Lucky for life by Don Hughes

Lucky For Life

By Don Hughes

Lucky For Life

By Don Hughes

Š2007-2013 Don Hughes, All Rights Reserved. Design by Michael Travis

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Table of Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Relatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Chapter 1 — Life Begins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 Chapter 2 — Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Chapter 3 -A New Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62 Chapter 4 – Digression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .86 Chapter 5 – Transitioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100 Chapter 6 — Winding Down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116 Chapter 7 - Retirement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147 Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .176

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ho am I, and, what has my life been all about? These are questions I have seldom

pondered these last seventy six years. Except for a vague impression that my life has been busy, fulfilling and most of all lucky, it has never occurred to me to attempt to document my experiences.

That is until I signed up for a “Story of Your Life” writing class at the Bonita Springs Art Center in Naples FL. That experience triggered a mission to leave a legacy in print.

My objectives are to make the story interesting without excessive embellishment, plus make it reasonably accurate chronologically and historically. More important than those objectives, I want to convey feelings my experiences have evoked within me. I also want to document important lessons I have learned along the way. If I’m successful, this story will accomplish more than just satisfy a reader’s curiosity about my life. A family member may better understand their own genes and legacies I’ll cover four very distinct periods; my birth until my father’s untimely death when I was seventeen, the ten years of reaction to this adversity and its silver lining, then the life changing experience of my marriage and twenty whirlwind years of family rearing, and finally my retirement years and re-discovering Elaine.

My style objective will be to mirror the “bottom up” style of public television documentary producer Ken Burns who uses lots of anecdotes and pictures. Assembling all this material should allow me to focus more accurately on the past. I’m a person who rarely looks back so reflection is a concentration challenge for me. My natural focus has always been on tomorrow not yesterday.

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riting down my feelings accurately will be another challenge because I have limited

writing experience, plus I anticipate a struggle to balance candor with tact. What are we but our stories? I’d like to tell them without hurting anyone’s feelings, so please forgive me if I offend. I want this to be an interesting adventure for you as well as me, so sugar coating feelings would only diminish the result. I hope the reader can learn something from my life that will help them in theirs. I seek no praise or forgiveness. Warts and all I’m very satisfied with my life. So far I feel that I have done the best I could with what I had to work with.

My thanks go to Rich Horan for both the title change and Hughes Oil edit and to Emily Kolatch for the many punctuation and phrasing changes.

Introduction

Relatives

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enealogy is inaccurate as a title for this section because that term refers to placing

many branches on the family tree, kind of a detailed and dry subject that has rarely been of interest to me. However, I do think it’s important for my current and perhaps future family to know something about relatives that might affect their genes or who had an effect on my life. Some of these folks began their lives back in the eighteen hundreds.

Fortunately there are no extreme skeletons that must be hidden, so I can include all the folks that I know. Conversely, I’m not aware of any relatives that were famous except my uncle, Dr. Clyde Holland, who married my dad’s youngest sister. For the most part, the relatives I have been affected by were honest-hard working, “salt of the earth” folks, mostly from English Protestant stock. They lived responsibly, but never ostentatiously, during financially difficult times. Their lives contain some interesting encouragements.

Let’s start with my mother’s side of which I know the least. Her maiden name was Schofield.

She was born in Boston, but her mom died when she was an infant. Her father then re-married and moved to Sussex, New Brunswick. That is how my mom grew up Canadian even though she was American-born.

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elen Schofield was the only child of her deceased mother, but ended up with two

step-sisters and a step-brother from her father’s second marriage. I believe this circumstance made for a lonely childhood and might have contributed to her lifelong manic depression problems (now termed bi-polar). A further example of my mother’s early life loneliness is that in her early teens she was sent to live with a stern, spinster aunt one hundred miles away in a small Nova Scotia town. Perhaps this move was just to get her a better education because a business type school was located nearby. However, I suspect her step-mother did not want her.

A lack of transportation and communication during that era limited most families’ togetherness, but I believe contact with her father and stepmother was more limited than normal even for those times.

Helen Schofield was a pretty woman just slightly over trim with skin so fair she would sunburn in the shade. Her demeanor was the opposite of her step-mother and siblings.

Helen Schofield Hughes

Helen was shy, sweet and humble with a soft voice.

Reletives

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Aurris McKay, Helen’s acting mother for her formidable years, was surely not shy. She was a story book character, responsible and intelligent but tough as nails. In this spinster Aunt’s younger years she drove a horse and buggy, in all sorts of weather, to deliver mail. She also acted as a midwife delivering babies all over the rugged farm country surrounding this small town.

Stewiacke, Nova Scotia was just one of many small towns strung out along the Canadian National Railroad, where folks lived off the land as best they could working long hours at the farming and logging trade that fed Nova Scotia’s few urban areas. From childhood visits there, I can still hear those eerie train whistles late at night as freight trains passed through. I would lie awake in a tiny second floor bedroom wondering where those trains came from, how many freight cars long they might be, and where they might be headed.

Aunt Aurris is on the right.

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y mom and I made several visits to

Stewiacke in my pre and early elementary school years and Aunt Aurris traveled to Boston a few times. The last

visit was when she traveled alone at eighty seven. She died in her early nineties.

My most vivid memory, while staying at Auntie’s creaky, old, Victorian style house, was being forced to drink un-pasteurized milk brought in from the farm next door. It was not only warm but had irregular lumps of cream floating around in it. That was torture for me, but even more difficult, was to muster the courage to say no to a stone faced Auntie peering over her glasses saying “It’s good for you, son”.

It was here in Stewiacke that I developed a lifelong facial distinction, a crooked nose. With a six-year-olds curiosity about where a door led, I walked out into space from a second floor loading door located about ten feet above a wagon shed. The subsequent broken nose went undetected until I got back home to the States. My crooked nose is now a permanent feature.

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here was always great secrecy surrounding Aunt Aurris McKay. Some of it was from

our own thoughts that we read into her tight-lipped, stern manor. The rest of the imaginings were from family folklore, like the hint that there was a McKay gold mine somewhere in the past. This hidden untold wealth myth was unmasked for me near the end of her life. I had to step in and fund some of her care after trust officer J. H. MacAdam of the Nova Scotia Trust Company wrote me on June 11, 1959 to tell me there was just $69.74 left in her account. The pot had finally gone dry.

Reletives

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My guess is that Aunt Aurris McKay had carefully nursed a small inheritance for a very long time. I suspect my mom secretly fantasized most of her life that she might someday be the recipient of a large inheritance. I vowed never to be this tight-lipped.

Growing up I had little contact with my mother’s step-siblings except for Clara. The others remained in New Brunswick. Step-sister Edna was married to a career army person and visited Boston only once or twice. My mom had a great writing relationship with her. Edna’s daughter Sheila visited once for a Red Sox ball game, and she was fun. Mom’s step-brother Headley was a no-show, a heavy drinker, I suspect. However, my Mom’s second step-sister Clara settled in Malden, Massachusetts and, due to my mother’s illnesses, played an important role in the elementary school years of both Lois and me. Her husband Dick was an experience I’ll explain later.

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verall the relationships with the Schofield grandparents were pretty limited, probably

because my grandfather’s second wife showed little interest in us kids. They operated tourist cabins in Sussex, New Brunswick which I visited only once while traveling by automobile to my dad’s family farm in Nova Scotia.

I’ll never forget reaching into the ice cream server in their little Sussex store and scooping a handful of sugar into my mouth. Ouch! It turned out to be the salt used to make the ice melt faster and keep the ice cream cold enough to serve. I must have been an impulsive little devil that the Schofields were not about to get too closely involved with.

I have a lot more information to illuminate the Hughes side of the family because that was my dominant relationship. The name Hughes originated in Wales, and I believe is a popular name there still.

This origin question took me a long time to figure out because of a long-

The Hughes’s “Son of Hugh”

standing erroneous assumption. Hughes is a popular Boston Irish Catholic name; I once counted 330 “Hughes” in the Boston phone book. Because I could not find a single family connection, I had long assumed that a Roman Catholic Hughes had converted to Protestantism somewhere in the last few generations. I concluded that my family must be a tiny Protestant offshoot of a large Irish Roman Catholic clan.

However, when I read JFK’s Profiles in Courage, I discovered that a Welshman named Charles Evans Hughes was the first Chief Justice of the United States. A light went on! Evidently very few of the Hughes strain found their way to the Boston area, but there was a large Protestant Hughes contingent in Wales. This dual heritage certainly was an asset for doing business in partisan Reletives

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Irish Catholic Boston. Many times I would hear the following comment, delivered in a heavy Irish brogue, “It’s great to be doing business with one of me own.” My response was generally to nod and then go mute as the follow up questions were something like “do you know Paddy Hughes?”

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y grandfather Lewis Hughes was born in

Nova Scotia. His father’s name was William, born in Nova Scotia in 1834. Great Grandfather William died in 1907 at age seventy three. His wife’s name was Isabella; I’m not sure how long she lived When did the first Hughes come over from Wales? My cousin Jim told me that three brothers arrived by ship in the late 1700s. They took up farming in separate areas of Nova Scotia, probably because they

Lewis Hughes

received land grants from the Crown before they left Wales.

My grandfather was a tall, kindly man with a neat

mustache who had many talents, like using a coal fired forge to make iron shoes for the work horses, making his own tools, and being skilled at all sorts of other trades. He must also have been adventurous as he once traveled all the way to the west coast trying to take advantage of the California Gold Rush. His brother Graham went with him but never returned. He raised a family in Modesto, California. Granddad’s brother Graham must account for my dad’s middle name, as well as my own, my grandson Dana plus the name of the most recent golden retriever in my son Bob’s house.

The last time I saw Grandpa Lewis Hughes was around 1939. My dad had driven from Boston in his 1936 Ford to pick me up from a summer visit. I vividly recall a group of men gathered around the car radio looking very serious about what they were hearing. I believe Winston Churchill was explaining that England had declared war on Germany and these men knew in their hearts that Canada and the United States would be next.

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randpa Lewis was born 1862 in the Truro area of Nova Scotia. His wife Katherine

was born in Nova Scotia in 1868. Her parents had come over from England and settled in Glen Gary,Nova Scotia. Lewis and Katherine bought a farm in Princeport in 1894 for $350. I assume it was not too long after they were married. Princeport, Nova Scotia was about 15 dusty dirt road miles outside Truro, which was a larger mirror image of Stewiacke. Truro was also located along the Canadian National railroad system.

Reletives

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You will hear more about my grandmother later. However, as strong as this wisp of a woman was, she could not possibly manage the farm after my grandfather’s death in his mid-seventies. Not one of her children remained in the Princeport area because there was little going on there.

For the last twenty some odd years of her life Grammy Hughes moved around Nova Scotia and the Boston area living varying periods of time with her children. She was amazingly active and healthy until just before her death at ninety four. There was no Social Security, life insurance or pension safety nets then.

Katherine Hughes

The young took care of the old and the fortunate took care of the unfortunate.

Five Hughes children grew up on the farm there in Princeport, three girls and two boys.

Only 14 other families lived in Princeport back then. To this day there is still not a single store and not many more families. In my youth Princeport had only one dirt road, a little wooden church, a one room schoolhouse, and no electricity. In the early nineteen hundreds wooden boats were built here on the banks of the adjacent Shubenacadie, a muddy, cocoa brown tidal river with steep, slippery, red mud banks, record high tides, and many miles of adjacent marshland.

Boat building must have been the original attraction to this area because on the wall of my grandfather’s iron forge shed were mounted half models of wooden commercial sailing boats. Half-models were the design plans from which unique wooden ships were fashioned. I doubt if any two were ever built exactly the same and all were named for someone special, mostly males.

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y dad was born in 1900, the third of five children

to be raised on the farm in Princeport. Typical of the times, his Bill Hughes

formal education ended at his completion of the one-room schoolhouse classes. I believe he helped on the farm for a few years

and then found his way to Boston and a job with the Boston Ice Company. He was a slight person only 5’9’’ about 140 lbs with a sharp facial profile and full head of hair kept neatly. When working his ice route, a cigar was never very far away. He was a rare drinker if he ever drank at all. He was like most rest of his siblings: pleasant, quiet, steady, and dependable, “no problem” a common phrase.

Reletives

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My visits to Princeport Nova Scotia occurred during elementary school vacations. I would arrive accompanied by an aunt, both of us tired and dirty after a very long, coach class train ride from North Station in Boston. We had to open the train windows for relief from the summer heat, but in doing so the smoke poured in from the coal fired steam engine.

I believe these visits were during some of the years my mother was in a mental institution. I traveled with one of my aunts was because my dad worked his ice delivery business all alone six days a week every week. Vacations or five day weeks were not familiar words for most blue collar workers in that era.

Lois and me with Grandpa Lewis

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hat a thrill to arrive at a working farm! The

most important routine was the twice a day hand milking of about a dozen cows. Money earned from milk comprised most of the cash these folks saw in a year as most other needs were either home grown or bartered. I’ll bet their total annual income was less than $2000. I would watch the milking exercise as my grandfather sat on a three legged stool directing a solid stream of milk into a stainless steel pail. He would occasionally let me try to milk but I could not develop the hand strength required. However, I could help pour half pails into the Devall separator and from there pour the milk, that was separated from the cream, into typical stainless steel milk cans. My granddad then set them out by the road to be picked up by the dairy cooperative.

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here were pigs and chickens to feed as well as the work horses that were used to plow

fields, collect hay, and log. Best of all there was usually a cuddly calf that my grandfather would tell me was mine to take care of. One year he forgot and gave the same calf to my cousin Dennis, not expecting us to meet. That was ticklish. I also got to ride on the hay wagon and to stomp the hay down both on the wagon and in the barn. Lots of sneezing followed, alleviated only slightly by the lime juice and water my grandmother sent out to the hayfield. From the itching of the hay seed that collected on a bare-chested, sweaty body, I learned why farmers wore long sleeve shirts even in the summer.

I must have been a handful here also but was tolerated a little better than with the Schofields in Sussex, New Brunswick. My granddad allowed me to learn by experience. I remember teasing a small cow out in the pasture one day when she abruptly picked me up with her horns and put me Reletives

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on my backside. I wore two red small puncture marks mid-point on my belly for quite a while.

The farm day sure was a model for clean living. The day began about 6:00 am with chores like cleaning the barn and feeding the animals. About 7:00 am it was back to the wood stove in the kitchen for a hearty breakfast. I would be so hungry and was that ever tasty. The day varied from there.

For example, one day a week my grandfather churned butter using the cream previously separated off into the Devall separator. In the woodshed he would pour the heavy cream into a small wooden barrel that would then be tumbled end over end by a foot pedaled apparatus. This required a strong leg for the arduous pumping action. That barrel would tumble for very long time, most of which he spent singing ditties. I would sit on some nearby stacked firewood and watch, kind of mesmerized by both his endurance and the result. Once chilled with ice, the butter was cut into squares, which we delivered to neighbors in a small, one-horse wagon. I called it the butter wagon.

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ad’s oldest sister was Aunt Winnie. She was average height and was trim, as all

Hughes’s were. She moved quickly and spoke the same way, getting up on her high horse sometimes. I’ll bet she was the one to be in charge of the others on the farm, but other than her siblings wise remarks, I really don’t know much about her life in Princeport or when she chose to leave for Boston.

Winnie was a kind woman, generous with her time for you, but not one to lavish praise or gush with empathy. I don’t know if it was a Hughes trait or a trait of its time, but most of my relatives seemed to fear that praise would give you a swelled head. “Love you” was a term I learned much later in life. However, personal discipline was a core trait. For, example, Winnie was still maintaining a single home when she was in her nineties. I recall dropping in on her unexpectedly one morning just after nine. There she was, dressed for the day, breakfast over and dishes cleaned up. She was also just getting over a fall from a stepladder while washing windows.

Winnie married a carpenter from Prince Edward Island and settled in Sharon, MA., a small town about twenty miles from the Jamaica Plain section of Boston where our family and Aunt Jean’s lived. Winnie’s husband Mac was a talented finish carpenter in the tradition of those who grew up in the boatbuilding, fishing oriented Maritime Province of Prince Edward Island. He had a strong work ethic and an equally strong drinking habit. He was up at the crack of dawn, put in a full day’s work and was asleep on the kitchen couch right after supper.

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ac and Winnie MacLean’s house was a small white and green, two-story, gabled

single. It had a separate garage on a couple of acres of land, on which flourished the typical Nova Reletives

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Scotia vegetable and flower gardens. Mac tended the vegetable garden and Winnie the flowers. It always surprised me that so much energy went into these gardens as well as the general appearance of their homes, because their regular work-day was so physically draining. Gardening had to be a matter of great personal pride and was not done to impress neighbors. There was a sprawling strawberry farm next door and the rest of the surroundings were woods. Other than to impress an occasional passing car,

Mona left, Thelma right.

Sharon House in background

home appearance was an issue of personal pride.

Since other relatives lived in apartments in the city,

Sharon was the natural family gathering place. Lots of great Sunday dinners occurred here; everyone overeating while listening and laughing to family banter. Sometimes we finished up with a hymn sing, the chords banged out on an old upright. There was little religious significance to this hymn singing. I believe hymns were the only songs commonly known.

The two MacLean daughters, my cousins Dot and Thelma, were quite different from each other. Dot was exactly ten years older than my sister Lois. Thelma was high strung like her dad, while Dot had that steady “salt of the earth,” Hughes personality. Later circumstances would cast cousin Dot in a significant role in my life.

When I first met Elaine her humble pleasant nature reminded me of Dot who is now closing in on ninety. Maybe Elaine’s resemblance to Dot in her demeanor contributed to my love at first sight impulse.

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ncle Gordon was the next

Gordon and Blanche Hughes oldest of the five Princeport NS-born Hughes’s. Unlike my dad, farm life seemed to have less influence or interest for Gordon. I believe he went on to high school, (the equivalent of today’s college). His first job, as a clerk with the Royal Bank of Canada, became his lifelong career. During his banking career he moved around New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, retiring as a bank manager and school committee chairman in the town of Windsor, Nova Scotia, near Halifax. I knew him best in his later years. However, staying in touch during my twenties was always important to me as he was the only male family connection to my dad who died so young.

Reletives

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Gordon was tall and gangly like my granddad, soft of voice with an empathetic smile.

However, he had the Hughes’s legendary candor. He was already in his nineties when Elaine and I visited him and Blanche in Windsor. I made the comment that he and my dad must have “got along great.” He replied swiftly and with not one bit of rancor, “Oh, we didn’t get along well at all.”

I’m not sure what that meant other than they probably had very separate youthful interests. Gordon went further in education and then into small town banking: my dad, the farm boy and laborer, only much later was offered an opportunity to be a small businessman.

I saw Gordon last in Windsor at his 60th wedding anniversary. Not bad for someone who did not marry until 34. I’ll never forget the hug he gave me after I delivered the poem I had written for the occasion. The hug was long and strong and so un-Hughes. He died within the next year, his former good health declining swiftly as though his mission was over along with his days of steady, strong discipline and independent living.

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ordon’s wife Blanche was such a lady, a natural talent no doubt honed by her role as

the wife of a small town bank manager. In those days there was social status attached to that position as most towns had only one bank, and a banker’s role was central to the entire economy, meager as that might be. Blanche was a wonderful conversationalist and entertained effortlessly.

What is interesting is that I do not believe they owned a house until they were into their nineties.

They chose to rent modest but nice apartments, the understated, quiet, conservative Canadian life style always apparent.

Their two daughters, Norma the oldest, and Nancy, close in age, were very special cousins to me, not for reasons of close contact but of close feelings. I saw both of them a few times during my childhood Nova Scotia vacations, then saw Norma later in my early twenties in Halifax during her nursing training. Norma was warm, loving, and laid back, like my Aunt Jean. She married Dr. John Potts and raised a lovely family in the small Canadian town of Dreyden, Ontario Her house accommodated two Newfoundland dogs, which look like small, long haired, black horses. Norma’s fastidious mother Blanche would amusingly roll her eyes when explaining a visit to Dreyden. An interesting aside is that friends of ours in Naples are from this Canadian town, and Dr. John Potts delivered their children. We have enjoyed the Potts on a couple of New Hampshire visits. I feel a kinship with these loving, low-key people.

