Rev. Levering B. Sherman Jr.

The Reverend Levering B. Sherman, Jr, 79, died unexpectedly August 12, 2025, at a Bangor hospital. He was born February 10, 1946, in Charlotte NC, the son of Elizabeth (Bradfield) and the Rev. L. B. Sherman, Sr.

Lev graduated from the Kent School in western Connecticut, Class of 1965. He received his BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1969 and in 1985 his MA in Communications. He earned his M.Div. from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was ordained to the priesthood in Western North Carolina in 1974. He came to Maine in 1989, where he served a number of churches. Lev's career also included work in counseling and mental health, public television, and educational media.

Lev loved reading books - fiction, nonfiction, history, biographies, religion and sports. He enjoyed walking in the woods, singing and listening to music (he had a magnificent tenor voice), and using the latest technology to broaden his skills in video production and photography. Lev had a series of beloved dogs, and a painting of his last one, Rozja, hangs on the kitchen wall (her favorite room in the house). Lev followed the Boston Red Sox and the Celtics and filled out his brackets every year for the NCAA March Madness tournament, always rooting for the Tarheels. He has loved live theater since his college days, when he spent several summers in Cherokee NC as an actor and stagehand in the annual productions of "Trail of Tears". In recent years, he supported both the Penobscot Theatre in Bangor and the Weathervane Theatre in Whitefield New Hampshire. Places Lev loved to visit include Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, the beach at Chincoteague, Virginia, and the Kanuga Conference Center in Henderson County, North Carolina, where his parents are remembered in the outdoor chapel. On one of his last outings, we visited the Thuya Garden on Mount Desert Island for the first time, and he took many pictures there.

Lev will be missed by a deep and wide circle of friends, relatives, schoolmates, and colleagues. As described by one of the latter, he was "truly a master of all trades. He was a preacher, an actor, a stagehand, a television producer, a leader, and a mentor."

Several other "families" besides his immediate one will grieve his absence. His Kent School "family" recently welcomed him and Ann to the class's 60th reunion on a glorious Juneteenth weekend. Classmates remember him rowing crew and playing basketball ("someone we could always depend on to do his best," as one classmate expressed). His Sunshine Freedom "family" in Dobson NC with whom he shared a love of the land they have stewarded for decades in the mountains of Surry County NC. His faith family: the many churches in Maine he has served from Millinocket to Skowhegan, especially, most recently, before his third and final retirement, the people of St. Patrick's in Brewer. His French "family" - his wife's "siblings, nieces, and nephews," and their families, from the early 1960s, when Ann lived for a year in southeastern France as an exchange student from her high school. On their last trip there in the spring of 2024, he was able to visit with many of them. Finally, his Samoset "family" of fellow timeshare owners with whom we spent every Week One on the frigid coast of Rockland Harbor since 2010.

Lev is remembered by friends and colleague in phrases such as "a gentle, loving spirit," "the wise older brother which nature had neglected to provide for me," and "the quiet salt of the earth, patient, humble, and one who could pour out compassion."

Lev is survived by his wife of 14 years Dr. Ann Holland of Bangor; his son Yuriy Paliyenko-Sherman and his wife Kelsey of Newark, Delaware; daughters Natalia Paliyenko Sherman, of Westbrook, Ludmila Ziegler and her husband Chad, of Smithsburg, Maryland, Emilie Holland and her husband Charles Westcott of Kingston RI; three grandchildren Matteo, Kalyna and Maksym; sisters Margaret Williams of Hendersonville, NC, Betsy Duls, of Radford, Virginia, and sister-in-law Jane Livingston of Veazie; many cousins, especially Stephen Sherman of Millersville, Pennsylvania, and Anne Baker Jones of Milton-Keynes, England; many nieces and nephews, especially Kirk Ferguson and his wife Ashley of Hendersonville, North Carolina, Grace Livingston-Kramer and her husband Ira Kramer of Veazie, and a very special great-niece Madeline Kramer.

He is also survived by the mother of his three children Adrianna Paliyenko, of Oakland.

The family wishes to thank the amazing team of the Cardiothoracic Surgery Service led by Dr. John Klemperer and the wonderful staff of the Cardiac Critical Care Unit at Northern Light EMMC for their excellent care of Lev and their compassion for us at his unexpected death (which was due to a medical complication unrelated to his open-heart surgery).

A requiem service will be held on Friday, October 17, 2025, at 11:00 in Bangor at the St. John's Episcopal Church on French Street, Bishop Thomas Brown presiding. The family invites relatives and friends to share conversation and refreshments at the Family Reception Center of Brookings-Smith, 163 Center St. in Bangor, following the service. The immediate family will inter Lev's remains at a later date at the Kanuga Conference Center in Henderson County, NC.

Condolences to the family may be expressed at BrookingsSmith.com.