Stanley Kuklinski, husband of Maine Attorney General Janet Mills, died last week from the effects of a stroke he suffered nearly a year ago.
Kuklinski, of Farmington, coached the Mt. Blue High School boys tennis team for eight years until last year and previously served as chairman of the Maine Athletics Commission and on the Maine Harness Racing Commission.
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He died Wednesday at the Hospice House in Auburn. He was 73.
Mills, who met Kuklinski in 1984 after the death of his previous wife to cancer, said Kuklinski had a very positive attitude and a great smile. The two met when Mills, who was a district attorney at the time, took tennis lessons from Kuklinski in Lewiston.
“He was the master of rebounds,” Mills said Sunday. “He survived three bouts of cancer, the loss of his first wife, having to care for his five daughters. He had a really can-do attitude.”
Kuklinski loved his family, sports, the state, Farmington and his Mt. Blue High School tennis teams, Mills said.
She said a former player who was a foreign exchange student from Afghanistan recently visited Kuklinski, dropping off a letter and a picture of a tennis court the former player had built in his home country. The player wrote that Kuklinski was one of the most influential people in his life, Mills said.
She said he wrote to Kuklinski: “I will remember you as I rebuild my country and bring peace to the world.”
“Stan loved the people of his adopted hometown of Farmington,” his obituary said. “He could regularly be seen in town, talking politics and engaging with people at the post office before having coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts and getting his hair cut at Bob Morgan’s.”
Kuklinski, born in Utica, N.Y., in 1940, moved to Connecticut after marrying his first wife, Mary Ann Laun, according to his obituary. He and Laun moved to Lewiston in 1981 to pursue their lifelong love of tennis by operating the Central Maine Racquet Club, but Laun died of cancer in 1984.
After he met Mills while giving her tennis lessons at the club, the two married in August of 1985. Their family lived in Wilton for 12 years, and Kuklinski became a real estate developer. They moved to Strong after his daughters were grown and then to Farmington around 15 years ago, Mills said.
Kuklinski had been in and out of medical care ever since his stroke last fall, she said.
“You could never knock him down,” Mills said. “Took a lot of hits in life, but he never got knocked down.”
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