asked in the interrogatories include: State the reasons why the plaintiff, his father and counsel were not requested by the board of directors to be in attendance at the executive session.
Also asked is whether any minutes or notes were taken during the executive session, and if so, where are they located at the present time. If none were taken, the question asks the defendants to state the reason why this action of the board of directors was left unrecorded.
In a response to a reply previously filed by the defendants, the questionnaire asks the board to explain why the grooming regulations promulgated by SAD 34, promote the general social standards necessary in terms of health and well being of the plaintiff and his fellow students. A back-up question also asks the board to describe how the general social standard was determined by the board.
Cited as being primarily a civil rights suit, Zendzian stated previously that because of young Woodbury's economic conditions, a clear record is a necessity for him in order to acquire a scholarship for advanced learning at a higher level of education.
Woodbury, in the original complaint cited beard wearing as being part of a family tradition. He sports a beard with a crewcut. Zendzian contends that the suspension and two times young Woodbury was sent home, are an infringement on his constitutional rights, and that the restriction against beards at Belfast Area High School bears no rational relationship to the school's function.

• Newspaper Article: Bangor Daily News, 27 May 1970, Bangor, ME.
'Case of Belfast Student's Beard Comes To A Head With Massachusetts Ruling' by Ken Buckley
BELFAST -- A recent federal court ruling in Massachusetts may have spelled the end to a pending $100,000 civil suit against School Administrative District 34 over a student's right to wear a beard in class.
Attorney Paul Zendzian of Pine Tree Legal Associates, representing Belfast Area High School student Erroll[sic:read Errol] Woodbury, said in effect Tuesday that because of Judge Frank Coffin's ruling in the Richardson versus Thurston case in Marlboro, Mass., in favor of the plaintiff "... the case is law now and leaves very little to be resolved in federal courts."
Somewhat Dubious
Zendzian said he was somewhat dubious of a trial emerging out of the incident and felt that the Richards-Thurston case has set the law for the entire federal first circuit court system.
Judge Edward T. Gignoux, he felt, would have to follow the ruling obtained in Massachusetts which favored the plaintiff in a case identical to the one in Belfast.
Francis Marsano of the law firm of Eaton, Glass and Marsano of Belfast, representing the SAD 34 board of directors, said among motions which have been presented to the board of directors for their consideration was one which would allow attorneys for both sides to make docket entries in the case for Judge Gignoux.
Trial date for the case has been set in Federal District Court at Bangor during the week of June 14.
One of the defendants named in the complaint which was originated by Erroll's[sic:read Errol's] father Leon Woodbury of Belfast -- Mrs. Ruth Stephenson, a director -- said Tuesday that the board was presented with several choices.
Do Best Possible
"However it works out, we'll do the best we can," she said. "This business of education is a huge task," she said, "and I think we have over emphasized our stand on dress."
As for the 17-year-old student who was sent home Sept. 3, 1969 because of long sideburns, or a beard, Mrs. Stephenson noted that the lad had been attending school for some time now clean shaven, even though an injunction obtained at the beginning of the case gave him permission to attend classes with a beard.
Mrs. Stephenson, who described the lad as a fine scholar, said that the decision for the youth to shave off his whiskers was his own.
Citing a family tradition to sport whiskers, Erroll's[sic:read Errol's] father, Leon, took action against the district when it was felt that his son would lose a chance of obtaining a scholarship -- possibly his only chance of attending college.
His father attempted to have the attorneys clear his record of a suspension which was allegedly posted against the lad Sept. 25 by High School Principal J. Douglas Thompson after he failed to remove his beard at the school's insistence.
Deny Any Record
The board of directors has, since the court action was taken, denied that any record of disciplinary action or suspension was ever entered in the lad's record book.
Zendzian maintained in the suit that the actionby the board of directors bore no relation to the proper function of the school. He also maintained that because of the action by the board young Woodbury was being deprived of his public school education.
He also maintained that because of disciplinary proceedings shown on his school record, the lad's chances of seeking higher education would be damaged.

• Newspaper Article: Bangor Daily News, 18 Oct 1971, Bangor, ME.
Excerpt from the article "Pogonotrophy Can Be Fun!" by David Bright
Beards! They are as different as the people who wear them.
There was a time when a beard was the mark of manhood. But in later times, in America anyway, the preponderance of beards began to dwindle. After a while it was only woodcutters and hermits who were associated with beards, excepting of course for Santa Claus and his cronies up north.
The beard revolution was probably brought back to life by the beatniks of the mid-fifties era. In the sixties, the hippies took over and they have been the bearers of the beard ever since. If you have a beard you're a hippy, according to many.
[snip]
Leon Woodbury runs Bikeland, a small shop filled to overflowing with bicycles and spare parts on Hancock Street. Bearded since the Spring of 1963 he quit shaving because "it's a bad habit."
The one great advantage the beard has gained him is that it's forced him to stop smoking.
"I used to be a three-pack-a-day smoker, then one day I was lighting up and set my beard on fire. I quit on the spot, you can't have both, safely."