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orma’s younger sister Nancy seemed more the city girl of the two cousins. She married

a corporate high achiever, Bob Stewart, who went on to become president of International Paper Reletives

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in Canada. Theirs was a life that included foreign countries and country clubs. Nancy must have been a great corporate wife with her mother’s gracious personality and her low golf handicap. What has really pleased me is that for the past thirty or more years, Nancy has never failed to write a lengthy and warm personal note each Christmas. In recent years, it’s been from her lovely, suburban home in Vancouver, British Columbia. I don’t know if this effort at writing-emanates from a strong family tradition of staying in touch or if it’s a holdover emotion from relations developed in childhood, but I sure enjoy the response.

My Aunt Jean Day was the next to youngest of the five children of Lewis and Katherine Hughes of Princeport, Nova Scotia. This woman is my candidate for sainthood. Against all advice, she married a heavy drinker in Truro, Nova Scotia, and stayed with him until he died, never once complaining.

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ortunately, Uncle Billy Day was an affable man even when drunk, which was every day.

His only jobs after coming to Boston from Truro were as a helper on various ice delivery routes.

From time to time my Dad hired him, probably to provide some income for his sister. Bill Day’s antics were mirrored in some early movies that featured drunks in comical cameo roles. He would stagger home each day in the late afternoon, reeling from nearby hedges to hydrants, picking himself back up only to fall down again. In the busy, visible city streets this was a terrible embarrassment to his only son who, by his nature, was a very sensitive person. Bill Day Sr. sobered up only a month or so before his death from cancer in his sixties.

Jean Day was a rock for my sister Lois and me after my dad’s death and my mom’s institutionalization. For three and a half years, Auntie Jean had us for Sunday dinner, went often with us to the hospital, and was a nonjudgmental shoulder to cry on and to receive advice. I never heard her once complain about living with such a heavy drinker or raising a sensitive son or, even though she had been trained to teach, ending up traveling by streetcar to clean houses. Jean Day never had a bad word to say about anybody. Her automatic response to any request was “sure.” I Reletives

Left to right: Cousin Dot, Cousin Bill, Aunt Mona, Aunt Winnie, me, Aunt Jean

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cannot imagine surviving my late teens and early twenties without her.

Her only son, my cousin Billy, did not have Jean’s calm, steady, Hughes nature. Billy and I were good friends. We drove together on a couple of pretty funny trips to Nova Scotia, and Billy helped me on the ice truck for a few years on busy Saturdays. Busy Saturdays often concluded at Mike’s tavern under the elevated structure on Washington Street for shots and beers pre-lined up and waiting for consumption on a one hundred foot long bar.

However, the demons that took his dad down wound up in Billy’s head. Young Billy Day was smart, a high school class president and a night school college graduate. He married a lovely girl much like his mother, Aunt Mona

had a good job, and yet drifted into alcoholism. Billy’s wife Rita kept the four children and a house going until

he recovered some years later. But recovery turned out to be mostly a change from alcoholic to workaholic, so we never got back to the relationship of our youth. I have missed that relationship.

I helped out a little but only in the early years of his affliction. Bill Day was a great person with a faulty gene. I wish I could have accomplished more for him.

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unt Mona was my father’s youngest sister. Earlier, I mentioned her husband Clyde

Holland as our only family claim to fame. At Mona’s funeral, I compared her to the young nun Maria in the movie Sound of Music because she was a spirit difficult to describe. I still have some of her letters, which made me feel so good and lifted me up when I needed it most.

As the youngest she probably did the least of farm chores, enjoyed the best of opportunity, and took the best advantage. Mona was everyone’s idea of a perfect lady and a fun person to be around. She was as poised and as pretty as her oldest brother Gordon’s wife Blanche. Mona had kind of a Katherine Hepburn look. I was told that for many years there was a subtle, competitive, female tension between Blanche and Mona, that’s understandable.

My Aunt Mona was a perfectly gracious doctor’s wife but had her own energetic and girlish life. She was involved in social organizations and was a great baseball fan, adoring of Ted Williams.

The Halifax baseball team consisted primarily of American college players on summer break. She occasionally had them into her home for dinners and would promise home baked pies for home runs. She had enormous charm and little conceit.

In my early years I heard only the Boston side of how the Holland’s lived and how the blue Reletives

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collar Boston Hughes’s would never live that “ high fallutin’ way.” The Holland’s had a lovely home on Spring Garden Road in downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia near the Public Gardens. Uncle Clyde had his medical office in a front room on the first floor. He dressed quite professionally, including spats. Meals were served in the dining room by a maid who served you your individual portion.

You had to ring the bell for desert and that concept blew the minds of the Boston contingent used to dipping in to large bowls for a third helping.

It was not until years later that I found out that the blue collar version of a good meal was in medical question. Dr. Clyde Holland was certainly not cheap but, as a top medical professional, he did think it was possible to eat yourself to death. Unfortunately, he did not enjoy a long Hughestype life. He had heart trouble and died in his late sixties. His treatment of himself was to severely limit his activity, which is the opposite of today’s treatment practice. His obituary ran four columns in the Halifax paper of April 24, 1971 and listed connections with both Harvard College and Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston.

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n several visits to Halifax during my early twenties, I experienced the real Clyde

Holland, rather than the family myth. By day, he was the formal, exacting doctor that struck fear into every nurse’s heart plus every intern who experienced his teaching at Dalhousie University.

But after supper, upstairs in the den, he was a jovial, humble, interesting man who asked me insightful questions and was very interested in my answers. I gained so much confidence from the way he treated a kid who barely got out of high school. He loved old movies and laughed along with my cousins Dennis and Jim and especially cousin Norma who was in nurses’ training nearby.

This was the man the rest of my family never knew, just feared. From him I learned not to be intimidated by intelligent, accomplished people; most are open to even a glimmer of new insights.

The Holland’s two sons Dennis and Jim were polar opposites. Dennis looked like his dad but did not have his interests. He completed a career in government as so many Canadians do that live in the economically depressed Provinces. I have had a few great get togethers over the years with Dennis and his wife Pat because we have a lot in common. It’s just the distance that has separated us.

Cousin Jim Holland looks like his mother Mona but had his father Clyde’s drive for study and accomplishment. He was playing the grand organ in downtown St. Matthews Cathedral at age fourteen and went on to become a physician. He taught at Dalhousie University like his dad but served mostly in military-type medical practice, helicoptering out to off shore oil rigs.

Jim was a quiet and interesting person. I saw him the few times I was in Halifax, but he Reletives

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never was able to visit me and did not always respond to my Christmas notes. After Mona’s funeral in Saint Mathews Cathedral, Jim and I drove back through the small towns around the Princeport area stopping at old grave sites. The gravestones displayed evidence of those harsh times of the eighteen hundreds. Lots of folks did not make it into their twenties and judgment of your character was severe. We could not see those that were buried face down because of some sin determined by peers, but you could sure see the tombstones facing west instead of east because of some larger perceived sin such as a family social problem. The sin could have been as little as a lack of respect for the religious discipline of the times or - God forbid – adultery.

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iscovering the roots of being harshly judgmental was revealing as this personality

flaw came naturally to me. I’ve worked for many years to minimize this tendency. Elaine and my business partner, Dick Horan, have been a big help. Were strong character judgments a result of those harsh times? Or does this tendency to hold others to a standard of your own choosing have some deep roots in Welch and Scottish traditions?

Well that’s all of the family I have experienced: two grandfathers, five aunts, five uncles and seven cousins. Some may get no further mention and others very little, but I hope these thumb-nail sketches, as well as the pictures, allow you to envision how these relatives affected my life, especially the period around my dad’s death and prior. Although many people influenced my life, I now realize that my dad and my extended family helped form some pretty strong roots that continue to nourish me today.

Reletives

Life Begins

~ 17

I

was born seventy-six years ago from starting this book; my birth year was 1931. My ar-

rival came four years after Bill and Helen Hughes were married. My sister Lois had come into the world two years earlier in 1929, a year made famous by the stock market crash.

This entire 1930s era was a desperate economic period that followed the “roaring twenties” economic boom. For most of this ‘30s decade the fear of being homeless and starving to death was very real for a large portion of the American population. For those lucky enough to find work, just keeping food on the table was considered financial success. There was no unemployment insurance, welfare funding was minimal, and health insurance non-existent. Many conservative financial attitudes of today are attributed to this economic disaster called “the Great Depression”.

“A penny saved is a penny earned” is one of the expressions born of this era of fear for tomorrow. Even as times turned better, some never again took even the slightest risk, so they lost out on the benefits of wise risk-taking. For them, fear of loss prevailed.

I wonder what my parents must have been thinking about the affordability of a new child as they brought me home from a downtown Boston hospital, Mass. Memorial. I came home to a four-room apartment five miles away in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston. The apartment was on the first floor of a typical, wooden, six-family house. Small flats were located on either side of a three story central hall. Ironically, Lois and Al Vater as well as Elaine and I, also started out in similar space. Son Bob and his wife Jodi just missed starting out this same way.

What’s interesting is that two years prior to my birth, my parents had brought Lois home to a larger apartment in a three-family house less than a mile away. The Great Depression may have had something to do with this downsizing.

O

ne of the motor driven vehicles became his very own in 1934 when the Boston Ice

Company sold both the trucks and the customer lists to their drivers. The truck was a 1929 Model A Ford. The price of buying this ready-to-go business was just one dollar as long as my Dad purchased the ice from the Boston Ice Company. To this day, Hughes Oil uses this 1934 date as its origin.

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18

These two pictures show a horse drawn ice delivery wagon and the first truck my dad drove in the 1920s for the Boston Ice Company.

I

believe that laboring on an ice wagon was my dad’s first job after coming to Boston from

Nova Scotia. He first lived in a brick row house in the South End section of Boston. It was a common practice then for immigrant workers to rent a room by the week. Included was a shared bath plus breakfast and dinner from the boarding house lady. On Sundays, your only day off, there was no food prepared, so you were on your own for food and to walk about the city or take the trolley to a movie or to the beach However, this all occurred before my time. I’m not even sure how my dad met my mother.

I think it was through the wife of his friend Arthur Simpson who drove those mad runs of the newspaper’s latest editions his entire life.

M

y first vivid recollections are

not from the little flat at 255 Chestnut Avenue, but from living in a little larger apartment a half mile away at 5 Westerly Street.

We moved there when I was about four.

Our flat was on the first floor of a two and a half story house owned by a German lady, Mrs. Vollmer. It had a fenced in yard dominated by a huge horse chestnut tree that draped itself over the fence from next door. The chestnuts were inside a yellow Sputnik-looking shell that had protruding “ouch” spikes.

This was a small step up in prestige but that was probably not the major consideration - a Chapter One ~ Life Begins

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second bedroom was. Westerly Street bordered the Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church complex, which took up an entire city block. The church was cavernous and was surrounded by a rectory, convent, grammar school and high school. What an amazing accomplishment by Irish and Italian immigrants to develop parishes like these in the early 1900s. Unfortunately the mighty Blessed Sacrament complex is now a relic.

H

owever, Blessed Sacrament was a going institution in the fifties. It very strongly

inuenced the lives of thousands of mostly Irish kids, many of whom went from rags to riches during my lifetime while providing strong Christianbased leadership all over the world. Contrary to the Church hierarchy, the lay people were more secular than sectarian. Many non-Catholics like me admired their basic values and tolerance.

Being Protestant, I was never made to feel different or an outsider by my pals, almost all of whom were Catholic. A few mothers genuinely worried I might never get to Heaven, but that was it for any prejudiced comments. By contrast, I found my Protestant friends more narrow.

The church baseball team was known far and wide, and the 11:30 Mass was standing room only. I can still see those stacks of Sunday newspapers lined up on the massive sidewalk that stretched the width of this huge building. I have never seen so many newspapers stacked in one place since.

On the downside, the power of the mighty clergy of that era mirrored the power of Irish politics more than the humility of Christianity. City people were so in awe of this institution, a slight gesture from the Monsignor or the Cardinal could sway an election.

Sixty years later this high degree of centralized power would lead to scandal as protecting the image of the organization overshadowed protecting its basic purpose. Sexual abuse by a relatively small number of priests was overlooked for far too long.

For a seven-year-old boy, the June Blessed Sacrament Rose Festival was the community event of the year. A Ferris-Wheel was set up beside the church and there were tents and tents of games of chance. In addition, three brand new automobiles were parked out on that big sidewalk to be rafed off at ten cents per chance. In the late thirties, it was pretty impressive to see brand new vehicles stretched out along the front steps of the church. All of us kids went to bed dreaming Chapter One ~ Life Begins

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20

of winning one of these new cars, which very few families in our neighborhood owned. Almost as exciting as oogling those brand new cars was winning a 20 to 1 silver choice in the cup and rolling ball gambling game. Kids weren’t supposed to play, but we did.

As bustling as this giant church complex was, Westerly Street, consisting of one- and twofamily homes owned by working folks, was quiet and tree-lined. In the attic of our two and a half story house lived an elderly, small, German lady who wore Coke-bottle thick glasses. She was a voracious reader and walked, rather stooped, each day to the local library with a book bag slung over her shoulder. She would smile at me and speak to me in an accent I could never make out as she made her daily

Dad and the new truck

trudges for more books. I wonder now what her life must have been like living in that tiny

attic all alone in a foreign country while Hitler’s war machine was warming up in her native land.

It was while living here, in 1937, that my dad bought a new International truck chassis. The day he brought it home, and before it was outfitted, he took Lois and me to Aunt Winnie’s in Sharon twenty miles away. What a thrill to be in a brand new vehicle for the first time even if it was a truck.

On the way home from Sharon, we finally convinced my dad to sing the only song he ever knew “Maggie.” I will never forget that experience.

Dad had the new truck chassis outfitted re-using the body from the original Model A Ford ice truck. He then had a custom-made, 275-gallon tank mounted behind the cab. This tank was used for hand-filling 5-gallon cans of stove oil (also called range oil or kerosene). He also had a portable platform built to cover the floor of the original ice body on which he could stack as many as twenty 300-pound cakes of ice. A length of canvas was included to keep the sun off the ice.

Exterior shelves extended along the ice body so he could stack 25-pound bags of nut coal packaged in heavy paper bags. Some folks used this small diameter nut coal in kitchen and parlor stoves instead of kerosene. It was safer than kerosene but a lot messier. Soot and ashes were common in the kitchen as well as an imposing three-section, soapstone sink with solid brass faucets mounted along the wall.

Chapter One ~ Life Begins

Dad at thirty seven - me at four

~ 21

W

hen dad wanted to deliver coal for furnaces, he removed the wooden floor platform so

the next load of ice would not get dirty from the leftover coal dust on the floor of the truck bed. With this flexibility, Dad was ready to solve the problem of the ice delivery business being slow in the winter. He was delivering ice, coal, and stove oil .

H

owever a far less positive thing happened to us on Westerly Street as well. My mother

suffered the first of her nervous breakdowns. Hospitalization in a dreary state institution was the only treatment affordable for a working family. The hospital cost may have been inexpensive, but the housekeeper’s salary must have taken half of my dad’s meager income. Our housekeepers were usually unattached, middle-age women wiling to work for very modest wages. Some could not be counted on to fulfill their obligations, a constant worry for my dad who had to work every day with no substitute available.

I can still recall confronting my dad after he came home from another brutal days work with “I hate Mrs. Weaver!” I’ll bet it was not abuse from the housekeeper, just my resistance to discipline that had to be imposed on a pesky six-year-old.

I don’t ever remember my Dad complaining, but he should have. He worked so hard six days a week, and then unfailingly attended church on the seventh day. It was not unusual to find him shoveling the snow off the church sidewalk early on a Sunday morning.

After church he packed a little black bag of goodies to take to my mother. He left the house around one o’clock for the long journey to Westboro State Mental Hospital. Since he had no automobile, this trip required a fifteen-minute streetcar ride to Brookline Village where he would board the B&W bus for a ride of an hour or more out Route 9 towards Worcester.

St Andrews Methodist Church

He didn’t return until after dark and went straight to bed so he could be up at 5:00 am to begin the six-day work week all over again. Days off, vacations, or sick time were never a consideration as this unrelenting schedule went on for more than three years. The black bag he packed for my mom and those pink B&W bus coupons were a familiar sight in his bedroom.

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n a number of winter Wednesday nights he took me to the wrestling matches at Chapter One ~ Life Begins

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22

Boston Arena, now called Northeastern University Arena. It was quite a thrill watching the early matches in a dense, smoke -filled atmosphere. Many men, including my dad, smoked cigars at these events. We would leave early, and I would babble all the way home on the streetcar about the excitement of watching strong men inflicting pain on each other. Professional wrestling did not look quite as phony then as it does now. Steve “Killer” Casey was my favorite.

We attended a small, wooden, Methodist church about a quarter of a mile down the street from Blessed Sacrament. On the corner opposite St. Andrews loomed Plant’s shoe factory, a massive six-story brick building that must have been nearly a half-mile long. About a hundred yards away, and dwarfing our church, was the factory’s giant smoke stack. It blew ear shattering sounds for twelve noon and at other times. On snow days, it signaled “no school” by three short blasts followed by three long ones. I can still feel the anxiety of that slow signal count, then cheering loudly as long blast number six echoed through the neighborhood.

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nly later in life did I learn about Thomas G. Plant. As a Russian Jew, he was an

amazing immigrant success story. In the 1920s, at the pinnacle of his wealth from shoe manufacturing, he built a very interesting vacation castle high up on Bald Peak just ten miles north of Wolfeboro. It has a panoramic view of Lake Winnipesaukee. Plant also founded the neighboring Bald Peak Colony Club, an exclusive golf club, which I have played on occasion.

Ironically, Thomas G. Plant died broke from investing in Russian bonds just before a revolution took place in that country. Allegiance to his native land ended up reversing the fortune he earned here.

I would not have thought it then, but that little Methodist Church, so tiny next to this giant factory, did more for me than Plant’s fortune did for him. Our congregation was so small, every church member had to pitch in whether it was taking part in a play, being chairman of a committee, or soliciting money to pay the stipend of a passing parade of student pastors from Boston University Theological School. It was here, especially in my teens and young adulthood, that I learned what being responsible was all about. There was no place to hide and assume somebody else should do it. All too often, the mirror pointed to who should do it even if it scared you to death because you had never done it before. There was no room for spectators here. We all had to be participants in this organization.

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nother interesting opportunity at St. Andrew’s was working with blind people. I sang

in the small choir directed by blind organist Ed Jenkins. Ed lived on the grounds of the Perkins Institute Chapter One ~ Life Begins

~ 23

for the Blind in Watertown with his wife Stella who had sight. Stella drove Ed over every Sunday as well as Wednesday night for choir practice. Quite often they brought over a blind soloist named Thelma McGovern. It was amazing to watch Ed play and direct the choir. You could not imagine he was totally blind. I came to know the Jenkins quite well and never ceased to marvel at their uplifting spirit. A lot of the disadvantage of blindness was made up by a very keen sense of hearing plus an innate sense of what was going around him. I never once saw him appear helpless.

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he other lifelong strengths I gained at St. Andrews

Methodist Church were spiritual. The basic message from the pulpit was that God loved each of us unconditionally.

Parents and peers often have conditions attached to their love which, when combined with your own youthful self doubts, could pull you down. Listening to the power of God’s love and the promise of a joyful life ahead, if I followed Christ’s teachings, would lift me up. This concept of never feeling alone, and that good days were ahead, gave me the 23 Burr Street strength to get through some tough times. Being born again and seeking personal salvation were ideas rarely mentioned. Looking out for others less fortunate was the dominant theme.

B

y the time my mom got back home from the mental hospital, I was about eight or

nine, and we were now living less than a mile away at 23 Burr Street in a similar type apartment. I believe the prior landlord at Westerly Street, Mrs. Vollmer, needed our apartment for new German immigrants. At the new Burr Street location, we no longer needed full time housekeepers, but my mom must still have had some problems as I remember my teenage cousin Dot taking care of us a lot. She became my favorite person later on, but I did not appreciate her then because she made me eat Kix for breakfast. Sixty-five years later you can still buy that tasteless, little orange ball cereal. I never have.

