Robert Buchanan, former Town Moderator, dies at 93

 

As the news spread through Weston that Robert Buchanan, town moderator for 30 years, had died at the age of 93, the accolades began to arrive.

“He was a pleasure to work with and made an enormous contribution to the tenor of the town and the way it functioned,” current Moderator Ripley Hastings said of his predecessor. “He was one of the pillars of the community, you could say. I was lucky and grateful to know him.”

Former Town Clerk Beth Nolan said, “He was a most gracious gentleman … he was very judicious, I think that’s the word to use for Bob, in a wonderful way. He honored the tradition of a New England Town Meeting and Bob’s Town Meetings were the epitome of democracy in its finest hour.”

Buchanan, a commercial litigator and nationally-regarded antitrust specialist who continued to report to work at the Boston law firm Sullivan Law (formerly Sullivan and Worcester) until his 90th birthday, died Sunday, April 19.

He is survived by his children Bob, Steve, Jamy and Genevra. His wife of 67 years, Jane, died in 2024.

“He had a good commanding voice, a sense of humor and a decisive set of rulings when it was time for them,” said his son Bob, referring to Buchanan’s long tenure as moderator. “He would often tell people, you’ll be more persuasive if you’re brief and make one point. And, perhaps the most important thing of all, is to keep things civil. He believed democracy with a small d means people know each other and they will be dealing with each other repeatedly, and they need to be civil.”

Buchanan was born in Port Washington, New York, back when ‘a little boy could sail on the harbor,’ before setting off for Dartmouth College, where he majored in government. After a brief stint in the U.S. Army, he attended Harvard Law School, and started his career in New York.

“He didn’t like New York,” Bob Buchanan said. “He liked Boston and New England.”

Buchanan met Jane on a blind date when he was an editor of the Dartmouth College student newspaper and she was a sophomore at Wellesley College. According to family lore, during their first date, they talked about the importance of the First Amendment and freedom of the press.

The family moved to Weston for the schools and stayed for the trees, Bob said.

“He liked the town’s natural environment. He liked running at the reservoir, cross-country skiing at the town forest and bicycling, sometimes with his dog.”

On weekends for many years, the Buchanans would head up to Lyme, New Hampshire to a log cabin they built by hand in 1976, where, without electricity or telephone, they would enjoy their books in the woods.

“My mother studied for her Ph.D. there,” Bob said. “It was also a break from the pressure of a high-paced legal practice.” In their later years, the couple traveled at least yearly, visiting China, Japan, Vietnam and Cambodia. When Steve served in Africa for the Peace Corps, they visited him there.

A dedicated news reader, Buchanan consumed the New York Times every day from the 1950s onward, and gifted subscriptions to each child “willing to receive it,” his son said.

Buchanan kept up his legal career until the realities of age caught up with him. He became a mentor to younger lawyers, advising those learning to handle difficult legal situations.

“He liked to be active, always in motion, always doing something,” Bob said. “A litigator is always trying to push things forward, and as he declined to where he couldn’t litigate any more, he was giving ethics advice, mostly inside his firm.”

In his time as moderator, Buchanan presided over dozens of annual and special town meetings.He ran unopposed for his entire tenure.

In addition to coordinating “everything” for meetings that draw hundreds of residents, Nolan said in the days when there were no clickers to cast votes, Buchanan had an amazing talent for counting. While there were typically four “counters” appointed to tally up votes for contested articles, Nolan said Buchanan would stand on the stage, point his finger, run it down each row and, “in his head, come up with the exact number.”

“He was amazing,” Nolan said. “I truly enjoyed being the volunteer town clerk while Bob was the moderator; it was an awful lot of fun.”

In a 2010 article from the MetroWest Daily News announcing his retirement as moderator, Buchanan said he had decided to “quit while he was ahead,” acknowledging that increasing hearing problems had made the job more challenging.

Bob said, “A moderator commands the room better when the moderator is a strong person with a strong will and a strong voice and when you are a strong person visibly being fair and impartial, that carries a lot.”

Chris Larabee contributed to this report.