Stanley J. Bocko

Died	1994-11-11
Town Meeting
In Office	1956 - 1981
Select Board
In Office	1957 - 1960
Director of Public Works
In Office	1959 - 1960
Preceded by	Oliver E. Strong
Succeeded by	Armand E. Provost Jr.
Representative to the General Court
In Office	1959 - 1970
Succeeded by	Michael E. McLaughlin

Stanley Joseph Bocko (1920 to 1994) was a Billerica newspaper publisher who served on the Select Board from 1957 to 1960 and represented the town in the Massachusetts House of Representatives through the 1960s. He grew up in Billerica and was active as a boy in 4-H club work: in 1936 he won a two-day trip to the Massachusetts State College, and in 1938 the Billerica 4-H Conservation Club, which he led, took second prize for its float in the Patriot's Day parade at Lexington and won the state Department of Agriculture's $25 prize for the best work in the tent caterpillar campaign. He graduated from the Howe High School in 1938, where he played football, basketball and baseball, served on the yearbook staff and was vice-president of the Sportsmanship Brotherhood; the yearbook said his ambition was "to graduate, and become a 4-H poultry judge."

After service in the armed forces he married Dorothy A. (LeMercier) Duquesnay, and they raised five children. He lived on Mount Pleasant Street in North Billerica, in the house built about 1893 for Joseph F. Talbot. He owned the Billerica Publishing Company and was editor and publisher of two weekly newspapers, the Billerica News and the Wilmington Town Crier; the firm also printed brochures and pamphlets, among them the town's annual reports and in 1971 it bought the brick building at 49 Pollard Street. He belonged to the Polish American Veterans Association, the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Elks, the Knights of Columbus and the Billerica Rod and Gun Club.

Bocko ran for selectman in 1956 and lost narrowly, and on March 2, 1957, he was elected at the head of the poll with 1,829 votes. In 1958 he and the chairman, Arthur R. Hallenborg, had charge of the police department, and he shared responsibility for the town halls. In 1959 he was chairman of the board, and when the Public Works Administrator resigned that spring the selectmen, sitting as the Board of Public Works, took over his duties, with Bocko serving as unpaid acting Public Works Administrator; the board's report for that year describes the betterment program of drainage and road construction, the extension of water mains and Chapter 90 work on Treble Cove Road, and meetings held "nearly every Monday night" to keep up with the growing town. He lost his seat in March 1960, finishing fourth with 1,187 votes.

In November 1958 he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where he at first shared the district with John Brox of Dracut and later represented Billerica alone, until the end of the 1960s. In 1960 he carried through the House a bill for the transfer of state land on Route 3 to the town for industrial use, sought by the town's Industrial Commission, which failed in the Senate. In 1966 the selectmen thanked him for legislation allowing the town to borrow for water works on bonds of up to thirty years, and the Conservation Commission reported that he had presented its bill authorizing the Water Resources Commission to set flood plain encroachment lines on the Shawsheen River.

He remained active in town government for many years. He was a Town Meeting member from 1956 to 1981, chairman of the Traffic Control Committee, which town meeting created in 1964, from its early years into the 1980s, chairman of the Memorial Plaque Committee in its first years, and a member of the Dump Study Committee in 1969 to 1971. He ran unsuccessfully for town clerk in 1973 and, in 1992, for the legislature once more. He died on November 11, 1994, and the town listed him among its memorials in the 1994 report.

Stanley J. Bocko

Stanley J. Bocko

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