Rita Mullin Dedicates 50 Years to North Reading

If you ask Rita Mullin, the 2009 North Reading Citizen of the Year, why there is a park named after her, she’ll tell you “it just happened that way.” And if you continue to talk with her, you may find that she says that about many of her contributions.

North Reading resident since 1954, Rita Mullin has been civically active since she attended . As an athlete she played various sports and attended clubs; she was involved enough for town officials and teachers to ask her to be on the Youth Services Committee. That set the path for a life-long commitment to North Reading’s youth and its efforts to preserve open spaces for recreation.

Mullin moved to town when she was five. Her father Walter worked on the railroad, while her mother Lena stayed at home. She had five siblings --three brothers and two sisters -- and today she is raising her two sons here with her partner, Lisa Bernstein. The boys, Zachary and Jacob, now attend her alma mater, North Reading High School, where her legacy of volunteerism began.

“In high school we were fortunate enough to have teachers in those days -- they knew our names, they knew our families names, our brothers and sisters,” she said in a recent interview.

Mullin helped to establish a youth center that was housed in the . It had a ping-pong table, a pool table and a room for the Youth Services Committee. It was her first experience in civic involvement which eventually led to her experience coaching softball. Her coaching days solidified her lifelong commitment.

In 1973, she joined North Reading’s women’s softball league and a friend asked her to coach the girl's team.

“Of course, because I was kind of an athlete at the time,” she laughed, “I coached and I realized that we didn’t have really any equipment.”

According to Mullin, the softball team had one set of balls and equipment to be passed around between eight teams.

Mullin said, “If you were going to have a practice, you had to go pick up the equipment at somebody’s house and return it.”

Based on the model her father set when he drummed up sponsorship for a Little League Baseball team, she visited various businesses one weekend and drummed up eight sponsors who each paid $150; this enabled the Recreation Department to buy equipment for every team. Eventually the team grew from a casual recreational activity to an official league team.

“That was probably the beginning of doing anything where you felt like, oh, if you step up you can make a difference,” she said.

Since then Mullin’s passion for youth, recreation and open space shaped her service. She has served on the Land Utilization Committee, which established, developed and built . Her dedication to the Youth Services Committee continues, as she emphasizes the importance of countering the influence that drug use can play in a community.

“Back 50 years before, when we were kids, I saw how important it was for us to have a place to hang around that was – you know – safe and something to do,” she said.

Still, when asked why the Rita J. Mullin Recreational Park, was named for her, she shrugs it off.

At the time, she said, Selectman Ernie Ducette proposed the idea.

“He thought I did a lot of volunteering. It’s funny, it was the week that my children were being born. I was in the hospital and my mom had called and she said ‘Oh, I just got the Transcript, I see they are going to name a field after you.' And I thought she was just confused. She was probably in her eighties then, still very spry, but I still thought she was just confused," she said. "I was always opposed… you know… volunteers volunteer because they want to and I didn’t think a field should be named after me. There are a lot of volunteers in town.”

She found out for certain when the issue came up for approval on the Town Meeting Warrant.

Despite Mullin’s opposition to North Reading’s nod to her service, her goals remain the same as they did 50 years ago, when her civic contributions began.

“My dream – and then I think I can retire and hang up my sneakers, so to speak -- would be to build a community center in town, ” she said. 

With her final terrain to offer being indoors, Mullin envisions a sizeable center that would bring together the young and the old. It would include things like basketball courts, an indoor track and other space for youth activities. She hopes to provide seniors a facility where they can walk indoors during inclement weather, as well as do other activities, like watch movies in an audio-visual room.

“It’s kind of like Ipswich River Park,” she said. “When we first built it, our motto was ‘Something for everyone.’ ”