Profiles in Belmont: Robert McLaughlin, Sr.

By Elissa Ely

There is a temperament best suited for success in law, especially in the area of litigation. There is a temperament best suited for success in life, especially in the areas of personability and contentment. It seems unlikely that the two temperaments could coexist serenely in one character.

Please meet Bob McLaughlin: indispensable town exemplar, and proof of the possible. He is chair, co-chair, or member of vital Belmont committees almost too numerous to count; senior and managing Boston law firm partner; white-haired scuba diver, water-and-downhill skier; sailor and seven-continent traveler (with no wish to see a penguin again); pleased and proud husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather.

“I was born on third base, but I know I didn’t hit the triple,” he says. In fact, Bob was born 87 years ago in Mount Auburn Hospital and raised on School Street. The family lived a few blocks in one direction from what is now the Grove Street Playground, and a few blocks in the other from what has become the Payson Park Reservoir.

When he was growing up in Belmont, milk arrived by horse-drawn wagon. The gas stove in the kitchen took quarters to cook a meal. Bob’s father, one of nine, never went to college, but he did go to law school at night while working days in a bakery. Eventually, he cofounded a family law firm, rose to become a Superior Court judge, and afterward joined the alternative family firm Bob had formed. Not all of us might welcome our parent as our colleague, but his son did. “You pick your friends, but God picks your relatives,” Bob says.

Law was destiny. Three out of four of Bob’s children are lawyers now. “I’m a competitive person,” he explains, “so trial law was a natural profession. When I started, it was also a noble profession. You extended courtesy to brother counselors. The goal was to make a trial system as accurate and fair as possible. It was fun.”

Times change: lawyer jokes are a staple of modern culture, punchlines are bad, paperwork is endless, relationships and trust are frayed. Still, he continues to practice. “My wife married me for better or worse,” he says, “but not for lunch.” (As well as a great facility with the law, he has a great facility with chestnuts that are old but still true.)

As fate happens, he married his wife—before lunch—on the day the Berlin Wall was erected, and they moved promptly to France when his position as a personnel officer in the National Guard was activated. The apartment had no central heat, and a coal stove in constant need of restocking. This might have caused discomfort for some. “It was marvelous,” he remembers, “a year-long honeymoon.”

Back in the states, the McLaughlins couldn’t afford to live in Belmont—and, let the record show, this was the Belmont of 63 years ago!—so they moved to Arlington while Bob finished law school. In 1976, drawn back, they bought their house on Belmont Hill, and his decades of town involvement began.

Here follows an imperfect attempt, after a deep breath, to list the Belmont committees Bob has served on. Membership on the Permanent Building Committee seeded many, though not all, of them: the Library Building Committee, High School Building Committee, Capital Projects Oversight Committee, Electrical Substation Site Committee, Energy Committee, Warrant Committee, Town Finance Committee. “As the lawyer, I’m kind of the point person,” he explains.

It requires persuasiveness, problem-solving, and, when called for, litigation. Bob litigated to get lights and artificial turf while he was on the Harris Field Renovation Committee; he litigated against a contractor’s shoddiness while he was on the Fire Stations Building Committee. “I know the process of bidding and when extras are out of line,” he says. It would be unwise to meet this man for the first time when he’s holding a deposition in his hand.

And yet, somehow there has still been enough time for a long and fervid affair with the ocean. The sea caught him and taught him, beginning in childhood. Bob was about seven when his parents bought an 8-foot rowboat. As a teenager, he was driving a 16-foot outboard powerboat. In his early 30s, he bought his first sailboat: a used 28-footer he named Seaquester, in punning tribute to both his profession and his passion. Before electronic guidance became common, he navigated celestially. Horses were no longer leading milk wagons, but stars were still leading sailors.

Summer trips in Seaquester were long; past Bar Harbor to the north, below New York to the south. In 1986, when President Reagan rededicated the Statue of Liberty, Bob anchored in New York Harbor for the event (his wife drove down instead).

He has raced to Bermuda four times, most recently with family members crewing. They finished middle of the pack, but took home the “Family Trophy.”

Here follows an imperfect attempt, after a deep breath, to list the Belmont committees Bob has served on. Membership on the Permanent Building Committee seeded many, though not all, of them: the Library Building Committee, High School Building Committee, Capital Projects Oversight Committee, Electrical Substation Site Committee, Energy Committee, Warrant Committee, Town Finance Committee.

There was also the annual Memorial Day Figawi event between Hyannis and Nantucket, “a three-hour race and a three-day party.” Proceeds still go to a variety of causes, including veterans, first responders, and youth organizations.

The current Seaquester, a third-generation iteration, is “full of comfort things”: a microwave, a stereo system. Household goods one never thinks of as heavy—what is a microwave compared to a hot water heater?—weigh down a boat. Lightness is required for speed, speed is required for racing, and as a result, comfort has scaled back competition. “99% of the time now,” Bob says, “I sail to the nearby harbor, have lunch, and sail back.” The multiday trips of summer are gone, though he still takes grandchildren out overnight. Boating, like law, runs in the McLaughlin blood.

How does one person create such prosperity in his professional and personal lives, and still manage to donate such quantities of time to the civic welfare and life of his town? Bob will tell you his wife has been pondering the same question for years. “You know the old saying,” he says cheerfully (and we do): “If you want to get something done, give it to someone who’s overworked.”

Elissa Ely is a community psychiatrist.