Bob Pulito: Forty Years of Craft, Creativity, and Connection

By Dawn Gale '81, Director of Advancement & Alumni Relations

For four decades, Bob Pulito has guided generations of Fryeburg Academy students—teaching not just skills with tools and materials, but lessons in creativity, confidence, and purpose that extend far beyond the classroom.

Bob’s path to Fryeburg began in Connecticut, where he grew up with an early appreciation for working with his hands.

That interest stayed with him, even as his career initially took a different direction. From 1982 to 1984, he served as Director of Parks and Recreation in Wells, Maine. It was meaningful work, but something was missing. The idea of teaching—particularly industrial arts—was always in the back of his mind.

Bob enrolled at the University of Southern Maine in a program designed for those who wanted to teach industrial arts. Though typically a four-year track, Bob completed it in just two
years. “I really wanted to teach,” he has said, and that passion set the course for everything that followed.

While at USM, a chance encounter helped connect the dots. Bob ran into Gregg Sanborn ’84, who mentioned he was from Fryeburg. That conversation, along with connections to Harold Sanborn and Mark Strange—whom Bob had met in an occupational safety class—would prove pivotal. When a position opened at Fryeburg Academy in 1986, the timing felt right. After visiting the campus and meeting Headmaster Harry True, Bob was offered the job.

“It just fell into place,” he recalls.

Over the years, Bob became an essential part of the Academy’s industrial technology program. For 30 years, Bob worked alongside Mark Strange, carrying forward a program that remained rooted in its core philosophy: hands-on, experiential learning. “We are a traditional hands-on program,” Bob says with pride.

That tradition has included a wide range of disciplines— wood technology, metal technology, plastics, drafting, and studies in power and energy. While Bob always had a particular
love for teaching wood technology, he grew equally attached to metalwork over time,

In an era when some schools moved away from technical education, Bob saw the enduring—and growing—importance of the trades. “There's such a need,” he notes. “Schools that eliminate these programs often realize that and end up bringing them back.”

What made Bob's program especially meaningful was not just what students learned, but how they learned it. His classroom became a place where students of all abilities and interests could find a sense of belonging. Some went on to college, others directly into trades, and some simply gained confidence while figuring out their next steps.

“They find a safe, welcoming environment here,” Bob says. “And they learn skills they'll carry with them for life.”

That environment also gave students the freedom to create. Bob often described himself not as an expert guiding them to a single outcome, but as someone helping to “plant a seed”—an idea or experience that might spark a future passion or career.

Over the years, those “seeds” grew into remarkable projects. Students crafted cedar-strip canoes—18 in total—along with guitars, coffee tables, gun cabinets, footstools, and even intricate grandmother clocks, including a Molly Pitcher design. They built more than a dozen 101⁄2-foot skiffs, maple sugaring evaporators, and lawn and garden dump carts.

Their work extended beyond the classroom as well. Students made wood duck nesting boxes for Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, as well as bluebird houses that can be found around campus. Other projects, including furniture in the Academy’s main building and its international sign, built a tradition of students taking pride in contributing to their school community.
One of his final classroom projects is a set of walnut-and-steel benches for the dining hall entryway, created in memory of his friend and longtime colleague, Alan Whitaker '77.

“When students build something for the school, they really take ownership of it," Bob says. “That’s been one of the most rewarding parts.”