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Wednesday, June 20, 2012
VOL. 13 nO. 12
LaCOnIa, n.H.
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School board honors 96-yearold library volunteer By rOGer amsden FOR THE LACONIA DAILY SUN
LACONIA — Helen Pisano grew up in New Haven, Conn. as the daughter of Italian immigrants and always wanted to be a school teacher but never was able to achieve that goal. ‘’My parents came from Italy. Just making a living was hard. I just couldn’t afford to go to school to become a teacher,’’ says Pisano, now 96, who took a job as a housekeeper for a Yale professor, Lars Onsager, who would go on to win a Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1968. In 1944 Onsager bought a farm in Sanbornton which was to become his summer home and Pisano came along with him and his family to New Hampshire’s Lakes Region. ‘’I loved it here. We came every summer. That’s why I wanted to live here when I retired,’’ says Pisano, who last night was recognized for her contribution to education in the city of Laconia in her role for the last five years as a Foster Grandparent at Elm Street School, where she works 16 hours see PIsanO page 12
Old school sonnets & bonnets Sandwich Central School teacher Justin Chapman helps student Alyssa Floyd write her favorite lines of a poem into her copy book on Friday. The 4th and 5th grade combined class at the school spends a day every two years at the Lower Corner Schoolhouse, owned by the Sandwich Historical Society, where the students experience what school was like in a distant era. The one-room schoolhouse, which held up to 25 students from grades one through eight, was in continuous use from 1825 to 1944, when schools in town were consolidated for lack of enough teachers. The schoolhouse was then used by junior high students until it was closed for good in 1950. (Laconia Daily Sun photo/Adam Drapcho)
3 groups seek clarification of how Rotary Park is managed By Gail OBer
THE LACONIA DAILY SUN
LACONIA — In an effort to get all city parks on the same page, representatives of all of the three stakeholders in downtown’s Rotary Riverside Park will draft a memorandum
of understanding for the scheduling and use of the city-owned green space. Rotary Park is a city park, said Belknap Mill Society Trustee F. Andre Paquette at Monday’s meeting of the Parks & Recreation Commission, emphasizing
the Belknap Mill Society and the Laconia Rotary Club have always understood that. “But to my knowledge there has never been a written MOU of an agreement as to how the park was to be run,” he said, adding he reviewed all of the
documents he could find since the park was built in 1996 but found nothing in writing. Paquette said he was prompted to search for the records when Parks and Recreation Department Director see PaRK page 6
Jackie Cilley makes it clear she’ll be a Democrat’s Democrat for governor
MEREDITH — Speaking to some two dozen supporters in Meredith last night, Jackie Cilley of Barrington, one of three
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Democrats running for governor, recalled a conversation with her son on election night in 2010 when she, along with a host of her fellow Democrats were swept from office. As her son sought Homemade Dough and Homemade Sauces to console her, she remembered Open Tuesday - Sunday snapping “this is not about me. at 4 p.m. Its about people and issues Rt 3, Weirs Beach • heatpizza.com • 366-2110 I care about.” Then he asked
her what she intended to do and when she answered “get some podunk job and go dancing with your father,” he remarked “I guess it is all about you.” Stung, Cilley, who served one term in the House of Representatives and two in the Senate, decided to return to the fray where she is vying for the nomination against see CILLey page 9