Solomon G. Hajjar

Born	1906-02-19 Lawrence, MA
Died	1966-12-28 Billerica, MA
Physician
In Office	1939 - 1966
Board of Health
In Office	1940 - 1942
School Physician
In Office	1952 - 1966

Dr. Solomon Gantous Hajjar, known in the town reports as Dr. S. Gunther Hajjar, was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, on February 19, 1906. He married Elizabeth J. Morris of Lowell on January 4, 1939, and by 1940 he was practising as a physician in Billerica.

In 1940 the voters elected him to the Board of Health, which chose him as its chairman in 1940 and 1941; he served until 1942. In those years he also gave diphtheria immunizations for the town, and the 1941 town meeting was asked to pay his claim for 112 complete diphtheria immunizations at $1.50 each.

On October 30, 1952, he was appointed acting school physician and medical director of the schools. Rising enrollment, which reached 3,222 pupils in October 1954, led to his appointment as a second school physician beside Dr. Orland S. Marshall as of October 1, 1954; Dr. Marshall examined the pupils of the Parker, Ditson and Pollard Schools, and Dr. Hajjar those of the High School, Junior High, Talbot and Old Howe Schools. In 1957 the two doctors, with the Board of Health, gave polio and flu shots to all the permanent men of the Fire Department. He signed the school medical reports every year from then until his death.

Dr. Hajjar died on December 28, 1966. The town report remembered him as the "beloved School Physician at the time of his death," and the 1967 annual town meeting stood in silence in his memory. At its later sessions that meeting voted unanimously to take land between Call Street and Rogers Street in North Billerica for a new school, and voted money for its plans. Begun in the fall of 1968 as the North Billerica School and already called the Hajjar School in the town's accounts that year, it was slowed by strikes, and the Solomon G. Hajjar Elementary School opened in September 1970 with 31 classrooms and more than 1,000 pupils. It was formally dedicated on October 18, 1970, and it still serves the town at 59 Rogers Street.

Solomon G. Hajjar

Solomon G. Hajjar

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