This week, the Southborough Rotary held its annual celebration of service. After a two year pause, the annual ceremony was held at the Food Truck Festival on Wednesday night.
The ceremony included their 2020 honoree Pam McDonald. (Her recognition was announced that spring, but this was the long delayed ceremony.) You can read about her service here.
For 2021, the Rotary recognized two residents, and I was honored to be one of them. The other was former Southborough Police Officer Rick Mattioli.
Below are the Rotary’s remarks for the 2021 honorees.
Richard Mattioli:
Rick, aka Rickey to his friends, is a true townie, having been raised in Southborough. Eldest son of Dick and Rita Mattioli. He started his career for the town when he worked in the school dept doing maintenance during school vacations. Then worked at the recreation department running the tennis program for 2 summers, and created, implemented, and coached the first soccer camp along with Fritz Weidergott, who was longtime coach and AD at St. Marks School. Rick
also started the Southborough Men’s soccer team.
In 1977, Rick and his brother Ron (who served almost 40 years) were appointed as part-time officers for the Southborough Police. His family has a very long and
distinguished commitment to public safety. Their Dad, 2 uncles, a great uncle, 2 cousins all worked for the Southboro PD spanning 9 decades! One cousin was a state trooper.
Rick worked under command of 7 Police Chiefs, (the 1 st being his Uncle Frank).With total of almost 43 years which included 28 years as fulltime administrative assistant which morphed into police business administrator for 4 chiefs. He implemented numerous community policing initiatives and is most proud of the junior police academy for young adults ages 12-15; that was in existence for 20 years, thanks to the help and commitment of his fellow officers, especially Officer
Kevin Landry.Rick is happily married to his best friend, Sandy, they have 2 beautiful daughters, Kristine and Leah, a wonderful son-in-law, Mike, and 2 loving grandchildren: Jack and Kelley.
Beth Melo:
Susan Fitzgerald created the blog MySouthborough to write about town news and events in 2008. At that time Beth was a stay at home mom who enjoyed reading the blog to learn more about what was happening in town. In November 2011, Susan convinced her to contribute a series of posts writing about a topic she knew Beth was passionate about – picture books for young children.
In spring of 2012, Beth learned that the Friends of the Southborough Library was in danger of folding after 40 years. They needed new volunteers to step up and take on some of the responsibilities. Beth helped promote the need then accepted the role of President, which she has served in ever since.
In 2013, when Susan was looking for someone to take over the blog, Beth was looking to reenter the workforce part-time as her youngest would be entering Kindergarten. Susan helped her make the transition to running the blog and Beth’s been doing it ever since. (It’s turned out to be a lot more than part time!)
Congratulations to the other honorees and thank you so much to the Rotary Club for the recognition. But also a big thank you to all of Rotary’s members for the great work they do. As they noted at the ceremony, their motto is Service before Self.
The work they are currently putting into the Food Truck Festival and raising funds for camp scholarships is just one of their many efforts to help the community and the world.