I know we lived on Burr Street in 1938 as the granddaddy of all New England hurricanes occurred that fall. Since we did not have the warning systems of today, Lois and I were out watching big trees bend in the wind when a giant elm tree crashed right in front of us. We beat it home pretty fast. Most Jamaica Plain streets were completely blocked with large old growth trees strewn across them. Men wielding two-man cross cut saws worked for weeks to clear the debris. I do not recall hearing the sound of a chain saw. Did they not exist?

Chapter One ~ Life Begins

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24

It was quite normal for men to work like machines in those days. The down side was that exhaustive type work like this did not leave much family, social, or intellectual time for most of the male population. Looking back, I think this brutal work was too often used as an escape from responsibility. I believe that is why women bore most of the child rearing responsibility in so many families. Unfortunately, my dad did not enjoy the luxury of escape. He was both Mom and Pop. Not too much later we moved to another similar apartment only a few hundred yards away and the first place I can remember my mom being with us. It was on the corner of Dresden Street and Spring Park Avenue. This time we lived on the second floor with one bedroom and a toilet on the third level where Lois slept. I could use the unfinished attic to play in as well as help my mom bottle and cap root beer there. I also recall fetching Ball jars full of garden vegetables from a vault like room in the basement I think canning fruits and vegetables from a World War II victory garden plot was a pretty common practice. Lots of store bought can goods were either rationed or just plain unavailable in the early 1940s.

A housewife’s role was not easy in this era. Women did all the laundry by hand, scrubbing clothes on ribbed, thick glass washboards set in a wooden frame. After plenty of hand-abusing scrubbing and sloshing in the machine, they cranked the clothes through a hand wringer to get most of the moisture out. They then hung them to dry on a porch clothesline using wooden clothespins. Clotheslines hung with laundry became a family’s diary. A clothesline was an open display for neighbor’s surmising. What hung on these rope lines said a lot to the next door neighbor about how you lived. The expression “airing out your dirty linen” originated from the transparency of what hung on that clothesline.

H

omemakers shopped every day for food because almost no one had electric refrig-

erators. Rain or shine, women walked to the various stores every afternoon. Very few people had automobiles as cars were expensive and gasoline was tightly rationed. Only a doctor or some other important person had an A sticker on the windshield for unrestricted travel.

In winter most streets were not plowed. After a snow storm they were rolled by horses pulling wide wooden drums. Some streets were Chapter One ~ Life Begins

Fifth grade Bowditch School

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blocked off for coasting and milk was delivered in horse drawn sleds call pungs. Coasting was plentiful and not as much of a safety problem as only delivery trucks were on the streets. I did have one scary incident coasting all the way under Harry Denton’s oil truck. Eventually, dad became one of the few to own an old car. However, in winter he would put it up on wooden blocks and drain the radiator.

I now realize that my dad was a real softie because one Christmas he let Santa bring me a Daisy Air Rifle, commonly known as a BB gun. I was about ten or twelve. Lois recently reminded me that I shot her special doll through the head several times. Worse than that, I would stand on a box in the attic, open the skylight, and pepper Fred Sheehan’s attic window next door. When caught, my dad paid to have Fred’s window replaced.

Dad took the rifle away, but I’m not sure that stopped my penchant for being a pest. The Saturday af-

Bowditch School, now retirement living

ternoon “shoot em up” cowboy movies had a big influence on my imagination. Man, would I be hyped up coming home from an eleven-cent double feature at the Jamaica Theater! Sometimes a short Lone Ranger serial followed the double feature, or maybe I was hyped by a ticketed crazy car race where the winning number got a free candy bar. This was pretty exciting stuff on Saturday afternoons.

F

or the next few war years, life was better for us all at 80 Spring Park Avenue. No house-

keepers, no hospitalizations, and on good weather Sunday afternoons we could go to my Aunt Winnie’s in Sharon in the used car my dad bought. These were great family get-togethers.

While we were living on the second floor of 80 Spring Park Avenue, Lois and I attended the Bowditch Elementary School, about three quarters of a mile away over on Green Street. This yellow brick building is now a senior home. Lois and I walked back and forth twice a day to the Bowditch passing a vacant lot on Chestnut Avenue, called the “hauntie.” I lost a couple of classmate fights on this vacant land. I remember winning only one. It was from little Danny Garrity. I was little feared in the neighborhood.

On the plus side I still have autographs of my Bowditch teachers. My favorite was Miss Fleming. She was very pretty, and I had a crush on her. She taught for many years evidently giving up any marriage opportunity because teachers in that era were not allowed to marry.

Chapter One ~ Life Begins

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T

he Spring Park Avenue neighborhood was an interesting mix. The street we cornered

on, Dresden, was an alleyway of inexpensive tenements. Along Spring Park Avenue were some lovely single- and two-family homes, but on narrow Dresden Street life was different. One family I knew went to the “Welly” for free milk and was scorned for it. I think that was because the intense propaganda of World War II brought out long-standing attitudes of self-reliance and sacrifice.

Getting something for nothing was considered sinful. In some circles it still is. New Hampshire’s “Live free or die” slogan would have fit in perfectly. We placed hard judgment on the Hand family of six whose dad was unemployed.

Fanaticism was also prevalent in the neighborhood. The MacDonald family in the house behind ours supported Father Coughlin, a rogue priest who produced an anti-Semitic newspaper.

The paper was free, and I now shudder to think that I helped deliver them. Right across the street from the MacDonald’s was Lippy’s store. What a burden he and his hard working wife must have carried, as Jews were so ridiculed then. I also recall having to get glasses in order to read the Bible a chapter at a time before I went to sleep. It’s pretty difficult to square my Bible reading with delivering an anti-Semitic publication. How could I accept such a grossly distorted message about Jews?

It was years later that I found that the Catholic Church in Rome and most of Europe was very slow to disagree with Hitler’s opinion of Jews. The attitudes of the Protestant church and other educated people were not much better. A survey of the 1938 incoming freshman class at Princeton was asked who they considered “the world’s greatest living person” Hitler polled number one with Einstein second.

A

s astonishing as the above statistic sounds in here in 2007, ignoring the persecution

of Jews was shared by many at that time. This attitude may have been more prevalent in our neighborhood because the Haffenreffer Brewery was within walking distance. I recall little ill-will being expressed toward local Germans, but nasty comments about Jews were common. The brewery produced Pickwick Ale in clear quart bottles with a long narrow neck. Locally it was termed “poor man’s whiskey guaranteed to grow hair on any woman’s chest.” Heavy odors of hops permeated the neighborhood air on brewing days.

Election tricks were about the same then as now. When Wendall Wilkie was running against FDR for president, we kids paraded around singing, “A horse’s tail is soft and silky; lift it up and you’ll find Wilkie.”

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Local criminal influence was supplied by the Carville boys across the street. They were being brought up by a divorced mother. Berky was my age and smaller but could beat me up because he was so aggressive. Roy was older and much meaner and spent many years in prison.

However the Carville’s were the exception. Sprinkled through the area were some pretty classy people who were teachers and various other professionals that lived in tidy single and two-family houses. A slice of life in this city neighborhood was a very wide slice indeed.

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bout this time Mom’s step-sister Clara and her husband Dick Richardson started to

invite us to their home in Malden, Massachusetts, and in the summer, to their rented cottage in southern New Hampshire. This gesture may have been to get us away when my mom was having problems, or maybe they just liked us because they had no kids of their own.

Aunt Clara was an out spoken woman, less stern than my mom’s aunt Aurris McKay, but Clara sure lacked the compassion of my father’s sister, who I now refer to as Saint Jean Day. Lois and I learned a lot from both Richardson’s. Unlike my dad, Uncle Dick was quite mechanical and savvy about many domestic things. He had a boat at the cottage in New Hampshire and some farm animals in Malden. Puppy-dogging him around was interesting. I once watched him behead a chicken with an axe then saw it fly headless for a few seconds.

I

n addition, Aunt Clara taught us some discipline along with domestic things from her nurs-

ing experience. However, these folks just could not resist being super critical of how my parents raised us. Interestingly enough, when they finally had kids of their own, they spoiled them rotten.

Their home in the city of Malden was on the opposite side of Boston from Jamaica Plain.

I can recall, around age ten to twelve, traveling there by myself or with Lois. I boarded a streetcar to get to the overhead rapid transit trains then transferred and stayed on to the second last stop, which was Sullivan Square. Along the way there were often characters to fend off plus other dangers to watch out for.

A

unique item available at Sullivan Square train station was Dulce. It was sold in small

bags for ten cents by a push cart peddler. Dulce was a chewable, salty, dried seaweed that was a Nova Scotia treat. I have not seen it since.

After leaving the overhead train at Sullivan Square, I transferred to a Fellsway street car for the half hour ride to Malden, all the time watching out the window for my correct stop. Conductors maneuvered these rugged steel machines over rails placed in a landscaped median strip.

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Speed was controlled by large levers the conductor moved back and forth while standing up straight.

The conductor banged a foot bell to warn those in his path at intersections. Fortunately, most conductors were kind men who made sure I got off at the right stop.

From there I walked a mile uphill to Aunt Clara and Uncle Dick’s first floor apartment in a two-family wooden house. It backed up to hilly, rocky woodland. A goat farm was next door. I discovered that those little goats really did eat the tin cans embedded in the garbage feeding pile.

You know, sending children across the city unaccompanied would be called child abuse by today’s standards, but what choice did my parents have? I’m sure many other kids traveled around the city for similar reasons.

One summer when I was twelve or thirteen, I was sent to rural Kingston, New Hampshire to take care of the Richardson’s one-year-old girl because a new baby was due. They had been childless for a number of years but now were having two in two years. Well that was some experience, diapers, feeding and all. I cooked all the meals and would take the one year old girl, Patty, to the nearby state park in a stroller. I really pleased myself that I could be that domestic.

However, it’s been downhill ever since developing that early domestic skill. The lesson to this is that boys are more domestically capable than you think. Later, as husbands, they rarely recall any prior domestic training.

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he dark side of Uncle Dick emerged during this as-

signment while Aunt Clara, the boss, was in the hospital. Many years earlier Uncle Dick had been in the Merchant Marine where A rare time of playing ball with Dad

long months on shipboard make for strange bedfellows. By this time he had taken injury retirement from Lever Brothers soap

manufacturing in Cambridge, MA. Extensive burns from an electrical fire, triggered by him pulling a large electrical breaker, had nearly cost him his life.

The scary side of Uncle Dick came out one night when he insisted I climb in bed with him.

The next thing I knew he was touching me where he should not, so I flew back to my own bed in a hurry. Just recently Lois told me she had to fight him off also. In those days you never mentioned these incidents. I think they were more prevalent and more accepted than many people today could imagine.

Uncle Dick’s new career in Kingston, NH consisted of working a small farm attached to Chapter One ~ Life Begins

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Nason’s General store. The farm power source was unusual, and it’s the only time I have ever experienced it. Oxen instead of tractors were used for plowing and other farm chores. It took some skill to control these strong, wide-shouldered, lumbering animals. Other than his dark side, Uncle Dick was very resourceful and interesting to be around.

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here are just a few more interesting experi-

ences of my pre- and early-teen years worth mentioning.

In the relatives section, I’ve already talked about those thrilling visits to my grandfather’s farm in Nova Scotia as the most memorable of my childhood. Life around home in Jamaica Plain was also quite different than it is for today’s kids.

I was always busy but rarely accompanied by my dad as I was in this picture. I played in the street like everybody else because there was no such thing as

71 Parkton Road today’s organized sports. Most fathers had never played sports, plus they worked long hours, so we made up and organized our own games. My dad tried to play with me when he could. When I played baseball or football with my friends, it was a mile away on some open space near Jamaica Pond or on nearby vacant lots. We wore very little equipment, so I doubt if we played as rough as today’s fully equipped kids. Maybe it was good for us to organize ourselves as this allowed natural leadership to emerge.

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ne example of how leadership emerges naturally involves a rag tag football team

that was started by us kids. We called ourselves the Spring Park Avenue Apaches. I remember selling raffle tickets to buy a blue and white jersey with a number on it, my first and only one. Guess who was the quarterback? Dick Horan! Sure enough, my pal and lifelong business partner had to be in charge even then. The first time my treasured jersey was sent to the dry cleaners, because the colors ran in the jerseys first washed the cleaners lost it. Thrills are so fleeting.

One summer pastime worth mentioning was attending Major League Baseball games. Lois says she went with me a lot. It’s a blur as to how often I went and with whom. At that time, Boston hosted the Braves in the National League and the Red Sox in the American League, so there was a game almost every day during the season. All were day games as neither park had lights. A common newspaper notation was “called because of darkness.”

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Getting to the ballpark required several public transportation changes, and we kids thought nothing of that challenge. There were always plenty of seats. Transportation cost a dime each way and the bleachers cost only twenty-five cents.

The Red Sox were everyone’s favorite. After their games we waited patiently for at least an hour until the players came out through a gate on Jersey Street. We then dogged them for an autograph until they gave in as they walked about a quarter mile to the Kenmore Hotel. I still have those hard-earned autographs - Ted Williams, Johnny Pesky, Joe Cronin, Stan Musial and others.

Some like Chuck Ryba and Catfish Metkovich, and Chuck Workman played only because most regular big leaguers had been drafted into the World War II effort.

W

hen I was about 14 we moved to 71 Parkton Road. It was a horseshoe street on the

side of a steep hill lined with three-family houses spaced no more than twenty feet apart. There was only one garage on the entire street of about seventy-five residences. As I reflect, this was a pedestrian era. A church service might be full with not a single car parked outside.

I think our need to move, once again, was caused by a landlord who needed our apartment for a newly arrived relative, in this case from Ireland. It was a friendly departure. Our Spring Park Ave landlord, Mr. Logue, was a kind man who raised Belgian Skipper Key dogs as a hobby. It’s a breed I’ve haven’t seen since but read about recently in a novel under its Belgian pronunciation.

These dogs were small, completely black, and had not even a trace of a tail. Mr. Logue gave us a puppy and warned us to be careful, but it was killed by a car.

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he move to Parkton Road looked like a step up because of its location. Parkton Road

was close to Jamaica Pond as well as the magnificent emerald necklace of parklands that semicircle Boston. Francis Law Olmstead, who designed New York City’s Central park, Chicago’s lake front parks, and many other famous projects, created this incredible piece of landscape architecture.

This winding stretch of altered nature wound its way from Boston Common all the way to Franklin Park which, to this day, contains a famous zoo. At one time you could ride a horse on a scenic bridle path over the five-mile length of this landscape masterpiece.

My dad’s choice of our particular apartment was questionable. Maybe he was limited by the wartime housing shortage. The flat he chose was on the third floor under a flat roof. It was chilly in winter, steamy in summer, and had a kooky landlord living beneath us. Their flaky daughter and son-in-law lived on the first floor. These people were weird. Neither family ever opened the door more than a crack. That was good because the smell that flowed to you almost knocked you over.

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T

he owner’s wife, Mrs.Winterson, clothed herself in rags. Her husband, a crippled former

saloon owner, was rarely seen but seemed the sanest. For a time I had to deliver ice to them. I would pause in the second floor back hall with a large piece of ice on my back and take a deep breath. Then I would dash through the dirty kitchen to the cluttered pantry where the ice box was, trying desperately to get the ice into the top compartment and get back out the door without exhaling. Sometimes I made it, but when I did not, the big inhale that occurred within that apartment was gagging.

One Parkton Rd. incident stands out. I developed scarlet fever one June and was delirious for about five days. When I came to our minister Reverend Youngeward, a handsome, big Minnesotan, was standing at the foot of my bed. I stayed in that bed for another month listening to baseball games on the radio, making up my own daily scorecards to tally the game. Many kids incurred serious illnesses in those days. Some died or Lois and me as teenagers

had lifelong after-effects because of these very prevalent

childhood diseases. Luckily I suffered no after-effects. Today when I read those nostalgic lookbacks justifying why we ate dirt with no ill effects, I say, “Baloney.” Lots of trouble occurred back then from Polio to early death or lifetime disfigurement from a lack of safety equipment as well as having limited medical solutions.

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y mom had mild problems with depression at Parkton Road. A familiar sight when I

would come home in the late afternoon from high school was my dad sitting on the edge of their bed talking softly to her. She probably had been in bed all day. It was this period of my life that I experienced her mood swings for the first time. Over a period of a few days she would change from this lovely, sweet person into a state of agitation and display a total change in her facial expression. I learned to watch her eyes and act accordingly However, the years of thirteen to seventeen are so self-absorbing I took little notice of my mom’s problems. I was home only to eat and sleep, which was the same for all my friends. When asked, “where are you going?” our answer was always the same—“OUT!” I did get some quality time with my dad because I helped out on my Dad’s ice and oil delivery route on Saturdays in Chapter One ~ Life Begins

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32

school season and weekdays during the summer. If I had a “pick up” baseball or football game, he would let me off early. I do not recall ever asking if he really needed me. Only occasionally did he seem disappointed to lose his helper on a busy day. He was such a nice person.

My value to my dad increased with my physical strength. At first I delivered small weights of ice and retrieved the empty round five-gallon cans people kept on their back porches. These cans were used to funnel range oil into two and a half-gallon heavy glass bottles that in turn fed a couple of range burners in the kitchen stove. Most of the stoves were cast iron, originally designed to burn coal. Most stoves had been revamped to accommodate kerosene burners that were gravity fed and manually adjusted. Lots of fires and deaths followed because these crude burners contained no safety controls. However, this heating arrangement was more comfortable and cleaner than tending a coal fired stove with its attendant smoke, soot, and ashes.

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bigger safety problem was the oil that was inadvertently spilled on the back hall steps

and porches by people like me. This created another disaster waiting to find its way into the newspapers. The oil can delivery boy suffered a little also. In winter, I had a continuous rash on my legs from the oil that slopped out on them from the missing poring spout caps as I bounced up the stairs carrying two full 40 pound five-gallon cans up two and three flights.

K

erosene stoves were a major source of heat in the Forties. Even if a home had central

heat, via a system of radiators or ducts, there was rarely a radiator in the kitchen, and the central coal fired furnace was lit only in the colder weather. About 25% of apartments had no central heat at all, so a parlor stove was used as a companion to the kitchen stove. Today’s level of comfort was a rarity in those days. It was either too hot or too cold in these apartments, another excuse for a teenager to rarely be at home.

However, working on that ice and oil truck taught me a work ethic that has lasted a lifetime.

You rarely stopped, and you made every move count. It is also the reason I passed my driving test in a truck only one week after I reached sixteen. I had been learning to drive bit by bit for more than two years. Since it was not legal to get behind the wheel until you were sixteen, the inspector commented, “Young man, you have learned a lot in just one week.”

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s I write this story, more and more, I see the pest in me. I’m sure at fourteen I was

pestering my dad, “Can I pull the truck up to the next house?” “Can I drive it just around the corner?”

“I can carry that ice up to the third floor!” No wonder my daughter Barbara and I lock horns occaChapter One ~ Life Begins

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sionally. She has some of these same pesky attributes, or faults depending on how you look at this quirk.

I must have also had a lot of social initiative because I was into all sorts of groups in my junior high and high school years. Except for the little Methodist church that I attended regularly, my social education was gained on the streets. It Lots of hours spent on this corner

was easy to make friends then as we all walked home from school together. Lack

of organized sports and other pedestrian cultural options pushed us all together. Boredom sure does foster creativity and friendship.

At first I hung out with kids from the Parkton Road area, but they were sort of cliquish.

Being in the Protestant minority was part of the problem but thinking more “blue collar” than them was an even bigger reason. Most of their dads had white collar jobs. These jobs probably had very little more income than a tradesman, some less, but wearing a shirt and tie to work inferred some sort of status. I never have understood or agreed with this assumption. Was it better to aspire to some sort of white collar clerk’s job than learn an important trade? In those days, it was common to hear a very skilled tradesman say to his son, “Don’t be a bum like your old man - go to college.”

