PROVINCETOWN — Larry Moodry first came to Provincetown in 1960, hoping to spend a college summer waiting tables. He got more than he bargained for. “Provincetown,” he says, “became my spiritual home.”
He has since missed only one summer here. “I believe it was 1976,” he says. He bought a two-story house on Mechanic Street in the West End 25 years ago.
Not that he’s home all that often. He was a volunteer at the Provincetown soup kitchen for 16 years, where his gig was setting up the dining room. For 10 years, he’s been helping out at the council on aging, warmly directing people as they enter the lobby. If you put your puppy in the pet parade at the Year Rounders’ Festival, he probably signed you up. He has also lent a hand at Provincetown’s tourism office, telling visitors where to go — in a good way.
Moodry was named Provincetown’s 2023 Senior of the Year in June. Chris Hottle, director of the council on aging, says he was chosen for his “enthusiastic outlook on life and his kindness and desire to help others.”
When he learned of the honor, Moodry says, he was perplexed. “I was at the council on aging, at the front desk doing my little job,” he says. “When the director asked, ‘May I speak with you?’ I thought I was in trouble.”
Then, Moodry says, “I thought, ‘Is this Undercover Boss?’ I mean, this couldn’t be happening to me.”
As the winner of the award, Moodry rode in style during Provincetown’s Fourth of July parade on the best-in-parade golf cart-themed float. “Oh, that was fun,” he said. “I saw a lot of people I know by name.”
Moodry went to college at Montclair State University in his home state of New Jersey, then got an M.F.A. at Temple University in Philadelphia. He has taught everything from kindergarten to graduate courses. Teaching, he says, is how he became “addicted to learning names.”
While teaching fine arts was his day job, Moodry’s passion for travel led him on adventures across the globe.
“I’m not the kind of traveler who likes to sit around the swimming pool and have cocktails,” he says. “I like culture shock.”
He estimates that he’s visited between 35 and 40 countries, and train travel is a favorite mode. He has taken trains across Europe and Peru, been on Kenya Railways, the Trans-Siberian Railway, and America’s Transcontinental Railway.
“I came from a working-class family in New Jersey,” Moodry says. He’s the oldest of three and grew up in New Brunswick. He remembers meeting his father at the train station in the evenings. “I was interested in these mammoth metal creatures that were taking people all over the place.”
Moodry’s sister, Sandra Murray, has been his travel companion on many adventures, although they’re very different from each other, he says. She now lives in Hawaii, where she can surf year-round, Moodry says.
At 82, Moodry remains determined to keep traveling. “I’ve never been to Alaska,” he says. Nor has he traveled the Mississippi River: “Maybe Minneapolis in the north to New Orleans in the south,” he’s thinking.
Wherever he goes, he comes back with material for the travelogue program he put together with the council on aging. He has made 31 films so far, documenting his trips. They’re a way of “looking at how much humans are alike across the world,” he says.
The beaches of Provincetown remind him of his years growing up on the Jersey shore, Moodry says. Race Point is his preferred spot for bodysurfing.
“Every day, I head to the beach. It’s my personal time to connect with myself, the universe, and humanity,” says Moodry. He also goes at sunset for an hour, bringing along whatever book he is currently reading.
“Somewhere in my being,” he says of Provincetown, “I felt this is the right place to be fulfilled.”
