Brattleboro’s Town Manager Peter Elwell has graciously agreed to a series of three interviews about himself, towns in general, and the future of Brattleboro. In this first installment, we ask about growing up in Brattleboro, his time away from Brattleboro, and his return to his home town.
Tell us about growing up in Brattleboro…
I had a happy “normal” childhood. So happy that no matter where else I ever lived, Brattleboro was always “home.” There were dozens of kids in my neighborhood (including my 3 older sisters) and we had friends all over town. We rode our bikes everywhere. Although it was the 1970s, it had the feel of an earlier era. In the summers and on weekends, we would leave home in the morning and go out and about, usually with just the admonition to “be back by dark.”
We played a lot of sports, usually in synch with whatever professional sports season was active at that time and only rarely organized by adults. On summer evenings, we played “cops and robbers” (a large scale game of hide+seek played by teams) throughout all the yards (and some of the garages) in our neighborhood. I walked to Green Street School and rode the bus to the junior high (now BAMS) and BUHS.
Those of us who were growing up here at that time definitely had a sense that the Town was changing, becoming more diverse and more artsy, but we were mostly focused on the things any other kids in other settings would focus on … school, friends, music, sports, etc.
