DEERFIELD — After 10 years as superintendent and countless miles of driving up and down Deerfield’s roads, Highway Superintendent Kevin Scarborough is hanging up his keys.

The longtime highway boss, who joined the department in 2010 before assuming the top position in 2014, retired last week after a decade of plowing, cleaning culverts and responding to all manner of road emergencies.

“I hope the town has been happy with me; I’ve been very happy with the town,” said Scarborough, 62. “It’s time and there’s a lot of things both my wife and I want to do.”

While the town conducts a candidate search for Scarborough’s replacement, current Assistant Superintendent Chris Miller will serve as the interim department head. Select Board Chair Tim Hilchey said that Scarborough has been a valuable member of the town staff.

“Kevin’s can-do attitude and problem-solving abilities made him a tremendous asset for Deerfield, especially in the aftermath of the destructive rainstorms in July 2023,” Hilchey said. “He will be sorely missed and we wish him all the best.”

With an early background helping prepare the White Birch Campground for the season in Whately as a teen, followed by time in the Marine Corps. and experience working with the explosives industry, Scarborough had seen and learned a lot before joining Deerfield’s Highway Department in 2010.

“It’s been a pretty cool ride,” Scarborough said, adding that there was more learning to be done in a municipal role with procurement laws and other regulations that the private sector doesn’t have to worry about.

When he first began reflecting on his time with the Highway Department, Scarborough said nothing really stuck out to him as a major accomplishment besides the consistent work he and his team put in. “I’m pretty happy overall with what we’ve accomplished over the last 10 years.”

Soon enough, though, he pointed to last year’s efforts to respond to and repair the damage caused by three separate, severe rainstorms in July. As the town was battered by storm after storm, Scarborough, Police Chief and Emergency Management Director John Paciorek Jr., and others were out working 16-plus-hour days to help the town reopen its roads.

“That’s probably my proudest right now, because of everything that happened last year,” he said. “The rains we have had have not impacted those areas since we fixed them.”

While most people take to golf or some other leisurely activity in retirement, Scarborough said he’ll be taking on a louder-than-average retirement gig: air show special effects.

Scarborough, with his background in explosives, works with Tora Tora Tora Airshows, a national company dedicated to sharing U.S. history alongside its fiery entertainment. As a member of the Tora Bomb Squad, Scarborough and his wife helped secure the Guinness World Record for the biggest wall of fire with a blaze spanning 16,046 square feet in 2017 at an air show in Yuma, Arizona.

“Where else can you go and be able to make as much noise as you possibly can, as much fire as you possibly can, as much violence as you can and not go to jail?” he joked, noting he is still an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) instructor with Baystate Roads, which is an offshoot of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.