George R. Cushman Cushman Jr.

George R. Cushman Jr. led Billerica's town recreation program for about fifteen years, as chairman of its Recreation Committee and then of the Recreation Commission from 1957 to 1971, and he was the first chairman of the town's Council for the Aging when it was set up in 1962.

In 1954 the Town Moderator appointed him to the Finance Committee, and under an article of that year's town meeting he was made a trustee of the Pinehurst Playground for three years. In 1956 he was chairman of the Akeson Playground Committee. By 1957 he chaired the Recreation Committee, and as chairman of the Recreation Commission he oversaw a program that in 1960 included an eight-week summer program on seven playgrounds, run by six recreation leaders and seven aides; a fifteen-week Saturday winter program at schools in Pinehurst, Nuttings Lake, Billerica Center and North Billerica; a boys' bowling league; a boys' and girls' choral group; and a skating program. The commission met each month at the Howe Junior High School, and it reported that the East and West sections of the town still needed supervised winter recreation. He was still chairman of the recreation board in 1971.

The annual town meeting of 1962 adopted a by-law creating a council for the aging, made up of the chairman of the board of public welfare, the head of the recreation commission, the chairman of the board of health and the superintendent of schools, or their representatives, with three to seven more members appointed by the selectmen, "to coordinate or carry out programs designed to meet problems of the aging." Cushman, as head of the recreation commission, was its first chairman, with Superintendent Frederick C. Riel among the members, and he stayed on the council until 1968. In 1960 he was also a member of the Industrial Development Commission, which was then trying to bring industry to the town and to get state land on Route 3 transferred to the town for industrial use. From 1971 to 1975 he served on the Gilson Hill Committee and the Gilson Hill Building Committee, and in the later 1970s he was a Town Meeting member.

References

1. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1956 (1955-59 volume): Akeson Playground Committee, George Cushman, Chairman
2. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1962 (1960-64 volume): Council for the Aging, George R. Cushman, Chairman; Frederick C. Riel a member
3. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1960: Report of the Recreation Commission (George R. Cushman, Jr., Chairman; summer playgrounds, winter centers); Industrial Development Commission