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= Richard D. Holmes =

Richard “Rick” Dale Holmes (born 6 September 1945) of Derry, New Hampshire, is a public historian and author best known for his long-running column in the Derry News and his local histories of several Rockingham County, New Hampshire, towns.

Holmes grew up in Sandown, New Hampshire, and graduated from Sanborn Seminary in Kingston, New Hampshire, in 1963. After graduating from Keene State College in 1968 with a BA in education, he served in the Medical Corps of the U.S. Army. From 1969 to 1971, he was a medical aidman in the Headquarters Company of the 20th Engineer Brigade’s 35th Engineer Battalion, near Binh Thuy Air Base, in the Mekong Delta of the Republic of Vietnam, where he was promoted to Army Specialist 4.

After leaving the service, he moved to Derry, New Hampshire, with his new wife, the former Carol Ann Martineau of Manchester, New Hampshire. Holmes was a social studies teacher and department chair at Pelham Memorial School in Pelham, New Hampshire, for over thirty years, retiring in 2000. He earned an MA in history from Rivier College in 1980.

Holmes became an active volunteer with the Derry Historical Society and was instrumental in reestablishing the Derry Museum of History, originally opened in the American Revolution Bicentennial year of 1976, in the Benjamin Adams Memorial Building in 2004. He has served as a member or chairman of the Derry Heritage Commission since 1985, and was installed in the new position of official Town Historian in 2012, in which he served until his retirement in 2017. He was awarded a Certificate of Merit by the American Association for State and Local History in 2007 and was selected as a Paul Harris Fellow by Rotary International in 2014. In 2015, the New Hampshire Humanities Council recognized him as one of the forty citizens over the age of forty whose life work has contributed the most to the humanities in the state.

Since 2005, Holmes has served as a trustee of the Robert Frost Farm State Historic Site in Derry and a member of the New Hampshire Department of Transportation’s Robert Frost / Old Stagecoach Scenic Byway Committee. His book manuscript on Frost’s Derry years, from 1900 to 1911, is being edited for publication.

Works
A View from Meetinghouse Hill: A History of Sandown, New Hampshire Peter E. Randall ASIN B0006ESJ3K (1988)

William F. Dugan, coauthor, Derry (Images of America) Arcadia ISBN 0-7385-8836-9 (1995)

Chester Revisited: A History in Honor of the Town’s 275th Anniversary Peter E. Randall ASIN B0006R2852 (1998)

William F. Dugan, coauthor, Derry Revisited (Images of America) Arcadia ISBN 0-7385-3763-2 (2005)

Nutfield Rambles: Stories from the History of Derry, Londonderry, and Windham, New Hampshire Peter E. Randall ISBN 1-9318-0764-7 (2007)

The Road to Derry: A Brief History History Press ISBN 1-5962-9650-X (2009)