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change after today.” Sylvia attended a one room school house in Hollis and later graduated valedictorian of her 11 member class at Hollis High School in 1955. That same year she married Howard Lee Smith. Sylvia and Lee raised their five children on the banks of the Saco River, where they also took over running the Nichols Trailer Park until the 1980’s. They decided to change careers and purchased Your Country Store from Ron Sargent in 1986, which they successfully ran for ten years. While running all these businesses, Sylvia became Town Clerk where she worked from home. As children, we recall the night before hunting season started, all day long vehicles would pull into the yard and even line the sides of the road to get their hunting licenses. This would get extra crazy when the day before hunting season also fell on Halloween and the trailer park was the place to drop the kids off by the station wagon full to go trick-or-treating. The Clerk’s office eventually moved into the Hollis Elementary School with the Selectmen’s office and Tax Collector. She was not there long however, due to the new Town Hall being built across the road in 1976. That was also the year we remember our mother being involved heavily with the bicentennial committee. Whatever Mom was signed up for meant that we were too. It was fun to be along for the parades, parties, and dedications. She repeated her dedication when Hollis turned 200 years old in 1998. This was when she was a Selectperson. Sylvia was not done yet done with the many hats she wore. She was able to get her real estate license, she was a paralegal, and she even ran for State Legislature only losing by 5 votes. I think Dad said “Not again, Sylvia” and I was relieved since we had to paint the campaign signs and attend all the fairs and parades. As a volunteer, Sylvia was even more remarkable. Helping others was always her calling. She was a volunteer at the Hollis Center Public Library, Secretary of the Meeting House Hill Cemetery Association, and she volunteered for Opportunity Alliance as a senior companion at the Gorham House. In the Hollis community, she was a life long member of the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, Buxton-Hollis Alumni member as well as TOPS and The Sunshine Club. In between all this hard work she found time for her hobbies: knitting, reading, gardening, bird watching, spending summers at Pine Point and spending time with her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. She was selfless to her community and her family. I don’t know how she did it all, but she did it exceptionally well.

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