• Newspaper Article: Bangor Daily News, 12 Jul 1972, Bangor, ME.
"He Did It The Hard Way But Made His Point" by Paul MacAulay
"I stepped out of the shop and saw a man with shoulders about so big with a long, black beard and carrying this big wrench. He said 'follow me and I'll show you what I'm going to do' and he showed me."
Smashes Car Window
The witness then told Third District Court Judge F. Davis Clark that Leon Woodbury raised his wrench and swung it at the rear window of his car with the anticipated result.
Woodbury, owner of Bikeland on Hancock Street, and an avid cyclist himself, was on trial Tuesday afternoon on a charge of willfully damaging property. Bangor police alleged that he broke out the car window of Horace G. LaBree of Mount Hope Avenue, after he jotted down LaBree's license plate number as the result of an alleged accident on June 27.
LaBree operates Builders Supply on Mount Hope Avenue and spoke in the high voice usually needed to overcome the noise of the power equipment in his shop. Asked by Defense Counsel Paul Zendzian if he spoke with Woodbury after the incident, LaBree said he got only as far as "Why you..." Then, he said, he noticed that Woodbury was still holding his wrench in the air.
LaBree confirmed that his daughter had been driving the car earlier in the day.
Woodbury Takes Stand
Taking the stand in his own defense, Woodbury said that on June 27 he was riding his bicycle back to his shop after appearing as a witness in a bicycle theft case in Third District Court. As he was crossing Hancock Street, he related, a car driven by a young woman screeched by him and he collided with the rear of the car. He was hurt, but not injured, he told the court.
The soft-spoken but burly cyclist said he then went to the police department with the registration number and was told to go to traffic division. Woodbury told Assistant County Attorney Thomas Briggs that he didn't make much headway there. "They said something like 'You're still walking' ", he stated. "A bicyclist has no protection of the law in Bangor," Woodbury affirmed. He said he asked the officer, "What do I have to do to get you people to pay attention, go up and break out a car window."?
Woodbury then related much the same details as recounted by LaBree. He said he picked the "smallest, most inexpensive window" and smashed it. "LaBree was startled and somewhat ferocious -- he just didn't know what it was all about," Woodbury told the court.
Realized Consequences
Woodbury said he fully realized beforehand that he would have to pay for the broken window as well as attorney fees. "It's not the first time I've been hit by a car in Bangor," he stated. "It's time that people wake up to the fact that something must be done about bicycle safety."
During final arguments, Assistant County Attorney Briggs said he had to sympathize with Woodbury if his facts were correct but could not condone his action. Defense Attorney Zendzian argued that Woodbury turned to his government and was rebuffed, then tried what Zendzian described as "self-help."
Court Sympathetic
Judge Clark, who was not always succesful in repressing smiles during the hearing, said he agreed with Briggs' position and fined Woodbury $10. He said he, too, sympathized with Woodbury and said he probably acted under mixed feelings of disgust, frustration and discouragement.
Judge Clark said he trusted that the police department will look into the matter of protecting bicyclists to see what can be done. He told Woodbury that if another wrench went through a window and Woodbury was the end of it, the court would not be as lenient again.