Through a school friend named Doug MacDonald I started hanging out on the corner of Paul Gore and Centre Streets during my last year at the Mary E. Curley Junior High, named for the famous mayor’s first wife, Emelda. From this group of twenty or more came a number of lifelong friendships. Each time we talk it’s like we never left that corner.

Unfortunately my pal Doug got nailed with alcoholism too few years after marrying a most wonderful girl. Some years ago, I tracked him down to a cabstand in Waltham. He was an embittered person living in a room by himself proud that his name was not on the mailbox. Handsome ex-Marine Doug MacDonald was no more. Such a puzzle! Such a tragedy! Doug was always clear about only one thing. Everybody else was at fault but him.

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t was on this same corner that I learned to spit with authority, smoke, drink beer and cash

two cent and five cent bottles to shoot pool. Sometimes I set up bowling pins for a nickel a string Chapter One ~ Life Begins

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34

to pay my share of the pool table rate of sixty cents per hour, but most of my vices were paid with my ice truck earnings.

However, our vices were not our prime function. Humor was the prime intellectual activity of this gang. If it was not funny, it was not worth doing. Seeing humor in all aspects of life was the prime legacy I took from these guys. After that attribute, the priority was not forgetting where you came from and always remembering who your real friends were. When I remember to implement this legacy, I’m the happiest.

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e all had nicknames, most of which were crude. However, we did curtail swearing as

a lady passed. We drove the owner of the little corner store crazy, sometimes flipping lit cigarettes up onto her awning to watch a hole form. She was a lovely Greek woman who read the Bible as she minded the store. She raised two bright kids while supporting a drinking, gambling spouse who rarely worked in the store. People did not divorce in those days; they just suffered.

I don’t know why Mrs. Peteross kept a pin ball machine in that store. Pal Peter “M” Weiss taught us how to file corset stays to fool the coin slot. When that would fail on a new machine, “M” would drill a tiny hole and hit the bumpers with a wire to ring up a score and get free games. “M” Weiss also ran the weekly mouse hunting game at the incinerator below his father’s medical office.

We stood around with shovels as he lit the incinerator off. When the mice started fleeing we pounded them. When I see that game represented in Arcades today, it makes me cringe.

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angs hung out then on most corners that had a store with a soda fountain, but violent

rivalries between gangs did not exist as they do in some places today. Sandlot football was organized around these gangs. Our team, the “Hobo’s,” was not strong even though an ex-Marine named Johnny Shea tried to help us. When we played Bubba Kelley’s Grovesnor Club we got smeared. Kelley became a star running back under their long-time volunteer coach Gabby Hartnett, one of many great neighborhood guys who helped kids.

A

couple of interesting anecdotes about the Grovesnor corner demonstrate the diverse

career paths of city corner kids. The first example is Frankie Salemme. He was a puny kid that nobody paid any attention to. However, in his mid-teens he took up bodybuilding, which led to him being recruited as a leg breaker for loan sharks. Gyms in those days were not health clubs but work out places for boxers and shady characters. Lots of questionable characters hung out there.

Puny Frankie Salemne went on to become “Cadillac Frank” working his way up to be head of the Chapter One ~ Life Begins

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New England Mafia. He has killed many people, been shot several times, and has served long sentences.

E

xample number two came from the family of the Grovesnor corner storeowner where

Frankie first hung around. One of store owner Mike Pernokas’ four successful sons, John, is a retired UPS vice-president who now lives in Wolfeboro. John is a most charitable man who donated the land for our new “Nick” athletic complex. A statue is being designed to honor him.

It was not a difference in opportunity that separated these two lives. Frankie Salemme had a great opportunity to go straight and succeed. Dick Horan’s dad got him into the electrical union and then a lifetime position at Boston Garden. Most people who caught this break would think they had died and gone to heaven. But Frankie gave it up. What happened? If I had to make a guess I would say that Frank got caught up in the ego of being in the “action”. Becoming someone special, someone tough, and someone important must have been his goal. What a price I feel he paid for those elusive thrills. I wouldn’t be surprised if he still feels it was worth it. Tough guys like him often bragged about being able to do “hard time” in prison standing on their heads.

On balance, the shenanigans on our corner at Paul Gore and Centre were more mischief than felony. What we shared was a lack of worthwhile goals just as the Korean War was beginning.

“Dog” Dougherty was the first to enlist in the Marines and one of the first Americans killed in combat.

A year later George Maling had half his shoulder shot off. The rest of us soon came to realize that being drafted into the armed services would be in our future very soon. Maybe that was the excuse for our frivolous attitudes.

I

hung on this corner all three years of high school. Why I chose to attend Boston English

High School in the downtown South End section of Boston, I will never know. Only a few other pals did. I think it was because the local high school, that Lois and my cousin Billy attended, had an unfair rap. It offered an agricultural course plus had weak sports teams. The perception of joining farmers and losers evidently did not seem cool to a fourteen year old. I sure was not making decisions on good research.

In contrast to Jamaica Plain High, Boston English was one of the oldest and most famous schools in America. The physical building was 125 years old and for many years jointly housed prestigious Boston Latin, which to this day still requires a tough entrance exam. Both schools have a long list of famous alumni and The Thanksgiving English vs. Latin football game is the oldest football rivalry in the United States.

Chapter One ~ Life Begins

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By the time I arrived in 1945, history had passed Boston English by. This mammoth fortress like building contained an unmanageable 3,300 students, all boys. The staff was pretty weak, probably because the best talent was drained by the World War II effort. Unlike Latin, which was a known springboard to schools like Harvard, the purpose of Boston English High had become unclear.

W

hat an easy place to get lost and go backwards in social skills in this crowded all-

male atmosphere. I took a regular streetcar in to school and a student-only streetcar took me back.

We often raised hell on it. It was not unusual to take the morning street car to school, put your books in your locker and walk the mile or so to the downtown theater district. By ten o’clock we were let into the RKO Keith, which featured both a stage show and a movie for a quarter. I recall seeing Cab Callaway and his band live on stage. I cannot imagine the pittance these talented musicians earned.

By the time the movie was over and we walked slowly back to school, I would take the special street car back to Jamaica Plain and call it a normal day. In a school where few knew who you were, it was also easy to cut classes, but you had to duck when passing a local bar because the teacher you were cutting might be in there.

S

ports were not much of an option for a 120 lb 5’7’ kid no matter how eager I was. The

practice fields were five miles from school, and the competition from 3,300 peers was intimidating to say the least. Unless you had an unusual body, blinding speed, outstanding poise or talent, forget it. It was not unusual for teams to be made up mostly of kids previously recruited from junior highs schools around the city. This made tryouts a joke. Only a talent like my pal Bob Kelley could overcome these obstacles. He played three sports.

I did sign up for one activity; assistant basketball manager. I then worked my way up to manager. By the time I reached my senior year, I wished I had gone out for the team earlier. I could shoot as well as the starters. Looking back, I must have been a natural organizer as I recall initiating a project to get all the old team pictures up on the coaching office walls. I think this excused me from a number of classes.

Chapter One ~ Life Begins

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M

y entire experience at Boston English was such a contradiction of my small Methodist

Church experience. With my lack of size, and lack of direction from home, it was a great place to hide and under perform. For example, I flunked every subject once during my senior year because I knew I had enough credits to graduate. Guidance counseling was non-existent, so I wound up paying $5 to apply to Burdett, a downtown accounting school. I shudder to think how I would have fit into that career.

Since I had all my credits, I was allowed to leave school on May 1,1948 with a note from my dad saying that he would employ me. I intended to help him for the summer and attend Burdett Business College in the fall while waiting to be drafted. Little did I know how my life would soon change and change so dramatically!

E

arly May 1948 was the beginning of my dad’s fatal illness. Our workday started about

6:00 am when we got the truck out of a private garage a mile away. We then drove less than a mile to the Boston Ice Company facility on Heath Street, a site now occupied by a large Veterans Hospital. The ice house was a large, red brick complex that once housed an ice making operation.

By 1948, its purpose had been reduced to just the storage of 300-pound ice blocks that were frozen elsewhere.

The complex also housed a garage that stored the company’s electric trucks. They served downtown ice delivery routes that were still a part of the Boston Ice Company system. These vehicles had hard rubber tires and the large batteries, located where an engine normally would be, were re-charged overnight. On busy days, it was not uncommon to see these trucks being towed in after running out of juice. This was 1948, so it’s interesting to note how electric vehicles are not exactly a new idea sixty years later.

A

fter loading up with about twenty 300-pound cakes of artificial ice, my dad and I set

out for the local meat and fish markets that displayed their offerings on top of shaved ice in glass show cases. That’s where the work began. At the receiving platform of the Mohican Market, Dad set a twenty-five pound piece of ice in a bushel basket. With a sharpened, five-pronged metal instrument attached to a four-foot wooden handle, he shaved the ice until the small block disappeared.

He then set another 25-pound piece in the basket and repeated the process. The full bushel basket now contained fifty pounds of shaved ice for me to put on my shoulder, then carry in and pour into the meat or fish display case. Some days only a dozen baskets were needed. In warm Chapter One ~ Life Begins

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38

weather, especially on Mondays, twenty or more full baskets had to be hand shaved. This took more than an hour of continuous-motion hand shaving.

By eight o’clock, the delivery of ice and five-gallon cans of range oil to tenements would begin over a scheduled route. After lunch the same route was driven again. Some customers wanted ice delivered automatically as needed and their stove oil cans filled whenever empty. Others put a special card, about twelve inches square, in their front window to indicate they wanted something. (I would love to find one of those old cards.) A customer would turn their card to indicate their choice of 25 pounds, 50 pounds, etc. or turn it to the other side to indicate the need for a can of oil or a 25-pound bag of coal.

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e were usually finished work by about 2:30 unless we had coal to deliver. When we

did, we returned to the garage, took the ice platform out of the truck body, and counted out the number of large burlap bags we needed. Then it was off to the coal yard to fill these rugged bags with the larger sized pieces of coal that were burned in the furnace in the basement. Oddly enough, the size of the coal chunks used in the furnace was called “stove” while the smaller sized coal used in kitchen stoves was called “nut.” A much larger size termed “egg” was used in big, round, gravity, warm air furnaces.

F

orty burlap bags (two tons)

was a full load. When we got to the delivery point we opened the appropriate cellar window of a two - or three - or six-family house and connected a metal chute to a steel stand. Then we dug out bag after bag from the truck body and lugged each one on our back until we reached that chute and poured the coal down into a wooden framed bin in the cellar. Talk about backbreaking dirty work, especially if steps were involved or the weather was warm. Wow! As I recall, only a few days into this summer employment, my dad started to feel lousy. As was his custom, he would take a short nap in the truck after lunch at Hoffman’s cafeteria across from Plant’s shoe factory. However, he soon started to complain of headaches and dizziness which was most unusual for someone who worked everyday hurt or not. I would insist he let me drive Chapter One ~ Life Begins

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him home and surprisingly he accepted. I would then complete the afternoon route, which was much easier than the morning trip, covering those same Jamaica Plain streets.

A

fter a few weeks of this routine, which forced him to struggle mightily to begin work

each day and to stay on his feet for at least the morning, a local doctor sent him to Peter Bent Brigham hospital for diagnosis. The suspicion was a brain tumor but there was no MRI or Ultrasound equipment then, so an exploratory operation was recommended. The doctors told us they had to drill a hole in his skull to relieve pressure and this operation alone might kill him, blind him, or turn him into a vegetable. Full recovery from a brain tumor would be considered a miracle in 1948.

I’ll never forget that last visit. He lay in bed white as a sheet and weak as a kitten but as I left he gave my hand such an eerily tight squeeze. In those days families were not encouraged to stay, so we went home to wait. The call came about 2:30 a.m. that forty-eight-year-old Bill Hughes had died. I dressed and drove my Mom and Lois to the hospital in his 1936 Ford. I then watched helplessly as my Mom fell prostrate over his pure white, cold body. I have often asked myself why I did not insist on staying with him until he died. How alone he must have felt as his life ebbed.

I drove at least the morning route the next two days as my mom and Lois, with the help of Aunt Winnie and Aunt Jean, were scurrying around making funeral arrangements. Three days later was the funeral. Uncle Bill volunteered to drive the route. I believe he stayed sober long enough to get the job done. This emphasis on work seems so mercenary now, but that’s the way it was in those days and especially in my family. Your job commitment came first. People counted on you to deliver that ice, coal, or stove oil, and you never let them down. Prior to my dad’s illness, it had been many years since he had a day off.

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ell, there I was on June 8, 1948, jolted into reality. I do not recall any great pondering

about what to do. I would do what I was taught to do. Show up and do what you have to do, figuring it out as you go. So on June 9 1948, the day after the funeral, I took the truck out of the garage at 6:00 am, only three months into the tender age of seventeen, I was a businessman, like it or not.

Chapter One ~ Life Begins

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I

cannot take credit for making a thoughtful decision to take over my dad’s little business

because I never considered that I had a choice. I was also surrounded by a very strong support system. The circumstances were so dire, and my dad so loved, that everybody imaginable pitched in to help me, including my dad’s competitors. Aunt Jean and Aunt Winnie were constantly at the side of Lois and me. Surprisingly, for the first few busy weeks my mom was mentally healthier than she had been in years. The shock of the tragedy evidently freed her enough to undertake many of the funeral details.

Thank God the ice delivery business was a relatively simple one requiring more brawn than brains, a perfect fit for where I was at age seventeen. For capital I took the bills from my dad’s left work pants pocket and the change from the right pocket and started in. Just recently Lois gave me a two-dollar bill that was found in my dad’s wallet when he died. It was a bowling prize.

Lois’s role in my life was huge at this point. I was pretty immature. The new six day regimen of long hours and very hard physical work was quite a change. My biggest weakness was not muscle even though I had little of that. No, the major problem for me to face was trying to burn the candle at both ends. I thought I could keep up with my pals, who lounged care-free most days, yet still work like a fool all six days. Something had to give.

Socially, I became known as ten o’clock Hughes because without warning I fell dead asleep in bars, Chinese restaurants, and worst of all, on dates. Poor Lois took on the responsibility of getting me up and out by 6:00 am each working day. This tested her patience sorely. I constantly bargained for just one more wink, so she had to stay awake until I physically got out the door in order to prevent a relapse back into the sheets.

Sometimes I got to the ice house before manager Tim Lopilato. He would find me dead asleep on the loading platform. What a wonderful man. He would often shave a number of baskets of ice in order to let me sleep another half hour on that hard wooden ice house platform.

I

did a little better on the other end of the day. Since I got home earlier than Lois, who

was in secretarial school and had a car to drive (the 1936 Ford), I did the shopping for supper and sometimes cooked it. The couple of hours before Lois got home was the only time I spent alone for reflection. Sometimes I would get sad about losing my dad, dealing with my mom’s problems, and then having to work so hard. It helped to listen to Jan Pierce’s “Bluebird of Happiness” on a Chapter Two ~ Reality

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42

78 rpm record. After that I started supper. I recall Kraft Macaroni and Cheese being a staple.

My ability or willingness to keep the coal fire going in the furnace left a lot to be desired.

Tending a coal fire fit my dad’s steady routine but not my lack of routine. Getting up early enough to put fresh coal on and then wait the fifteen minutes to close the damper did not fit my scrambling habits. Lois often came home to some pretty cool temperatures because a coal fire demanded regular and experienced attention. I gave it neither.

On more than one occasion, after being out with the boys, I arrived home to meet a pretty irritated and cold sister. I would then sheepishly go to the basement to re-start the coal fire. I would put fresh coal on and then pour a cup of kerosene on to get a fast start while thumbing through old Readers Digests. Singed hair was often the result of this dumb move as flames shot back at me through the open fire door. I could have burnt down the building.

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n even more dangerous situation occurred right after I came home from work and in

the apartment alone. I would light the flame under the gas hot water tank to heat enough water for a much needed bath. While waiting for the 30-gallon copper tank to heat, I would lie down to rest my head for just a few minutes thinking I could stay awake. However, all too often I fell into one of my famous deep sleeps. This was not good as there were no controls on these open flame gas heated tanks. The gas flame stayed lit until it was manually shut off.

Well after an hour or so the tank got pretty hot. As the water inside started to turn into steam, the tank would rumble and shake the floor frightening the landlord below who would charge up stairs to shut it off before the tank became a missile and went up through the roof. After a few of these episodes this nutty old lady would greet me in the back hall every single time I came home and in her creepy, foghorn voice say, “Don’t forget the water heater.” I wanted to punch her out, but I knew she was right. No question, I was a liability.

I had fewer such problems at work. Operating a route delivery ice business was pretty simple in 1948 and keeping track of money did not require a CPA. Since you paid cash at the ice house, and most customers did likewise, the cash left in your pockets at the end of the week was the profit. Words like invoice and statement would be well into my future. At the end of that first December my cousin Billy asked me how much I paid in income tax. I replied, “What’s an income tax?” Life has not been that simple since.

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oute delivery by small trucks was the way people received most of their goods and

services in 1948 because few had automobiles. There were separate vendors for milk, eggs, Chapter Two ~ Reality

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bread, fish, laundry, and many other goods and services. For example, the life insurance man stopped by once a month to collect and record in a big columnar book the two dollars he collected for a typical $1,000 burial policy. When our insurance man was drafted into the army, his wife took over the job. That’s how it was then. Checking accounts were non-existen; cash was all we knew.

Trudging up three flights of stairs to collect two dollars seems unimaginable now, but everyone pitched in with little complaint.

It was quite fulfilling to be part of a large group of local entrepreneurs out on the streets. I was interacting and learning from them everyday. Almost every one of these people was honest, hardworking, and friendly. We looked out for each even though we were sometimes competitors.

Trickery was scorned as pride in being honest was important to everyone during World War II.

P

erhaps the biggest influence on my life during my late teens and early twenties were

recollections of my dad. Even though he was dead, I wanted him to be proud of me. I wanted to match his work ethic, and I wanted to emulate his integrity. So many times, while pondering a decision about how to be fair or to have the courage to do the right thing or not get discouraged, I said to myself, “What would Dad do?” Recalling those feelings is a good part of my motivation to write this story. Maybe my kids, my grandkids, or somebody else will gain something from my life experiences that will help in their decisions.

Generations-ago experience and traditions were more easily passed on because folks lived closer together and with less outside distraction.

Not all of life’s knowledge is on the net. Transferring thoughts heart-to-heart by eye contact was pretty effective then and still can be.

The condition of the delivery truck I inher325 South Huntington Avenue

ited was eye opening. That one and a half-ton

1937 International truck, so new and shiny when we lived on Westerly Street was now eleven years old and been nursed through the repair shortages of World War II. But poor mechanical condition did not seem to concern me or my first employee Bubba Kelley. Bubba and I immediately took both doors off the old truck cab for faster working conditions and, as it turned out, faster repair.

Within days of my new career, the drive shaft started falling out. That was some noise as a sixfoot-long steel shaft banged along the pavement. Since “the ice must be delivered” was the dominating objective, putting the only truck we had in the shop for repair was not a consideration.

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At first Bubba and I painstakingly picked the needle bearings off the street and placed them around the coupling before we bolted the drive shaft back in place. However, good, old non-mechanical Bubba decided to throw these little needle bearings away to save time. The drive shaft now fell out almost every time we stepped on the brake. It was some scene when this happened on a main street and a short-of-patience trolley conductor was stuck behind us banging his foot on the bell. Bubba and I would leap out of the door-less cab with the correct wrench in our back pockets and make moves like race pit mechanics. We thought this was funny.

However the conductor, who may have seen this act before, did not.

I wonder if I would have survived that first summer without Bubba. What a spirit! He lived in the basement of a large Bubba’s basement bedroom window brick apartment house that was on the way to the Boston Ice Company. About 6:00 am, I would jump over the hedge, kneel at his ground level bedroom window, and softly say, “Bubba get up.”

Sometimes the whisper was enough but sometimes brother Jimbo, sleeping in the same double bed, woke first and irritated even faster. Jimbo’s elbow to Bubba’s ribs woke him up fast but often started a fist fight which had to be squelched by their mother, Sarah.

I could devote an entire chapter to this bigger than life person, plus Sarah who had such an impact on my life, but that’s later. For now, getting through the summer of 1948 is the story.

