NORTHAMPTON — From picket lines to City Council showdowns, Paul D. Bixby was a fiery politico who won’t be forgotten.
Local officials past and present remembered Bixby, 75, who died of a heart attack on Monday, as the voice of the opposition. Bixby spent 20 years serving the city as a School Committee member, city councilor and City Council president. He was a fearless advocate for his constituents, for blue-collar workers and for Northampton natives.
Though he lived his life fighting for the Democratic Party, many called him “conservative” in his approach to city politics in the ‘80s and ‘90s, a time in which the city’s culture was shifting from “Hamp” to “Noho.”
Former Mayor Mary Ford said she and Bixby were friends and colleagues in the Democratic Party before she won her first bid as mayor in 1991. But as soon as she won the top job, there was a natural shift — Bixby, ever the voice for those with less power, rose to be the opposition leader.
“I valued him for having been involved for many years and for really, truly caring about the city,” she said Wednesday. “It’s natural that people who find themselves on the outs of City Hall look for somebody to speak out and be their champion. And that’s what Paul did.”
Ford took power at a tipping point in the city, a time of progressive evolution. When she ran for a second term in 1993, Bixby ran against her. He was council president at the time, and didn’t lose by much.
“Sometimes we would push each other’s buttons,” she said.
Ford recalled an incident in which she called a recess from a City Council meeting after she and Bixby became locked in a heated exchange.
“I still wanted to argue and so I followed him all the way to the door of the men’s restroom. That became sort of legendary — it was not my proudest moment,” the former mayor said, laughing.
That moment was also a memorable one for current City Councilor Marianne LaBarge, who recalls sitting in the audience that night.
“That is one episode I will never forget,” she said. “You don’t see stuff like that anymore.”
There was something about Bixby’s persistence, about the way he passionately argued his position that would get under Ford’s skin.
“We would sometimes almost totally come to blows,” Ford said. “He could sometimes get a little fiery holding a certain position. That was one of his qualities. In general it’s a quality that I think our community, and our whole nation, need.”
Bixby first ran for public office in 1974, when he won a seat as a Ward 5 School Committee member. He later ran for city councilor at-large and served as council president, beginning in 1980. His campaign motto: “Your concerns are my concerns.” It’s a line he always lived up to, fellow politicians said.
He never fell prey to the will of the group, but voted with his constituents and his gut.
“He voted very honestly and did the right thing,” said Michael Ahearn, a fellow so-called opposition leader who served on the council. “He was a very good councilor — he took care of the whole city.”
It still sticks in former mayor David Musante’s craw that Bixby voted against a walkway Musante wanted to install by the senior center on Conz Street. Still, he remembers Bixby as someone with whom there was always mutual respect and fondness.
“We didn’t always agree on issues, but we got along pretty good,” Musante said. “He was a good guy — always cheerful and willing to talk about any issue.”
Forbes Library trustee Russ Carrier, who served with Bixby on the School Committee, said Bixby “never forgot where he came from and always fought for the working people of Northampton.”
“When he told you something, you knew where he stood,” Carrier said. “He was a person who really believed firmly in the things that he stood for.”
Senate President Stan Rosenberg remembers Bixby’s work.
“Paul was a totally down-to-earth public servant, both at work and in his role on the Northampton City Council. He was very effective,” Rosenberg said. “He will be missed.”
Bixby was born April 19, 1942, in Northampton and was a longtime resident of Riverside Drive. He was an electrician by trade and worked for the University of Massachusetts as such for 30 years.
His son, Paul Bixby, says his father was an ardent supporter of the police and fire departments. He remembers him standing at the picket line with them, as well as the city’s teachers, to fight against staffing cuts.
“He really was a blue-collar kind of guy that supported the guys at the front line,” he said.
He said his father always struggled to temper his fiery core.
“Me and my mom, we would watch the meetings on TV,” his son said. “Sometimes we would be horrified — he’d be yelling at the mayor,” he recalled Wednesday. “He’d get so riled up, he would take it very personally.”
Paul Bixby said that, despite his full-time job and his passion for city government, his father always made it to all of his games and even found time to coach his children’s teams.
“He was there for the times that were important,” he said.
In recent months, the younger Bixby said, his father succumbed to dementia and would often slip into thinking he was arguing in City Council chambers. He said he suspects his father would have gone further in his political endeavors, given the opportunity.
Instead, after his unsuccessful bid for mayor in 1993, Bixby retired from city government and learned to fly. After decades of pushing it off, he got his pilot’s license.
Whatever he was doing, he said, his father had a powerful personality.
“He was very charismatic. He could talk to a crowd and say, ‘I want you to take your shoes off and walk around the block.’ And a good chunk of them would do it just because he asked,” he said, adding that his father always worked to use that power for good. “He wanted to make sure people were heard.”
Amanda Drane can be contacted at adrane@gazettenet.com.