Forrest Paradise

Died	1994-12-04
Finance Committee
In Office	1949 - 1950
Select Board
In Office	1952 - 1958
Town Meeting
In Office	1956 - 1961
Bowers Fund Commissioner
In Office	1960 - 1962

Forrest Halley Paradise (died 1994) was a Billerica selectman for six years in the 1950s, when the town was growing faster than at any time in its history, and before that a leader of the Bennett Public Library Association and chairman of the Finance Committee. He graduated from the Howe High School on June 20, 1929, as an honor scholarship student. On October 8, 1938, then living in Chicago, he married Elizabeth Loring of Billerica, and they made their home in Billerica, where their children were born in the 1940s. A local historical inventory names him, with Dr. Maurice A. Buck, whom it calls his uncle by marriage, among the notable later residents of the old Ruggles and Parker house that once stood on the Common. His wife, Elizabeth L. Paradise, was herself a Town Meeting member and was elected to the School Committee in 1961.

In 1947 he ran for the School Committee and finished fourth. As president of the Bennett Public Library Association in 1947 and 1948 he reported to the town on the library at the Centre and its Pinehurst branch, where circulation rose to more than 30,000 volumes in 1948, and on the search for quarters for a branch in North Billerica, which he wrote would allow "at least partial service to the school children" there. He remained a director of the Association after his presidency. He was appointed to the Finance Committee in 1949, with Oliver P. Greenwood among its members, and was its chairman in 1950, and that year he was named to a committee to study the town manager form of government. In the presidential primary of 1952 he was chosen a member of the Republican Town Committee.

In March 1952 he was elected to the Select Board, defeating Arthur C. Barnard by 1,795 votes to 1,196. The selectmen also served as the Board of Public Works, and in 1953 he took charge of halls and water with Barnard and of parks with Frederic H. Brown. He was re-elected in 1955 with 1,938 votes and became chairman. The board's report for that year records the taking of land on Lexington Road for the Nuttings Lake School, the appointment of Vernon L. Packard as the town's Superintendent of Public Works, the near completion of the new water treatment plant, the opening of the fire station at Pinehurst, and the August hurricane and flood, which broke the water main at the Concord River bridge on Boston Road; it also describes the week-long celebration of the town's three hundredth anniversary, from May 22 to 29, 1955, with its historical pageant, parade and firemen's muster. He was vice-chairman in 1956 and served through 1957 with Stanley J. Bocko, and in March 1958 he was defeated for re-election by William T. Desmond, 1,567 votes to 1,378.

After leaving the board he continued in town meeting; in 1960 town meeting appointed him a Bowers Fund Commissioner to fill the two years left in the term of the Rev. J. Harold Dale, and the same year he was nominated for moderator pro tem. He died on December 4, 1994, and the town report for that year listed him among its memorials.

Forrest Paradise

Forrest Paradise

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