Neighbors

Lynn Dunbar has been Sullivan’s town clerk since 1979.

DEER IS

After 25 years of working as town clerk, Lynn Dunbar praises “the people of Sullivan” as the single best aspect of her job.

But if you were to ask her how she even came to be town clerk, she would laugh.

“It’s actually a pretty funny story,” she said. “I was working in [Dunbar’s Grocery] store in 1979 when one of Sullivan’s selectmen came in. He asked if I could type some papers.

“I said sure, but I knew that there was more than just typing involved.”

Then that same selectman suggested that she would make a good town clerk. Again, she laughed, but also thought, why not?

Dunbar declared her intentions to run for town clerk. When she went to the town office to vote, she found her name was the only one on the ballot.

“No one else turned in the papers,” she said.

That was 25 years ago, back when the office was in the town’s recreation center. Before that building was put to use as the town’s first office, town officials worked out of their homes.

Dunbar also took on other civic duties when she became town clerk, replacing Doris Milne. She also replaced Helen Walker as treasurer and Barbara Davis as tax collector.

Being town clerk requires a lot of time and energy. Registering voters, issuing hunting licenses, collecting taxes, and taking care of birth and death certificates are just some of Dunbar’s tasks.

“I love my job. It has brought me closer to the people of the town,” said Dunbar. “My hours are 8 to 4, but if the lights are on earlier or later, come on in and I’ll make sure to take care of the problem.”

Dunbar even has taken care of residents’ problems in her nightclothes.

“I will do anything I can to help, even if that means rolling out of bed in the middle of the night, sporting just my pajamas,” she said.

Dunbar has lived in Sullivan all her life. She and her husband, James Murphy, live on Taunton Drive, in the very house where she grew up.

She has seen an increase in the town’s population.

“The town keeps growing,” she said. “I just hope that I can keep up with it.”

If you pester her long enough, she will admit that one of those newer residents is actually her husband. They married 18 months ago.

They met precisely because she is the town clerk—and one of her duties was to document, by photographs, the building of the new Hancock-Sullivan Bridge.

It was finished in December 1999 after construction crews worked two years on the job. One of those workers, she says, was Murphy.

“I took 3,400 photos and had my own hard hat,” Dunbar said of the construction site. “I also met my husband.”

The position of town clerk comes with many more mundane responsibilities. But there is hardly a moment she can’t handle a sticky situation.

“It gets scary sometimes with all the responsibility, but I have done a pretty good job so far,” she said.

Dunbar has no complaints about her job—nor about living in a small town.

“I have had a nice board of selectmen to work with, and I have been around some great people,” Dunbar said. “So I can’t complain.

“If I could describe this town in one word, it would be ‘caring.’ If there is a problem, the people will come together and help each other out.”

That caring concept hit home last month. Townspeople turned out for a benefit supper at the recreation center for Debbie Briggs, Dunbar’s sister.

After the sisters worked alongside each other in the town office for the last 15 years, with Briggs as “deputy everything,” Briggs learned recently she has lung cancer.

The residents’ response to the benefit supper was tremendous.

“It was a huge turnout, the biggest dinner they have ever had,” Dunbar said.