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1. How long have you been in Rotary?
I have been in the Dover Rotary Club for 38 years and served as President from 1996 to 1997. For the last three years I have also been the Assistant District Gover-nor with primary District responsibility for the Dover, Rochester, So. Berwick, and Durham Great Bay Rotary Clubs.
2. My favorite Rotary moments:
There have been so many in 38 years but four occasions stand out. I remember the construction and dedication of the Rotary Garden at Henry Law Park during my term as President. This was one of the first large projects we did af-ter becoming successful with our bingo fundraiser. The Garden seemed to set the stage (yes, pun intended) for other large projects like the Rotary Arts Pavilion, the flag pavilion and Kerry Forbes Memorial, Park Street Park and countless other pro-jects and donations large and small most with excellent LINKAGE to the efforts of our Rotary club.
I remember the Rotary Drill Team led by our wonderful deceased member Rev. Dave Slater. There were about 15 of us in business suits and briefcases marching in the Christmas Parade doing intricate (??) marching maneuvers and exchanging briefcases. The crowd loved it. I also am thankful for the opportunity to give the keynote address at both the 90th and 95th Anniversary celebrations of the club. It required me to review the club’s amazing history of Service above Self and made me proud of the impact the club has made for what is now approaching 100 years. Few organizations can claim such a record of service.
3. Where I currently live and where I grew up.
My wife Vi and I have lived in Durham for 47 years. I consider myself a resident of Durham and a citizen of Dover. Vi and I have been married for 51 years and have two wonderful children and two grandchildren.
I grew up in Peabody, Mass. and attended the public schools. My family was a typi-cal Ozzie and Harriet middle class family with my father being a business executive and my mother was a stay-at-home mom. After Peabody High, I attended Tufts University and the best thing that happened to me at Tufts was I met my future wife, Vi, who was also a Tufts student one year behind me. We were married in 1969. Tufts was extremely difficult for me and in my Freshman year I went to the admis-sion office to ask if I was an experimental admission ! As time went by, Tufts really prepared me well for Law School at Boston University. I graduated from BU Law in 1971 and thereafter we moved to New Hampshire, bought a house, passed the Bar exam and started work as a freshly minted attorney.
4. My Hobbies:
I enjoy traveling by land and by sea. My wife and I have visited every continent ex-cept Antarctica. We particularly enjoy the Far East. Our favorites are India and the Taj Mahal, China and the Great Wall, Egypt and the Pyramids, Africa and the Serengeti, Cambodia and Thailand.
I also enjoy playing golf and cruising on my small boat on Great Bay. I enjoyed rid-ing horses with my wife in the Dover Christmas parade until recently when horses were not allowed.
5. My Business Profession or Current Working or Non-Working Environment:
I practiced law from 1971 until my retirement in 2014. In the beginning, I was a gen-eral practitioner and handled both civil and criminal cases but this all changed in 1981 when I represented Dover Rotarian Kerry Forbes when his housing project was denied in Dover despite the fact that it completely complied with the law. The planning board listened to the neighbors and not the law. The denial was promptly overturned in court proving, in fact, that one could fight city hall and win.
Thereafter, developers and municipalities became my constant clients seeking ap-provals usually for large projects and advice on planning and zoning issues. It was a difficult practice in that my clients were very sophisticated and demanding and hear-ings were conducted at night and trials in the daytime were frequent. My major cli-ents were Walmart, Home Depot, McDonalds, Market Basket, Liberty Mutual, Wentworth-Douglass Hospital, Huggins Hospital etc., as well as significant residen-tial real estate developers. I appeared before the NH Supreme Court about 40 times and also appeared countless times in lower courts. On the municipal side I assisted many cities and towns, the most memorable of which was the representation of the Town of Newington relative to the transition of Pease AFB to civilian uses.
6. Something my fellow Rotarians don’t know about me:
For over 20 years I sang in church with the St. Thomas More folk group in Durham! My goal in life was to be a major league baseball player. The closest I came was in my senior year in high school when I pitched against Tony Conigliaro who later be-came a star for the Boston Red Sox. There were about 15 major league scouts in suits at the game. The first ball Tony hit off me was an easy ground out to third base. His next time up he hit a ball off me that is still in orbit ! The Red Sox chose Tony and not me!
7. Final words:
The imposition of COVID-19 restrictions has made it clearer to me than ever, that Rotary is all about person to person contact with likeminded Rotarians dedicated to doing good for the less fortunate. ZOOM is no real substitute for the personal side of Rotary. Hopefully, when the virus is defeated, we can get together and return to spreading the good news of Rotary to others and renew doing strong, community based projects.