Bubba and I worked great together those first summer months laughing all the way. He even allowed me a week off in August to drive to Nova Scotia with Cousin Billy. I told Bubba he could have the week’s profit, which turned out to be illusory because he had hired his brother. Good old Jimbo just helped himself to most of the cash he collected for the ice at each stop. Somehow Jimbo felt entitled. Bubba never forgot this lesson.

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ate in the fall of 1948, Bubba took off in a very old car on a multi-year odyssey to get

a college education. Since mother Sarah was the only Kelley breadwinner, almost no money from home was available, so Bubba worked his way across the country doing a variety of jobs and concluding the trip with a football scholarship to Palo Alto in California. Over the next couple of years he would occasionally show up back home in a car unsafe to take to the local store, never mind to cross the country in. He finally settled back East and graduated from the University of Connecticut Chapter Two ~ Reality

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on another football scholarship that he somehow finagled. Bubba Kelley was the ultimate selfmade marvel, but you never heard that from him. Bubba never bragged; he just went ahead and did things on his own every single day. Bubba helped an awful lot of people, but I never recall him asking anyone to help him. “Don’t ever let anyone see you sweat” was ingrained in him by the subtle but powerful leadership of mother Sarah who exemplified, “Who are we but our stories?” Sarah was no dreamer, but from her I learned there is sustenance in myths.

A crash course in how to be a businessman was Bill of sale for family assets

not the only challenge for me that summer of 1948. My

mom’s strong mental capacity during my dad’s month long illness, and through the hectic days that followed was short lived. Within weeks of June 8, 1948 a manic spell set in that required immediate hospitalization via police paddy wagon including being wrestled in to straight jacket while emergency commitment papers were hurriedly signed.

This meant my mom no longer had any legal rights which set off a legal scramble. It took some months to register the 1937 International and the 1936 Ford sedan. A wonderful lawyer named Charlie Sheffield, recommended by the Boston Ice Company, saved the day. Since my dad had no legal will, my mom no legal rights, and Lois and I were underage, it was some undertaking to keep proper registration plates on the truck. Once again my Aunts Winnie and Jean stepped in. They became temporary administrates while Boston Ice Company-lawyer Charlie Sheffield worked for next to nothing. Lawyer jokes do not apply to Charlie. His total bill was $250.

I ended up paying the estate $350 for the 1937 truck and the 1936 car. The only money my dad had was a $3,000 joint savings account with my mom, which was substantial for its time.

He had saved this money to buy a new truck for cash. Unfortunately the state took that money for my mother’s care since they now owned her legal rights. This circumstance made the start up capital of the new D. G. Hughes Ice Oil & Coal mighty thin -like zero.

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Somehow, I nursed that 1937 International through the winter of 1948/1949. In early spring, I cobbled together a loan from The Boston Ice Company and my Aunt Winnie’s generosity plus my own savings of the past nine months, to total $1800. This bought a new two-ton F8 Ford chassis and a 500-gallon tank divided into two compartments. I re-used the ice body from the old truck. I could now deliver furnace oil if I could find a customer. D. G. Hughes Ice was on the body, Range and Fuel Oils was lettered on the new 500-gallon tank. No more daily breakdowns.

But my mom was the big concern. She was first cared for at a short-term state facility nearby called Fenwood. Lois and I could visit her daily, and she got good care. This facility’s purpose was to keep new patients out of the traditional long-term care facilities by giving them more intense short term care. This worked, and a few weeks later she was a new person, so much so that we started taking her home weekends

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hen came a fateful weekend. When Lois and I picked her up on Friday evening we no-

ticed a distinct change in her eyes similar to the way an alcoholic’s family can see trouble coming.

Evidently no doctor had checked her out and the nurses just repeated last week’s orders to allow a home visit.

Well, that was some weekend as she proceeded to get higher and higher. This was the second time in just a few months Lois and I were to witness this manic escalation without her having a single drink or any other substance that might cause her mind to race so fast. She had to be watched constantly as she ranted and chained smoked, sometimes putting cigarette butts out in her hair.

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ithin twenty-four hours, it was not whether to return to the hospital, but how fast. It

was a pretty emotional scene to watch the police once more wrestle our mother into a straight jacket and carry her down three flights of stairs to a waiting, black, London-looking paddy wagon.

Since it was daylight, I remember shouting to all those peering out behind their lace curtains to mind their God damned business. For a prideful seventeen-year-old, this was a traumatic experience.

The wildly varying mental cycles of Helen Hughes were just beginning to baffle the doctors who, at first, saw each recovery as being long term and not an ongoing pattern of mysterious cycles.

At the end of a year, which was a long time to keep a patient in a short-term facility, my mom was sent to Mattapan State Hospital. It was a sprawling counterpart to the facility she spent over three years in when we were kids. Those dreaded cycles continued. For about six weeks her mental state made you wonder what she was doing there and then those cycles would come Chapter Two ~ Reality

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to an abrupt end. For four weeks she would become one of the sickest patients requiring, hot tubs, rubber rooms, and other treatments.

Each time this happened, all her clothing would get lost and Aunt Jean would get it replaced.

Much worse was the transition for her at the end of the bad spells. She would be stuck for days in the “P” building among some pretty crazy people until space could be found in the M building, which had quiet private rooms. I’ll never forget observing some poor souls in the “P” building who had patches on their foreheads indicating a lobotomy had been performed. It was pitiful to think these folk would carry that lifeless facial expression until they died. What a severe, last-resort treatment. I hoped and prayed my mom could avoid this draconian treatment.

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an, did I hate the visits to the bad wards trying not to notice some naked screaming

women throwing shoes, but I sure became thankful for the nurses and aids willing to work in these conditions. I became equally thankful to the state for providing the refuge. Experiences like this make you realize that not all tax dollars are wasted. There will always be some real suffering going on out there that only government can handle. It’s not about being conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat; it’s about caring.

For three years, these cycles continued almost on a fixed schedule. For example, if a relative or old friend planned to visit, either Lois or I could mark a date on the calendar and say; “She’ll be fine if you visit near this date.” Only on a monthly basis were Lois and I able to talk to a doctor.

We learned little from these sessions as state institutions employed mostly interns who were stretched thin among many patients. However, my mom did receive the most modern treatments of the day which included some new forms of torturous electric shock. None of these ideas changed those maddening up and down cycles. Electric shock treatments must have been pretty tough on her, but she never complained.

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o my life from 1948 to 1951 was a little like my dad’s had been ten years earlier.

I worked hard six days, went to church on Sunday and to the hospital on Sunday afternoon. The reason I say only a little like my Dad’s life was that I had no housekeeper to pay or kids to look after, plus it was my mom and not my wife I was visiting. In addition to having Lois at my side, my support system was enormous. My aunts often covered the Wednesday visit, Aunt Jean had us every Sunday for dinner, my eighty-five-year-old grandmother would walk more than a mile to clean our apartment, and I could drop in at will in Sharon for a cool night’s sleep plus a good meal. My dad’s family was just rock solid. They were people you could always count on.

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Sometime during the 1948-1950 period my draft notice came in the mail. The draft was a continuation of World War II legislation because the Korean Conflict was in progress. I decided to appeal my 1A status for a few reasons; my mother’s mental condition; I was sole support of the family; I was sole operator of a business. Besides, my generation had little passion for involvement in an Asian civil war.

It’s amazing how the same war cry of “Let’s get them before they get us” still influences a significant number of American minds almost sixty years later. The result of the Korean War and a similar result from our involvement in Vietnam a few years later has made me very suspect of this type of domino thinking. From the beginning in 2003, I challenged George W. Bush’s conclusions on Iraq. Evidence in 2007 does nothing to change my mind. I believe that misguided ideas about what constitutes patriotism breeds a thirst by many to have their country exert power just because we can - not because we should. An oversized ego by a president and a vast arsenal of weaponry can fuel some rash decisions. As you can see a conversion from my childhood, conservative, patriotic, “mind your business” roots to a more liberal, questioning type of thinking, started to develop in my late teens.

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y 1950 draft status hearing was a unique experience. It was held in a small meeting

hall above my friend Paul Callahan’s men’s Store in Roxbury. A group of about six people sat around a table seeming not the faintest bit interested in my circumstances. Only one man spoke.

He asked, “Where do you buy your ice and oil?” I said, “The Boston Ice Company.” He then said, “Do you know Joe Berwyn?” I said, “No.” He replied quite forcefully, “You do now!” I then was dismissed with the parting words ringing in my ears, “Don’t forget Joe Berwyn!”

Joe Berwyn was an amiable person who operated a combination gas station, ice house, and fuel tank facility next door to the Boston Ice facility in Roxbury no more than a mile from the Boston Ice facility on Heath Street in Jamaica Plain that I had been patronizing. So I started doing business with Joe Berwyn and like magic I was re-classified 4A. This clarification would be automatically renewed every six months for the next fifteen years.

I still have feelings about the correctness of accepting this assumed bribery. Would I have gotten the deferment on my own? I only did business with Joe for about five years, but he must not have been a vindictive person because my draft status never changed. Maybe this experience is why I have never tried to short Uncle Sam on taxes. Compounding this feeling is the fact that Dog Doherty was killed and George Maling had half his shoulder shot off in this Korean conflict.

Korea’s effect was up close and personal.

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I recall that this era, which included lots of ice delivery, was not my happiest of times. I just did not want to be labeled an ice deliveryman. It was not the brutally hard work that bothered me, but I was embarrassed to have other college bound kids see me lugging ice. It was a status thing.

Lugging ice made me feel just a step above the garbage collector. My dream at that time was to be able to accumulate enough oil customers so that I could give up delivering ice. It was a dwindling business anyway. However, this changeover took about four very tough years to accomplish as I slowly gained enough furnace oil customers to offset the income from ice delivery.

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any years later when someone mentioned I had recently been successful, I said,

“Oh no! My success is not recent.” I explained that the day I no longer had to deliver ice was all the success I needed. Each little success thereafter has been just frosting on the cake.” My idea of success in the early-fifties was to be relieved of those dreadful early mornings shaving ice into bushel baskets at the Mohican Market and then on to the same old delivery route. During that period, I remember waiting until high school girls passed by before putting on that stupid rubber backer and carrying ice that dripped down my back as I trudged up flights of stairs into tenements.

The most prideful thing I remember about delivering ice occurred at Nolan’s Market, an old fashioned butcher shop. Frank Nolan’s market had a large wooden walk in meat chest cooled by ice stored overhead, not exactly modern day refrigeration. Frank insisted that the 315-pound cakes of ice be cut no more than in half so they would melt slower. This meant wrestling a 150-poundplus piece of ice on to my back, held by ice tongs that dug into my shoulder. Since I weighed only 140 pounds this was a confidence challenge.

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hen I got the ice settled on my back from the truck ice body, I would march into the

store and pound my feet up five wide steps on a rugged wooden stepladder. This was a momentum trick. If one more step was required, I would not make it. The step ladder had a wide platform at the top to allow me to turn and rest the far edge of the ice block on the edge of the chest opening.

With the weight now off my back, I would push the block along the floor of the ice holding compartment which stood about eight feet above the market floor level. Ten to twelve trips up that ladder was the usual.

I have no idea what I would have done if I ever stopped on the ladder or missed connections at the top. I did this stunt about once a week in warm weather and quite often a small crowd gathered to see such a strong-man effort from a skinny kid who would never attract attention at the beach.

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Success came so slowly. Around 1953 I was no longer an iceman. I had enough oil business to be called an oilman. It’s amazing what an effect self-perception can have on you.

The fall of 1950, was about the time Dick Horan started to help me on Saturday’s and sometimes during the week. He was attending Boston College from home. Dick soda jerked at the Southgate Pharmacy plus helped me lug ice and cans of oil in his free time. This humble beginning would be the start of a thirty-eight year business relationship. To outsiders it would always be an interesting, envious relationship between two dissimilar people.

I started out with more money and for a time worked harder. Dick wound up with more money by staying longer, but our relationship was never a contest for money. It was a shared goal of doing something important and doing it in a way that we could be proud. That concept was to give full value to the customer, provide fair employee wages and benefits while treating vendors openly and honestly. Profit was never a consideration until we satisfied the prior goals, an idea that is not as popular now.

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hese shared values did not spring from any business manuals but from our strong reli-

gious backgrounds. As different as our religions seemed to be on the surface, most doctrines of both Catholic and Protestant origins arrived at the same conclusions about how to treat people.

From this experience I evolved into more of a secular Christian than a narrow sectarian-type Christian. Methodist, Baptist, Catholic, Jewish seemed similar to me. For me, the message of Jesus mirrored my business results so closely, I have left theology questions to scholars and followed Sunday School type reasoning on business decisions. That philosophy is now called “old school.”

Dick did a lot for my confidence as I tended to be a working fool and not a big thinker. Right from the start Dick pretended we were partners in some big enterprise that needed continuous discussion and analysis. I’m sure it was Dick who convinced me to open the first office in the old cobbler shop at 2 Boylston Street. His idea was that if you want to be big, you better look big. His was such a different point of view from my family who were not risk taker, inadvertently discouraging me. At Hughes Oil’s 50th anniversary, Lois admitted she tried to discourage me from continuing in a business she thought to have no future.

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to look more like a real oil company. We located a 1930’s Gulf Oil tank truck at Kritzie’s junk yard in Foxboro and cut out the last compartment of the tank to accommodate a little ice. I recall him and me squeezing inside this old tank to hand sand and paint the rusted interior. We were working way out in the middle of acres of junk vehicles and could have died from the fumes. Nobody would have ever known.

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hen this truck was no more than six months old, a once in a lifetime experience oc-

curred. One busy Saturday, we were parked just over the crest of a long and steep hill called Rockview Street to deliver range oil to a fifty-gallon barrel located outdoors behind a brick building. I stayed in the cab because we had lost the wooden block we placed in front of the wheels when the truck was pointing down hill. Dick pulled the hose out from the reel inside the cabinet (shown in the above picture) then headed down the driveway, hose over his shoulder, to where the barrel was located. I stayed in the cab with my foot on the brake because a truck parked with the engine running is held back only by an emergency brake which is notoriously unreliable.

As the oil started flowing into the barrel, and Dick out of sight behind the house, the customer came out to pay. I Instinctively and thoughtlessly jumped out of the truck to meet the customer half way down the driveway. All of a sudden Dick shouted, “Whoa!” and I saw the hose followed by the nozzle pass by me spewing oil as it moved like a runaway snake. I foolishly chased it and will never forget the feeling as I got to the street. The truck was gone, hurtling down this long steep hill driverless and heading for homes.

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hen in a flash of good fortune, after about 150 yards, the truck veered right taking down

a street light first and then a fire hydrant before coming to rest against an outcropping of Roxbury Puddingstone rock, native to our area. Dick and I finally caught up with the truck but could not get near it as a geyser of water at least two feet wide was flowing twenty feet in the air from the hole where the hydrant had been. The hydrant hole was now located behind the truck, the broken-off hydrant lodged underneath the front of the truck. Since the truck was now wedged safely against this rock outcropping, we ran to a nearby nursing home to call the Fire Department.

It then struck us funny; there was enough water cascading down over that truck to put out the Chicago Fire so why call the Fire Department? We sat on a nearby wall, kind of stupefied, so we lit up cigarettes, and started to giggle. I have no idea why. People were running out of their homes shouting, “What happened?” By then it all seemed so crazy, like it happened to somebody else.

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truck pulled the truck away from the rock, the only damage turned out to be two small dents in the front bumper plus damage to the hose reel cabinet and water in the oil compartments. Evidently, the truck plowed over the light pole and the hydrant dead center and so hard that it slowed gradually and came to a gentle stop up against the small cliff. We were back to delivering in about two hours. I cannot imagine the consequences if that truck had continued the rest of the 400-yard steep incline and plowed into houses right next to the street. The speed and the weight would have taken the truck right through as least one house, maybe more. This story is another example why I consider my life “Lucky.”

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uring the years he was in college, Dick was my co-worker and best friend. At the

start of his third year, I bought a one-year-old, powder blue DeSoto convertible from Bobby Dunn who had won it in New York. I paid $1,900. It was some thrill to be out cruising with the boys on a summer night in this beauty. I wish I had a picture showing the heavy chrome grille that was likened to the smile of a Japanese General. Or a picture of the dark blue leather boot that snapped over the roof when it was folded down.

Dick often took this showpiece to school.

He claimed it was the only way he could get home in time to help me in the afternoons. This was especially true after I bought a coal truck and a coal delivery business from Vern Stimpert. Most people thought Dick owned that DeSoto convertible as well as at least half the business because he had the car most of the time. The Desoto was often spotted outside a tavern near Boston College.

I did not discourage the ownership illusion because Dick loved to be the center of attention, I did not. Girls I dated sometimes were skeptical of Dick. They thought he led me around by the nose, but I knew better. Sixty years later my analysis remains unshaken.

Dick and I had a lot of laughs in a new business, delivering coal.

Our used coal truck had a steel body that could be portioned off for separate deliveries of a ton or more. I believe five tons was the limit. It had a double lift. The body could be tipped straight back like an ordinary dump truck or could be set to lift about eight feet straight up in the air and then tip in order to chute coal into cellar windows up to twenty feet away. Using this higher position of the body could be hairy as the body had to be level or the coal would come off unevenly and tip the truck on its side. To prevent this potential catastrophe, we would climb up inside the body and shovel like mad to keep the exiting coal pile level. Not sure if we fully understood the risk.

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most of whom were rarely sober. Beer was the solid choice to clear coal dust from the throat.

When we first drove into the coal loading yard, we stopped over a large scale that weighed the truck as a starting point. Then we backed under a large steel hopper that had been filled with coal from twenty feet above by a railroad car. We pulled a large lever that filled one of the truck compartments with what we guessed to be a ton. Then it was back to that big scale, embedded in the ground, to see if we were correct. A person in a little shack slid open a small very dirty window and gave one of three responses. “Right on,” “over x pounds,” or “under x pounds.” I can still hear those veteran coal people giggling as we shoveled the excess off or shoveled on what was short: rarely did we recieve the more typical command, “right on.” As drunk as those old time coal drivers were, they could hit the correct weight dead on each time.

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ummer was a prime delivery time as many folks stocked the coal bin for the winter

because of lower prices. Man, was that dirty work. In warm weather, gritty coal dust penetrated every pore of your wet body as well as your lungs. One hot summer day stands out. I can remember Dick and I sitting on a curbstone on Parkton Road, spitting out pure black and itching all over. We just looked at each other and could not stop laughing at the ridiculous situation we found ourselves in. The idea of building a coal delivery empire did not make it into a third year.

Dick and I played softball together on the Hughes Oil team, and so did Al Vater. This team evolved from a church league into more of a barroom league. I was involved in its organization, and I believe this slow pitch softball league still functions fifty-five years later.

Softball is a great socia /athletic game.

Seven innings of athletic fun and then it’s off to the bar to replay the game while the local bookie took bets on the dog races. These illegal bookies were young guys with an incredible ability to keep all those complicated bets in their heads while dealing with big tables of loud softball players. Runners on the stock exchange have very similar attributes.

The new name I mention is Al Vater. Both of our families were solid members of St. Andrews Methodist church which led to a marriage to my sister Lois in 1952. Since drinking in those days was done mostly in a tavern or sneaked from a pint bottle hidden in the cellar, the reception was planned to be dry. Dick Horan and I fixed that void. We set up a bar in the trunk of that beautiful Chapter Two ~ Reality

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DeSoto convertible. Al’s dad, Jack, thought it a great idea, but I’m not sure his mom, Millie, approved because in my childhood years she was a leader of the Loyal Temperance Union at the church. I can still see the crowd getting smaller and smaller inside the reception hall, but growing larger and larger around the liquor laden DeSoto trunk in the parking lot. Some day I must ask Lois to forgive me.

After their honeymoon, Lois and Al moved into a typical four room apartment and soon established the first D. G. Hughes office in a small room that later became daughter Susan’s bedroom. The office equipment consisted of a small mahogany desk that Lois and I purchased at a furniture store near Boston Garden. The 19 Adelaide Street.

store was in an old brick warehouse building with an elegant interior. What a way to sell. They had a bar set up

and served drinks as you shopped, never asking your age. I lost track of this little desk, or it would now be a keepsake.

