NORTH THETFORD — Town clerks in small towns are often in the best position to know who may be struggling a bit because they see just about all the residents for one reason or another.

Emily Hood certainly knew who had fallen on hard times as Thetford’s town clerk and treasurer for 18 years. So she decided to try to help out and have the town provide some necessities.

“She was seeing people who couldn’t pay their taxes or couldn’t do a lot of things and she was hearing a lot of things from a lot of other people,” said her sister-in-law, Jessica Eaton. “She decided that there was one basic need and that was food.”

So Hood launched Thetford’s emergency food shelf in 1984. It remains today, serving the towns of Thetford, Vershire, Fairlee, West Fairlee and Strafford and has been a big help to a lot of people, Eaton said. A plaque in town hall recognizes Hood for initiating it.

Hood, who died July 23, 2024, at Woodstock Terrace at age 86, was also the town service officer. Service officers in Vermont towns assist residents with services, helping them obtain emergency food, fuel and shelter as well as helping them through the application process for state social welfare and other programs.

“If somebody needed help in town, she would try to find a way to help them,” Eaton said, adding that Hood might be doing work through her church, then the North Thetford Federated Church, which has since become the United Church of Thetford, or the town.

Hood was born in Thetford in 1938 to Elspeth and Russell Eaton. Her father was a mechanic and owned a garage and her mother was a teacher and postmaster in town. After graduating from Thetford Academy, Hood received her teaching degree from Lyndon State College. She had a few elementary school teaching positions including in Jericho, Vt., and Canaan before moving to Arizona.

A single woman driving alone across the United States in the 1960s was probably not as common then as it might be today. After all, one could wake up one morning with a motorcycle gang camped nearby. But Hood, Emily Eaton at the time, did not give it a second thought.

“She was never afraid of a challenge,” said her brother Sam.

So in 1964 at age 26, she loaded up a brand new Ford Fairlane station wagon, hooked up a trailer and headed west for a teaching job in Yuma, Ariz. She camped along the way, often sleeping in her vehicle.

“Being the oldest and the only girl growing up in a family of seven children, she had no fear about trying everything,” said Jessica Eaton, who married Hood’s brother, Russell.

Sam, said his sister later related a story about one memorable morning on the trip.

“She told us she woke up and there was a group of Hell’s Angels motorcyclists camped just on the other side of the knoll,” Sam Eaton said, remembering how his sister found the situation a bit humorous.

After Arizona, Hood was home briefly before driving her brother to Phoenix then continued on to her next adventure, teaching in Alaska. She taught in Cordova on the Gulf of Alaska and in Nenana, which is about an hour’s drive southwest of Fairbanks.

“She really loved the outdoors,” Sam said.

Hood’s brother and sister-in-law say her energy, spirit, sense of adventure and concern for others are what they remember the most about her.

“She was just a very caring person,” said Sam, who shared his sister’s birthday 18 years later.

Back in Thetford. Hood bought the house her grandfather built in 1900. She married her husband, Les, who worked for her father, in 1971. The Hoods raised two adopted children, brother and sister Mark and Tammy.

Hood served her hometown in a number of capacities including as town clerk and treasurer for 18 years, 1972-1990.

After the first 14 years as town clerk and treasurer, Hood considered stepping down from the position until voters narrowly approved a $700 raise for her 32-hour work week, bringing her salary to $14,400, the equivalent of about $40,000 today.

Sam said his sister was always on the move and was a tireless worker. He bought Emily and Les an apple tree one year and that was the start of an apple orchard and other fruit trees and bushes on the 14-acre property.

“They had everything. It was just unreal,” Sam said. “They had plum trees, peach trees, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries. Her children loved her homemade root beer.”

Hood also tended to large vegetable and flower gardens and the family raised goats, chickens and turkeys, did sugaring and had a pond with ducks and geese.

“She would be up at daylight, work two or three hours and then go off to her job,” Sam recalled. “When she came home at night she would work until dark and do it again the next day.”

Hood canned and froze much of what the family grew.

“She basically raised all the food for the kids when they were growing up,” Jessica Eaton said, adding that many families in town grew their own food when Hood was a child and she continued that.

Hood’s husband died in 1989 and she ended her tenure as town clerk and treasurer a year later. Continuing her concern for those in need, Hood began helping the elderly in town and did that until she had a stroke in 2007.

“After her husband died and her children were grown, she volunteered a lot of time to help out people,” Jessica said.

Sam, who was his sister’s caregiver after her stroke, said she was well aware of those in town who could use a helping hand and did everything from shopping errands to minor housekeeping and driving to appointments.

“She just knew people who needed a little help,” Sam said.

Though her stroke left her in a wheelchair, Hood, who moved to Woodstock Terrace in 2011, never stopped trying to pitch in when and where she could.

“She would go out in her wheelchair with a grabber and weed the flower garden,” Sam said.

Hood shared her spirit of adventure with the rest of her family. Most memorable, and remarkable, for Sam, were his sister’s road trips with her children, nieces, nephews and grandchildren.

“She would load up the car and take them places,” Sam said. “They went to Gettysburg once. She made sure it was a fun trip but also educational. I guess that was the teacher in her.”

Other trips were to Washington D.C., a few times, and New York City.

“I remember she used to get them up at 3 a.m., pack lunches and drive to the seacoast of Maine or New Hampshire to watch the sunrise,” Sam said. “I am not sure how interested they were in the sunrise but they loved the beach.”

It seemed like Hood never slowed down and in fact was picking blueberries just a few days before her death, Sam said.

“I don’t know how she did all that she did.”

Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.