After Recreation Director Danielle Strauss announced that she will be retiring after 20 years in the role, she had a moment to reflect on the decades spent creating a sense of community in Swampscott.
For Strauss, she isn’t just the Recreational Director in town — in fact, she’s the very first Recreation Director for the town, who took on the responsibility of fostering community outreach programs and events that would unite each corner of the town.
She’ll be officially stepping away from her duties as Recreation Director on July 10 — though Strauss has agreed to stay on part-time, in order to help with the transition of leadership.
Strauss spoke at length about her decision to retire, where she talked passionately about the importance of creating a sense of community for residents.
“I had been living in Swampscott for a while, had three young children, and the town administrator at the time had posted a position of recreation director,” she explained. “I was volunteering my time at the Clark School, doing after-school enrichment programs for the kids… And at the same time, I felt like Swampscott wasn’t offering residents anything.”
Strauss said she felt like there was a void in town. Where others saw a hole in the community, she saw potential to make something out of nothing.
“Somebody asked me to apply for the position, someone who knew me from Clark School, and she asked me to apply for the job because she thought I’d be a good fit, so I applied… and I just had a whole head-full of ideas,” Strauss said.
After interviewing with several individuals involved in town leadership — one of them being former Gov. Charlie Baker, who was on the Select Board at the time — and when she started, she set out creating new programs one idea at a time, Strauss said.
“There were no events in town… There was the Strawberry Festival, but that’s what it was, a parade and the football team selling strawberries,” Strauss said. “So, I built upon that, which then became a concert, and at one point had a beer garden. We just created something bigger, and from there each year, did something else.”
She noted that people in town expressed concerns about Swampscott feeling more like a “commuter town” without any bedrock of community engagement. In order to foster that sense of community, Strauss reiterated that the town needs events held at community spaces like the lawn outside town hall.
“I created concerts every week, now we have movie nights every week, and the Strawberry Festival and Harbor Festival, which I collaborate with the Yacht Club,” she said. “I would collaborate with others to get more volunteers and more things happening.”
Strauss listed Swamptoberfest as one of those events — which was born as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic with people wanting to get back outside. “A lot of it is just about creating community,” she said. “Like the farmer’s market which creates community. We started at the high school and brought it down to the town hall lawn. People came from every area, and it was amazing to see.”
She continued, “Now we have a robust farmer’s market, robust events — all you have to do is look at our website and see all the events we’re offering people.”
Strauss credited the previous town administrator, Sean Fitzgerald, for always “pushing her to do more.”
She also credited Program Manager Jacqueline Camerlengo for being a critical element of help throughout Strauss’s time as recreation director.
Looking forward, Strauss believes the legacy that she will leave behind after retiring from the position is her dedication to creating as many community events as possible.
“The community events and the amount of programming we brought in for families, and the safety of the kids who do our programs,” she said. “When I started, we didn’t have adult supervisors running these programs; they had high school kids… I came in and brought adults in at each program, and we’re going to change our check-in system and how we do things. We’re just able to offer more programs now than we could back then.”
