Maine troopers are marking a century since they lost the second of the state’s police officers to die in the organization‘s line of duty.
Inspector Fred Foster of Lisbon had only been a member of the state highway patrol for a year.
Foster, 27, died 100 years ago when his Harley Davidson struck a horse hauling a load of hay.
The Route 3 accident occurred in Belfast on August 30, 1925. He had joined the state highway patrol in 1924.
Foster was then only the second Maine state policeman to die while on duty.
He was also the second in the service of the state police to die while patrolling on a motorcycle.
A year before Foster’s fatal accident, Trooper Emery Gooch was the first state cop to die on a bike.
Gooch, 39, was killed when he lost control of his motorcycle in Mattawamkeag on August 9, 1924.
He had joined the State Highway Patrol just a month before.
The same year Foster died the legislature approved expanding the state highway patrol to a full-fledged statewide police force.
The legislation authorized the governor to appoint a chief and set the duties and powers of the new department.
Arthur H. Field, who had served as Lewiston’s police chief, was named the first chief of the state police.
The new department’s officers were issued a motorcycle, a pistol and a law book and were assigned to patrol areas throughout Maine.
The weekly salary for an inspector – Foster’s rank at the time – was $28.
Since Foster, ten Maine troopers have died in the line of service.
The most recent case was Detective Benjamin Campbell, who was killed in a freak accident on April 3, 2019.
Campbell, 31, a polygrapher at the time, had been with the state police seven years when he stopped to assist a disabled motorist.
While helping the driver, Campbell was struck by a wheel of a truck that had come detached from a passing vehicle.
Campbell had pulled over along Interstate 95 near Exit 180 while on his way to a Portland meeting to help a driver who had spun out of control in icy conditions.
He was standing outside of his cruiser when two wheels separated from a tractor-trailer logging truck that was driving past him.
One of the wheels landed in the median strip but the other slammed into Campbell. He was rushed to a nearby hospital but died of his grievous injuries.
The accident happened in the southbound breakdown lane along I-95 in Hampden, five days before Campbell’s birthday.
The young father left behind his wife Hilary and their little boy, Everett, who, was only six months old.
Everett sadly never got to know his father and the selfless, unsung hero his Daddy would become for simply stopping – without fanfare – to help a member of the public.
At his funeral, held at a Portland arena to accommodate 3,000 mourners, Everett’s mom choked back tears as she told the crowd:
“I can’t begin to say everything I want to say. So I’ll just say that I love you. I love you with every piece of my being. I promise you I’ll do everything I can to raise our son as we planned.”
Due to the passage of time, unfortunately little if anything more is known about the lives of Gooch and Foster.
In 2021, the legislature passed a law stimulating that each fallen state trooper would be honored for their service with a mile of state highway dedicated in their name.
RIP to Maine’s finest, from Emery Gooch in 1924 to Ben Campbell in 2019.
