Friends, Family Remember Bob Blumsack

Blumsack Honored with City Hall Ceremony Tuesday

– Allison Goldsberry

From left to right, Bob Blumsack, City Clerk Ed Finn, and Assistant City Solicitors Mark Rumley and Anthony Santoro. Photo courtesy City of Medford.

Anyone who can get friends, family, and colleagues to sing “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts” has to have been a special guy.

The song was one of several irreverent musical selections played during a City Hall ceremony on Tuesday in honor of Bob Blumsack, Medford’s second longest-serving City Solicitor.

Blumsack was known for his “legendary” sense of humor, a quality that was highlighted several times as Blumsack’s friends and family spoke in his honor, including Mayor Michael McGlynn, Century Bank President Marshall Sloane, School Superintendent Roy Belson, Former Medford Fire Chief Lawrence Sands, Medford Personnel Director Richard Lee, and son Henry Blumsack.

Mayor McGlynn said Blumsack was known for embellishing stories simply to get a reaction out of his audience, while son Henry recalled his father, a Somerville native, often adopting an English accent or Irish brogue while spinning his tales.

The gregarious Blumsack, a devout Jew, was perhaps best known at City Hall, according to the mayor, for organizing the annual Christmas party, which earned him the nickname “Ecumenical Solicitor.”

Lee said Blumsack’s sense of humor was only surpassed by his legal prowess. Blumsack spent thirty-seven years in the Law Department, the most of any lawyer in the department’s 116-year history. He spent eighteen of those thirty-seven years as City Solicitor, second only to Mark Gallagher, who served in that capacity for twenty-four years.

Belson noted how Blumsack combined his “fun side with his legal skills,” once using his powers of persuasion to avoid paying for a crashed golf cart by threatening to sue the golf course for loaning himself and a friend a “faulty” golf cart.

Blumsack, also known for his calm and cool demeanor, gave advice to a fiery young Superintendent Belson in approaching the City Council, advised a young Mayor McGlynn on firings and consolidations when the mayor first took office twenty years ago, and helped newly-minted Fire Chief Sands learn the legal processes involved with the firefighters’ unions.

Sands joked that Blumsack was a great friend because “he never billed me for personal legal advice!”

Blumsack was a veteran of the United States Navy and served in the Pacific during World War II. He is survived by his wife Marilyn and their children Cheryl, Jeffrey, Jodi, and Henry, as well as several grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

City Hall issued the following statement about Blumsack and his years of service:

“Bob was a fine lawyer who represented Medford with dignity and style. His sense of humor is legendary. Bob was a good friend to all at City Hall and a close colleague. He will be missed.”

Blumsack is pictured at right in a photo provided by his wife, Marilyn.