By Julia Beauregard
Hometown Weekly Correspondent
Medfield locals gathered at Lovell’s on January 5 to celebrate the first Medfield Foundation Volunteer of the Year, Henry Marcel, one day prior to his 80th birthday. Friends of the longtime former Medfield resident joined together to celebrate Marcel over pizza and cake.
Henry Marcel is truly a man to be celebrated, as he has worked tirelessly behind the scenes for decades to make the town of Medfield a better place for all.
He is the man responsible for lighting up Medfield’s downtown every year with the holiday lights for the holiday season. As a founding member of MEMO, Marcel has been responsible for organizing and stringing lights in Medfield for over 50 years.
Aside from working to brighten up the town each holiday season, Marcel completed much of the grunt work required to make Medfield Day, a MEMO event that began in the late 1970s, possible each year. He is the one who created and operated the electrical services to power the event, along with the assistance of other local electricians. He ran the event several times throughout the years, providing whatever was needed to make the special day run smoothly and successfully.
Marcel served the community as a volunteer firefighter, beginning over 50 years ago in 1973. Though he has been retired since 1998, he still proudly wears his Medfield Fire Department tee-shirts and aids in the electrical work at the fire department.
As Laverne Lovell recounted, her husband, the late George Lovell, said, “Henry Marcel is the smartest man I have ever known,” and his intellect and kind heartedness shine through with everything he has done for the community.
On behalf of Medfield, we wish him a happy and healthy 80th birthday.
