Stotler’s Name On Every Town Ballot For Past 26 Years

By Colleen Gundlach

Retirement doesn’t come easy to Jim Stotler. When his career at the Connecticut Department of Transportation ended in 1997, Stotler embraced a new career and more volunteer work. There is no sign that things will be any different now that he is stepping down as a longtime member of Norfolk’s Board of Selectmen.

Earlier this year Stotler announced that he would not seek re-election to the selectman’s seat he has held for the past 14 years. His wife, Sandy, retired as a Botelle School teacher five years ago, and the couple is eager to do some traveling. However, since Stotler is still a member of the City Meadow Committee and holds key posts at the Immaculate Conception Church, where he is also a Eucharistic minister, it appears that he may not be retiring from service to the people of Norfolk. “I lived in this town for most of my life, and have worked hard for it,” he says. “There is still a lot to be done here.”

Stotler grew up on a dairy farm on Schoolhouse Road in South Norfolk. The land surrounding the home in which he was raised is now forest and not recognizable as a former farm, but it once sustained 10 cows and 4H-Club member Jim Stotler. Many years later, Stotler built his home on the farmland and raised his family there. Now there is one more home on the old family homestead, that of Stotler’s daughter Jill, her husband Ken Hall and their twin daughters, Morgan and Madison. Stotler also has two sons, both teachers, living outside of Norfolk, and a grandson, James III.

Having earned a degree in ornamental horticulture and landscape design and served as a Navy Seabee in Vietnam, Stotler married, settled back in Norfolk and took a job with the Department of Transportation in highway design and maintenance. He was responsible for highway vegetation matters statewide, removing, spraying and planting, receiving an award from the National Roadside Vegetation Management Association in 1996.

Retirement from this career in 1997 didn’t mean a rocking chair for Stotler. He went right to work for Goshen Tractor and then Goff Machinery as a mechanic and salesman. During the 11 years of his second career, he continued to give back to his town.

Stotler had wanted to run for public office in Norfolk for many years, but the Hatch Act barred state employees with federally funded jobs from election to public office. So he was appointed to a vacancy on the Inlands/Wetlands Commission in 1974 and served for the next 12 years, nine of them as chairman. In 1983 he was also appointed to fill a vacancy on the Board of Education and served nine years, five of them as chair. When his employment was no longer funded by the federal government, he was finally able to run on a town ballot in 1986 and has appeared on the ballot in each municipal election since.

He has also served as chairman of the Botelle School Renovation Committee, the school Roof Committee and the Ambulance/Firehouse Feasibility Study Committee. In addition, he was a justice of the peace for 15 years, an emergency medical technician with the Norfolk Ambulance for four years, and coached basketball and baseball for six years each.

In his many years of public service, Stotler says the biggest issue he has faced was the Botelle School renovation. “We lost Center School many years ago because we didn’t maintain it,” he says of his elementary school alma mater. “We needed to renovate Botelle so that the same thing didn’t happen. Without a strong school building and a great educational system, nothing will change in Norfolk because no young people will move to town and we will stagnate.”

Stotler has seen many changes in Norfolk, mostly brought on, he feels, by increased mobility. “We had four gas stations, three grocery stores, two barbers and one dentist in town since I have lived here.” He even recalls a First National Store in the now defunct Brick Block. “I can’t see how our town can support such businesses anymore,” he says. “We simply don’t have the volume.”

He cites the need to entice younger people back to town as one way to grow the town. “Even if we don’t have employment in town, Norfolk is still the ideal place to live. I drove an hour and a half to work in Hartford every morning and an hour and a half back at night, in all kinds of weather, including snowstorms,” he says. “It was worth every minute to be able to live in and raise my family in Norfolk.”