• Newspaper Article: Bangor Daily News, 27 Jul 1973, Bangor, ME.
'Bicyclist Hailed[sic] Into Court' by Mark Woodward
The dean of Bangor bicyclists Thursday became the first person in history to appear in court on a citation issued by the Bangor Police Department -- for a moving bicycle violation.
But Leon Woodbury, owner of Bikeland, and vocal proponent of a bicycle safety program for the city, says he will fight the charges against him because he feels they reflect a general harassment of cyclists by some local policemen.
Woodbury explained Thursday night that the experience of his Tuesday arrest on Main Street "would, in my opinion, be classified as impossible in America by most people, but, it happened."
The bearded, 44-year-old cyclist appeared in Third District Court at Bangor Thursday and entered a plea of innocent to a charge of failing to give a timely and appropriate signal when making a left turn.
Woodbury claims that when he was stopped for the alleged offense in front of Freese's, the first words uttered by the arresting officer were "Mister Bikeland" in what Woodbury described as a "very sneering tone".
The officer, said Woodbury, "blasted at me for failure to keep to the right and wanted identification after calling me by my name, later saying he didn't know me."
Woodbury said he was never told what offense he was being charged with, was merely handed a ticket, and said the officer "had gone down the street before I finished reading the citation."
Woodbury also asserts that the Bangor Police Department has a personal vendetta against him because of a Bangor City Council meeting last spring when he criticized the department for conducting a "nonexistant"[sic] bicycle safety program.
In support of this vendetta theory, he offered the fact that the police department stated last spring that it would issue warnings to first offenders on bicycles and only on subsequent offenses issue court citations.
The NEWS on May 5 published a statement of department policy, in a story headlined "Warnings given to 11 bicyclists", to the effect that "those stopped for an infraction the second time will be summoned to court if they are 17 years of age or older."
Woodbury says he is fighting the charge to focus attention on the need for a bicycle safety program which so far has not been established by what he terms a "totally automobile-oriented police department".
Though Woodbury feels automobilists should be educated to be more cautious and hold more respect for cyclists, he also feels that cyclists could benefit from a "total education program."
Woodbury said complaints by motorists and pedestrians about cyclists, and the danger to cyclists because of unwitting motorists could be greatly reduced if a safety program were initiated.
But, he concluded, "after pushing for a safety program for three years now, I find that the only thing being done is a total program of harassment of bicyclists by police offers who act like gestapo storm trooopers."
Thursday afternoon, Sgt. Paul Guerins said that though the Woodbury summons was certainly a rarity, the department had a "whole file full of warnings" issued to cyclists.
He said the warnings included illegal turns, riding on the wrong side of the street, riding at night with no lights, and a host of other infractions.
Guerin said the department was intensifying its enforcement efforts to "stop these bicyclists before something serious happens."

• Newspaper Article: Bangor Daily News, 3 Feb 1974, Bangor, ME.
"Paper crimp brings old industry new life" by Ken Buckley
When you talk about 'cycling, Leon Woodbury of Bangor has traversed the whole route and almost recycled himself into the mainstream of current conservation strategy, going from a bicycle salesman to a recycling advocate.
Capitalizing on the energy crisis and the desperate need for paper, Woodbury and two assistants are packing and pumping a creaking relic of a baling machine with disused newspapers and cardboard and shipping them south for recycling.
"Companies are screaming for recycled paper," claims Woodbury, who opened up a rented "air conditioned" Betton Street warehouse in Brewer three weeks ago, and quickly found that he needed a fulltime helper and a parttime assistant to keep the baler working.
But the former Belfast resident, who once did the same thing in 1960 for cash and then came to Bangor to sell bicycles, after the recycled paper market crashed, isn't in the business solely on "an ecological kick."
Woodbury is buying paper and cardboard from local rubbish dealers. He hopes to set up receiving bins outside the warehouse eventually to collect newspapers and cardboard. And he will buy newspapers from the local boy scout troop to help out their fund drive.
"We're coming into the age of recycling," the jovial bewhiskered giant chuckles amid a stack of cardboard and bales ready to be shipped out to Gardiner. Woodbury claims he just as easily prognasticated the recycling era, as he did the bicycling urge a few years back.
"Paper companies can grind this stuff quicker than they can pulpwood." he says. On cold days like Friday in the Betton Street warehouse, his men can almost pack paper faster than it's thrown away.
Strangely enough, Woodbury came across the 1932 baling relic in the Tri-City Baling Co. at Randolph. The company went out of business 10 years ago when major paper mills claimed recycling was too expensive.
Capable of compressing 400 pounds of paper and cardboard in 20 minutes, three weeks ago, Northeast Baling Enterprises collected, packed, pressed and shipped four tons of material for conversion into pulp.
The second week, Woodbury's tonnage increased to eight tons. This week he had packed 10 tons.
Contemplating a $9,000 new baler, Woodbury believes that the original $3,000 investment will see either a tripling or quadrupling of his present output.
The demand for the baled cardboard and paper is there. Getting it to the baler is a different story.
Woodbury is paying contract men a tonnage fee and is more than ready to take as much waste newspaper and cardboard as people can drop off at his warehouse.
The baled material is taken to Gardiner where Yorktown Paper Mills, a 100 per cent recycling facility, he says, mixes shredded newsprint and cardboard with woodchips into pulp.
The company is also understood to produce cartons and a special writing paper from reclaimed salvage. Some of the substances is farmed out to other mills around the state.
Woodbury is in the business to make money. It's an enterprise consistent with the age. And like all enterprises, "it's a long shot gamble."

