From the windswept prairies of Canada’s bread basket and chipping paint on oil tankers to the pioneering creation of a full spectrum of senior living opportunities, it has been a wonderful career for LincolnHealth Senior Vice President of Home Health & Senior Living Judy McGuire.

McGuire will retire June 3 after a 26-year career in healthcare that started when she landed an accounting job at what was then Miles Memorial Hospital in Damariscotta.

She had just moved from southern California where she lived with her husband and worked in a small CPA firm after crewing on oil tankers for the Atlantic Richfield Company. She joined Miles at a time when financial and demographic pressures were forcing small rural hospitals nationwide to change.

Private insurance companies and government insurers Medicare and Medicaid (Mainecare) were squeezing margins by limiting hospital stays and reimbursements. At the same time, an aging population needed more care.

Over the next quarter-century, those changes would only accelerate. Not long after she took that first job, McGuire remembers the then-hospital CEO telling her that very small rural hospitals like Miles were faced with a stark choice: diversify or shrivel and die.

McGuire was part of a team that chose the first option, building a spectrum of high quality; financially sustainable senior living facilities to address growing needs in the community and at the same time diversify the services provided by Miles.

She was also a member of the steering committee that decided whether Miles would join a then-nascent MaineHealth, now the largest integrated healthcare system in the state.

Through negotiating Mile’s participation, McGuire helped define the relationship of smaller healthcare entities within a network that provided the economies of scale that rural hospitals needed to survive, while allowing them to maintain the autonomy necessary to respond to the needs of their communities.

That role in leadership began when the administrator of Cove’s Edge left in 1994, and then CEO Judy Tarr suggested McGuire apply for the job.

McGuire, who was then finishing her bachelor’s degree while working full time and raising two young children, had to take six courses in one semester in order to complete her degree in time to be able to take the Administrator-In-Training course and be ready when the previous administrator left.

She brought with her a deep respect for her elders that she developed growing up in Saskatoon, the largest city in the wheat-growing province of Saskatchewan, Canada, and lessons learned as a crew member on the Atlantic Richfield Company’s giant oil tankers, where one of her many jobs was maintaining the ships while at sea.

“One thing I learned was no matter what you do, do it to the best of your abilities and be proud of it,” said McGuire. “Another thing I learned was that the rest of the crew was not going to carry your load because you were a woman. You had to be as good as them. You had to be strong.”

One of the highlights of her work, as administrator of Cove’s Edge and then as senior vice president of Senior Living was developing Chase Point Assisted Living to fill the gap between the care provided at Cove’s Edge and the independent living apartments at Schooner Cove.

“As people get older, it gets harder to visit. There was a real need in our communities,” she said. “The goal has always been to provide the services people need where they need them.”

In 2009, when Miles and St. Andrews Hospital merged their hospitals, she also oversaw the integration of Miles Home Health & Hospice and St. Andrews Home Health into Miles & St. Andrews Home Health and Hospice.

By combining the resources of both agencies under the umbrella of the larger healthcare system, the new agency, Miles & St. Andrews Home Health & Hospice, was able to offer a seamless continuum of home health and hospice services.

Most recently, McGuire oversaw the development and construction of the Zimmerli Pavilion at St. Andrews Village, which will add 12 private patient rooms dually licensed for long-term care and rehabilitation care, allowing more people from the Boothbay peninsula to receive care close to home.

“It’s ingrained in our culture to provide the highest quality. To care for elders and to provide services for wherever they are in their life to help them maintain their independence and dignity,” she said.

At the core of those services are the relationships between providers and residents. Watching those relationships and working with a great staff has been one of the true high points of her career, said McGuire.

“They take that journey with older people that often ends in death and they celebrate right up until the end. It takes special people to work in this industry,” she said. “They are some of the kindest, nicest people.”

After she retires, McGuire said she hopes to spend more time bicycling, gardening, skiing and hiking, but that she may also delve into consulting or project work as opportunities arise. First on her agenda is training to bike 350 miles along the Down East coast as part of Bike-Maine 2016.

“It will be a very active retirement,” she said.