(Formerly “Meet Bob”)
Updated June 2024:
By now, most of you in Enfield know who this writer, your Councilperson, Robert Lynch, is. I’m among the five who serve you, who represent you on the Enfield Town Board. We labor at the first rung of American Democracy, perhaps that most important rung when it comes to meeting your everyday needs in this community. Occasionally, we five disagree among ourselves. But more often than not, we cooperate; we work together as a team.
In 2019, when I first ran for the Enfield Town Board, I wrote my abbreviated life’s story. I did so to acquaint you with me. I sought to earn your trust… and your vote. At least in that latter regard, I’ve succeeded. You’ve elected me twice. Thank you.
I now enter my second term of office. Over this past half-decade, I do not believe I have changed as the person I am. I’ve only journeyed farther in that twisting pathway called life. As such, there’s little need to amend much of what I first penned years ago. I need only add thoughtful insight to wedge the past within today’s reality. The words I revise in this self-constructed thumbnail memoir are those that reflect what’s happened between 2019 and today.
What I write will tell you the story of who I am; or more properly put, of the person I consider myself to be. I believe every person is unique. I welcome hearing your own unique life’s story. Here is mine:
****
I have always been a country boy. I’ve always called the Finger Lakes my home. I grew up on a 100-acre part-time farm between Phelps and Geneva. When my classmates were playing ball after school, I was plowing fields. I didn’t have to do it; I wanted to. I was given my first 26 chickens at age seven. I raised them all. I had an egg route. In my youth I always wanted to be a farmer, impractical as that was. It wasn’t until college that the radio bug bit me. It changed my life.
I entered Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 1968. The infamous Willard Strait Hall take-over was during my freshman year. Student protesters entered the “Strait” that Saturday morning through the window of WVBR, the student station that accorded me my broadcasting start.
In Cornell, I majored in Agricultural Economics. But mostly, in my upperclass years, my major was WVBR. I was the station’s off-campus reporter, covering virtually every meeting of Ithaca Common Council, the Tompkins County Board of Representatives (now the County Legislature), and also many town boards. I resided for a while in a small Scotty travel trailer that remains to this day at the rear of my Gray Road residence.
My Dad, John—friends called him Johnny—worked for more than two decades at Morse Chain. Johnny was eventually elevated to electrical foreman at Morse’s sprawling South Hill plant. About the time I entered Cornell, Dad commenced building what he called Little Hector, our Gray Road home. I inherited Little Hector from my parents. It’s not quite finished yet.
After Cornell—and WVBR—I transitioned to WTKO, 1470 (AM), then Ithaca’s #1 station. I was news director, program director, and eventually operations manager. I take great pride in those TKO years. My sister Marcia and I oversaw a 4-person News Department that covered virtually everything that moved in Tompkins County: county government; the towns; the courts. I supervised WTKO’s air staff, mapped programming strategy, and made WTKO more dominant than it had ever been before. Marcia and I left WTKO in 1981. Marcia later served as an admissions officer at Ithaca College, as volunteer coordinator at the Ithaca Fire Department, and as Tompkins County’s Public Information Officer. She retired as PIO in December 2019.
After a brief tour as an airborne traffic reporter in Rochester, I returned to local employment in 1987. I joined the staff of an Enfield business, Independent Broadcast Consultants, Inc. (IBC) on Podunk Road. Some of you may know my former boss, Bill Sitzman. For many years, he helped us in Enfield vote on Election Day. Bill and I designed the technical facilities for broadcast stations and secured their FCC approvals. I remained at IBC for 25 years. Both at work and at rest, this community, Enfield, is truly my home.
As IBC wound down, I transitioned to paralegal studies. In 2015, I earned my paralegal certificate at TC3 and was honored as the program’s Graduate of Note. I served for a time as a research paralegal with Schlather, Stumbar, Parks and Salk, Ithaca. I’ve since taken as many as seven continuing education courses at Cornell Law School, including courses in Criminal Procedure, Administrative Law and the Death Penalty. Yes, if I had to do it over again, I’d be a lawyer, maybe even a judge. Yet maybe I was meant to serve you just the way I have.
