'Classic' Vermonter dies in cabin fire
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Leonard Derby stands in front of the debris of what was his father’s home Thursday in South Londonderry. A fire destroyed the home Wednesday, taking the life of 89-year-old Lester Balch Derby. Cassandra Hotaling / Rutland Herald |
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By Susan Smallheer STAFF WRITER - Published: April 10, 2009
SOUTH LONDONDERRY — Leonard Derby accepted condolences Thursday afternoon in front of the scorched rubble that had been his elderly father's home.
Derby's father, 89-year-old Lester Balch Derby, died Wednesday afternoon at his home, and Vermont State Police said the cause of the fatal fire remained under investigation.
"He was found near the front door," Leonard Derby said, noting that when he got to his father's home Wednesday afternoon after being called by his aunt, he knew his father was dead inside because the padlock wasn't on the front door.
"He always put a padlock on the door when he left," the Halifax man said, showing a visitor the front door that survived the fire with its empty hasp.
Lester Derby lived for the past 45 years in his 12-foot by 15-foot cabin that didn't have electricity or running water. Born in Andover and raised in Londonderry, Lester Derby left school after the fourth or fifth grade and lived the life of a 19th-century Vermonter.
He worked in mills and farms and cut pulp wood by hand, his son said. Leonard Derby said his parents split up when he was 7. Leonard Derby and his sister, Emma Lazelle of Halifax, would stay with their father occasionally as children.
He started a junkyard on his 15 acres bordering the West River so he could work independently and free of other people's rules. In recent years, he raised additional cash by picking up soda and beer cans and bottles by the side of the road.
He only had a small Social Security check, his son said, and he knew how to "make a $10 bill stretch."
He was described by many as a "classic" Vermonter, full of pride and prickly independence. "Some people thought he was a hobbit," his son said.
At the Village Pantry in South Londonderry, owner Stuart Itter said Derby's death was the latest in a series of tragedies to hit the West River Valley in the past year, starting with last spring's drowning deaths of a woman and her two young daughters, the death of a kayaker a week later, the death of a local woman in a car accident this winter and now Derby's death.
"I just saw him last week," said Itter, a New York City retiree now running the local upscale deli, who said Derby asked him how much a gallon of milk cost.
Itter said he sold it to Derby for $2, far below the regular price. "Lester was just one of those strange phenomena of life," he said. "He never bothered anybody," Itter said. "I'm really sad."
Derby refused his son and contractor grandsons' offer to build him a new house with a concrete floor, electricity and running water. Nor would he move into a senior housing development in South Londonderry, his son said.
"My aunt would yell at me and say, 'Why don't you do something with your father,'" Leonard Derby said Thursday. He wanted to, he said, but his father didn't want him to and he wanted to live "on his own land" and on his own.
"He was stubborn and he was smart. He read a lot," the son said, noting he had last seen his father two weeks ago, when he took him grocery shopping at Clark's, a market in Londonderry where he would buy most of his food.
The son said he spoke with the Council on Aging in Brattleboro about getting care for his father, but was told unless his father were found mentally incompetent, the elder Derby was free to live the way he wanted.
His father suffered several serious and painful medical problems and had a hard life, the son said. He walked with a limp from a poorly healed broken leg and lost two fingers from mishaps.
Sometime in the 1980s, he had to go into the hospital and, worried about people stealing parts from the junk cars while he was away, went through his junkyard with an ax and destroyed anything of value, his son said.
"He was paranoid at times," Leonard Derby said, looking at the springtime woods, littered with the rusty carcasses of the big cars of the 1940s and 1950s.
"People would sneak in at night and steal parts," Leonard Derby said. "But he destroyed parts that would be invaluable to him today."
"My father was a child of the Depression and he never threw anything away," said Leonard Derby, who along with one of his sons pondered his father's life and the tasks ahead for their family, cleaning up the littered landscape at the end of West River Street, a half-mile long dirt road that leads into a popular hiking and biking trail along the river.
People in Londonderry and South Londonderry were protective Thursday of the unusual man, saying he was honest and kind. They admitted his scruffy appearance, his long, unkempt hair and beard could scare children. "His hands were often black," one person recalled.
Marlene Baird, one of the workers at Clark's, said Derby was a kind and polite person. "I never had any trouble with him," said Baird, noting that Derby would buy milk, bread and juice and know exactly how much he had spent to the penny at the cash register.
He used the local coin laundry where her daughter worked, Baird said, and would ask her daughter for permission before he bought her a bag of M&M'S from the vending machine.
Nelson Abbott of Chester, another Clark's employee, said people went to Derby's for car parts.
"He was just always there. He had the junkyard," said Abbott, whose brother-in-law is Derby's nephew.
"He was honest, probably the most honest man I ever knew," he said, noting that Derby's habits of checking the trash barrels recovered Abbott's missing checkbook a few years ago.
Vermont State Police Detective Michael O'Neil said the cabin's woodstove was suspected as the cause of the fire, but he said the fire was still under investigation, and he said it would be several weeks before the exact cause of death was determined.
Funeral services will be held in Chester, and burial will be near his parents and brother in a Londonderry cemetery, Leonard Derby said.
"The rescue crew told me he was burned, but still recognizable," Leonard Derby said. "But I couldn't look."
susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com
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