HOPKINTON, N.H. (AP) – Now no one can say he’s not a hands-on public servant.

Gov. John Lynch, headed home on Hopkinton Road on Tuesday evening to pick up his wife, stopped to help a driver whose car got stuck in a deep roadside culvert.

Barbara Gratton said she was dropping off a friend after a Shakespeare reading club and didn’t realize her car was trapped until it was too late.

She was just hanging up with AAA when a sport utility vehicle with flashing lights and a familiar face pulled up.

“Oh, I recognized him through the windshield as soon as the SUV pulled up behind me,” she said.

Gratton, 84, said she was so flustered to see New Hampshire’s chief executive stopping to help that the first thing she did was assure him she was a good Democrat.

“I know he would’ve helped me no matter what, but for some reason I had to tell him. He’s a marvelous man,” Gratton said.

Lynch took off his coat and got behind the wheel while his driver – State Police Sgt. Bruce Twyon – and a Hopkinton Police officer got behind and pushed.

Then Lynch stayed with Gratton until a flatbed truck came and got her car back on the road. Hopkinton Police Sgt. Bill Simpson followed her all the way home.

“I just did what any other concerned New Hampshire citizen would have done,” Lynch said.

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