In February of 2019, I sensed my life turning in a new direction, toward local public service. I ran in the Democratic Primary and then the General Election—both of them contested races—and won a seat on the Enfield Town Board. My term of office began in January 2020 and ran through 2023. I sought a second term. After securing the Democratic nomination, I and a second candidate won the November General Election unopposed.
But between those two races, I took a risk. I reached one notch higher. In 2021, I aspired to represent many of you on the Tompkins County Legislature. I lost that legislative race to a fine man, Randy Brown. Yet I consider myself richer for having tried, for having reached for one brass ring I could not grasp. Life makes for learning.
In terms of my approach to governance and to life, I attempt to find the best qualities in just about everybody I meet. And for purposes here, I will not dwell on the political challenges I’ve encountered from time to time during my tenure as an Enfield Town Councilperson. Sometimes you need to stand on principle. At others, it’s best to yield to compromise. The balance can be struck on the sharpest of edges. Even though local government can at times be messy, I view reasoned political discourse as Democracy in action.
Since commencing my service as Enfield Councilperson, I’ve made many new friends. I’ve found our community’s dedicated volunteers and the organizations they serve to reflect those Thousands Points of Light that the late President George H.W. Bush often spoke about. Whether at the Enfield Food Pantry, the Fire Company, the Community Council or elsewhere, those who serve us do so much. They, the volunteers, deserve more credit than they receive. We, the Town politicians, the ones who always seem to capture the headlines, probably receive more of the accolades than we, ourselves, truly earn.
During my inaugural campaign, I put my decision to be your Town Councilperson into a couple of sentences. Don’t think of them as self-serving. Truly, they apply to all of us:
“I sense that for each of us there stands a moment, a proper time to lean against the wheel, to put one’s education, life experiences and passion to use for the common good. Each of us should attempt to light one little candle that illuminates the darkness.”
I really hold no regrets in life, even for those things I now believe I might have done differently—done better—had I known the consequences way back then.
When I ran for the Tompkins County Legislature in 2021, I lost the Democratic Primary. I lost it badly. I suspended my campaign shortly thereafter. And my surviving independent candidacy limped into the fall to finish a distant third in November. But I learned from that loss. I learned that service on the Enfield Town Board will probably be the capstone of my political career.
Unless, of course, something new encounters me on my path. I don’t expect it. But life has a way of holding surprises. So here’s how I look at it: Maintain an open mind. Never tire. Never give up. And try not to quarrel.
Enfield’s political history too often has seen public servants come and go. We serve, and then we depart. I’m now entering my eighth decade of life. I recognize the limitations imposed by the realities that coincide with graying hair and having too little of it. They are realities I rarely worry about. It serves no purpose to do so. Health willing and your support sustaining me, I intend to seek a third term of office as your Councilperson come 2027.
This website that you are now reading has taken an unexpected turn over the years. It was first constructed as a political vehicle; a tool to communicate my ideas and my vision to you and to secure your vote. This website has evolved. Given the state of local media—and the long tendency for Ithaca reporters to ignore rural towns like Enfield—I’ve employed what I have established here to communicate the political news of Enfield and Tompkins County to you and to your neighbors. Why? I think it’s because that in so many ways over the decades I have remained a reporter at my core in the first sense. It’s in my blood, perhaps intertwined in my DNA. I cannot leave it, nor can it leave me.
Communication remains a foremost interest. It drives me. It keeps me up late at night writing stories, stories I hope that you will then read. What motivates this effort is a passionate desire to chronicle what happens around us in a truthful, meaningful, and objective way. I attempt to separate opinion from fact. I hope I succeed. You must judge.
****
Just as I did with those 26 chickens in 1958, and just as I’ve sought to do living at Little Hector for the past 55 years, I’ll strive to serve your best interests these years ahead as best I can. Please join me on this path, this unfolding journey in mapping Enfield’s future. Because truly, as my campaign slogan reminds us all, We Are One Enfield.
Onward,
Bob Lynch, your Enfield Councilperson