Al worked just Saturdays at first, but a few years later he started full-time for a little business that had now evolved from D. G. Hughes Ice & Oil to Hughes Oil with an office at 2 Boylston Street, Jamaica Plain. Thus began another long relationship. Al added financial security and a much appreciated non-complaining work ethic. Al knew where the money was at all times and made sure everybody got paid, including me. He was always there when needed. “Mr. Steady” was a great balance for Dick and me.

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round 1953 Dick married his sweetheart, Joan. It was the year he graduated from

Boston College. This temporarily reduced our working relationship. Being a big man with the D. G. Hughes Ice Coal & Oil Company, while good for the ego, was not going to cut it financially as a married man. By this time Frank Mello, another of my many mentors, was looking for someone to run his oil delivery business, so he hired Dick. This disappointed Dick’s mom who envisioned him to continue his education and be the family’s first lawyer. He would have been a good one, but I now wonder if he would have been a happy one?

Dick’s new boss, Frank Mello, was a natural entrepreneur. He was an orphan raised by a most wonderful woman along with her own family. Her name was Agnes Murphy. After high school, Frank Mello opened a gas station in the Forest Hills section of Jamaica Plain. He later branched into oil delivery and then into selling oil wholesale to small dealers like me. By 1953, Frank Mello Chapter Two ~ Reality

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was well into another new venture, selling oil trucks and related equipment. Since Frank wanted to put his time into the new venture, Dick was hired to run the Mello Fuel oil delivery business, a company of about a thousand customers.

This started a whole new relationship with Dick. We met for lunch at the local diner a few days a week and exchanged ideas. I learned a lot because Mello Fuel was much larger. Eight years later Hughes Oil pulled even due to my good fortune converting lots of coal users over to using automatically controlled fuel oil. However, Mello Fuel did not grow as much because Dick played more of a caretaker role. Dick did not try to take accounts from me even if the customer knew him better. Dick always sensed we would wind up together someday, but there was no collusion applied to force this. He served Frank Mello well.

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his period of time between ages 21 and 28 was my most physically exhausting period

as I was trying to make the transition from being a hustling route delivery person to a business owner. My first step to becoming a genuine oil dealer was to learn how to convert coal burning boilers into burning fuel oil. This required removing the coal grates and in their place installing a combustion chamber backed up and capped off by asbestos. A gun-type oil burner was then inserted. I thought nothing of poking my nose into a bucket and mixing asbestos with my hands having no idea it might cause larynx cancer fifty years later. The old coal bin was next to go. It was torn down and a 275-gallon tank installed in its place. An electrician completed the job for a total cost of $275. $275 barely covered the cost of materials but each conversion from coal to oil meant a new customer for many years. One day I was the salesman that sold the job – a few days later I was the installer - a day later I was the oil driver who filled the tank. If something went wrong later, I was the repairman. The only job I felt confident about was truck driver. I was scrambling to learn the other roles while doing them, which meant a lot of pretending. In order to compete with larger companies, I had no choice but to say “We do that, too” while actually having no idea how I was going to do what I had just promised. However, I stuck with each job until I got it right, so the customer never paid for my mistakes. It was a tough but effective way to learn.

There were no technical schools to attend so I learned about heating and oil burners from my competitors plus mechanics who worked for other companies. I courted any source that I thought could help me. So many times I recall being upset in a customer’s basement not able to figure out how to fix the oil burner. As the house got colder and colder, I would say to the customer, “I have to go for parts.” In a panic mode, I would drive to spots like the local diner or a parts supply Chapter Two ~ Reality

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store looking for a familiar face. Since I was the business owner, I did not feel I could admit to a customer that I did not know what was wrong. Any admission of not knowing would take many more years of confidence building.This painful learning process may be why I think in such an inter-dependent way to this day. For so many years I needed so many people to help me, that thinking I do not need others never occurs.

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oining the Better Home Heat Council was life changing. A very forward-looking oil

dealer, named Tom Scott, had noticed how quickly a natural gas company had wiped out the fuel oil delivery business in Philadelphia during the early-fifties. As an organized utility, the Philadelphia natural gas supplier was able to quickly destroy a disorganized group of oil dealers who acted as though their competitor was their enemy. That gas company put on a massive ad campaign to convince people that oil heat was old fashioned and dirty. That message succeeded because no alternative message was delivered by the oil dealers. Oil dealers folded up in droves.

What a lifelong lesson this experience was for me. I learned to avoid , “Let somebody else do it.” The first executive director of our newly formed group, a retired General Motors executive named Bob Cullen, rallied us dealers to throw in proportionate money for an ad campaign to hit gas heating in their weak spot - safety. He crafted the oil heat logo, which to this day is the same - a sleeping baby. Bob Cullen was a master at keeping a diverse group of individuals locked on a single message.

During this era a lack of legislative restraints allowed the utilities to use money earned from the sale of their regulated product to outspend us ten to one on advertising and make subsidy payments to developers if they would install gas heating in new homes. The utility war chest was so large that they could pay for many ideas, but our meager budget forced us to concentrate on the single message of safety. We did it well. Fifty years later Oil Heat is still popular. An interesting observation is that the oil dealers, who joined up for the common good, enjoyed success.

Those who thought someone else should pay, are long out of business. Attitude is everything!

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eing involved with other dealers in a common goal was a wonderful learning opportunity

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biggest lessons for me was that share of market follows share of mind. You cannot wait until you start losing business to make changes. You must continually make sure the public is satisfied with your service or product. By the time your customer losses become obvious, it’s too late - decisions to change companies were made moons ago. Wait and see just does not work; anticipating does.

The lesson is to keep in touch with your customers, competitors and the big picture. Local image is important, but much more important is your industry’s image. You can seldom survive as an island in a sea of a general lessening need for your product.

Dick was equally involved in the Better Home Heat Council in his role as Mello Fuel manager, so we became inseparable. During this eight-year period, we were always wondering when Frank Mello would sell his oil delivery business, which he was paying less and less attention to. Eight years later, in 1961, Frank concluded that his son Gerry was not interested in the oil delivery portion of his enterprises, so he agreed to sell Mello Fuel to me. Prior to this time, it was tempting to think Dick could have quit Frank and taken most of the business with him for free. That would have been negative small thinking. It turned out to be well worth it to buy Mello Fuel for a fair price and get all of the customers without conflict. We ended up paying for Mello Fuel customers out of profits.

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hen Frank agreed to sell, I offered to give Dick half of the Mello Fuel business if he

would stay on and be my working partner. I believed the way it worked was that I put up the cash to buy Franks trucks and accounts receivables and Dick would, over time, pay me back half of that outlay. The money paid to Frank for his customers was paid off out of profits at a rate of about four cents a gallon per year. It took about six years.

Since Mello Fuel and Hughes Oil were then of equal size, about one thousand customers each, Dick now owned 25% of the combined companies and I owned 75%. For many years we worked as partners, took similar modest salaries, and put the profits back into the business. At the time we formed our partnership Dick and Joan had five kids and no money, so what I bought was Dick’s talent and his influence. I have always assumed this was a fair deal. Later Al Vater was offered a small portion at the same price.

The only one condition was that Frank Mello’s second mother, Agnes Murphy, be allowed to continue the part time employment she had previously with him. This arrangement got this older but healthy woman out of the house. What an opportunity for us. This wonderful woman graced our office for the next ten years with the most positive attitude you could ever imagine. It was amazing, after a severe snow storm, to see Agnes arrive by public transportation. She often counseled us that there was no such thing as a big problem, a bad person, or a totally wrong idea.

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F

or me, buying Mello Fuel was a giant step that changed Hughes Oil from an entrepre-

neurial venture dependent on my hustle to a combined company that was big enough to apply real business ideas. Dick took charge of sales as well as oil purchasing and oil delivery. I supervised what was the biggest challenge, which suited my interests - oil burner service and installation.

This was an effective division of talent and interest and would stay that way for many years.

I do not ever recall a disagreement over control or personal gain. I soon learned there was a big difference between profit earned and cash available as growth forced us to put a good share of the profits back in the business. We assigned this investment according to ownership, which I cashed in many years later in August of 1988. During this long building period, we pretty much split the rest. Our shortest meeting of the year was to determine bonuses, salaries and profit.

Thank God neither Joan Horan nor Elaine Hughes was demanding.

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e also bought Frank’s office facility on 50 Call Street, a former coal yard. The buildings

had recently been remodeled and suited us just fine. After ten years, the little store front on Boylston Street, where Elaine worked while first pregnant, was no more.

My personal life (pre-marriage) was not all that dramatic during the eight years it took to get from mom and pop D. G. Hughes Ice Coal & Oil to a more sophisticated Hughes Oil Co. Being young and single I was able to run fast enough to keep up with the daily needs of business growth.

However, change, driven by growth, kept challenging my abilities. In addition to Hughes Oil, I stayed involved in church activities, singing in a choir, serving on industry committees, plus a few other interests such as Kiwanis and the Community Council. I personified youthful high energy.

Two events helped me continue at this mad pace. First, my mom had come back home, and I found a really nice apartment on the third floor of 92 Paul Gore Street. What a lucky break.

The Baldwins lived beneath us and the best landlords that ever lived, the Randalls, occupied the first floor. Both families in the apartments below us had compatible and congenial Newfoundland backgrounds born of hard work and fairness.

What had finally cured my mom, after all that time and extensive psychiatric treatment, turned out to be simply a job. After three and a half long years, and during a well period, the hospital put her to work in the dental office straightening out records. When the bad cycle 92 Paul Gore St Chapter Two ~ Reality

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did not occur. She was discharged about a month later, urged to get a job, and assured it was ok to smoke. Luckily she got her pre-marriage job back. It was in the record room of the Mass. Memorial Hospital, the place of my birth and her only other job.

With my mother back home, I could keep up with my hectic schedule of business and outside interests for the next few years. She doted on me and asked for nothing in return. Mrs. Baldwin and the landlord, Mrs. Randall, pitched in to pamper me at other times. These were happy times for me. I’m so grateful for my Mom’s sacrifices as she worked every weekday, then had Lois and Al and the kids in for dinner on most Saturday nights. I was out constantly and not much of a companion. About the only thing she and I did together was to attend church on Sunday. I did teach her to drive, but that did not work out very well.

By this time I had outgrown hanging out on the corner so I began to limit my social life to Bubba Kelley and Paul Callahan, whom we called Hoon. Dick Horan got out with us occasionally but his family was growing large quickly. What a perfect anti-stress remedy Hoon and Bubba were.

My hectic pace allowed the tensions that built all week to be released on weekends. Mondays were a fresh mental start.

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riday nights we would meet at Bubba’s basement apartment for drinks with mom Sarah

Kelley and her friends from work. Sarah seemed more of a peer then a parent. Belly laughs would flow faster with each batch of Manhattans she mixed. Because of my experience with this unique and creative Boston Irish humor, I’ve since had a passionate dislike for crudeness in comedy or phony laugh tracks because I experienced the real thing. These folks were Jonathon Winters-funny.

I learned from Sarah Kelley what class was all about. It was possible to have a few drinks and lots of laughs without being crude or hurting anyone’s feelings, if you used intelligent wit. Using bad language, or sex, or hurtful insults were considered by her to be a crutch for the witless. Her disapprovals were never prudish or spoiled the party because she never delivered sermons. Yet her eyes delivered never-forgotten messages because we wanted her approval so badly. Sarah Kelley spoke volumes with a roll of those eyes.

I finally got a chance to say thank you with a poem I wrote for her seventy-fifth birthday. The poem was called “Did it ever occur to you Sarah.” I delivered it at a celebration in a popular downtown restaurant called the “Red Coach Grille.” It was the first poem I ever wrote and hopefully it did justice to my relationship with the unforgettable Sarah Kelly. The memories mentioned brought tears to Hoon’s eyes. He knew she often used the term “Did it ever occur to you?” to deliver one-line comments that set you thinking that you just might be a little out of line. The advice was delivered so subtly, and Chapter Two ~ Reality

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backed up by such unavoidable eye contact, that you never felt confident enough to argue your innocence. You just thought about what she had just implied and never forgot the message.

Friday night, after a couple of drinks in the Kelley kitchen at 325 South Huntington, where a bare steam pipe ran overhead and an electric clock kept perfect time but was thirty- five minutes fast, it was time to be off to a downtown bar. Sarah and her friends would separate from us and take a cab to a ladies hotel lounge of choice. They often took their aging Springer Spaniel named Checkers. However this dog was not a good drinker and quite often had to be sent home early and alone by cab. The door to Kelley’s basement apartment was never locked, so a good tip to the cab driver got Checkers inside safely.

Most nights out I did not get past ten o’clock before exiting to the back seat of my car while Bubba and Hoon continued to party. Sometimes they dropped me off past midnight at Paul Gore Street, then kept my car. Walking to work on Saturday mornings and wondering when I might next see the car became normal. Lots of stories abound about where those two musketeers wound up. This “Who knows?” pattern went on for years.

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uring this period I dated a couple of nice girls, but I got scared when they got serious.

I’m not sure why. I might have feared the complexity of having to change religions as a mixed marriage in those days was between a Catholic and a Protestant, not between a black person and a white person. In those days there was no compromise in Roman Catholic rules. At least with one girl, I realized that the priest’s opinion would always overrule mine. It is also possible I feared a steady girl because I was too busy, had too much fun on weekends and had it too good at home.

I was so engrossed in developing my business that I would have been a lousy husband anyway.

Whatever the reason, I treated two very nice girls poorly when I broke up just mumbling my reasons.

I am not proud of my not facing up. Girls are so much more mature.

One clue about where my head was at that time emerged from a late night comment from one girl in a group of gals Bubba, Hoon and I had been partying with. As we guys broke each other up with our well-traveled brand of fast-paced banter, one girl suddenly interrupted with, “You guys don’t need us - you have each other!” She may have been right on target as to why I was still single at age twenty-six. I was working hard all week but having a great time weekends. Maybe I did need only my business and “the boys.”

Here I was twenty-six years old and into my tenth year in business. Then somehow I was talked into taking up boating by a guy named Bernie Norwald. Bernie was a local exaggerator who had a small trucking business and sold boats on the side. Character connections like this Chapter Two ~ Reality

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were common for me as I was on the streets everyday making deliveries and therefore vulnerable.

Self-described boat-expert Bernie set me up with a fourteen foot mahogany ¼” thick plywood boat called a Mohawk. He powered it with a 40 HP Scott Atwater outboard. This boat buying decision was to soon change my life as much as my father’s death.

I’ll never forget the shake down cruise. Hoon, a few others, and I trailored this boat rig and dumped it into a most narrow part of the Charles River near Dedham. We cruised toward Needham when someone noticed shallow water while straddling the bow. One rocky bump later, water was flowing in, and we had to sit on the stern all the way back to the launching spot to keep from duplicating the Titanic. My boat expert Bernie put a patch on the hole that became the boat’s distinguishing characteristic.

A few other incidents occurred that could have made me a statistic. The boys and I decided to go deep sea fishing one Sunday and launched the boat into the Charles at Cambridge which, through a set of locks, led to Boston Harbor. Obviously we guys were not satisfied to stay in the safe harbor and calm seas, so we ventured out towards Boston Light. Dick Horan was a serious fisherman and caught a beauty. Hoon, more interested in the beer, held Dick’s prize fish across his lap, and then laughingly pitched it over his head and back into the sea. We all roared but Dick missed the humor in this impulsive act, something Hoon was known for after a few beers.

However, that was the funny, not the dangerous, part of this trip. Soon a wind came up and started to pop this little 14-foot plywood craft around like a cork. I never thought we would make it back through waves that obliterated what was ahead as we plunged into one after another. We could not see markers and were terrified as big ships loomed ahead. Somehow we made it back.

I had a less frightening but still scary experience touring interesting Boston Harbor with Elaine. The outboard engine seized up and we drifted into the Mystic River up against anchored cargo ships that loomed a hundred feet over our heads. What a way to learn boating. I now realize that safety for me and those who dared boat with me was less dependent on skill and much more dependent on Providence.

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owever, the best of boating, which would lead me to Lake George and the biggest

life changing happening of all, was yet to come.

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uring the summer of 1958, Bubba Kelley and I planned a vacation together,

something we had never done before. We towed my little boat behind a 1954 Oldsmobile and headed for a single person’s resort in Lenox, Massachusetts where we parked the car and did not turn the key until five days later when we left. The resort was called Eastover Inn, and it was some experience. At one time, this mansion and its sweeping landscaped grounds served as a summer estate for a wealthy New York family.

When Eastover Inn advertised that everything was included, they meant it. Bubba had the same eight cents in his pocket five days later and we missed out on nothing. You brought your own drinks but set-ups and ice stations were available in a number of locations on the honor system.

When you checked out they asked how many. Eastover was

Bubba getting the boat ready

one continuous party paced nicely with food and activities designed to keep you somewhat sober.

I have never been to a place with more activity. A band played at the pool every afternoon; there were softball games and all sorts of other sports, a case of beer being the usual winner’s prize. In addition, a Dixie Land band performed at happy hour, there was dancing with an orchestra at night in an elegant stable complex plus we finished up with more Dixie- Land until 4:00 am in the basement of the main house. Hamburgers, coffee, and donuts were continually available to keep you from passing out.

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he owner, George Bisaca, was a civil war buff and a Rebel-admirer, so the entire staff

was comprised of Southern college kids. They even flew the Rebel flag at the entrance. The highlight of the week was a mock Civil War battle. Bubba and I were the only two guests to participate - for the North of course. We had muskets and uniforms plus horse-drawn covered wagons. It was some show that was put on by this extravagant owner. Luckily I did not get into any other battles that week because when people noticed my crooked nose, Bubba would tell them I was a boxer and make up exciting details of my boxing record. I have no idea what I would have done if I had been challenged.

We then left for a few days at Lake George, New York to try water skiing for the first time.

Lake George is much like Winnipesaukee except it does not have as many islands. Lake George Village is the single crowd’s favorite area so we stopped there. I had brought short water skis beChapter Three ~ A Whole New Life

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cause my friend who sold me the boat said short skis were easier to learn on, sure! Well, we launched the boat in to the water with aplomb. Bubba then jumped in the water and after several tries got up on the short skis -without a life jacket and without an observer in the boat. What rules?

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hen I tried the same thing I could not get out of the water on those little skis being

pulled by a weak 40 hp Scott Atwater outboard engine. However, being with Bubba, we obviously ran into a couple of girls who wanted a ride in the boat. I think we met them at a dockside bar down the lake a ways. Somehow these girls helped me finally get up and my water skiing career began. I’ll never forget my first beginner mistake.

I had dropped one ski and thought I could circle back and pick it up while still skiing. Ouch! My knuckle collided with the steel adjustment knob.

One of the girls was a nurse and helped me get the Lake George

swelling down.

Then came the big night! Bubba and I were out to one of the bars that stay open late and have live bands. Leaving there, we invited two girls to have coffee with us. Finishing the evening at the local diner for coffee and maybe a hamburger was a ritual for most everyone then.

As luck would have it, the two girls turned out to be waitresses with Elaine (who I had yet to meet) at a big, barny Chinese restaurant up the street where you ordered your Chinese dish by number. Elaine and a young Asian waiter named Fong happened to be sitting in a booth nearby.

The girls with us must have acknowledged their restaurant relationship with Elaine, so Bubba and I did our usual thing. We waved, “Hey, come join us”. Obviously we did not observe social protocol that says you do not do this to girls you have just met, guys maybe, girls never.

As I mentioned earlier, Bubba was rarely into serious conversation and this night was no exception. The worst question you could ever ask us was a common conversation starter. “What do you do for a living?” This question always brought a response we had never given before, like animal trainer, mushroom grower, wedding planner, bartender in a nudist colony, and the like. The fun for us was to invent the details and experiences that went with the career we had just made up. Sometimes it could get pretty funny and some people could get deep into it with you after a few imaginative remarks were made. We never used the same career twice or ever discussed what the next career might be. It was just one of many ways we used to amuse ourselves and avoid boring conversations.

