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 Louis A. Bolduc
January 20, 2003
Louis A. Bolduc, died yesterday morning at his home at 46 Alfred Drive following a long illness. He was 71. A former longtime city health commissioner
Bolduc joined the Pittsfield Department of Health in 1959, shortly after graduating from the University of Massachusetts with a bachelor of science degree in public health. He served under nine mayors.
He was appointed chief health inspector in 1967 and became commissioner of health in 1974, after a short stint as acting commissioner. He was the first commissioner who did not have a medical degree.
During his tenure as commissioner, he steered the department through ups and plenty of downs, including the severe budget cuts following the passage of Proposition 2 1/2 and the city's giardiasis crisis.
Budget cuts through the 1980s forced his department -- which once oversaw a dozen nurses, aides and doctors, as well as nurses and doctors in the schools, health inspectors and laboratory technicians -- to shrink drastically.
When the giardiasis epidemic hit the city in 1985 -- caused when a bacterial parasite entered the city's water supply sickening 5,000 to 8,000 residents -- his department was 70 percent smaller. He worked seven days a week during the crisis, despite being sick himself.
And in 1991, he recommended closing the health laboratory because of costs, putting his own wife, the former Mary Irene O'Hearn, a bacteriologist, out of work.
At his retirement in 1996, he said his greatest public health achievement was a ban on smoking in public places passed by the city the year before. A former smoker, Bolduc pushed the ordinance as a way to protect children from the effects of smoking. His thesis for his master's degree in public health administration, which he received from UMass in 1980, was on public policy and smoking.
"We don't enjoy keeping people from doing something their body tells them to do," he said, referring to the actions of city officials and the department's advisory group. "But we do derive pleasure from providing cleaner air for everyone."
Former Mayor Evan S. Dobelle, who also appointed Bolduc director of the city's Home Heating Assistance Agency, described him at the time as a "good detail man."
"He's great on follow-through. He doesn't polarize people, and he can listen. He's the best choice for the job."
Born in Hyde Park on Feb. 9, 1931, son of Louis J. and Gerardine Chouinard Bolduc, he attended schools in Lowell and was a 1948 graduate of St. Joseph's High School there.
He served in the Air Force from 1950 to 1954, during the Korean War.
He was a communicant of St. Joseph's Church, a member of the Pittsfield Rotary Club, the Berkshire Hills Country Club, the American Legion, the Knights of Columbus and the Pittsfield Anti-Tuberculosis Association.
He also served on a number of city and state boards and committees, including the Sewer Commission, growth policy and hazardous waste committees, and on the city's Nuclear War Impact Study.
He and his wife were married Sept. 1, 1962, in St. Joseph's Church.
Besides his wife, he leaves a brother, Roger J. Bolduc of Bandera, Texas, and four sisters, Lorraine Bourassa of Arlington, Texas, Jacqueline Lamoureaux of Lowell, Cecile Bolduc of Hampton, N.H., and Charlotte Bolduc of Saudi Arabia.
FUNERAL NOTICE -- Louis A. Bolduc, 71, died Jan. 18, 2003. He is also survived by his sister-in-law, Margaret Donovan; his nieces Barbara Lagergren and Sharon Cronin; his nephew John Donovan; grandnieces Caitlin Cronin and Courtney Donovan, and grandnephews Sean Donovan and Christopher Cronin.
Calling hours will be tomorrow, Jan. 20, from 3 to 7 at DEVANNY-CONDRON FUNERAL HOME. The funeral will be Tuesday at 8:15 from the funeral home, followed by a Liturgy of Christian Burial at 9 at St. Joseph's Church, concelebrated by the Rev. Michael Shershovich, pastor, and Mr. Bolduc's nephew, the Rev. Roger Lamoureaux, past of Sacred Heart Church in Lowell.
Burial will follow in St. Joseph's Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, if friends desire, donations in his memory may be made to St. Joseph's High School, St. Joseph's Church, or to the Renal Dialysis Unit at BMC, in care of the funeral home, 40 Maplewood Ave., Pittsfield, MA 01201.
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