FAIRLEE — Paul Sargent, the longtime Fairlee businessman and civic leader, was well known for his love of old cars, particularly pre-WWII Fords like Model As and others with V-8 engines. He kept about 15 scattered across a few barns, was a regular at local car shows and joked that he wanted to be buried in his favorite treasure, a glimmering beige Ford Cabriolet that he had restored from its 1934 heyday.

Lesser known by his passing acquaintances was Sargent’s love of history, books and poetry. Among his favorite poems to recite offhand, according to one of his sons, was William Cullen Bryant’s “Thanatopsis,” which is Greek for “a consideration of death.” Written in the early 1800s, its final verse concludes:

So live, that when thy summons comes to join

The innumerable caravan, which moves

To that mysterious realm, where each shall take

His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,

Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

If the 21st century translation is something like “live life to the fullest,” perhaps that explains the quantity and depth of Sargent’s undertakings over 86 years, almost all of them spent in Fairlee, until his death following a brief illness last December. At various points he served as the town’s fire chief, selectman and Planning Board member; as a lieutenant in the Vermont National Guard; and as a 60-year member of the Masons.

Among his several business ventures was an excavation company that eventually narrowed its focus to swimming pool installation and maintenance, a seemingly odd fit for a town defined by lakes that was nevertheless a successful mainstay.

Through it all, interspersed with family life, deer hunting and games of baseball or softball, were the cars.

“That was kind of his happy place, was to collect and eventually restore,” said Scott Sargent, the middle of Paul’s three sons. Paul Sargent also shared two stepchildren with his widow, Joan Sargent.

Scott Sargent, 63, still lives in Fairlee and owns a high-end car restoration business in Bradford, Vt., sometimes investing around a million dollars into Bugattis worth many times more for clients flown on private jets to places like Pebble Beach, Calif.

His father’s auto hobbies, as he described them, were decidedly more low-key but nonetheless consuming. Paul Sargent would sometimes throw a sleeping bag into the back of an old pickup truck and camp out at regional car shows, for example, buying cars for four-figure sums. Many times, the elder Sargent found cars simply by driving around rural Vermont, looking out for vintage Fords peeking out of old barn, or knocking on doors based on little more than a hunch.

In those cases, Paul Sargent might gain the sellers’ trust over a period of weeks or even a year.

Part of his pitch was on his business card: “We Buy But Never Sell.”

“He certainly was distinguishing himself from other people who would buy cars and then flip them, sell them, and that was their gig,” Scott Sargent said. “And he definitely knew that you’re walking up to this house, they’ve got a barn, they’re obviously old-timers and in the barn they’ve got a car that they’ve just had their whole life but they can’t bring themselves to sell it and it’s part of their identity.”

The fact that Paul Sargent was going to keep the car and add it to his collection was reassuring to sellers, Scott Sargent said. Sometimes he restored them, but other times he was more interested in preservation, perhaps rebuilding the engine and fending off rot yet forgoing shiny new coats of paint.

He’d drive them, too. A favorite loop of Paul Sargent’s was up to Barre and down to Quechee before returning to Fairlee, Scott Sargent said. But in the right weather, especially for the roofless roadsters like the Cabriolet, “any of these two-lane roads” would do.

Sargent also helped other people to celebrate cars, including by participating in the local Fourth of July parades and organizing an annual Orford car show — which friend David Patridge, 74, said was open to anyone but “pretty sympathetic towards the Ford group.” Sargent was active in the Early Ford V-8 Club of America, a national association, especially its Twin States chapter. (When Scott went to school in Arizona, Paul used the membership directory to find someone who would keep an eye on him in the area, Patridge said.)

The elder Sargent’s interest in old cars stemmed from an innate curiosity, his son said, which also undergirded his love of history — from local people and places to Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil War and, of course, Henry Ford.

That curiosity showed, too, in his ease in talking to people.

“He just had a way of smiling at you, and you could tell that he was really kind of smiling with you,” said a friend, Win Ameden, 74. “He wasn’t looking down on you or anything like that.”

Ameden was 8 or 10 when he first met Paul Sargent, who was then a young adult doing some construction work for Ameden’s grandfather at a property on Lake Morey. Ameden looked up to him immediately, and the two reconnected in the ‘70s when Ameden returned to Fairlee after a period away. They bonded over old cars — Sargent with his Fords and Ameden with his BMWs — and would stop by each other’s shops to chat.

They also fostered a shared love for their hometown. Paul Sargent lived for many years on Main Street, which helped to define his centrality in the community, Ameden recalled. He “would often try and do as best he could for the most amount of people,” Ameden said.

Eventually, in the early 2000s and with his Selectboard service long past, Paul Sargent convinced Ameden to run for a seat. After Ameden won, he consistently drew from Sargent’s guidance.

Most of the time, he didn’t have to ask. Sargent was eager to provide his view, Ameden said, especially on topics related to his business ventures, including a few small subdivisions where he owned rental houses or slowly sold off parcels.

“He was an old Fairlee guy, and he had his fingers in a lot of pies,” Ameden said.

In general, Scott Sargent said, his father believed Fairlee “needed to expand, but carefully (and) not at all at once” so as not to overwhelm services such as the school system.

He was also a creative problem-solver, said Patridge, who occasionally helped Sargent in his swimming pool installation business. He recalled Sargent seeing an ad in an auto trading business journal that read something to the effect of, “Have ‘34 Cabriolet, need headlights.”

Sargent’s response, according to Patridge: “Have headlights, need car.”

That’s how Paul Sargent ended up with his favorite, which Patridge helped him restore: the beige 1934 Cabriolet, with giant circular headlights framing a huge vertical grill. Since Sargent’s death, it’s nestled among the rows of his cars that have been moved to his son’s warehouse, where the younger Sargent still occasionally takes them out for a spin. Some of Paul Sargent’s ashes sit in the Cabriolet’s glove box, ready for the next cruise.

Maggie Cassidy can be reached at magg.cass@gmail.com.