Chester C. Sandberg

Chester Carl Sandberg (died 1984) was Billerica's Veterans' Agent and director of its Veterans' Service Center for nearly thirty years, from 1955 until his death on October 14, 1984. Before that he served on the Planning Board from 1951 to 1956, as its chairman in 1955, and he was an elected Town Meeting member from 1956 to 1984. He graduated from Howe High School on June 14, 1939, in the same class as Ralph Kenneth Sandberg, who preceded him as Veterans' Agent; the town reports do not say how the two were related. He and his wife owned land on Boston Road, and the Town Meeting ballot of 1973 gives his street as the Middlesex Turnpike.

He was elected to the Planning Board in 1951 with 1,671 votes, the year the town accepted a new Planning Board under Section 81-A with power over all subdivisions, and he served as its secretary under Morris Arakelian. The board's reports of the early 1950s describe a steady stream of subdivision plans and rezoning hearings. In 1955, with Sandberg as chairman and John T. Blackwell as its planning consultant, the board carried a major revision of the Zoning By-Law through the annual town meeting, sponsored the article that banned trailer parks and camps from the whole town at a special town meeting in September, and prepared a Town Plan Report and a new residential zoning scheme for 1956.

In November 1955 Ralph K. Sandberg, Veterans' Agent since 1945, resigned on moving to Revere, and the selectmen appointed Chester Sandberg in his place. For the rest of his life he administered the benefits and medical assistance the town paid to needy veterans and their families under state rules, and his reports tell of a caseload that kept growing with the town. In 1974 he wrote of "the biggest case load in the history of Veterans Services in Billerica," of medical bills that forced repeated transfers of funds, and of two C.E.T.A. employees assigned to help his understaffed office. In another report he explained that he always waited until the end of the fiscal year to claim his own expenses, "as we never get the amount needed," so that the office costs and the investigator's mileage were paid first. From 1976 he also represented the Veterans' Service Office on the Council on Aging.

Illness kept him away from the office for part of 1981, but he remained in the post, by then part time, until his death on October 14, 1984. The next report of the department noted "the retirement and passing of our part time Agent, Chester Sandberg," and Kenneth L. Buffum was appointed full-time Director in his place. The town report for 1984 remembered him in its In Memoriam.

References

1. Howe High School graduates, June 14, 1939
2. Annual Town Election, 1951 (Planning Board)
3. Report of the Planning Board, 1951
4. Report of the Veterans' Service Center, 1955 (appointment)
5. Report of the Planning Board, 1955
6. Report of the Veterans' Services Department, 1974
7. Report of the Veterans' Service Center, 1979
8. In Memoriam, 1984