Steve Eldridge draws on his diverse experience as a Rumford leader.
RUMFORD – Steve Eldridge has deep roots in New England. He loves history and digging around in his genealogy. He loves architecture and anything old. And he’s passionate about capturing people on film.
Eldridge, 52, Rumford’s town manager since January, is a man of many talents, skills and visions.
“I grew up in a family with a long history in New England,” said the Gorham native who graduated from a small Connecticut high school. “I spent summers with my grandparents working on genealogical research.”
“I have a real passion for finding out who we are,” he said.
His educational and career pursuits have taken him from Maine to Massachusetts, Connecticut, Manhattan and back to Maine again.
In 1989, after spending years working in photography studios in Massachusetts and New York, including a stint as an owner of one of those studios, and working in the food industry, he and his wife, Ellen, decided to return to Maine with their three small children.
“We wanted a quieter life. Connecticut had changed,” he said of the increasing population and disappearance of dairy farms and apple orchards.
He moved to Monmouth, where he still lives.
“Living in a small town and having children, I got involved in the town’s recreation program, then was asked to serve on the budget committee,” he said.
Then, while still working in the food industry, he decided to look into an advanced degree. Although his first inclination was a master’s in business, then-Monmouth Town Manager Steve Dyer suggested Eldridge might prefer public administration.
Land use matters
“With my background in environmental biology, I became passionate about land use,” he said of one of the first master’s level classes he took through the University of Maine.
With his experience as a business owner, his work in marketing through his photography background, his work for big business and the perspectives gained from having worked in Boston and New York, public administration seemed like the right field.
“It’s all been very helpful to have a diverse background,” he said.
His first town manager position was in the small town of Etna in eastern Maine. He went to Greene next for several years before coming to Rumford.
Since arriving here, he’s been a ball-of-fire, working toward revitalizing the town through economics, rehabilitation of some architecturally significant buildings and trying to bring art and cultural projects to the area.
Although he doesn’t play a musical instrument – he harbors a desire to take piano or guitar lessons – he has a passion for music. His mother and many members of his family are musically inclined. He even took lessons for a while as a child. He likes most music, from classical and jazz to the blues. His son, Christopher, is a musician.
Photography provides him with a chance to study people. He and his daughter, Erin, who is majoring in architecture at the University of Maine at Augusta, have spent many hours walking the streets of Boston or some other city taking pictures of people.
A fly fishing fan
And whenever he wants to get away for a while, fly fishing somewhere in the Sebago region is perfect.
“Catching fish is secondary. It’s the motion of the the fly rod, the peacefulness of the surroundings,” he said.
An avid reader of history and practically everything else, he admires former President Jimmy Carter for his humanity and George Washington because he was able to rise above politics.
But most of all, he admires his father, Glenn.
“He is one of the hardest workers I’ve ever known,” said Eldridge, who admits to being a workaholic himself.
Eldridge graduated from Eastern State University in Connecticut with a degree in environmental biology and chemistry, then from the University of Maine. He and his wife, an occupational therapist, are the parents of three children. The eldest, Donald, died in 1995.
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