A grand gift to the town from the man you can’t see

Everyone knew his name. Albert Stone. Mr. Stone, to most. Few knew the man.

“He minds his own business, eats his lunch, and goes back to work,’’ said Gail Derboghosian, a waitress at Cliff’s.

Then one day Stone wrote a letter to town officials. His company wanted to give Townsend a gift, by far the largest in the town’s history. There were no conditions, no naming rights, no matching funds required. All the town had to do was say yes and supply the necessary permits.

Last month, Stone made good on his word, opening a soaring 17,000 square-foot library with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, 56 computers, and white oak ribbing, a cedar-shingled senior center with a fieldstone fireplace and physical check-up room, and a town meeting hall with Romanesque pillars and a catering kitchen. Earlier, he had delivered a new highway equipment garage, along with the 44 acres it sits upon.

In all, the gift is estimated at $20 million, according to town officials; Stone declined interviews, or to reveal the cost.

The largesse has stunned this town of 9,500, whose glory days as a barrel-making capital have long since passed and where residents struggled for three decades to raise funds to build a new library. They made do with a senior center jammed into a strip mall shared by a Family Dollar store.

The new light-filled spaces, set off with elegant details, are “the kind of stuff Boston people are used to seeing,’’ said David Chenelle, chairman of the selectboard. “But in the small communities of Central Massachusetts, you just don’t see this.’’

As for the man behind it, some residents have taken to describing him in mythical terms, like a Willy Wonka of Townsend, who for years reclusively oversaw the production of plastic dustpans and laundry hampers in a sprawling plant not far from Townsend’s center, while plotting a gift to townspeople.

“He always seemed like a grumpy old man - very quiet, and if he said anything it was a growl, ’’ said one Townsend business owner, who asked not to be identified for fear of offending Stone.

Now, the owner said, he has had to square that image with the man who has transformed and reinvigorated civic life in Townsend.

“This was a total about-face. I’ve had to change my opinion,’’ he said.

Stone, for his part, has remained staunchly private. As he was designing the project, Stone made clear in his letter to town officials that he wanted all questions funneled not to him, but to his “liaison,’’ Gary Shepherd, a Townsend contractor who acts as Stone’s personal point man.

Stone didn’t attend the groundbreaking ceremony, and he insisted that the library not be named for him or for Sterilite, but for a former selectman and his wife, and that the senior center be named for a couple active in local affairs, Shepherd’s parents. His first public remarks anyone in Townsend can recall were at a grand opening ceremony for the new facilities Oct. 31.

Town officials, who said Stone asked for nothing in return for his gift, note that he has been a benefactor of the town in the past, donating defibrillators, a playground, and a building for the food pantry.

Details about him are hard to come by. Those who know his background are reluctant to share it, for fear of violating his desire for privacy. The Sterilite website offers no information. And Stone, who refused to be photographed and would only comment through Shepherd, merely laughed when presented with a reporter’s questions about him, asking why anyone would want to know, Shepherd said.

Shepherd provided this information: Stone was raised in Haverhill. He graduated from Colby College. He served in the Navy during the Korean War and was stationed in Okinawa. He graduated from Harvard Business School and joined the company that his father and uncle, Saul and Edward Stone, co-founded in 1939, originally making wooden heels for women’s shoes but switching to plastics manufacturing during World War II.

The company moved in 1968 from Fitchburg to the site of a former barrel-making factory in Townsend, and has been headquartered there ever since, even as the company has built larger factories in South Carolina, Texas, and elsewhere. According to its website, the company is the largest private manufacturer of plastic housewares.

Today, Stone is in his 80s and his two sons oversee operations; one is president and the other is vice president. But Stone, who also is the father of three daughters, remains chairman of the board and reports to work every day, taking lunch breaks with his sons and two managers, punctually from 12 to 12:45.

Stone is a hard-driving boss, demanding excellence and devotion, residents say.

“Strict but fair,’’ said Christine Clish, director of the town’s new senior center, whose husband worked at Sterilite. “You had to punch in on time and punch out on time.’’

Imposing might be too soft a word to describe his demeanor.

“I feel like a 5-year-old child when I am around him. I look up to him. I really respect him,’’ said Nancy Shepherd, the woman for whom the senior center is named but who said she has exchanged only the barest of niceties with Stone over the course of years.

“You would never ask him a personal question,’’ said Terrence McNabb, a local pharmacist who has known Stone since the two ran together at a YMCA in Fitchburg decades ago, when the Sterilite plant was there. “He’s a reserved gentleman.’’

At Cliff’s, where Stone bypasses the counter for a view of the town green at a round table styled with paper placemats and a container of Smuckers jam packets, Derboghosian knows a waitress who is afraid to wait on the table. But Derboghosian isn’t, and even dares to rib him.

“If you joke around enough,’’ she said. “You can get a smile out of him.’’