Public Officers of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1967–1968 (the “Bird book”)

Creator: Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Date: 1967
Type: book
Repository: State Library of Massachusetts, digital collections (handle 2452/43395)
Locator: p. 274, House entry and portrait for Raymond F. Rourke
Access: Public; PDF downloaded and read 12 Oct 2026. Open online
Rights: Commonwealth of Massachusetts government publication; reproduced as a state government work. No photographer credited.

Statements this record supports

C-059 — Among the last residents of the Battles Home in 2004 were Raymond F. Rourke (1917–2004) — Lowell firefighter, state representative elected 1956 and serving 1957–75, deputy secretary of the state Department of Transportation 1975–85, city councillor and the city's mayor 1978–79 — and his wife Rita (LaCoss) Rourke, married 1939. The Lowell Sun of 2011 reported 'former Lowell Mayor Raymond Rourke and his wife, Rita' among the residents relocated when the home closed; his obituary (Lowell Sun, 25 May 2004) says he died on 24 May 2004 at Willow Manor Nursing Home, Lowell, and carries a guest-book note from a former Battles Home employee who 'knew him and his wife'. The 1967–68 state register gives him at 36 Hudson St., 15th Middlesex District, 'fire fighter', Mass. House 1957–68.
C-065 — A portrait photograph of Raymond F. Rourke as a state representative appears in Public Officers of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1967–1968 ('Bird book'), p. 274, a Commonwealth publication digitised by the State Library of Massachusetts; it is reproduced on the site as a Massachusetts government work. Wikimedia Commons hosts a smaller copy under the same rationale.