GORHAM – Robert Caswell, longtime director of public affairs for the University of Southern Maine, has retired. His last day fielding media calls was Monday.

Caswell, who lives in Gorham, said he doesn’t have any immediate plans, but figured he would stay busy. He turns age 62 in mid July.

He’s been the university’s director of public affairs since 1983, after serving on the staff for three years.

“I’m not going to sit in a rocking chair,” Caswell said Friday in an interview on the university’s Gorham campus.

Caswell graduated from the university in 1974 with a bachelor’s degree in history. After working as a news reporter, he began duties with the university’s public relations office in 1980.

“I’ve had a great run,” Caswell said, reflecting on his 34 years on the job.

Caswell’s wife, Diane Caswell, retired recently following a 40-year teaching career that began in Belfast. She spent 34 years with School Administrative District 6, where she retired from the Buxton Center Elementary School.

Diane Caswell was recently elected president of the Friends of Baxter Memorial Library, where she’s a volunteer.

They have two daughters, Aimee, who lives in Cincinnati, and Jenna, who lives in New Hampshire. Both daughters are graduates of Gorham High School.

Now that the Caswells are both retired, there’s time to log some traveling. Robert Caswell said they plan to visit their eldest daughter Aimee this summer.

Caswell said he and his wife are both big baseball fans and are scheduling a side trip from Ohio, traveling to St. Louis, Mo., to take in a Cardinals baseball game. Then this fall, they’ll visit the Grand Canyon.

The university soon will conduct a search to find his successor. In the interim, Judie O’Malley, assistant director, will handle Caswell’s duties at the university. She said she’s not applying for the job.

O’Malley said Caswell was fair-minded and honest to a fault.

“He loved working with reporters,” O’Malley said.

Caswell had freelanced for the Kennebec Journal and worked full time for the Courier-Gazette in Rockland before landing a job at USM.

When Caswell was hired by the university, he worked for its communications director, Roger Snow, who had years earlier founded the Westbrook American, forerunner of the American Journal.

Since Caswell’s days as a student, the university even has been re-named.

When Caswell was a university freshman in 1970, the school’s name was the University of Maine at Portland-Gorham. On the street, it was nicknamed PoGo U. The school was re-named University of Southern Maine in 1978, Caswell said.

But the name change didn’t ease contention between staff members of the two campuses.

“When I came in 1980 there was a lot of divisiveness,” Caswell said.

In recent years, university budgeting has been in the headlines.

“The budget challenges – you can’t sugarcoat it,” Caswell said. “They are serious. There are no easy fixes.”

Friday, while still on duty, Caswell said, “We need to look at better ways to use this (Gorham) campus, especially in summer.”

Citing the town’s population growth and the campus’s location 10 miles from Portland, Caswell said there’s potential for more arts and cultural programs on the Gorham campus.

“Gorham is a gateway to the Sebago Lakes Region,” Caswell said. “This campus has a lot of assets.”

He also favored developing more links with the town, and he said the university is the largest employer in Gorham. Caswell said Gorham Town Manager David Cole and the Town Council members have been supportive of the university.

“The issue we still have to address is closer ties between the university and the town,” Caswell said. “We’ve made a lot of progress.”

Robert Caswell