WOODSTOCK — When his son got a poison ivy rash years ago, Paul Wildasin didn’t go to the local drugstore. He went to a nearby field.
There, he found the bright orange-and-yellow, sunset-looking flowers colloquially referred to as “touch-me-nots” or jewel weed. At home, Wildasin, a trained florist with a degree in environmental studies, broke the flowers apart and crushed them until a liquid flowed from the stems, which he applied to his young son’s rash. Within days it was gone.
This was something Wildasin knew well. An avid hiker and well-known member of the Woodstock community for decades, Wildasin had a unique love of the woods, fields and nature that grew around his Upper Valley home.
“He always had these homeopathic remedies,” his son, Thaddeus Wildasin remembered. “He taught it to me my whole life.”
Paul Wildasin died on July 19, 2021, at 76 of prostate cancer, which had metastasized to his bones, Thaddeus said last week. He added that his father died at home in Woodstock, on a couch he had loved to sit and nap on for years.
The loss of Wildasin was a hit for the small, tight-knit town of Woodstock where Wildasin was known as a pillar in the community. For 25 years, Wildasin ran a floral shop that closed in 2005 and also served as host at Bentleys restaurant, which closed in 2019.
“Bentleys had a lot of furniture and for years, Paul was one of them — he was a fixture,” said former Bentleys co-owner Maria Freddura. “He was the host so he was the same familiar face you would see every day.”
Wildasin grew up in Hanover, Penn., the son of a mill worker father and a mother who worked at a potato chip factory.
He attended school in Pennsylvania as well as Fork Union Military Academy in Virginia. When he was a teen, his family relocated to Maine, where they had purchased a small hunting camp, which would become the basis for much of Wildasin’s passion later in life.
“He liked the peacefulness and the serenity of the camp,” Thaddeus Wildasin said, adding that up until his death, his father still owned a small painting of the camp that a visitor had made. When asked where his father developed a love of nature, Thaddeus pointed to that time in Maine.
“He was surrounded by it…. It was all about nature and living off the land,” Thaddeus Wildasin said.
After high school, Paul Wildasin went to the University of Maine where he majored in environmental and soil studies.
After getting his degree, Wildasin moved to Nashua and met his first wife, Danielle Doran, with whom he had a daughter, Mary-Alice Wildasin. The family then moved to Burlington when he got a job at the University of Vermont’s agriculture extension program.
The move to Vermont eventually brought him to the Upper Valley and, following the dissolution of his first marriage, he met and married Sandra Burrell, Thaddeus Wildasin said.
From the Upper Valley, Wildasin’s life took a turn. He was accepted into the Kentucky Theological Seminary in Lexington and relocated with his wife down south.
For Wildasin, the switch from agriculture and environmentalism to theology was not as stark as one might think, his son said.
“I think that he basically believed it’s all the same thing,” Thaddeus Wildasin said. “I think in his head he thought that God and nature were the exact same thing.”
In Kentucky, Wildasin deepened his love of nature, becoming fascinated with the Foxfire books — a series that detailed environmentalist, back-to-the-land efforts among residents in rural Appalachia.
His interest in sustainability “had to do with that melding of nature and religion,” his son said.
By the early 1980s, Wildasin and Burrell had moved back to Vermont with their young daughter, Tabitha, and had Thaddeus Wildasin.
Vermont was the state where Paul Wildasin thrived, his son said. On frequent hikes with his family, Paul Wildasin would point out the different kinds of moss and lichen and flowers.
In the mornings, he would take his children to Woodstock’s Mountain Creamery, where he would order a drink and eggs benedict and devour articles in the Rutland Herald — his favorite local paper.
In Woodstock, Paul Wildasin immersed himself in the community, working first for a local florist before taking his love of nature to his own business and opening a floral shop, which he ran for over 25 years.
“A lot of people got to know him through that,” said his daughter, Tabitha Monfette.
She and her brother would spend hours in the shop, trimming rose stems, delivering flowers and arranging bouquets for prom season and holidays, Monfette said. She recalled that her father’s favorite flower was a plumeria — a vibrant pink or yellow flower native to Hawaii — but, Monfette said, her father loved any plant he wasn’t allergic to.
Monfette remembers how Wildasin passed down his knowledge and love of the business to his children, educating them on how to arrange flowers and identify types of plants.
“It was a learned behavior from growing up,” Monfette said. “He taught both my brother and me a very strong work ethic.”
Monfette said her father brought that same passion to many aspects of his life — beyond plants and nature —– like his love of his German heritage and Pennsylvania Dutch upbringing.
She said that as he grew up, Wildasin was close with his mother and grandparents, and the family would often spend hours making traditional German food like hogma — stuffed pig’s stomach — as well as desserts like fruit pies and lemon tarts.
Food was an important part of Wildasin’s upbringing, and Monfette remembers how her father would often put together elaborate dinners for the family.
“The whole family — aunts, uncles, grandparents — would all gather for a dinner and it didn’t matter who you were if you were in the house you sat down and ate,” she said.
Both Monfette and Thaddeus Wildasin remember their father’s love of Hawaii, as well. After his divorce from his second wife — the siblings’ mother — Paul Wildasin made it a yearly tradition to take the nearly 11-hour flight to Hawaii in February.
There, the man who was always working would finally take a break, Thaddeus Wildasin said. He added that his father was an avid reader who would “devour” books on the beach in Honolulu and on evenings he would stop by Hulas Bar and Lei stand, where he soon became a regular.
“From the first moment he went there he so identified with the culture and people and he enjoyed walking on the beach and reading his books,” Monfette said.
Back in Vermont, however, his flower business started to struggle, until Wildasin finally sold the shop in 2005, partly to help pay for his son’s college expenses, Thaddeus Wildasin said.
After selling his business, Paul Wildasin threw himself even further into his community. He was already working as a host at Bentleys, he took a job as a lister for the town of Woodstock.
On his off-time, Wildasin would volunteer at St. James Episcopal Church in Woodstock, directing a church fair to raise money.
“I think he just saw the community and really appreciated it, how close-knit it was,” Thaddeus Wildasin said. “I have a feeling that he didn’t want to be that much of an outsider so he really used his position to build himself into the community.”
Wildasin’s presence in Woodstock is remembered by many in the town, including co-assistant town clerk Mary Riley, who called him the “most artistic, creative person I’ve ever known.”
She recalled how Wildasin’s floral arrangements could be seen throughout Woodstock, but most prominently in front of Bentleys, drawing in customers with their vibrancy. Beyond his creativity, Riley said Wildasin had a good heart.
When asked to describe Wildasin, Riley said simply, “He was a compassionate man and a caring individual.”
Anna Merriman can be reached at amerriman@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.