Working for the community: the diverse occupations of a local citizen
Interviewer: To start, could you tell us about your life?
Loretta: Hi. My name is Loretta Porter. I came to Lexington when I got married in 1972.
My husband was originally from Ireland. He had a lot of family that came here.
His aunts and uncles came here, and he wanted to live in Lexington. He was living with his aunt in Burlington. Then when we got married, he was in the house painting business, and he wanted that Lexington phone number.
I lived in different places since then. Five different, actually. Small house to a bigger house to a two-family house that we had owned because he had cancer. He wanted to be comfortable. Then we went to an apartment. Then, I came to the condo that I live in now. But I had different jobs going along.
I was the president of Clarke Middle School for a couple of years during the townwide teachers strike, and that was interesting. Then in church committees, running different things: the 150th birthday celebration for Hancock Church, Pilgrim Church celebrations, and offices in that.
And then I was on the town meeting committee for about 19 years. Then, I left that and did a job part-time in the special education department at Lexington High School. So I've done a lot of things. I was the notary of the public, had a real estate broker's license, and sold land on Martha's Vineyard.
So my kids have moved in different directions, but I've stayed here because I have found the town to be a very nice place to live. I found people to be very nice and down-to-earth, being here for the last 52 years.
Interviewer: Could you elaborate on how you first started pursuing your career path?
Loretta: I think it was just the way things went along. First, I got out of school and then immediately worked at BU as secretary. And at the high school in the School of Education. And then I went on to work at a bank in Boston. I was a bank teller. Then I moved out of the suburbs. And, you know, was a chief teller.
Just went from one thing to the next.
When I had the children, I was home, and trying to find time was hard. You know, around their schedules back in those days. Not every person stayed home or could afford to do so.
Then I was involved with the PTA at Hastings before they first closed. Vice president and all that. Then, when I went to Clarke, my son was in the first sixth grade at middle school. Before it was 7th, 8th, and 9th grade. Then it became 6th, 7th, and 8th.
So everybody was more nervous, like, “Oh, my sixth graders are going to be in middle school!” Really scared about that, you know.
So I was there, and they needed a committee president. And I was already there. So I became president. Then it happened that in the following year, when my son was in eighth grade, and my other son came to sixth grade, there was a town-wide teacher strike. I don't think it's the only time that's happened. That was crazy because there was no database set up with people’s emails and contact information. I mean, people had started to have emails, but there was no communication happening.
So I went down, and the teachers were at the end of the driveway. I was on Waltham Street. And so I brought them coffee and munchkins with the help of my son, my sixth grader. And then I said, “Gee, I really need to go in and talk.”
The staff was all mad. They were yelling at them and telling them that they're traitors and whatever. These were the secretaries who had been there forever, so they were all upset about the teachers that they had worked with. So it was very tense. Then it was like the phone was ringing off the wall at home, because some people knew my phone number. So I said, “This is it. We got to set up a database.”
So we went and contacted people from each team and different grades and asked them to please set up a phone chain. So we set up a phone chain so we could communicate with them and let them know when there were going to be meetings, like school committee meetings and stuff like this so they could advocate.
Then we had town wide presidents meetings about the crisis. It was quite an experience.
Later, someone knew me from Hastings. When Hastings closed, I went to Clarke and they went to Diamond. They asked me if I would be her husband Sheldon’s campaign manager.
I said, “I've never done that.” And they said, “Loretta, yeah, but you have connections with Clarke, and he's from Diamond, and he's in town meeting, and etc.”
So I went and called someone I knew that already did this job: Barry Peltz, who was Polly Woodwork’s campaign manager. She told me what to do. You ask people when you don't know how to do something. You ask a lot of times, a lot of questions.
I did fundraising for the churches and Clarke too. So I've been all around the different parts of Lexington. Between schools, church, town, government, you know, all the different parts.
Interviewer: Did you always grow up in the Boston area?
Loretta: Well, I was born in Malden hospital, and grew up in Melrose. Went to high school for the school system in Melrose. And when I got married, as I said, my husband was living with his aunt in Burlington. She used to farm over there. They owned a big tract of land back way back then, and sold it to those Catholic churches on Winn Street and their school.
But you know, he wanted to live in Lexington, and I mean it, it is because of the Lexington phone number. People didn't want to hire you unless you were local, and they could tell it by the area code in your phone number. Now, of course, nobody knows where anybody lives. We could all have a California cell phone number and still be here.
But that's the way it was. People wanted to be more personal like that. You would stand up to what you said. You would do that kind of thing. He never had to give a contract. All his work was word of mouth around Lexington and Belmont. People would just say, “Hey, you got to hire Alan. He did all the work from the Douglas family, those funeral homes, and other people.” A lot of school committee members seemed to hire him. So he had a good reputation.
