Diane Bell was always in motion. Whether she was running races with friends, playing with her grandkids or “boogieing” on the dance floor, staying still was one thing she didn’t do.
“She had a couch that she’s never even sat on,” her daughter, Jaime Bell Fairfield, said. “She just didn’t sit down.”
That was in equal parts due to Bell’s enthusiasm for life and her devotion to caring for others, her daughter and other loved ones recalled this week.
Sometimes she was on the go with friends — ziplining for their birthdays, running up Mount Washington alongside them, or dancing on the light-up floors at Bubba’s Sulky Lounge. Other times, her constant motion looked like helping her daughter with laundry, getting her granddaughter ready for a dance recital or taking her 100-year-old mother-in-law to doctor’s appointments.
The Westbrook resident, 75, was out doing one of the many things she loved — running with friends in Portland — on Nov. 20 when she was struck by a driver and killed.
The loss has reverberated through a wide circle of family, friends and fellow runners who say Bell made everyone feel seen and loved.
SOFT AND STRONG
Bell spent much of her life as a caregiver.
Born in Westbrook on July 1, 1950, to Lorraine and Joe Johnley, she was the oldest of three sisters. After graduating from Westbrook High School, she attended St. Joseph College (later Southern Vermont College) in Bennington, Vermont, where she studied to become a medical secretary — which she eventually did.
But when Bell was 19, her mother died of breast cancer. She moved home to care for her younger sisters, Nedra and Melissa, who were 16 and 9 at the time.
“My mother had to grow up real fast,” Fairfield said. “She came back and basically raised them.”
Bell was able to find joy and satisfaction in the way she cared for others, which often extended to the finest details. During high school, Bell worked at Dairy Queen and prided herself on making the perfect curl on top of soft-serve ice cream cones. At home, she meticulously folded washcloths so the corners lined up just right.
“She didn’t half-ass anything. She would do things because it was the right way to do them,” her daughter said.
It was during the years caring for her sisters that Diane met her husband, Reed Bell, on a blind date. Diane Bell showed up in her green Mercury convertible; the two drove to New Hampshire to travel the Kancamagus Highway, and by the end of the date, Reed was driving.
Fairfield said her parents loved to spend time outdoors, drive to the White Mountains, or pick up Italian sandwiches and picnic at Pine Point Beach.
Bell experienced a lot of loss in her life. Her 2-year-old niece was struck by a car and killed decades ago. She gave birth to identical twin stillborn daughters in 1978. Her husband was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer at 40; he lived 12 years with the disease before his death in 2004, with Bell caring for him the whole time.
After her husband died, Bell was there to walk her daughter down the aisle at her wedding. At the reception, the two shared a mother-daughter dance.
And while she was hardworking, determined and gritty — as capable of moving through exceptional loss as she was of running up a mountain — Bell was also soft. She cried easily and often, brought to tears by the care of her friends and the love she had for her grandkids.
“Somebody would call her to catch up, and she would cry out of gratitude they were making time for her,” Fairfield said.
When she said goodbye to Bell before her body was cremated this week, Fairfield tucked a couple of tissues into her mother’s pocket.
A NEW CHAPTER
After her husband died, Bell sold the house on Colonial Road where she had grown up and raised her own daughter and moved to Gorham. She took a job at the Hannaford there and worked at the customer service desk and as a cashier.
It was around that time that she started running. A lifelong smoker, she quit when her husband got sick and started going for regular walks. Bell ran her first race in 2008, a 5K. She was 58. After that, she ran in more than 100 races. She logged every one on a spreadsheet, recording her times and making notes.
“Stayed with Barbara because she was out of breath that day,” she wrote next to one race for which she logged no time. (Barbara was a regular running friend.)
By 2013, Bell was running marathons. She did snowshoe races in the middle of winter and traveled up north to run in Millinocket. The community of runners she found through her running group opened up her life, Fairfield said.
Margaritt McNulty and Linda Davis were two of her closest friends. She met them both running about 15 years ago, and the three were inseparable.
“Everybody thought they were her best friend,” Davis said. “She always made you feel like you were a part of the group and that whatever you had to say mattered.”
Friends described Bell as upbeat, with a good sense of humor. She wore hearing aids and would joke about struggling to follow along in exercise classes. Davis remembers giggling in class together over how neither of them could hear the instructor.
McNulty said Bell had a special way of connecting with others — one reason, she said, that so many people counted Bell as a close friend.
“She didn’t just try to fix it. She didn’t do that. She knew how to be there,” McNulty said.
She described her friend as generous, though she felt the word was somewhat insufficient.
“It was in her spirit and in her listening to other people. With her time. With sharing joy. Generous with all that,” McNulty said.
Fairfield and her mother shared a calendar where they coordinated the grandkids’ schedules and work and running. A few weeks before she died, Bell saw her daughter had scheduled a hair appointment at the same time as a Mammogram. Bell had an appointment with the same hairdresser that would fit her daughter’s schedule better, so she offered to switch.
“The things you do for your kids,” Bell wrote in a text to her hairdresser that day.
But it wasn’t just for her kid. The people in Bell’s life say she showed up that way for everyone.
To her grandkids, Grayson and Cora, she was Naana — a name she chose because she liked the “Naana” riff in Journey’s “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’.” She so regularly took her granddaughter to dance class that the other dance moms made her a sweatshirt that said “Dance Naana.” She drove all over Maine to attend her grandson’s baseball games, even when they were hours away.
She circled back on runs to make sure even the slowest runner in the group was never running alone. She sorted the trash in her condo complex so everything that needed to be recycled made it into the bin.
“She wasn’t your grandma’s 75. You know, she was very active and full of energy,” McNulty said. “She prioritized adventure and fun and time. She would give you the time.”
On Monday, Portland Trails and the Bicycle Coalition of Maine will hold a vigil for Bell.
Funeral services for Bell will be held at Dolby Blais & Segee Funeral Home on Dec. 6 at 11 a.m., followed by a burial at St. Hyacinth’s Cemetery and a celebration of life at the Elks Lodge in Portland. The funeral events are open to the public.