There can be few people in Hampton who were not familiar with Maurice Bisson, the legendary, we should say, Maurice Bisson. Some of us knew him as the First Selectman, as supervisor of the road crew, some knew him as the mechanic who we relied upon to repair our vehicles, as the excavator who could problem solve what appeared as an impossible situation, and fix it, and some knew him as the person who held our hand through a traumatic experience, all the way till we were ready to let go. But we all knew him as a person who exemplified what it means to be a good neighbor. Maurice. Helped. Everyone. You didn’t have to know him. He didn’t have to know you. If you were stuck on the side of the road, needed someone to shovel your walkway, had a question concerning your well or your engine, Maurice was there.
In 1993, Maurice was recognized as the Gazette’s Citizen of the Year. When he was informed of the honor, his response was “What have I done?”
His wife, Rose, provided a couple of examples. She remembered a Christmas Eve he spent at a young family’s home when their heat wasn’t working and they couldn’t find a repair man. “If anyone calls and needs something,” she said, “Maurice is there.” He checked on elderly neighbors daily, running errands, clearing their driveways. During power outages, Maurice went from place to place with his generator. When he brought it to someone’s home at night, he would frequently find a thermos of hot coffee or soup. “That was plenty of thanks for me,” he said.
Maurice also volunteered his equipment and expertise to the community. When the Town Hall moved to its present location from the small building on the corner of Main Street and Old Route 6 West, Maurice volunteered his time and his trucks to move everything, enlisting the assistance of others and coordinating the entire operation. Former First Selectman Walt Stone recalled a time when Maurice threw the town’s damaged snow plow into his truck, drove all the way to Watertown, New York with it, and then returned later the same day with the repaired plow. He also volunteered as a spare driver for the snow plow to relieve the members of the road crew when storms required hours of plowing. And he and his chain saw were always available when trees or limbs required clearing from roads after storms, Stone relayed, noting, “He never charges”. The town was not the only entity that benefited from this generosity. More often than not, Maurice wouldn’t charge folks for his assistance.
In 2003, Maurice decided to donate all of that time, wisdom, and knowledge to town government. Because his decision came after the period of endorsements, Maurice ran in the November Municipal Election as a write-in candidate. He stood outside the 75’ perimeter and handed pencils with his name on it to voters. They used them. He defeated democratic, republican and petitioning opponents in a 212 – 175 – 117 – 77 vote to become one of our town’s Selectmen. Maurice’s victory was not only a stunning achievement for our little town. With neither an endorsement nor his name on the ballot, his election earned him recognition from the Secretary of State, front page coverage in The Willimantic Chronicle, and national acclaim in The New York Times.
The next election cycle, Maurice ran for First Selectman, securing and fulfilling the position of the town’s Chief Official until his retirement in 2009. Under his leadership, Maurice continued his goal of “bringing common sense back to our town government”. Among other accomplishments, he used his considerable skills to train the road crew, repair the highway department’s equipment, and serve as the spare snow plow driver. His was always a pragmatic approach, and of course, consumed more time than the office compensates, and when, for example, he discovered the amount the town was paying to transport fallen trees and limbs to a waste facility, he collected the timber, brought it home, turned it into firewood, and delivered it to residents who couldn’t cut it themselves. His devotion to the town and to its people was evident throughout his tenure.
In November of 2009, the town hosted a retirement party for Maurice in appreciation of his time as Selectman. “Good neighbors like the Bissons,” one person stated, “are hard to come by”.
In praising Maurice for his charitable contributions, one neighbor said: “Maurice usually forgot to bill the people who couldn’t afford his help, and when pushed to send a bill it was always modest in size”.
Another added, “Hampton needed a man to teach us by example. We were sent Maurice, and we have been the better for it. Let’s challenge ourselves to look around, find someone less fortunate, help them out, and refuse payment.”
And one neighbor read a poem written by Gary Snyder which epitomized Maurice. In spite of its title “Removing the Plate of the Pump On the Hydraulic System of the Backhoe, its message is simple and appropriate:
Through mud-fouled nuts, black grime
it opens, a gleam of spotless steel
machined-fit perfect
swirl of intake and output
relentless clarity
at the heart of work.
Though Maurice received recognition in local, state and national news, words from his neighbors were the ones that meant the most to him. Many of us remember Janet Robertson’s Memorial Day Address, in which she invited everyone to shake her hand, “the hand of an old lady who shook the hand of an old man who shook the hand of a lady who shook the hand of a man who shook the hand of George Washington”. But she began with another message. Her husband, Jim, had recently passed away after a long battle with leukemia when she was involved in an accident at the treacherous crossing of Routes 97 and 6. Maurice was contacted, and he stayed with her through the ordeal at the scene, went with her to the emergency room, and remained with her until she returned safely home. Deviating from the standard script of a Memorial Day Address, Janet explained, “I wanted you to know, this is the kind of person you’ve elected as your First Selectman.”
Maurice’s legacy lives on whenever we respect the uniqueness of our small community with the spirit of volunteerism, with kindnesses to our neighbors, the generosity of our gifts, helping those less fortunate. In this way, we honor Maurice’s memory.
Juan Arriola