“An interesting life”: Rev. Shearman honored as Gorham’s oldest resident (2024)

A young sailor arrived in Tokyo Bay in 1945, and the devastation and destruction from World War II bombing became etched in his mind.

The Rev. Phillip Shearman of Gorham, now 98, was then a petty officer second class aboard a destroyer, the USS Bordelon 881, that anchored there 79 years ago Sept. 3, the day after Japan’s official surrender. He was part of the occupation forces and served on shore patrol alongside Army MPs.

“Tokyo was destroyed,” he recalled last week in his living room, “flat as this floor.”

Sailors from his ship asked for extra helpings at meals and smuggled food ashore to help feed Japanese citizens who were starving on the streets.

One Sunday morning, he rode in a launch from the Bordelon to the battleship USS Iowa to attend church. All he recalled the chaplain saying was, “Don’t let the American people ever forget.”

Shearman recalled his experiences last week after receiving the Boston Post Cane as Gorham’s oldest resident. He’ll have it mounted on his living room wall. His name is engraved on a plaque in Town Hall.

He was born July 6, 1926, in Portland and grew up in Massachusetts, where his father was a Baptist preacher.

The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, a high school teacher brought a radio into the classroom and Shearman heard President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous “Day of Infamy” speech.

After completing high school, Shearman joined the Navy in 1944. He said his girlfriend liked sailors so he thought “I better be one.”

He recalled an amusing moment in boot camp. His company, lined up in ranks on a Sunday morning, received their orders: “All Catholics, fall out for church. All Protestants, fall out for chow.”

His boot camp pay was $50 a month; later, his pay as a sonarman second class was $96 a month. His job was detecting enemy submarines.

The Bordelon was assigned to the Pacific and it rode out a typhoon. Some destroyers in the convoy went down. “I wasn’t concerned until I saw the captain wearing a life jacket,” he said.

Shearman is now a humorist, a historian and a career clergyman. He has served as pastor in Massachusetts; at a 1,000-member church in Toledo, Ohio; at West Gorham Union Church and at First Parish Church in Gorham.

A knowledgeable historian, he said the First Parish roots were on Fort Hill, where early inhabitants lived in a garrison. “You couldn’t have a town without a settled minister,” he said.

At First Parish, he served initially as an associate for the Rev. Jack Perkins and simultaneously as associate at Westbrook-Warren Congregational Church. He’s now a member of State Street Church in Portland.

He’s lived in Gorham for 45 years.

The late, retired police officer Gordon Junkins was a longtime friend, and Shearman delivered his eulogy last year. “I have conducted more funerals than you can imagine,” he said.

Shearman is now convalescing from a fractured leg, which has a steel plate in it. He no longer drives, but his license is valid to age 101. He moves about aided by a walker and misses socializing at Sullivan House Bakery in Gorham Village.

His wife, Donna, said his favorite food is shepherd’s pie and he loves baked potatoes. And holding up a jar, he said, “peanut butter.”

“I ate everything in the Navy except for liver,” he said.

He reads without glasses and just finished the book “The Wingmen,” about combat pilots Ted Williams and John Glenn, whom Shearman once talked with in Toledo.

As for longevity, he credits whoever invented the pacemaker. He has had two. He never smoked, but tempted, lit a cigarette once in Hong Kong. “I took a drag and thought I was going to lose it,” he said.

He never drank either, but confessed he had a sip of wine at a wedding.

He and Junkins would go to the Rust Farm in Gorham to help drive trucks during the corn harvest. One day, Shearman, alone, was cautiously driving Junkins’ pickup back to town and passed someone who knew Junkins.

That driver went to the farm, found Junkins and said he had flipped off the guy driving his truck. “Who was it?” he asked.

Junkins’ response: “Reverend Shearman.”

“I’ve had an interesting life,” Shearman said.