HARRISON — Richard “Dick” Craig Schieferstein, 08 October 1943 to 12 April 2021, passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by his family, after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

Dick was born in Somerville, N.J., to John and Doris Schieferstein. He graduated from Somerville High School. He started work as a teenager working with his father on a Durling Farm’s milk route, delivering milk door to door in the 1950s. Following high school, he enlisted in the Air Force, becoming a jet mechanic. He was stationed for some
years in France, and later, in the only recently acknowledged, Congo Crisis.

Following his return to New Jersey, and being Honorably Discharged from the Air Force, he gained employment with the Mettler Company, a German high-precision weighing and measurement company, where he worked in the Mid-Atlantic Region. While working for Mettler, he met the love of his life, Charlene Camille Schieferstein. Soon after they were wed, and looking for adventure, were transferred to Simi Valley California. While in California, on the weekends they enjoyed camping in the desert, and soon after Dick purchased a motorcycle and regularly raced in several desert dirt bike races including numerous Barstow to Vegas long distance races.

After a few years, they returned to New Jersey, and still looking for adventure resigned from Mettler and moved to Harrison, Maine in 1973. Where they opened “Project USE,” with two other family couples, a wilderness school based in Harrison, with a base camp in Newry. Several years later, Dick worked brie y as a logger in the western Maine foothills.

In the spring of 1977, Dick and Charlene welcomed John Joseph into their lives. John would become Dick’s greatest adventure. Their relationship as father and son, was unequaled, and they embarked on many outdoor endeavors together, including backpacking, mountain climbing, canoeing, logging and countless others.

In 1979, Dick took the skills that he had gained with Mettler, and he and Charlene opened QC Services Inc., a calibration company based in Harrison. In the early years, he tirelessly hustled around Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, making business relationships, forming very long-term clients. As the years went by, his perseverance won, and they steadily grew, eventually providing calibration and sales services to nearly every university, high school, factory, paper mill, hospital, laboratory and wastewater treatment plant in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and some in Massachusetts and even Quebec.

In 1982, he joined his other passion, the Harrison Fire Department. Serving there, most of it as a captain, with tremendous devotion to the department until his retirement in 2018, 36 years later.

He was also a member of the American Legion Post 139, where he served as adjutant for two years.

His love of the outdoors continued throughout his life, looking forward all year to the annual fishing trip with his buddies to Camp Seven on Azichohos lake, camping with his family, or logging with his son.

Every person that has met Dick is lucky to have done so, as there have been none other like him. Always there at the right time, to save a person choking, which he has done three times, rescuing someone in a ditch, capsized in lake or countless fires or motor vehicle accidents.

He is survived by his forever dancing partner, his beloved wife, of 54 years Charlene, his sister Diane Prow of New Smyrna Beach, Fla., his son John and wife Whitney of Harrison. Grandson Quinn, and grandaughter Riley of Harrison, niece Major Stacey Bateman, and nephew Scott Prow.

The world has lost a truly unbelievable, husband, father, brother, grandfather, uncle, friend, boss and just simply man. He will be very dearly missed; we love and miss you. Thank you for being you.

Enormous thanks go to the staff of Beacon Hospice and First Light Home Care, and many others.

A viewing will be held at Chandler Funeral Home, 8 Elm Street, Bridgton, from 5 to 7 p.m., on Wednesday 28 April 2021, with graveside services held at the Harrison Village Cemetery at 2 p.m. on Thursday, 29 April 2021.

In lieu of flowers, if desired, please make donations to the “Anthony C. Hazelton Scholarship Fund,” of the Harrison Fire & Rescue Department.