18 July, 2023
Out on the Town is HCAM's limited series produced by HCAM Journalist Intern Sidhi Dhanda.
View this Out on the Town episode here.
Eric Carty is a fixture in Hopkinton. He grew up on Lake Maspenock, has been working for the DPW for 39 years, and is known in town for his insights on weather trends.
What Carty is not as well known for is his passion for hockey. He learned to skate on Lake Maspenock, and growing up, his dream was to become a professional hockey player.
“I was good, but good enough to do that,” Carty said.
Carty was looking for a part-time job during college, and his neighbor, the town clerk at the time, helped him get a job at the DPW. After graduating in the 80s with a business degree around the time of the stock market crash, Carty decided to stay
there for a little longer and was hired full-time. Because he liked the work environment so much, Carty stayed and worked his way up to becoming Hopkinton’s Water Sewer Manager.
“We have got a great bunch of people that work here, and it makes it fun coming in every day,” Carty said. “It’s a great work family that we have here.”
His non-work family includes his wife, two children, and close family friends that live in Carty’s neighborhood. Carty still lives on the same piece of land that he grew up on, surrounded by some of the same neighboring families he grew up with. Carty remembers that he and his neighbors would spend all their time in the water in the woods near the lake.
“Like the the old saying goes, we were outside as soon as the sun came up, and our mothers were looking for us as soon as it got dark to come back in,” Carty said. Among Carty’s many roles is weather spotter. Growing up, his best friend’s father taught weather at Natick School. Watching the weather on the news one day, his friend’s father realized their reporting differed from what was happening. He called up the channel to let them know, and they asked him if he could start calling regularly to let them know what was happening in Hopkinton.
He encouraged Carty to start sending in weather information too. Carty was hesitant at first but decided to as he was collecting the information already for his job.
Another part of Carty’s job is advocating for water conservation, and he is hoping to do that more while helping bees. Carty explained that there has been a decline in bee populations in recent years in part due to large lawns taking away wildflowers bees need.
Carty hopes that by encouraging residents to maintain smaller lawns and designate areas for wildflower growth, bees can be helped, and water conservation as there will be less lawn to water.
Even though Carty has been in Hopkinton his entire life, from his hockey aspirations to weather to bees, there are still some less well-known facts about him, including his connection to Hollywood. Through his sister, who is interested in DNA and ancestry, Carty learned his family is related to Marilyn Monroe and Mary Chilton, who is thought to be the first woman to step off of the Mayflower.
