JEAN HEWITT BOUGHT HER HOUSE IN Corona by accident. The longtime Mainer farmed oysters until her perpetually cold toes compelled her to spend one winter in Arizona. Driving back east, she stopped for a night at the Corona Motel. The next morning, on a walk through the village, she saw a For Sale sign on a cream house with red trim. When the real estate agent said the house had been shown several times with no offers, Hewitt made one well under the asking price, just to try to console the owner.
“I was thinking they’d never take it,” she says. “Then the Realtor called while I was in Kansas.” They’d accepted. Corona became home.
“I love it,” says the 87-year-old, who has lived in Corona for two years. “It seems to be very sedentary and uninteresting, but there’s a wealth of stuff happening—like building windmills.”
Corona, a blink-and-you’ve-missed-it village along US 54 in the geographic heart of the state, was founded in
