They just don’t make ’em like Bob Curtin anymore.
This is a man who not only has been there and done that, but has remembered all of it.
Set to retire at the end of June, Curtin leaves an unparalleled Lynnfield legacy behind having attended every Town Meeting since 1985 — 25 years as a Lynnfield Weekly News reporter/editor covering the meeting and the last 16 as the meeting’s go-to guy as assistant town administrator.
That’s 41 consecutive years, folks.
Curtin estimates he’s attended 84 meetings in all. He’s played a significant role in some of the most important decisions ever made in Lynnfield — impactful, game-changing decisions that changed the course of the town’s future, in some cases, for generations.
The new middle school. The acquisition of Reedy Meadow Golf Course. The elementary schools’ expansion. The new fire and police stations and Town Hall. L.I.F.E. senior housing. The acquisition of Centre Farm. The high school turf field complex. And, the grand daddy of them all — MarketStreet.
Through it all, Curtin was the man behind the curtain, using his unlimited institutional knowledge to carefully frame every issue put before residents and guide town leaders to the finish line.
Curtin’s first meeting was in 1985. Residents turned out in droves to vote on the two controversial articles — a proposed second-story addition to the center shops and a proposed L.I.F.E. senior housing complex on Tappan Way. Both articles failed after opponents agreed to vote quid pro quo style. Curtin pulled an all-nighter to make deadline.
“I was brand new to the Town Meeting concept. All I knew I learned from Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms paintings- the Freedom of Speech painting that shows a man with a Town Meeting warrant in his pocket,” Curtin said. “Town Meeting is a little messy by its nature, but the best thing is residents decide how their money is spent. A big part of my job is to help them be as informed as possible.”
Curtin said this year’s meeting was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. This time, however, instead of being seen and not heard, Curtin was sent to the front lines (the gymnasium) where he went into Rambo mode to maintain order.
“We underestimated the size of the crowd and had to set up on the fly. We lost the feed because too many people were on their cell phones (many following the Celtics game) which overloaded the Wi-Fi. We had to ask people to get off their phones. We knew that you couldn’t conduct the meeting if people couldn’t hear it.”
Perhaps Curtin’s most memorable meeting took place in 1995 — in hindsight, Curtin said, for the wrong reason. His wife, Sharon, had just given birth to the couple’s first child, Hayley. They came home on a Sunday; the Town Meeting was Monday.
“I got to work at about 8 a.m. Monday and came home to check on everything at 11, but nobody was home. Hayley had gotten dehydrated, so I ended up at Salem Hospital, then came back to cover the meeting. That’s not a very popular story in my house.”
The biggest meeting — and one that changed the town’s financial landscape in a big way — was the MarketStreet meeting in 2007.
“The turnout was so large. We had people all over the place,” Curtin said. “I was still with the paper at the time so I didn’t see behind the scenes, but I believe it was the biggest Town Meeting the town has ever had.”
Perhaps the most interesting meetings were during COVID. Held outdoors on the high school football field, the challenge was keeping meeting materials from being blown away.
“As fast as we could retrieve them, they were flying off the chairs again,” Curtin said. “Those were the only other meetings we really underestimated the attendance. I don’t know if it was a novelty or people were just looking for something to do.”
A 1983 Harvard University graduate, Curtin started his career at the old Suburban Publishing Company writing for industry magazines. He thought he’d be there for a year or two; he stayed for 25. He made the decision to leave the newspaper business when he realized the industry was contracting.
“I knew there were going to be some tough decisions,” Curtin said. “It was time to make a jump.”
And jump he did, all the way to Lynnfield, first as an assistant to then Town Administrator Bill Gustus, then as assistant town administrator to Rob Dolan, a position he’s held since 2009.
Curtin said his job as a reporter/editor “absolutely” prepared him well for the job.
“I’m sure that was one of the reasons they hired me,” he said. “Working for the paper all those years, I couldn’t help but pick things up to understand things like the bylaws and charters. I knew why things happened 10 or 15 years ago so I knew why policies were put in place.”
Select Board Chair Phil Crawford said Curtin has “historic knowledge of the Towns and years of reporting made for a natural transition to Assistant Town Administrator. Bob has been the backbone of the department during his tenure and will be impossible to replace.”
Dolan agreed.
“Bob has improved the lives of every citizen in Lynnfield. He will never be replaced. Every day, I’ve learned from him about Lynnfield’s history, the uniqueness of town government. I’ve witnessed his total dedication to public service. Bob is a constant reminder of a time when people solved problems working together, talking face to face about issues, always with mutual respect.”
Town Counsel Tom Mullen said Curtin is “the most knowledgeable guy I know.
“When he came to Lynnfield, he immediately became crucial to virtually every function of town government, in part because he knew so much having been around and observant for so long, and in part because he was just an extremely smart guy with great political skills. He remembers everything that’s happened in his 41 years. I am going to be devastated by his departure.”
From famous actresses (Brooke Shields) to a Nobel Prize winning physicist (keep reading), it’s fair to say that Curtin’s travels have taken him along an exceptionally diverse road, earning true know-it-all status. He tells the story of a young reporter who was upset that her co-workers were always going to Curtin when they hit a roadblock. Curtin handed her a volume of an encyclopedia and asked her to pick a page at random.
“I got the first one, but she still wasn’t satisfied, so I told her to pick another,” Curtin said. “I started laughing and told her, ‘That’s Sheldon Glashow. He won the Nobel Prize in 1979. I used to talk Red Sox with him when I was in his class at Harvard.’ She was stunned that I knew who he was.”
A Salem native, Curtin and his wife Sharon Cameron, Peabody’s director of health, have lived in Peabody since 1991 where they raised two children, son Theo and daughter Hayley.
Curtin is a huge jazz aficionado and plays the saxophone and piano. A Civil War buff, he loves to read. He’s visited more historic battlefields than he can count and is hoping to visit some of the ones he’s missed when he “retires.” Truth be told, Curtin will continue to help out at Town Hall from time to time.
When asked if he planned to attend Town Meetings after he retires, Curtin was quick to answer, “Only if they need me.”
Something tells me, they will.