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This time our career was a family-owned car wash, and we got deep into subjects such as getting dizzy while cleaning whitewalls, the knack of getting beer can rings off dashboards, and having the vacuum get plugged with ladies underwear from under the seats. Since our dates were a little peeved that we invited Elaine over, most of what we thought funny was getting little response from them, so Elaine joined in. After a few of her witty questions and additions to how our car wash could be run, I said to myself, “Hmmmm - this girl gets it!” Forty-eight years later, she still does.

Elaine and I wrote back and forth the rest of the summer, then four of us guys returned to Lake George Village for the Labor Day weekend. Elaine’s girlfriend let her down and would not go out with Bubba, so it was us four guys and Elaine. It was one funny weekend that Elaine fit right in with that, after Bubba covered for my condition at arrival.

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ince it was our custom to drink beer every place we drove, Lake George was to be no

exception. The problem was we rarely drove further than a six pack from home. However, Lake George was 325 miles. The nearer we got, the shorter the distance between relieving ourselves of all that liquid. When we arrived to meet Elaine at the restaurant, I could not raise my eyes above her knees. When we went to the boarding house room she had reserved for us, I fell asleep and the boys could not wake me. Bubba made up some story for that evening, and Elaine must have bought it. To think I could have destroyed the relationship by my foolish conduct makes me shudder even now I left Lake George thinking that this was a person I could spend lots of time with. I did not have to explain my friends, she understood because her uncles acted like we did, funny, but fair and humble, never took themselves too seriously. In no way did she try to impress me, or isolate me. It was not an act, she was just being

Tom Doyle and me

Elaine. But was this just a summer romance? We would write and see what happens.

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nother great relationship began might have been the catalyst for our relationship.

During that next winter of 1959, I attended a Better Home Heat Council meeting with a gentleman named Tom Doyle who had a similar sized business in Quincy, MA. Tom was every bit as gregarious an Irishman as my friends, so we quickly became good friends even though he was about twenty years older. That age gap, especially for business friends, was typical because I was very young to be an oil business owner.

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Most of my peers had a much later business start due to the intrusion of World War II and the Korean conflict in their lives. For a good number of years, I was self conscious about my age and youthful appearance, wondering if important people would take me serious.

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n the way to a business meeting one day, Tom mentioned that he owned a cottage

in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. This historic town borders the southeast shore of Lake Winnipesaukee, New England’s largest lake. Since buying the boat the previous spring and having had my Lake George and Boston Harbor experiences, I was “all ears” about my chances of renting a cottage there. Tom put me in touch with Realtor Dick Bowe, and I soon was the proud seasonal renter of the soon-to-be famous Avery Cottage #1. This traditional four-room summer cottage was located on Clark Point, the outermost southern edge of beautiful Wolfeboro Bay. The cost for the entire season was $1,200, electricity included. The Avery’s are still pure class.

This was another adventure for both me and my pals, and it opened the door for some great weekends. I was never placed in the position of Bubba clowning as usual

host because everybody pulled their weight and

then some by bringing all sorts of drink and food and helping with the cooking. Weekends at Avery cottage #1 were always a team effort and a barrel of laughs.

It was early on in that 1958 season that the little plywood Mohawk boat finally got its name.

It happened one evening after Hoon (Paul Callahan) got wound up in one his impromptu skits while doing the dishes. He started having this involved conversation out the back window over the sink.

The conversation was with “Smokey the Bear” whom he insisted, and everyone soon agreed, was outside in the dark under a big tree. From that night on conversations with loveable “Smokey” became common and the boat finally had a name.

I invited Elaine to come up for two weeks in July, and she accepted. I was excited as I had not seen her since she had driven from Syracuse to Jamaica Plain that spring for a weekend visit.

Boy was she gutsy that time. She missed the turn at South Huntington Avenue and wound up calling me from a gas station in a totally black neighborhood at a time when black/white tensions were high. I responded, “Get in the car and lock the doors. I’ll be right there.”

However, the visit in Wolfeboro was to be different from the previous few brief times we saw each other. Prior visits were just baby steps in a budding romance. I was hoping the two Chapter Three ~ A Whole New Life

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weeks together in Wolfeboro would cement our relationship. In the first week, Elaine was not exactly throwing herself at me. Was it her natural personality? Or was it something else?

Typical of the times, chaperones were expected for a stay over visit by ourselves, so Sarah Kelley stayed with us the first week and Bubba’s soon-to-be wife Barbara took the second week.

The usual crowd was invited weekends. The first week was strange and a bit scary for me as Elaine seemed so distant. Her attitude seemed to be like mine when I felt trapped in a relationship I did not know how to painlessly exit. I feared the summer romance bubble had burst. I felt that she had caught on to me.

The most interesting part was a Wednesday night trip across the lake to the Weirs in the little 14-foot boat. Elaine put on her best dress, and we headed out to the big wooden Irwin Gardens dance spot to hear Harry James. Well, after thirty minutes on the lake all hell broke loose near the witches’ rocks a mile from our destination. There is just nothing like a Winnipesaukee thunderstorm.

It’s like being in a car wash. You cannot see anything. Somehow I avoided winding up on the rocks but our night was finished. I will never forget seeing Elaine with that pretty flowered dress plastered to her body and the rain pouring down from her hair. We finally made it to the dock and called chaperone Barbara Kelley to make an hour’s drive to pick up two wet and shivering people.

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o this day I have no idea what or if Sarah Kelley told Elaine at the end of that first week,

but the second week with Barbara Kelley was just the opposite and that lovingly warm spirit of Elaine’s has never stopped flowing for forty-nine years since. When that second week ended, I was never more certain of anything in my entire life. I had found the person with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life. All of the prior uncertainties about others were just that. This time I knew. Years of advice like “you will know” turned out to be correct.

That fall Elaine moved to Plainfield, New Jersey as a result of taking a $4,500 per year teaching contract. It was another gutsy move. The same girl friend that had let her down in Lake George by refusing to date Bubba, reneged on her companion contract to teach in New Jersey.

So Elaine set off to work and live in a place she knew nothing about.

This move would initiate a new weekend routine for me that began with a five-hour drive to Plainfield, NJ. I can recall starting out early Friday on afternoons after a hectic work week and looking forward so anxiously to see Elaine. However, after getting through New York City at rush hour and then enduring a white knuckle thirty-mile ride from Newark to Plainfield on trailer truck dominated Route 22, often I did not care if I saw anybody.

This tension was not relieved by greeting the wonderful teacher friend who boarded Elaine.

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Bevie Magers would greet exhausted me at the door and, in her best get-your-attention Midwestern voice, explain all the plans she had made for me and Elaine that weekend. She really cared about us but her style was a bit over-the-top. Her husband Mick was the opposite. His sweet calmness helped offset Bev’s need for control. By Saturday morning, after a night’s sleep and one of Bev’s delicious breakfasts, the loving feelings returned. We continued a nice relationship with the Magers until smoking made her last years difficult and caused her death just recently.

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ne early fall weekend, Elaine and I visited New York City, and happened on a mati-

nee of Flower Drum Song. In the evening we met Don and Sandy Caldeira to see Harry Belafonte.

Don and Sandy were Elaine’s friends from Syracuse, who had been married recently. They were living and teaching in a small town way out on Long Island, so we went there for the rest of the weekend. It was called Miller Place and their apartment was in a converted motel, just the right size for working newlyweds.

It was here I popped the question and received the answer I was praying for. Sandy and Don were the correct people to be the first to know as they have gone on to be our closest mutual friends. Part of the reason was our families blended perfectly, but there was more depth than that to our friendship. Sandy and Don were our kind of people then, still are, and always will be.

An interesting anecdote that is typical of 1959 is what happened after I popped the question.

Just recently Don Caldeira reminded me what actually happened. We woke him and Sandy to tell them the good news. After that celebration, Don and I went to bed together and Sandy and Elaine slept on the couch together. Hard to imagine today!

Miller Place became the unofficial engagement announcement location because I had not bought a ring. I’m not sure why, probably my social immaturity. When I got back home, Dick Horan’s sister, Peggy, recommended a good downtown jewelry salesman, and he counseled me on a ring selection. When Elaine came to Boston for the

Bubba and Barbara years later at a daughter’s wedding

wedding of Bubba and Barbara Kelley in late October, we skipped out of the reception temporarily to meet the salesman at Homers Jewelry to confirm the ring choice and to get a proper fitting. We returned to the wedding reception and when we felt we would not upstage the bridal couple, we made our engagement public. It was some joyous feeling. I do not recall being any more emotional since.

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My mom shared in the joy of our engagement, but this big a change in her life put her back in the hospital for a few months. However, she had a full recovery and as long as her life consisted of a daily routine she was fine. Getting up and going to work each day was vital for her health.

That winter was pretty busy for Elaine between teaching and working with Bevie Magers on wedding plans. Elaine had to plan a July 2nd wedding in Syracuse while living in New Jersey.

She not only had to plan it without her mother nearby, but also around her mother because of her alcoholism.

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laine’s dad died when she was only sixteen so she had only one parent. There was

just no way to know if that one parent would be sober enough at least for the wedding, a sad situation that alcoholism can reduce a person to. Edna Postler was one of those rare people who became an instant alcoholic after having her first drink at age thirty-five. I doubt if she ever got to enjoy social drinking. She was sober most of the time and lots of fun, but you could never count on her sobriety, especially on important occasions.

Elaine fashioned a wonderful wedding plan. We were married in Syracuse in a small Methodist church that was later razed to build a school at which Don Caldeira some years later became principal. Reverend Childs, a former pastor in Elaine’s small home town of Phoenix, NY, officiated. What a sweet person. He was so important in our life that we kept in touch until his passing ten years ago. To this day I can see him calmly explaining that the exhilaration of the wedding day would fade as children and work busied our lives, but then as that life subsided, we would fall in love all over again. That is exactly what happened.

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he reception was at a lovely facility called LeMoyne Manor. Fifty-five people from Boston

occupied the entire motel next door and did they party. So much so that my business pal Tom Doyle got billed for a new rug for his room. A few of my buddies stayed on for days to party with some of Elaine’s family. Her Uncle Chuck and her brother Dick found the Boston boys as entertaining as I. They formed a fun loving relationship real fast. They got back together a couple of times after, when the Boston College football team played Syracuse.

A few wedding incidents stand out. The caterer was asked to have an alcoholic punch and a non-alcoholic punch. Mistakenly both were alcoholic. Al Vater’s mother Millie, the former Women’s Temperance leader that Dick Horan and I outfoxed at my sister Lois’s wedding, got looped thinking she was drinking non-alcoholic punch. We still giggle when we recall how she would slur, My - thish is delicious punch!”

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The second remembrance occurred at the rehearsal party. Dick Horan’s brother Billy, one of the biggest sports I have ever known, started ordering expensive champagne. Well Elaine, for whom alcohol tolerance was low and bridal stress high, kept repeating, “This is really good. I haven’t been this relaxed in ages!” Thank God it was a four o’clock wedding or she would not have made it. Her 112-pound body and wedding-stressed head were hurting so much that Dick Horan had to discretely take her behind some bushes in the wedding picture park to upchuck. Elaine has since vowed to lock up her daughters on the night before their weddings.

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e finally left the reception just after Elaine’s Uncle Morris swept Elaine’s mom Edna

out the door. She had done herself proud making the wedding and the reception. One of the “boys” who attended was Mark, our local druggist. He laughed for years telling folks how he gave me a pill to keep me up and a contrasting pill to put Elaine down. At the motel, just twenty miles down the road, I had to use the fireman’s carry just to get my new bride’s limp body through the door to our room.

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ur honey-

moon was spent in Avery She Makes It !

Cottage #1 in Wolfeboro, and we stayed for a month.

That was the longest stretch I ever took off from work. Toward the end of the month some of the “boys” showed up on the weekend. As you can imagine, the rest of the time was genuine honeymoon evidenced by the fact that Robert William Hughes showed up on April 3rd,1961, just nine months and twelve hours after the July 2, 1960 wedding. Since the Kelley’s, who also honeymooned here, produced their daughter Sarah in a similar timetable, the current owners call this location “conception cottage.” What is so interesting is the current owners, the Palmasons, have since become our friends. They have continued the spirit of this place and expanded it a few times in the intervening years.

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ugust 1960, Elaine and I settled in to a three-room apartment on Centre Street, in Ja-

maica Plain just around the corner from the storefront Hughes Oil office. It was cute and convenient,

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so we sold Elaine’s little Renault Dauphine to Hoon. It only had 4,000 miles on it, but the transmission failed within a month. It took months to get a new one so the car sat within our view in the gas station across the street. How embarrassing. However, Hoon was a good sport. When friends asked when the car might run again, he would reply that only “Lucky Pierre” could fix this French car, and he had to come all the way from France. Once again Irish humor took the edge off a sticky problem.

The Hughes Oil fleet of 1961 had grown to two oil trucks and a couple of used station wagons for service. They were parked across the street from our apartment in a Getty gas station where the previous year the Renault, we sold to Hoon spent considerable down time.

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laine and I saw a number of Red Sox games that summer. We could decide at 7 pm

to go to a 7:30 pm game. We would just turn the apartment door key, drive two miles to Fenway, and park on a nearby street. We would pay only seventy-five cents to sprawl out over the half-filled bleachers and sip beer. There were few problem fans then so a party atmosphere prevailed. It was relaxing and fun. Winning the pennant was not a Red Sox consideration in 1960.

1960 was also the year the Patriots started in a new league called The American Football League. They played at the old Boston Braves baseball park which is now Boston University Field.

They were called the Boston Patriots. They were founded by a gentleman named Bill Sullivan, who had been public relations director for Notre Dame football, along with three others. On a borrowed $25,000 each, the Patriots were born.

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e bought eight season tickets and did we enjoy those Friday nights for a number of years.

The league later moved to Sundays and the location varied from Fenway Park to Harvard stadium and then to Foxboro where a stadium was put up in a hurry for only $6,000,000. It looked the price.

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We hardly missed a game for twenty-five years but that takes youthful energy when you work six days a week and make a full day’s work out of attending a football game on Sunday. As we spent more and more weekends in Wolfeboro, watching on TV was more appealing than those prized tickets on the 45 yard line.

The Patriots, under the long cloud of Bill Sullivan’s leadership, were mediocre at best. The Irish style of glad handing and nepotism did not cut it in a competitive environment.

My theory that success, or lack of it, starts at the top was well proven when a new owner named Bob Kraft took over around 2000. For most of the years I held season’s tickets, you could hardly give the tickets away. Since 2000, Patriots tickets are gold.

Elaine handled her 1960 pregnancy so well. She walked about fifty yards around the corner to the first Hughes Oil office at 2 BoylElaine pregnant at the first office machine

ston Street and punched keys on a Burroughs office machine that was the forerunner of the

earliest computers. On our first Christmas, Al Vater gave Elaine her Hughes Oil work clothes along with a very funny letter about how she should conduct herself. I think we still have the mechanic’s coveralls he gave her.

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laine got her first taste of city life sitting behind this bookkeeping machine. Just before

Christmas, two policemen in uniform walked in to our little storefront office and asked; “Watcha got for Santa’s Sleigh?” I reached under the counter for what they were looking for, and handed them a bottle of whiskey. Elaine was amazed. Buying her first illegal Irish Sweepstakes tickets was less surprising but another great memory for someone who has a natural interest in games of chance.

Catherine Ahern, a customer with a charming Irish brogue, made sure Elaine got one of these very special tickets each year. They were numbered in Ireland and much sought after. You had to know someone. Catherine was just one of many interesting people that walked into that little office located near a busy street car stop.

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e were happy in our early marriage, but I had a penchant for saying the wrong things.

To this day she remembers a remark I made that I thought positive and she thought cruel. One evening I said, “You know, Elaine, you should not depend on me for all your social life. You need to make friends on your own.” Here she was, pregnant in a strange city. Males can be so insensitive and so late to mature, if at all!

Memories of our life in that little apartment encourage us about our cycle back to apartment living in Depot Square, Wolfeboro in 2006. In that Jamaica Plain three room apartment, we incurred two daytime burglaries costing Elaine her jewelry and some wedding presents. But that did not seem

First Saint Patrick’s Day

to shake our love for being close to people and events We also discovered that when you live in a small space, you tend to socialize more outside your home. You just naturally are more social than when you are living in a spacious, suburban home that contains every convenience to keep you indoors. The expression “good fences make good neighbors” is not one that we have ever embraced. For us a feeling of remoteness is a bigger problem than the small differences you might have with close-by neighbors and the attendant security risks of living in more populated locations.

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he big event that occurred while at that three-room apartment at 325 Centre Street was

the birth of Bob. He was born on Easter night - or more accurately, early the next morning - nine months and twelve hours after the wedding. Timing did make a difference then. I will never forget taking Elaine to the Longwood Hospital just a half-mile away sometime after midnight. She woke me and calmly said she was ready. I still shudder at my performance after that request.

When I pulled up in front of this small maternity hospital, I think I assumed she could find her way to a darkened door. She had to remind me to escort her to the door. I rang the bell and it was answered by a stern faced nurse who said, “I’ll take her bag. You can go home.” So I did.

When I think about that level of thoughtlessness now - Wow! Early the next morning our general practitioner Herb Fisher called to say, “It’s a boy.” When I went to see Elaine I committed another big gaff. As she cradled hours old Bob I leaned over to Chapter Three ~ A Whole New Life

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kiss this non-complaining, small woman who had just painfully produced a seven and a half-pound baby boy. I said, “ Whew! You smell of ether.” How tender!

We stayed in the little apartment for about two years, but with Lynn on the way, it was time to look for something more family-friendly. We chose a single home in Jamaica Hills a mile or so away but light years away in culture. This was a part of Boston near scenic Jamaica Pond that backed up to the estate section of the town of Brookline. This area was separated from the city by a picturesque and winding Francis Law Olmstead-designed parkway. This six-hundred home area was the only part of Boston comprised exclusively of single homes. There were no six-family houses, no three-family houses, not even a corner store. The homes in this small section of Boston The front of the house was Belo Street gradeI put parking in the rear

were occupied by an interesting mix of city officials, professional people, prestige seekers, and even some gangsters. It was kind of a suburbia bordering the city.

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ur house was an English brick colo-

nial which had some interesting Tudor effects. For example, the brick was installed irregularly; some stuck out on a forty-five degree angle with English Ivy growing on the front face. Since the house was located on the side of a steep hill, the second floor windows were about level with the street and a set of nice brick steps led down to an oval-topped front door like what might be seen on a castle.

All in all, it was a pretty special three bedroom house.

I’ll never forget my first day there. I walked up an indoor stairway to the second floor and realized I was still in my own house. I was thirty-one years old but had never lived in a singlefamily house. Every place I had lived prior was called a flat because that’s what the living space was, flat. In my entire life whenever I walked upstairs I would be in someone else’s home. What a weird feeling to have this entire structure to ourselves. It was exciting!

However, me being me, I could not leave this thirty-five-year-old house alone; so a new kitchen went in plus I had two sets of fieldstone walls built on the rear slope so the kids could have Chapter Three ~ A Whole New Life

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a play yard and Elaine and I a place to park. From a financial perspective, these improvements did not pay but they made the house nice to look at and live in. The cost of the improvements was $15,000 making my total investment in our first single home $47,500. That was a lot of money for that era.

An interesting note is that eight years later in 1970 - as the de-facto desegregation solution was determined to be cross-city bussing of young school kids - I sold it for $42,500. White people in Boston’s middle class neighborhoods would not accept this dramatic a change and fled the city.

I not only suffered a $5,000 loss, but it took almost a year to sell this beautiful house. For a perspective in how much change in attitude has taken place in the past thirty-five years, that same house would now sell quickly for about $750,000. This price run up far outstrips inflation as young professionals now occupy not only this elite section, but many other previously working class sections of Boston.

I

recall our life at Moss Hill Road fondly. The kids walked to a wonderful elementary school

tucked away in the wooded back corner of Jamaica Hills. Because the mayor and others lived here, the Manning School got the best of everything. There was close involvement by most parents, and Elaine made some good friends. Unfortunately a number were Irish Catholic super-moms who could handle six kids plus many other duties. This just added to Elaine’s sometime feelings of inadequacy even though she was doing one hell of a job for our family.

