Mount Desert Thanks Durlin Lunt for a Lifetime of Service.
Aug 24, 2025
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by the Bar Harbor Music Festival.
MOUNT DESERT—Community members and staff surrounded Town Manager Durlin Lunt at the Neighborhood House, Friday afternoon, celebrating his retirement from his position as town manager for the last 16 or so years. However, Lunt has been immersed in the town and its running for a far greater time.
“I want to remind everyone of Durlin’s trademarks: his humor—his lovely sense of humor—his support for his staff and selectboard, his guidance, because he kept us respectful through many landmines,” Mount Desert Selectboard Chair John Macauley said in remarks before the crowd at the Neighborhood House, Friday. “And history? How many of you knew that he was a history buff?”
The crowd laughed.
That’s something it would be hard not to know.
Lunt is known for his love of history, of story, and of quotes, which he sprinkles in verbal conversation, meeting notes, and emails.
“Few will have the opportunity to help shape and influence policies and procedures that will guide their community for a generation or more. I have been blessed with this privilege for fifteen years and that it took place in my hometown makes the return to the community as a private citizen even more rewarding. Although we face severe challenges in the years ahead there is no doubt in my mind that we are on an upward trajectory,” Lunt told the Bar Harbor Story in February.
Those sentiments were echoed Friday.
“That goal was to make Mount Desert a leader in our community, in our state,” Lunt said. “I devoted every ounce of my abilities and my work to make that happen.”
“This community is very, very special to me,” he said.
It’s been his home his entire life.
“I’ve tried to the very best of my abilities to be a professional and competent representative of all of you because that’s what I do: represent all of you,” he said.
“Stories are the real and binding thread and fabric that tie a society together,” Lunt said. “Great leaders in our country have always used stories…. It’s such an important thing.”
Stories, he said, are a special way to get a point across, and then he told a few to those gathered.
Lunt received the Linc Stackpole Town Manager of the Year Award in 2022, a major honor in Maine for municipal officers that is awarded by the Maine Town City and County Management Association.
He served as a summer police officer in his town in the 1970s. In 1979, he admonished Hale Joy via an Ellsworth American letter to be kinder and give the Maine Lumberjacks, a professional basketball team a chance.
Giving people a chance has always been one of Lunt’s trademarks.
Elected to the Mount Desert Selectboard in 1975, he became the chair from 1984-1992. Working in the nonprofit sector, he eventually decided on a master’s degree in public administration and then his employment focused on workforce development.
All that changed in 2009, when he was first thinking of retiring. Instead, he headed to Mount Desert, this time as its manager, leading his hometown through a time where things were a bit cantankerous.
“He had the skills to smooth over conflicts in the town and help the healing process through the rebuilding of personnel and resident relationships. He did such a great job, he was soon appointed to the full-time town manager in 2010,” Town Clerk Claire Woolfolk said. “Over the years, I’ve watched Durlin as he steered the ship of the Town of Mount Desert through some rough seas and to where we can say we have relatively calm waters compared to what we had back then.”
Woolfolk mentioned Lunt’s work putting the town on more solid financial footing, the Northeast Harbor village improvements, CIP, the sharing agreements with the Bar Harbor police department.
She also mentioned Lunt’s ability to hire competent staff and their ability to do their jobs.
”While we are going to miss you, we’ll remember to paraphrase Richard Nixon’s wise words: Always give our best; never get discouraged; never be petty, don’t hate the haters. Which from my observations, this is how you ran this town. I hope you stop in on your regular walkabouts and share more stories as well as a few timely quips,” Woolfolk said.
Others attending mentioned Lunt’s advocacy for the village of Otter Creek and work advocating returning historic view sheds.
While Lunt steered the ship of Mount Desert, he impacted the people he worked with and cultivated a strong municipal staff, who he lauded, Friday evening, as the unsung heroes of the town.
“We really need to pay more attention to the true heroes amongst us; the ones that fight fires, the ones that go out on our ambulance calls, that plow the roads, the ones that patrol our streets, the ones that work behind the desk in the town office and provide great customer service. These people who sometimes, unfortunately sometimes, they toil in shadows, they are the actual work horses that keep our community going. They are the work horses. I’m merely the show pony,” Lunt said.
Jim Willis, former Mount Desert and Bar Harbor police chief, told The Story last winter, that Lunt has made him a better man.
“I’m sure plenty of people can list Durlin’s accomplishments. There are plenty, to include implementing a CIP for the town, developing partnerships with neighboring communities to ensure critical services get delivered and many others,” Willis said. “Durlin was a great guy to work with. He recognized individuals’ potential, perhaps more than the individuals understood about themselves.”
That recognition of potential helped change Willis’ life.
“Durlin prompted me to get my bachelor’s degree with the town’s financial assistance. It took a few years, but I did get it done. When he asked me to go to Bar Harbor to help out as acting chief, I was still taking classes and had just become president of the Maine Chiefs Association,” Willis said. “I wasn’t sure I could manage it all. Durlin said he knew I could and that he’d be there to help. Durlin checked on me regularly, offered support and most of all, listened to me when I needed an ear.”
That belief in people’s potential has made a difference in many lives.
Now, Lunt has a chance to believe in himself that same way as he focuses on his own next big project after retirement: at least two books about the people of Mount Desert, people whose stories he has collected along his own journey.
“For some time, I have felt it important that an informal social history of Northeast Harbor be written from the years following the Second World War through the nineteen sixties through the eyes of an ordinary person who grew up in the village. It was an extraordinary time and an extraordinary place. By the early nineteen seventies, the character of the village of Northeast Harbor had changed dramatically and forever. Every year, fewer of us alive remember those years and can record them. I want to memorialize these voices before theirs and mine fall silent,” he wrote.
Lunt himself is one of those voices. He grew up on the island, went to school here, raised his family with his wife, Jean, who is also a force when it comes to community and intellect. His son, Jeremy, a filmmaker, also is a creator and collator of story.
But before Lunt throws himself in headfirst into his books, Lunt will be staying on as interim manager for three days a week while the town searches for his successor, and also mentoring other town managers in the state.
In his resignation letter, Lunt also thanked the selectboards that he’s served. In his speeches Friday, both at the Neighborhood House and earlier at the Ripples Hill groundbreaking for nine more year-round homes, he honored the town employees he’s served with, and thanked the people of Mount Desert for letting him be their manager.
“It has been a high honor and privilege to do so,” he wrote in that letter.
Charles de Lint once wrote, “Our lives are stories, and the stories we have to give to each other are the most important. No one has a story too small and all are of equal stature. We each tell them in different ways, through different mediums–and if we care about each other, we’ll take the time to listen.”
Lunt has taken the time to listen and to care. No story in his town will ever be too small.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Mount Desert Accepts Town Manager’s Resignation
·
Feb 25
Durlin Lunt Will Retire This August
·
Feb 4
Follow us on Facebook or BlueSky or Instagram. And as a reminder, you can easily view all our past stories and press releases here.
Bar Harbor Story is a mostly reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thanks for being here with us and being part of our community, too!
Thanks for reading Bar Harbor Story! This post is public so feel free to share it.
If you’d like to donate to help support us, you can, but no pressure! Just click here (about how you can give) or here (a direct link), which is the same as the button below.
If you’d like to sponsor the Bar Harbor Story, you can! Learn more here.
THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING OUR COMMITMENT TO YOUR COMMUNITY
Discover more from Bar Harbor Story
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.