Robert A. Olivieri

Robert Anthony Olivieri (about 1920 to 2017) was a Billerica police officer who rose to the rank of captain in the town's police department, and who for nearly thirty years was also one of the town's elected constables. He graduated from Howe High School in 1938; the senior class voted him its "Class Shiek," and in the class will he left his Robert Taylor photograph "to inspire future senior girls."

After the Second World War he joined the police department. He was one of the town's special officers in 1946, and by 1947 he was one of five regular officers, with Joseph L. Ryan Jr., Harold W. Blake, James F. Callahan and Charles R. Morris, under Acting Chief John F. Trainor. He was named acting sergeant in 1949 and was a sergeant from 1950, the department's two sergeants then being Ryan and Olivieri. When Trainor retired in 1956 and Ryan became chief, the department had grown to a chief, two sergeants and fourteen patrolmen. Olivieri later became a captain, the rank under which the town remembered him at his death.

In March 1956 he was first elected a Constable, and he was re-elected every year, usually near the top of the ballot (2,910 votes in 1957, 3,399 in 1959, 3,428 in 1970), and then for three-year terms from 1973; he was last listed as constable in 1983. As constable he served and posted the warrants for town meetings and elections, returning, as in 1973, that he had posted copies "at each of the Post Offices of the Town" and at public places such as the fire stations, at least eight days before the meeting. Each year the annual town meeting also appointed him, with Chief Ryan and later with Joseph Burke III, a keeper of the lock-up, and from 1956 to 1960 he was one of the town's field drivers.

When the 1959 annual town meeting established a permanent Personnel Board, under Article 35, to act as "a central authority for personnel problems, wage and salary adjustments and job classification," he was named to it with chairman Charles W. MacRannolds, Stasia J. Rudgis and Robert H. Margeson, and he served on the board until 1973, through the years in which it drew up and revised the town's job classification and wage and salary plan. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the selectmen still listed him among their police department appointees. He died on September 9, 2017, and the town report for 2018 listed him among its memorials as a "Billerica Police Captain."

References

1. Billerica Town Report 1938, Howe High School graduation: Robert Anthony Olivieri
2. Howe High School yearbook 1938: Robert Olivieri, Class Shiek; class will
3. Billerica Town Report 1946, town officers: Police Department special officers, Robert Olivieri
4. Billerica Town Report 1947, Police Department report: regular officers Ryan, Blake, Olivieri, Callahan, Morris under Acting Chief John F. Trainor
5. Billerica Town Report 1949, Police Department report: Acting Sergeant Robert A. Olivieri
6. Billerica Town Report 1950, Police Department report: Sergeants Joseph L. Ryan Jr. and Robert A. Olivieri
7. Billerica Town Report 1957, annual election: Constables, Robert A. Olivieri 2,910
8. Billerica Town Report 1959, committees: Personnel Board (Art. 35), Charles W. MacRannolds, chairman, with Robert A. Olivieri
9. Billerica Town Report 1973, warrant return signed by Robert A. Olivieri, Constable (copies posted at the post offices and public places)
10. Billerica Town Report 2018, In Memoriam: Robert A. Olivieri, died September 9, 2017, Billerica Police Captain