Linda Bean, an heiress to Maine outdoor retailer LL Bean who founded her own company to market other famous Maine products, most notably lobster rolls and beach rentals, and who was an outspoken conservative in a state that traditionally preferred political independent, died on Saturday. She was 82.
The funeral home that conducted her funeral published an obituary that did not mention the cause or location of her death.
Ms. Bean was a granddaughter of Leon Leonwood Bean, the purveyor of rubber-soled duck boots and plaid flannel shirts who went from hunter to preppy and fueled the company’s growth into a national catalog giant and one of Maine’s largest employers.
As one of about 30 heirs to sit on the private company’s board, Ms. Bean used her wealth to support right-wing causes and politicians, including former President Donald J. Trump; Accumulation of paintings and possessions associated with the Wyeth art family; and started her career as an entrepreneur in her mid-60s.
In January 2017, the Federal Election Commission said a tens of thousands of dollars in donations Ms. Bean made to a group supporting Mr. Trump, Making America Great Again LLC, exceeded the $5,000 individual donor limit. An anti-Trump group threatened to boycott LL Bean; The company distanced itself from Ms. Bean but did not remove her from the board.
Linda Bean’s Perfect Maine, founded by Ms. Bean in 2007, began with the purchase of a commercial wharf that supplied bait to lobster boats and purchased their catch in the picturesque village of Port Clyde, where she had a home. Her goal was to mass-market lobster under her own name — as Frank Perdue had branded chicken — and to prevent Maine lobster from being sent for processing to Canada, which Ms. Bean viewed as a socialist state.
She admitted that marketing, not lobstering, was her forte.
“I love working with words,” she told the New York Times in 2009, reflecting on menu items like Linda Bean’s Port Clyde Lobster Stew and Linda Bean’s Lobster Cuddlers — a name she preferred to use for buttered lobster claws. “Like chicken fillets — it shows you that you’re eating something juicy, not scary,” she said.
Ms. Bean purchased additional lobster wharves in nearby Tenants Harbor and on Vinalhaven Island. She also opened a lobster processing plant in Rockland and founded a restaurant chain with locations in Portland, Camden and Freeport, Maine (near the LL Bean flagship store) and in Delray Beach, Florida.
In 2016, Ms. Bean and others succeeded in getting Maine’s lobster fishery certified as sustainable by an independent group, the Marine Stewardship Council, in what was seen as a consumer-friendly coup. (Certification was suspended in 2020 due to the impact of lobster fishing on whales.)
According to The Bangor Daily News, less than a decade after starting her company, Ms. Bean was solely responsible for about 5.5 percent of Maine’s lobster catch. In addition, according to the newspaper, she became “one of the most controversial figures in the state.”
Ms. Bean’s conservative politics were well known from her two congressional runs, her support of far-right social policies and her feuds with the state’s Republican establishment, which she considered too moderate.
For many years she was an executive officer of the Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund, a conservative group founded by Phyllis Schlafly. Ms. Bean raised money for a successful campaign in 1984 to defeat a state Equality Amendment banning sex discrimination. In 2005, she supported a campaign to repeal a state law that banned discrimination against LGBTQ people – an attempt that failed.
In February 2021, shortly after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Ms. Bean donated $150,000 to a committee supporting Mr. Trump, according to the FEC
Linda Lorraine Bean was born on April 28, 1941 in Portland, Maine. Her father, Charles Warren Bean, was a designer of leather and linen goods for his father’s company. Her mother, Hazel June (Turner) Bean, was in LL Bean’s writing office when she met Charles Bean, and she later became a member of LL Bean’s board of directors.
Linda Bean graduated from Antioch College in 1963 with a degree in business administration and accounting. That year she married James Raymond Clark. A second marriage to Verne E. Jones in 1975 ended with his death in 1985. She was married a third time to Donald L. Folkers from 1990 to 2007.
She is survived by a sister, Diana Bean; three sons from her first marriage, Nathan, Jason and Kevin Clark; and four grandchildren.
Ms. Bean was originally a Kennedy Democrat, she told the Times in 1992, but was pulled to the right by Mr. Jones, her second husband, a farmer nearly four decades her senior who bristled at local government power over his property.
In 1988, she ran and lost in the Republican primary for a congressional seat in Maine’s First District, which covers the southeast coast of the state. Four years later, she won the primary for the seat but lost in the general election in a landslide to Democratic incumbent Thomas Andrews.
Ms Bean’s love of Port Clyde extended beyond the lobster business. She bought up much of the waterfront, including the Port Clyde General Store, the Dip Net Restaurant and two inns, as well as houses which she converted into holiday apartments.
Their enthusiasm spanned three generations of artists – NC Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth – whose realistic works are closely linked to the people and landscapes of the St George Peninsula, which includes Port Clyde, and the remote offshore islands. As well as collecting her art, at her death Mrs Bean set up a library in Port Clyde to house books about the clan, the Wyeth Reading Room. She even purchased a townhouse in Wilmington, Delaware, where NC Wyeth lived after his marriage in 1906, complete with his wedding bed.
Ms. Bean’s aggressive acquisitions in Port Clyde were not always well received by locals, nor was her corporate branding of the coastal Maine lifestyle. Neighbors went to court to stop the library’s construction, complaining that it was too big for the site and would attract too much traffic, but it prevailed.
She defended her investments in Port Clyde and surrounding villages as protecting a valued way of life.
“Most people retire in their mid-60s, but I spent these extra 10 years in St. George because I care about my community and want to help maintain lobster fishing, the arts and the hospitality of visitors, that give this peninsula its special vitality,” she said in an interview with The Bangor Daily News in 2017.
However, in recent years she had stepped back from managing her businesses.
In September 2023, a fire at the Dip Net Restaurant destroyed that and two of their other waterfront businesses: the general store and an art gallery, losing works by NC Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth. The fire also damaged the office of the company that operates the Monhegan Island Boat Line.
Ms Bean had described the damage as a “devastating blow” and vowed to rebuild as quickly as possible.
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2024-03-29 11:54:42
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