Heidi Frail, the only sitting Select Board member running for reelection, knows about working hard. Her mom worked three jobs, and Heidi started babysitting and working after school as soon as she was able. “I grew up in Newton,” Frail said, “and went to the public schools there. My mom was a social worker, and they don’t make a lot of money.” A divorced mom, Frail’s mother was determined to keep Frail and her brother in a place with good schools and a sense of community, even at the cost of long hours.
The example stuck. Asked about Frail nowadays, her friend and neighbor Barb Livingston said, “She’s easily one of the most diligent people I know. And she’s also somebody who in my long time knowing her has never been afraid of hard work.”
But, Livingston said, there’s a twist to Frail’s dedication and diligence: “With all of that, she’s also an exceptionally joyful person.”
For Frail, that’s not a dichotomy. The biggest surprise she found upon starting her first term on the Select Board? “Um, it’s super fun. That surprised me. I just really enjoy it. People are always saying, ‘Oh, thank you for doing this.’” She laughed. “Yeah. Like, no, no, no. Really. I really like doing it.”
Has it changed her? “I completely lost my capacity for small talk. Right? I got nothing. But if you want to talk about trash pickup, or, you know, federal regulations, about municipal items, I’m your woman.”
Frail’s career has taken a couple of turns. She spent time in sales and marketing, managed Starbucks stores — “I opened a lot of Starbucks” — then, after having her two sons, retrained as a radiology technician. She spent about six years at Newton-Wellesley Hospital doing fluoroscopy and interventions in the pain clinic. Now she works for a company that makes portable MRI scanners about the size and shape of the Star Wars robot R2D2.
“When I took the job, it was basically to administer a Gates Foundation grant that puts those scanners at maternal and child health sites in low- and middle-income countries. Mostly Africa and some Asia — India. Since then I’ve taken on other responsibilities. Now I’m the program manager for our hospital and office programs.”
Frail works from home. During the pandemic, she said, “When everyone else was at home doing Zoom all the time, I was in the hospital, working in person. And then we swapped. But I really enjoy it and it allows me the flexibility that I need to do the Select Board position. So that’s really great.”
The looming 2016 presidential election motivated Frail to become involved in politics, first through the League of Women Voters and the Democratic Town Committee. Then she ran for Town Meeting and became more deeply engaged in local issues, eventually co-chairing the Housing for Needham (HONE) advisory committee that did the bulk of the background research and analysis that led to Needham’s now-repealed plan for MBTA Communities Act compliance.
Michael Diener, who worked with Frail on the DTC and HONE, said Frail’s preparation and attention to detail stands out — and not just at meetings. Diener recalled asking Frail how she and her husband, Steve, came to live in Needham. Among other things, Frail told him, they wanted their kids to grow up in a place where they could walk to school. Out of curiosity, Diener checked Google Maps to see how far the Frails’ home was from the schools their sons attended. “I plugged in her address: To Mitchell School, it was like a half a mile. To Pollard, it was like half a mile. I plugged in the address for the high school. It was a half a mile. And I’m like, wow.”
While Frail’s HONE role made her controversial this past winter as the repeal effort progressed, Frail remained determined and positive.
“It spurred a lot of engagement. Right? I think that’s a really good thing. I wish that the engagement could be more issues-based instead of personality-based. But I’ll take what I can get because you can’t do the right thing by the community without the community’s input.”
Her seat on the Select Board gives her input into all kinds of issues, but she has kept some focus on housing and the environment by volunteering to be the board liaison to study committees for tree preservation and large house building requirements.
“One of the reasons why I ran for Select Board in the first place is because sometimes it’s hard for people to stand up for what they believe in. And it’s hard for people to say things that are confrontational in public. And while I often get the whim-whams about it, I don’t have a problem with doing that. Which is not to say that I’m always right, obviously, but I do think that being straightforward about things is really important.”
She does not see issues as standalone. “I grew up in an apartment in Newton because my parents were divorced and we couldn’t afford to keep the house and all that stuff,” Frail said. But now she thinks, how does housing turnover happen? Frail’s mother and her wife recently moved to assisted living. Frail’s sons are now ages 22 and 20 and out in the world. All those life issues are housing issues, too, she said.
“It’s just fascinating to be just completely immersed in these issues. And even so, I know that there are tons of experiences that I don’t have. Friends who have a child with a disability or something like that who are going through the schools, you know, they, their experience is a hundred percent different than mine. But … it’s just so fascinating to learn about what other people are doing. People are so interesting. I’m not sure that I’m all that interesting. But I find other people fascinating.”
Editor’s note: Reference to the ownership of the MRI company was deleted due to a reporting error.
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