Bob Boucher began working at Toll Gate shortly after the Trenton steel mill where he worked for 38 years closed down.
By John Tredrea
One afternoon a few years back, Toll Gate custodian Bob Boucher went into a classroom where students were working on drawings. An artist himself, he liked what he saw in the students’ work and said so.
"I said, ‘Nice drawings,’" Mr. Boucher recalled last Friday. "I guess there was something about the way I said it, because they asked me: ‘Do you draw, too?’ I said I did, and they asked me to bring some of my drawings in. So I did."
He’s been bringing them in ever since a lot of them. Copies of dozens of Mr. Boucher’s drawings of animals and outdoor scenes have been hanging in the school’s media center since the holidays. There are drawings of dogs, deer, wolves and nature scenes of various kinds.
"I’ve been drawing all my life," he said. "I can’t remember when I wasn’t doing it. I like being outdoors, hunting and fishing, and mainly draw pictures of animals and scenery."
Mr. Boucher began working at Toll Gate five years ago, shortly after the Trenton steel mill where he worked for 38 years closed down. "I worked for Delroid, which was the worm-gear division of Delaval, on First Avenue in Trenton off Whitehead Road," he said. "The Delaval company made steam turbines. They closed down the place in July of 1999. I started working here that November. I love my job here, because of the kids and staff. They’re wonderful."
Individual students regularly ask Mr. Boucher to do drawings for them, and he always complies. "I’m working on several of those now," he said. "One student asked me to do one of a lion, another of the Toll Gate building. Other students asked for one of a kangaroo and one of a monkey. One kid was funny. He said he wanted me to do a drawing of a nose. I said ‘A nose? That’s it? Just a nose?’ And the kid said, ‘Yep, please.’ So I’ll do him one of a nose. I’ll figure something out."
A talented and prolific artist, Mr. Boucher also has helped out in art classes and worked on several murals in the school, including a very large one in the downstairs hallway, and given students tips on how to draw.
"Just little things I picked up on my own over the years," he said. "For instance, there’s a tendency a lot of people have to start with a big circle when they want to draw the top of a tree. I tell the students to start with a scribble line and add more scribble lines, going for the shape and look of a tree as you do."
Pointing to one of his works, a highly detailed, attractive landscape scene on the media center wall, he said: "If you look at that a minute, you can see that whole thing is was done with short scribble lines. Just patience, that’s all it is."
Mr. Boucher and his wife, Pamela, have a 37-year-old married son. They live in Hamilton.
"Basically, everything I do in drawing I learned in school when I was a kid myself," he said.
"When I was a junior in high school in Millers Falls, Massachussetts, I was offered the chance to go to the Boston School of Art. But I turned it down. I didn’t think I had the time! But if I had gone to that school, everything would have been a lot of different. I wouldn’t have wound up working here for one thing."
You could see from the regretful look on Mr. Boucher’s face that he thought that would have been too bad. Clearly, a lot of other people at Toll Gate, of all ages, would feel the same way.

