Myron Ellis Tarbell

Myron Ellis Tarbell died in Bennington on August 18, 2026. He was eighty-seven. Born there on May 3, 1939, he grew up knowing a paper mill as a clock that did not sleep, and he learned a beater before he learned a highway. A roll, he said, is a promise: it holds, or the whole story comes apart in the dark. For thirty-five years he was a millwright, crawling under machines that other men only blamed. He arrived early. He did not advertise. Foremen called him because he would write up a cracked bearing even when the shift was already called. He charged a fair hour and a smaller one when a church van needed a lift more than a sermon. He kept a notebook of machines, not clients. The notebook had grease on the edges. He married Imogene Tarbell in 1961. They raised three children in a frame house that needed a new porch every twenty years. Imogene kept the garden and the choir. Myron grilled on Sundays and considered a plate of smoked chicken a seasonal obligation. After his knees quit the worst pits he still came out for a favorite press, moving slower, doing the same honest work. Friends remember a man who wiped his hands before he shook yours, who could stand in a noise without making it a personality, and who left a floor cleaner than he found it. He loved the river at evening, a glass of tea he did not finish, and the sound of a machine that had decided to live. He died in Bennington, in the town whose mill had written his calendar. The line still starts. Someone else will hear the knock that means trouble.