Richard H. Vara, 76, a longtime resident of Dover who authored two books on local history, died Sunday May 15th at the Tippett Home in Needham, three years after being diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma. Mr. Vara was born on Central Avenue in East Needham and attended Needham Public schools. He played football at Needham High School, from which he graduated in 1946. Days after graduating from University of Massachusetts, he married high school sweetheart Anne Pinkham in 1951. During the Korean War, Mr. Vara served in the U.S. Air Force in Japan as an air photo interpreter. After the war, finding land in Needham to be prohibitively expensive, he and his wife settled in Dover in 1956. He worked as a construction engineer and later earned an architecture degree from the Boston Architectural Center. His company, R.H. Vara and Associates, specialized in the design of commercial buildings. An active participant in town affairs, he served on the Dover Historical Commission, the Long Range Planning Board, and other organizations. He produced several documentary programs for DCTV, the local public access channel.
In the early 1970’s, Mr. Vara conducted a series of recorded interviews with older residents of Dover, which became the nucleus of “Dover Days Gone By” published in 1976. He spent over a decade writing and researching a second book, “The Dover Union Iron Mill, a carefully documented history of an Innovative but ultimately unsuccessful 19th century industrial site. Until a few months before his death, he continued to gather material for an unfinished third book on history of a series of water-power mills at Charles River Village , on the Dover- Needham town line. While in his early fifties, he bought a ten speed bicycle. After riding near home for several years, he embarked on a cross- country bike trip in the summer of 1985, riding from Seaside, Oregon to Cape Elizabeth, Maine accompanied for much of the way by his wife, Anne. In subsequent years, he went on many other long tours, including two rides from Mexico to Canada with Anne, and solo excursions from the Mediterranean coast of France to the Arctic Circle in Finland and from Warsaw to Istanbul. When riding alone through rural areas of Eastern Europe, his son Greg recalled, he learned to express himself with gestures and a few key words in local language , including “Bread”, “Drinking Water” and “Tent site”. Over the course of two decades, his family estimates, he pedaled perhaps 60,000 miles. “He had the most wonderful legs”, Anne said.
Besides his wife, Mr. Vara leaves a sister, Evelyn Wood of Nassau, New York and five children; Suzanne of Portland Oregon, Jon and his wife Victoria of Cabot ,Vermont, Douglas of Morrison, Colorado, Gregory and his wife Susan of Millis, and Stephen of Los Angeles, California. He also leaves his grandchildren Cedric, Britanny, Rosalind, Ethan, and Jackson.
A graveside service will be held at the Highland Cemetery in Dover on Monday May 23rd at 10: 30 AM followed by a Memorial Service at the Dover Church 17 Springdale Ave in Dover at 11:00 AM. Relatives and friends are kindly invited. In lieu of flowers memorials in Richard’s memory may be made to the Stanly Tippet House, 920 South St. Needham MA 02492. Arrangements by the Eaton Funeral Home in Needham.