Aubrey D. Lapolice Collection

Background on Aubrey D. Lapolice

A long-time maintenance supervisor at the Belchertown State School, Aubrey Daniel Lapolice, was the only son of four children of a working-class family from Chicopee Falls, Mass. Born on April 22, 1893, Aubrey was just ten when his father, Joseph, a section hand on the railroad, and mother Anna relocated to Belchertown, and in 1910, the census records that they had added four young girls -- "state charges" -- to their household.

After service in the 76th Division during the First World War, Lapolice returned home and within a fairly short time, secured a position in maintenance at the Belchtertown State School. The School had been authorized in 1915 as the Commonwealth's third institution, after Fernald and Wrentham, for the care of "feeble-minded children," and the first in western Massachusetts. At the time Lapolice began, the school was overseen by Wrentham, operating as a farm colony while construction of the dormitory and administrative and support buildings was under way. The school officially opened on November 15, 1922, with the arrival of a transfer of 65 boys from the Fernald School and, two weeks later, an additional 128 boys from both Fernald and Wrentham.

As superintendent of maintenance, Lapolice was involved in construction projects and maintenance around the campus of nearly 850 acres and a physical plant of nearly one hundred buildings and structures as of the date of his retirement in 1961, including farm buildings, a power plant, support buildings, and 7,846 linear feet of concrete tunnels.

Lapolice married Catherine Leary in 1918 (1888-1955), raising a daughter Kathleen Marie (later McGrath), who was born in 1924. At the age of 87, Aubrey Lapolice died in Belchertown on Feb. 22, 1981.