• Newspaper Article: Bangor Daily News, 8 Sep 1975, Bangor, ME.
"$5,000 damage in Brewer fire"
An early morning fire on Saturday took the roof off the Northeast Baling Co. building on Rooney Street in Brewer, and caused between $5,000 and $8,000 damage to the cement-walled building and equipment therein. The company salvaged waste paper.
Leon Woodbury of Bangor, owner of the building, said the building was not insured because of the high cost of insurance. He also felt the fire was set by someone, but Brewer police said the preliminary investigation showed the probably cause was a discarded cigarette. The building is across the street from the Parent Lumber Co., which burned earlier this summer. The cause of that fire was listed as a carelessly discarded cigarette.
At 3:07 a.m. Brewer Fire Department sent two trucks to the building which was engulfed by flames when they arrived.
Woodbury was at the scene later Saturday morning dismantling some of the equipment. He said the business had been shut down for the past two months because of the poor waste paper market. He said much of the equipment was damaged, but he thought the baler used in the business could be salvaged.
Woodbury claimed the building had been vandalized earlier in the summer.

• Newspaper Article: Bangor Daily News, 24 Jul 1984, Bangor, ME.
"Son ignores cemetery rules, buries mother in pine coffin" by Walter Griffin
MONROE -- Hazel Woodbury lies at rest beside her husband Omar in the Pilgrim's Home Cemetery and her son Leon is determined that her body will remain there undisturbed. Woodbury knows he raised the wrath of cemetery officials because he freely admits that when he buried his 75-year old mother last Saturday afternoon he broke all their rules.
"I did it in respect for her religious principals[sic]," Woodbury said Monday.
"She must have told me 5,000 times that when she died she wanted her body put in a pine box, close the cover and have it closed for all eternity. She wanted to blend into the ground and be part of it the way God said. There's nothing in the Bible about any eternity cannister."
Woodbury said that when he attempted to tend to his mother's dying wishes he was blocked by a cemetery regulation preventing burial of a coffin directly into the ground. The rules state that a separate, concrete burial vault must also be used. Despite that rule, Woodbury decided to bury his mother in Pilgrim's Home Cemetery. The family has owned a plot in the cemetery since 1942 and Hazel Woodbury's mother, father and husband are buried there.
Alden Kenne, president of the cemetery association, said he was both concerned and disappointed by Woodbury's actions. He said that while the trustees may not "go as far as having the body removed, he (Woodbury) did break the rules. This is the first instance we've ever had of someone breaking the rules."
In order to break those rules, Woodbury had to be very persistent. When his mother died last Friday, her body was taken to the Rackliffe Funeral Home in Belfast. Funeral director Phil Rackliffe said he agreed to Woodbury's wish that his mother not be embalmed and be buried in a pine box before sunset the following day.
When Rackliffe arrived at the cemetery for graveside services Saturday and learned that Woodbury refused to abide by the rule requiring a burial vault he said he would not be a part of the funeral. Rackliffe informed Woodbury that as a funeral director he had to abide by the cemetery's rules. He offered to purchase the vault himself so the burial could proceed.
Woodbury said he declined Rackliffe's offer and instead fired him. In order to hold to state law, Rackliffe then returned to Belfast with Mrs. Woodbury's body, prepared a burial transit form, had Woodbury sign a release, then transferred the coffin to Woodbury's care.
Although the sight of a coffin sticking out the back of Leon Woodbury's 15-year old Toyota station wagon as it drove through town must have raised a few eyebrows, he did it in order that his mother's soul rest in peace. The family placed Hazel Woodbury's coffin beside her husband as she had requested and covered her for all time.
Rackliffe said that, while most people have the impression that burials are governed by laws, in reality there are very few laws pertaining to burial. He said as long as people file a request with the town clerk, loved ones can be buried at home. Racklife can recall burying someone in their front yard once and said using a coffin is not a requirement.
"You can do it just like they used to do in the old West -- just roll the body into the hole," Rackliffe said. "The law only states that human remains must not create a menace to the public health."
As far as Woodbury is concerned, his rights to the cemetery were established more than 40 years ago when the family plot was purchased.
"A lot of people would knuckle under when they start talking rules, but not me. There ain't no knuckle-under built in me at all," he said.

Leon married Rhoda Ann Kimball on 14 Jun 1950 in Carmel, ME.¹ (Rhoda Ann Kimball was born on 30 Jun 1935 in Bangor, ME, died on 3 Sep 2012 in Alexandria, VA and was buried in Harmony Place Cemetery, Monroe, ME.)