Reuben Mahar made a career for himself in IT with skills he learned online and a can-do approach that informs his passion for broadband access today. If I see something broken, I get excited about trying to fix it, he said, from home maintenance to municipal government. If its expensive to have someone else do it, I try to learn to go do it myself. Ive done pretty OK. (Elizabeth Walztoni photo)
Though Reuben Mahar describes himself as a kid in an adult’s body, his interests take a generational view. A self-educated IT professional who credits his career to internet access, Mahar regularly participates in Waldoboro Select Board meetings and makes time for fun from science-fiction audiobooks to freeze-dried food experiments with his wife, Kim, and their three cats.
“There’s stuff I enjoy doing. Currently, those things seem like they could benefit some people,” he said. “If I didn’t enjoy it, I think I’d still do it, because now it’s become important. But that’s how I started a lot of things.”
Mahar grew up in Rockland and attended Rockland District High School, now Oceanside High School. Running lighting and sound for theater productions kept him in school; nothing else interested him until he bought his first computer as a sophomore, which he called a watershed moment.
“It was hard to keep my focus on anything … but once I found that, I hyperfocused on it,” he said. “I would go to the library, get on the internet, and just mainline all this stuff. That was when I learned if I was interested in something, I could pack information at a pretty rapid rate, and it never really stopped.”
After high school, Mahar “meandered,” including a two-week move to Florida, stints at restaurants, and a job at RadioShack, where he learned more about electronics.
While working overnights at Wal-Mart, Mahar talked his way into the electronics department, made a friend who needed a ride to the movies, and met that friend’s former girlfriend, Kim, there.
“I told myself, ‘Don’t date your friend’s ex-girlfriend.’ I failed spectacularly, which worked out great for me,” he said.
They married in 2005 and spent eight years living in an apartment at the Marshall Point Lighthouse in Port Clyde before moving to Waldoboro’s Manktown Road in 2012.
“If you can find someone smarter than you with skills you don’t have and you tell them that often, you’re going to do fine,” Mahar said. “And if they like the stuff you like, like sci-fi, that helps, or at least if they don’t openly hate it.”
After finishing an A+ certification in computer work, Mahar spent a year in IT at Down East Magazine and five as a private consultant before being hired by his current employer, MaineHealth.
“You can have an education, and education is great,” he said. “If you’ve been doing something for an amount of time, that’s just as good. I was able to demonstrate skill and go on to the next step.”
He started out fixing computers and is now an endpoint architect, leading a team choosing and validating technology used by the company. Mahar said he still loves the job and looks forward to getting up in the morning because he feels he is making a difference.
Working there during the pandemic was a highlight, he said, as he felt he was able to help by finding equipment for vaccine clinics.
That time also expanded his interest in broadband, which he had been involved with since 2016, when Tidewater Telecom grew its network in Waldoboro.
“I don’t just work in it; it’s my hobby,” Mahar said. “Everyone’s got their obsessive thing. Mine is computers, mine is networks. I love me some internet.”
He started watching town government meetings online and then going in person. Because they are often sparsely attended, he found it easy to have his ideas heard.
“In a lot of small towns, you can basically go sit at the table,” he said. “The decisions are made by those who show up.”
Mahar joined the Waldoboro Broadband Committee as vice chair and then chair before it was absorbed by the town’s economic development committee, where he remains a member. Last year, he also joined the budget committee.
He said some staff and elected officials have become like friends to him, and involvement feels meaningful.
“People can pay their taxes and donate to charities,” he said, “but sometimes you just need to show up and listen and vote.”
His urgency in pushing for broadband expansion through these roles also grew during the pandemic.
“It went from ‘Hey, internet would be nice’ to ‘We have to have this,’” he said. “That is probably the thing I am the loudest and most obnoxious about, followed by cat photos.”
Mahar is quick to credit the town staff, officials, and other residents. He has worked in places where people are competitive and where they are collaborative; he sees Waldoboro as the latter.
The couple purchased a home there because it was what they could afford, he said, a move he was resistant to then.
“I had this image of Waldoboro of, you know, poor and drugs,” he said. “What I know now, in my adult life, is that that is everywhere. Nothing is perfect, and it is what you make it.”
Now, he feels it would be hard to get him to leave.
“If I won the Powerball right now, I’d just build a bigger, obnoxious house in some other part of Waldoboro,” he said.
Mahar finds it easy to stay in a place where he feels people want to make improvements and maintain what they have.
“The people here are really great. People I agree with politically and people that I don’t … These folks want to make the place better,” he said.
He listed housing affordability and the ability to be competitive with surrounding towns as important projects, along with internet.
“There’s some work left to do. If I weren’t involved, I’d still be at home complaining,” he said. “At least now I’m doing both. I’m complaining, but then I get to go to the meetings.”
His eye for the future is also present at home; he and his wife hope to leave their property to a niece or nephew. They have access to broadband, will soon have fiber, planted fruit trees, and use high-kilowatt solar panels.
“Which will outlive us, and that’s sort of the point,” he said. “The reason I tell that story isn’t so much ‘Look at the great things we’ve done,’ it’s ‘It’s easy to lose sight of long-term things you can give to people who aren’t here yet.’”
He said he also advocates for broadband projects that will last for generations; as a cable-based technology, like phone lines, Mahar believes infrastructure could be usable for a hundred years.
Some of his long-term thinking comes from the nature of the infrastructure, which in Mahar’s view need to be built to last for decades at costs spread across the years.
His passion for broadband results from the trajectory of his life, he said, which was possible through the internet.
“It all centralizes on access to information,” he said. “I, along with my wife, am able to afford a reasonably nice home and all the things we want going back to skills we learned starting on the internet.”
Mahar said he never wanted for anything growing up, but the skills he learned online have put him better off financially than his parents were.
“Which, I think, is what a lot of people would want for their kids,” he said. “You want them to do better than you do. I wouldn’t be if I didn’t have access to that, and so I want that for other people.”
Outside of work and the town office meeting room, Mahar enjoys his garden, listening to audio books, building computers, and making garlic bread.
He and his wife share a side job freeze-drying candy like saltwater taffy and Skittles with a machine Mahar described as a “pandemic panic purchase,” alongside some “actual reasonable human food.”
“It seems like the ‘Forrest Gump’ shrimp speech,” he said. “You can put anything in there. Some of it is good. Some of it is not.”
Recently, he used a flood on the second floor of his house as an opportunity to install fiber and wire new migraine-reducing lighting.
“If I see something broken, I get excited about trying to fix it,” he said. “If it’s expensive to have some else do it, I try to learn to go do it myself. I’ve done pretty okay.”
Like home ownership, Mahar said community improvement takes involvement.
“You can work on it, or you can let it fall down around you,” he said. “I’m not perfect at anything, but I’m good enough to keep things moving. If I can use that skill to better myself or better someone else, I will.”
Mahar refuses to “toot his own horn,” however, and said he is not territorial.
“If anyone reads anything they like, cool,” he said. “Copy me. Do it better.”
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