Ralph N. Newman

Died	2007-12-25
Town Meeting
In Office	1968 - 2000
Finance Committee
In Office	1969 - 1971 1988 - 1991
Town Registrar
In Office	1974 - 1984
Nutting Lake Postmaster
In Office	1975 - 1975
Preceded by	Eleanor T. Dustin
Succeeded by	Jeannette C. Fogarty
Nutting Lake Postmaster
In Office	1976 - 1979
Preceded by	Jeannette C. Fogarty
Succeeded by	Joanne F. Gastonguay
Nutting Lake Postmaster
In Office	1979 - 1987
Preceded by	Joanne F. Gastonguay
Succeeded by	Anne E. Gaquin
North Billerica Postmaster
In Office	1981 - 1982
Preceded by	Joseph F. Condon
Succeeded by	Jeannette C. Fogarty

Ralph N. Newman (died 2007) was the postmaster of the Nutting Lake post office in Billerica from 1979 to 1987 and served the town for three decades as a Town Meeting member, a member and chairman of the Finance Committee, and a member of the Board of Registrars of Voters. In September 1950 the town clerk recorded his marriage at Billerica, and by the late 1960s he was active in town affairs: he was elected a Town Meeting member in 1968, joined the Finance Committee that year, and was secretary of the special Police Study Committee from 1968 to 1970.

When Daniel P. Melillo resigned as chairman of the Finance Committee at the end of November 1970, Newman succeeded him, with William G. Greene Jr. as vice-chairman, and he led the committee through 1971, when the Association of Town Finance Committees judged the Billerica committee's report "the next best among all Massachusetts Towns in the over 25,000 population range" for comprehensibility, appearance and persuasiveness. He presented the committee's report to the annual town meeting of 1972. In 1974 he ran for a five-year seat on the Planning Board and lost to Albert A. Dickinson and Paul V. Clough, polling 1,545 votes. That summer the selectmen appointed him to the Board of Registrars of Voters to finish the term of James Torpey, who had resigned on June 1, 1974; he was reappointed in 1975, 1978 and 1981 and sat on the board with George L. Grantz, Marie M. Kyricos and the town clerk until 1984.

On July 19, 1975, he became officer in charge of the Nutting Lake post office, and on October 20, 1979, he was appointed its postmaster. For a time from September 1981 he was also officer in charge of the North Billerica post office when Joseph F. Condon's long tenure as postmaster there ended. He kept the Nutting Lake office until November 1987, when Anne E. Gaquin was named officer in charge.

He remained a vocal member of Town Meeting, where he was chairman of the Precinct 10 delegation in the early 1980s. In 1982 he moved to refer the question of commercial dumping at the town dump, the number of out-of-town commercial vehicles using it and its remaining capacity, to the Solid Waste Study Committee, and the meeting carried his motion; in 1984 he pressed the selectmen to give town meeting a running dollar figure halfway through the budget and to break down the administrators' salaries. That year he ran for the Select Board and finished fourth for two seats, with 883 votes. He returned to the Finance Committee from 1987 to 1991, and in 1990 and 1991 he presented a check and then savings bonds on its behalf to high school students whose drawings illustrated the committee's report. In 1989 he announced to town meeting that, "after several years and much red tape," the name of Paul Newman Jr., son of the late Selectman Paul F. Newman, who had died of wounds received in the Vietnam War, was being added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. In 1998 he petitioned for an article to do away with the ten-dollar minimum charge on residential water bills, and that year the moderator presented him a plaque for twenty-five years as a Town Meeting member. He died on December 25, 2007, and the town meeting stood in a moment of silence in his memory.

Ralph N. Newman

Ralph N. Newman

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