For most people, Sunshine Stewart will forever be remembered for the last thing she was doing when she was killed on Crawford Pond in Union earlier this month: paddleboarding. But for those who knew her best, it’s sadly fitting that she was on the pond at the time of her untimely death.
From a young age, Stewart loved the water. At 48, she’d found many ways to enjoy it throughout her life, from kayaking out to her family’s small island off Tenants Harbor, to setting up a 10-foot long aquarium in her college dorm room, to working on a lobster boat.
She had only taken up paddleboarding in recent years, but she quickly picked it up, as she had many other jobs and skills in her lifetime, according to her close friends.
“Paddleboarding was something that she really got into in the past few years,” said her longtime friend, Annie Haven, who met Stewart while they were attending Bradford College in Haverhill, Massachusetts. “I think part of it is [that] paddle boards are pretty easy to transport. She [was] very adept on the water.”
Stewart’s body was found on Crawford Pond on the morning of July 3. She was staying at Mic Mac Cove Family Campground and had gone out paddleboarding the previous night. A 17-year-old boy also staying at the campground, Deven Young of Frankfort, has since been charged with killing her.
The killing has shocked people across the midcoast, as well as those who knew Stewart best. She was well-liked in communities including Union, where she lived during her childhood, and Tenants Harbor, where she had a home that she frequently worked on. Many friends called her “Sunny,” a name that captured her bright disposition.
While Stewart never married or had kids, she had several long-term relationships and was close with her sister, brother and nephews, according to the Midcoast Villager. She also had dogs, with a particular fondness for German shepherds.
“Sunny was the strongest woman, the most capable woman many of us have ever known,” said another of her friends, Caroline Keefe, who first got to know Stewart while they worked on the opening crew at 18 Central Oyster Bar & Grill in Rockport.
The first time they ever met, Keefe said, Stewart was “popping out of her red Toyota pickup truck with a cigarette hanging out of the side of her mouth, and she greeted me with a warm ‘Hey, sweetheart,’ with this warmth about her.”
The pair later worked together to fix-up a decrepit camper of Stewart’s, deepening their bond.
Keefe went on, “To imagine the set of circumstances in which someone could violently take her from this world … it would require a great deal of malice, forethought, intent and strength. It requires a sort of attitude about women that is taught, that is learned. It requires ideals and orientations in the world that are dangerous.”
Stewart had planned to spend the summer at Mic Mac Cove Family Campground and host friends and family there throughout the season. She liked to take people exploring on Crawford Pond and, when she went out on her last paddleboarding excursion, had been scoping out possible areas to bring them.
She was also a practicing yogi and had a gift for sharing her passions and interests. She had taught her nephews yoga and a friend’s child how to paddleboard.
Her friend from college, Haven, also paddleboards, but said that the activity “will never be the same again” for her.
Besides Stewart’s devotion to Maine, she also had connections to other parts of the world, including a strong community of friends on the Caribbean island of St. John, and a love for Alaska.
Now, her family plans to send her cremated remains to different parts of the world that were special to her, but part of her will stay in Maine, according to Haven.
Her loved ones plan a captain’s style send-off ceremony on Aug. 10 to release some of her ashes into the ocean.
“It’s like her life has been ripped away,” Haven said. “We should still have an entire another lifetime to go, to enjoy all those retirement years, to enjoy more steps in our career, to enjoy all that was to come. We’re only halfway there. And now Sunny doesn’t have that anymore. She has left a very big space in the world that can only be filled by her.”
