BRANDON — “I just want to tell you what it’s like to be a celebrity in Brandon.”
Dick Kirby took the microphone at Brandon town meeting Monday evening with his wife, Debbie, after the couple was honored in this year’s Brandon Town Report. Kirby said that after he got word of the dedication, he met with his weekly coffee group of older gentlemen in Brandon, who call themselves, “Sick, Lame and Lazy.”
“They all started saying they could have been chosen to be honored in the town report,” Kirby told the roughly 120 people gathered in the Brandon Town Hall Monday night. “And everywhere I go, I hear people saying, ‘Here comes trouble.’”
Brandon selectboard Chair Seth Hopkins presented the couple with a copy of the town report at the start of Brandon’s Town Meeting, saying that the Kirbys are a shining example of neighborliness.
“When my wife, Olga, and I moved into Brandon, the Kirbys were among the first people to welcome us,” Hopkins said. “And when Olga and the kids are out of town, I can always count on an invitation to dinner. It’s those kinds of kindnesses that make a community.”
The Kirbys met as students in Brandon High School, were married in 1955, and have lived on Forest Dale Road since 1956, raising four children.
Hopkins said he and selectboard Vice-Chair Doug Bailey have always admired the Kirbys’ volunteerism and work ethic.
“Dick was out shoveling snow in front of the Brandon Artists Guild yesterday,” he said of the octogenarian. “We figured out that Dick is as old as Doug and I put together, but he still outworks us, and we hope to follow his example.”