My mom enjoyed coming here weekends and being with Bob and Lynn before Barbara was born. She adored Elaine and it was mutual. Elaine’s Mom, Edna, visited a few times from Syracuse by bus and that was always an adventure. One evening, Edna got in to the sauce and went off to bed real early. When my mom got up in the morning and looked in the kitchen, she could not believe her eyes. Edna had gotten up in the middle of the night and baked a delicious apple pie in a strange kitchen without ever turning on a light. My mom never got over this bit of magic.

Another Edna incident, even more memorable, occurred one year while we were enjoying her visit from Syracuse combined with a family Christmas vacation in Wolfeboro.

Fresh snow had recently arrived, so we decided to join the Kelley family for a day of skiing at Waterville Valley, an hour and a half away from Wolfeboro. Since we kept a Vater/Hughes unlocked liquor cabinet at Port Wedeln, Elaine decided Edna should join us at the mountain rather than give in to her request that she stay home alone. Well didn’t Edna beat her daughter on this unfair order.

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S

ince alcohol was not served in ski lodges then, Elaine felt safe leaving her mother by

the fire with Elaine’s pocketbook and a good book. Since the adults were all busy getting kids into nursery, finding missing mittens, and responding to “I’m freezing,” Edna got little notice for a few hours. Since she was wearing a bright red coat, Elaine assumed she would not be hard to find.

Edna did not drive so where could she go up in this wintry mountain wilderness? However, as kid-care calmed down Elaine began checking on this easy-to-spot target, but to no avail.

In the early afternoon, as Bob Kelley and I were getting on to the lift, finally free of kids for a while, we heard an announcement. “Would Mr. Hughes please report to the security office.” So Bubba and I took off our skis and went to find the small security office. There was Edna sitting beside the chief’s desk absolutely blotto.

W

hen we inquired about how she got into this condition in an alcohol-free place, we

were told a small pub some ten miles down the road had called the local police to remove her.

How did she get there? It was typical Edna for innovation. In the lodge she had struck up a conversation with a waiting charter bus driver, and he agreed to drop her off at this pub even though she had no idea as to how she might get back. Since she had Elaine’s pocketbook, the bus driver must have been well rewarded as well as the folks sitting at the pub bar. For a while it must have been fun for everyone.

The exasperated security chief asked if I knew her, and when I said, “Yes,” he did not comment past “Get her out of here now.” So Elaine gathered the kids and all the gear while Bubba and I struggled to maneuver this heavy woman through some tough terrain to a jam-packed Ford Country Squire station wagon parked a long ways away. Elaine and I had a most interesting ride home explaining to the kids that Grandma’s babbling was because she was tired. Adding insult to injury, the kids kept asking Elaine why she was talking mean to fun-loving Grandma.

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inety-eight Moss Hill Road was a great experience for me, but less so for Elaine. These

were stressful years for Elaine. She was coping with my high energy level, my over-the-top outside involvements, caring for three small children, plus enduring frequent and debilitating migraines.

Non-complaining Elaine was frazzled at times, and I hardly noticed. I don’t think I had enough empathy or pitched in to help with the kids as much as I should. In late years she has told me a major frustration was that I was so distracted that I did not realize when she was mad at me.

One incident demonstrates my insensitivity. Friday night was Chinese food night, so I would call the Ho Sai Gai and order a take out. Each time I called, the wife of the restaurant owner would Chapter Three ~ A Whole New Life

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respond to my “Hello, this is Mr. Hughes,” with “ Oh, yes. Mr. Who.” After allowing this to get to me, one night I harshly corrected her. She was in tears.

Around the third year at Moss Hill Road, my Mom died at age sixty-five. She had a heart attack while at work in the hospital. Her smoking habit, encouraged by psyMann & Mann Funeral Home Dad buried from here in 1948- Mom in 1965

chiatrists years back, must have been a strong factor as well as her new worry about

having to retire soon.

The night before she died I had an experience eerily similar to when my dad died eighteen years earlier. As I went to leave the hospital room she held my hand so firmly and for so long. As I reflect I again wonder, was I leaving her room because I wanted to go or was it hospital policy?

Why did both parents have to die alone?

How the visiting hours at Mann and Mann Funeral Home were arranged raised other long lasting questions. Lois and I decided to have the casket sealed for reasons I’m now not positive about. I guess we thought staring at a corpse was wrong. At any rate I’ll never forget this woman from my mom’s office complaining about not being able to see Helen Hughes for the last time after taking such a long street car ride to get to Mann & Mann’s. It made me re-think our reasoning.

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ummers were pretty quiet in the Moss Hill Road neighborhood so we tried to get away

for at least a couple of weeks. One year we rented a cottage in Tuftonboro near the Barber Pole, another year we tried a seasonal rental in a real cute place on Lake Ossippee that we could have bought for only $15,000, and one summer we tried staying in the city.

We found that of our Moss Hill neighbors left the city and traveled twenty-fifty miles or more south during the summer to expansive salt water beaches that extended from Scituate to Cape Cod. However for me, the allure of New Hampshire continued. I shunned ocean beaches that had no shade to protect my fair skin. A bright sunny day at the treeless ocean was akin to torture for me. Skin cancers 50 years later have proved the validity of my concern.

In early November 1964, Al and I took a trip to Wolfeboro to see what was available for sale. Our honeymoon cottage was now being rented by our friends Barbara and Jack MacLeod Chapter Three ~ A Whole New Life

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78

and their single friends. These folks were enjoying it much the same way that my gang had. The Avery family still owned it and Dick Bowe was still the leasing agent, so it was a smooth transition among friends. We were still welcome, but Avery Cottage #1 on a rocky knoll with steep granite stairs was a better location for singles than for a family with small kids.

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or the first few hours of that cottage-prospecting day we didn’t see much that interested

us to either purchase or rent. Then all of a sudden we spotted a familiar Dick Bowe “For Sale” sign on North Main Street and turned in. Down we went on an empty dirt road for half a mile when suddenly there was a breathtaking view of the big lake. Little did I suspect that another life changing event was about to unfold.

As we were standing on this hilly, wooded shoreline a friendly round-faced man came along introducing himself as Jim D’Angelo. He took us next door to his cottage, which had an older Cadillac parked nearby. The trunk was open displaying gas cans and tools. I noticed there were snow tires, not on the back, but uselessly on the front of this car. I thought, “This is my kind of guy.”

I asked him if the land we had just looked at was for sale, and he nodded. From my point of view it was the choice lot in the development. I later found out it was only recently back on the market after a near bankruptcy. The land turned out to have more liens on it from local business people than it had trees. I asked the price and he said $6,000. I looked out at one of the most magnificent scenes I have ever witnessed and said, “Sold”! I had no idea about the future of this development but unless the lake went dry and the mountains tumbled, there was great value in the panoramic natural beauty here.

At that time the lot next door was also just coming back on the market, so Al told his cousin Barbara of its availability. Barbara, so restricted all of her life by a penny-pinching family, took all of her hard earned life savings and bought the lot. Her mother almost died. Barbara Baldwin (later to be McLeod) turned out to be just as impulsive and equally rewarded as Al and I were after seeing this view.

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hen Al and I went to Dick Bowe’s office to sign a purchase and sales agreement,

Bowe recommended a builder. His name was Norm Poisson. To this day I rank him one of the best I ever experienced. He built a nice place within our budget, guided only by a sketch on the back of a napkin. “Fish” had lots of good ideas.

On the way back home from our initial visit with Dick Bowe, I asked Al if he wanted to share this place the same way we had shared some of the rentals. He agreed and thus began another

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long partnership. Neighbors would often ask, “How do you two families get along so well?”

My only answer was “We never think about it, we just do it.” Wouldn’t we be pretty stupid if we escaped to this beautiful place from a working week in the hot city, and could not get along with the Vaters.

The cottage when first built

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l and I had some great rides up

on summer Friday afternoons, sometimes picking up a mind clearing six-pack as we neared our destination Lois and Elaine enjoyed each other’s company all week plus Susan and Carol took some of the burden of toddler-care off Elaine. Finances were interesting. We never had a meeting or an accounting. Al paid all of the bills, deducting my half from my salary at Hughes Oil. Except for the most minor problem of Lois challenging my most obnoxious statements, Port Wedeln gave us all many years of contentment.

If there was a down side to having this nice cottage in Wolfeboro, it was a lack of vacation diversity. Why go to other places when we had something this nice. We did take a few winter ski trips with the Kelley’s. We also alternated Thanksgivings with the Caldieras in Syracuse and some January trips to the Balsams in northern New Hampshire. Other than that we did not look to socialize excessively with neighbors in Needham or in Wolfeboro.

We had so much fun with the Caldeiras and family, plus the old gang I grew up with, that Elaine and I agreed that we should look no further. We were so socially spoiled by family and Boston Irish humor that social climbing was not a priority.

J

ust before this period and while still at Moss

Hill Road, we got the bright idea to buy a dog. It would be company for the kids, the thinking went. Movies like “My friend Flicka” must have had an influence so we bought a female Golden Retriever pup and named her Sandy. I hope it was not to honor Sandy Caldeira.

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time a new person came along whether she was indoors or out. It was nice to have a dog happy to see you come home but leaping through a screen door to greet you was a little much. Instead of a kids’ companion this dog had to be separated because Bob and Lynn wound her up and in turn the dog wound the kids up. When we put them together in the downstairs playroom, we would first hear “Crash! Boom! Bang!” and then the screaming began.

This, coupled with the dog’s penchant for getting out of the yard and being brought home from miles away by the police, made a severance decision easier. It was still hard to give her away to strangers, but we placed an ad for a free dog and off she went. I’m not sure what we told the kids, but Bob to this day clearly remembers this sad separation.

The above minor incident and my mom’s passing were the only sad things that happened to us while living at 98 Moss Hill Road. This Jamaica Hills area of Boston was a prized place to live in and still is. It had a strong neighborhood association that resisted any attempt to build anything even resembling commercial. I served on the board and wound up as president, which was kind of embarrassing as some of these folks were every bit as heavy handed as the current Bush administration, except these were Democrats. The end always justified the means. Preserving property values was the prime objective of this association. Empathizing with newcomers came in a very a distant second.

For example, a Lebanese church wanted to build on land they owned in our area and needed a building permit. Since we could not stop a church, we tried the usual underhanded stuff to make them give up. City Hall insiders managed to get their building permit lost and the association justified this action with the rumor that there was going to be a bar in the basement. Typical domino thinking extended this fantasy implication of wild orgies because they were Greek and not Irish. I will never forget how I felt after meeting with these high-class people. All they wanted to do was move their long loved church from the now crime infested South End area of Boston, where it began, to a place closer to where their parishioners lived.

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urns out the panic in the neighborhood was caused by the architect leaving out the

word that should have preceded the word “bar.” That word was “coffee”. I was upset over this but more dismayed that many were not. I could not understand why so many people, whose families were victims of discrimination in the past, were so quick to jump to conclusions to justify a heavy handed approach. For me it was a dramatic experience in “the end justifies the means” type of thinking. There were lots of good things about Irish dominated Boston but having too much political power could breed some pretty ugly actions.

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D

uring this period of our newly-married lives, we enjoyed a continuing relationship

with Tom Doyle and his live-in girlfriend, Jane. What an interesting experience. Tom and Jane were originally married to other people, but drifted toward each other through camping experiences that involved both families. When Elaine and I entered their lives, Tom and Jane were living together in Milton, MA, as well as in Wolfeboro. Jane was a very pretty woman and a most gracious hostess, classy like my Aunt Mona and Elaine’s Aunt Laila.

What is so unusual is that the kids from both previous marriages came to this cottage and seemed to get along. In addition, Tom and me in a favorite spot

Jane’s former husband Jim lived

with them in Milton and occasionally visited Wolfeboro. The only person left out was Tom’s first wife. She lived in a housing project in Boston and never appeared in Wolfeboro or Milton, but she outlived everybody, perhaps her revenge. The kids from Tom’s first marriage seemed to resent this omission somewhat as Jane’s kids were more favored, but it was subtle.

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imes were tough times for Roman Catholics who wanted to remarry because divorce

was taboo! Elaine and I enjoyed the company of these wonderful people for a number of years.

Tom would invite us to his numerous cookouts and to card games in Milton. For Wolfeboro cookouts, Tom would pick up steaks at Ralph Stinchfield’s Market Basket and take complete charge of the grille. My job was to keep him supplied with drinks. I can still hear that voice, “Where’s my drink?” only seconds after I had just delivered a fresh one. He seemed to inhale them rather than sip them.

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ur busy family life did not allow for a long continuing close relationship, but we tried.

Tom and Jane’s relationship came to a much sadder ending than it deserved. Jane developed heart trouble that restricted almost all activity while Tom had multiple ailments that required a pill regimen that was mind-boggling.

What is so sad is the religious pressure felt by these decent people. They suffered years of separate bedrooms, the judgment of others about Tom living with a married woman. They experienced a long search for a priest who would marry them. When the marriage finally took place, Chapter Three ~ A Whole New Life

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82

it was short and wracked with pain. Their love for each other and their commitment to be responsible about family obligations was not rewarded as it should have been. I doubt they had two good years of married life.

Mixed in to our relationship with Tom Doyle were the personalities of a couple of locals. It mirrored my experience in Wolfeboro, so different from my Boston Irish heritage. Tom had two golf pals, a local plumber named Jim Clough and Ralph Stinchfield, the owner of the only market.

Both worked hard and played even harder. Tom and Ralph and Jim were some trio when they got to drinking. Tom always demanded he buy the steaks and drinks and nobody could out- fight Tom Doyle for the check at a restaurant. I never could.

A

fter Tom died, Ralph, then in his late fifties, turned the grocery business over to his

son and shortly thereafter entered a nursing home where he sat in a corner for twenty years before he died. I guess he thought he was sick and ready to die, an up country attitude that mirrors an old Nova Scotia tradition termed “taking to your bed”.

Jim Clough remained a plumber and electrician but diabetes shortened his life. He too changed from Tom’s fun loving drinking partnerto a person who clung to minor grudges like so many do here. For example, after his former pal Ralph died, his widow was living alone and had an electrical fire. In her hour of need, Jim Clough the electrician would not come. The reason? Some years earlier Ralph had simply asked his pal about a plumbing bill that Jim had sent. Jim took the request the wrong way and never spoke to Ralph again. When I visited Ralph in the nursing home he said, “If I only knew what I did wrong, I would apologize.” Opinions are held long and strong up here.

The word “never” is used far too often. To me, city life seems so much more forgiving.

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ne of the greatest lessons of my life was learned at Tom Doyle’s cottage in

Wolfeboro. He had invited an interesting gentleman to one of his famous cook-outs. His name was Breda Klefos, a towering Norwegian-born man who had been active in the anti-Hitler underground movement and survived to write a book about his experiences.

Having started from nothing, Breda was now a successful owner of printing plants. He mentioned he had just opened a new plant in Puerto Rico, and I asked him how he made such important decisions. He explained how he went to the National Library of Congress and found out that the government would finance it 100% if he hired Puerto Ricans, details Americans rarely bother to investigate. He then shared his decision making philosophy, which has stuck with me ever since.

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His philosophy sounds so simple but is not widely implemented because many fail to invest the time to uncover the strength of this logic. What Breda Klefos emphatically told me was: “Indecision is nothing more than a lack of facts!”

He explained that decision-making is not about worry, flipping coins, mystical intervention, or superior intelligence. Rather it is a careful process of collecting and screening information until the decision either makes itself or narrows so significantly that the remaining uncertainty is a nobrainer.

Colin Powell’s concept is: when he feels he has screened 70% of the most valuable information, he’s ready to make a decision. People who seek 100% fall victim to paralysis by analysis.

People who decide on scant information fare worse. It’s achieving a balance between the amount and the validity of information that makes for good decision-making. This turns me away from both the shoot-from-the-hip folks as well as nit-pickers who take voluminous notes and conclude nothing.

As a result of Breda Klefos, for important decisions, I learned to gather and evaluate facts and then document them. But in volunteer work, many find my style too much trouble.

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nother interesting experience of this sixties era was Elaine’s relationship with Jeannie

Novello across the street on Moss Hill Road. Jeannie’s husband Rocky was out of town a lot, so she befriended Elaine as Lynn and their daughter Laura were toddler friends. Jeannie was fun and looked and acted like Goldie Hawn. She was the daughter of an Irish Brookline cop and had knowingly or unknowingly married an Italian mobster. Elaine and I never did figure out who was deceiving who in this relationship. As long as the gifts from Rocky kept coming, I doubt if Jeannie asked many questions of Rocky’s whereabouts.

After observing Rocky’s nocturnal patterns, listening to Jeannie explain some of his travels, and seeing the same piece of chimney tile lying in the back of his spotless pickup for a year, I suspected Rocky was not the chimney contractor he claimed to be. When I discovered that his uncle was Ben Tilley, I was much more certain of Rocky’s profession.

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ncle Ben Tilley was a long-time Hughes Oil customer and a well known hood. He

was a most charming man who came to our office to pay his oil bill, always in cash. He wore the finest of clothes and never failed to leave a five dollar tip for the oil driver. Even when the company grew to five thousand accounts, Ben Tilley remained the only person ever to routinely tip an oil driver. He also was the only person I ever knew who carried Florida plane tickets in his monogrammed shirt pocket so he could decide, at a moments notice, to sit in on a big card game in Miami.

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I

t took Elaine a long time to accept the fact that Rocky was a gangster because there

were no gangsters living in her small hometown of Phoenix, New York. For Elaine, gangsters were in novels, not in your neighborhood. However, after listening to Jeannie’s stories for a couple of years and being the recipient of World Series tickets or tickets to sold out Bruins games, Elaine agreed Rocky was not your average working man.

Rocky and Jeannie’s world crashed when he was convicted of complicity in Boston’s largest robbery ever, the famous Brink’s armored car robbery. It occurred right outside the bar where Rocky would direct me to pick up those very special Bobby Orr-era Bruins tickets. I do not think Rocky expected to serve one day since he had escaped previous convictions, evidently bribing his way out. I recall a Judge Saulnier being disbarred after one of Rocky’s trials.

I could not believe Rocky’s coolness. The very day he was to be picked up to stand trial, he spent the afternoon with my daughter, Lynn, and his daughter, Laura, at his pool. The other five men, who were indicted with him fled. They were not apprehended for five years. They had plastic surgery done and had formed new families and identities in the Midwest.

However Rocky’s confidence about getting off one more time turned out to be misplaced.

He got slammed with a sentence of 25-40 years. It must have been a shocker to finally face the music. Elaine ran in to Jeannie some years later. She said she was working as a hat check girl. I never knew what finally happened to Rocky or daughter Laura.

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oward the end of our stay on Moss Hill Road, I accomplished one of the most difficult

challenges of my life. I managed to give up smoking. Both Elaine and I had been trying for several years but each of us managed no more than a day or two of abstinence. Each time we started back to smoke the habit grew even stronger. I was up to two packs a day and Elaine at least one.

Our living room windows were pale blue when the sun shone through them even though they were cleaned often.

What triggered my ability to shed this curse was a bout with pneumonia. In about 1967, I was in bed for two weeks with oxygen and a very painful throat. A cigarette was not a consideration.

When the temperature, pain, and weakness subsided, I realized that I had just been through the longest stretch ever without a cigarette. I became determined never to light one up again, and I battled fiercely with myself to keep that promise.

From this struggle, I gained empathy for folks not able to quit because for a long time the strong associations lingered. How do you make a phone call without first lighting up? How do you stop and think about something without first lighting up? And how is it possible to have a cup of

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coffee or a drink without a cigarette? These were challenges for a long time, but I was lucky. My determination built instead of weakening. Each month it became easier to resist the temptations, but addictions sure are scary things, so I do not criticize those who succumb.

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y 1970 it was decision time for the Hughes family about remaining on Moss Hill Road.

Do we remain loyal to my roots and the place where my business was located, Jamaica Plain? Or do we leave for the suburbs like so many of our counterparts already had? Bobby was completing his last year at a great neighborhood school, but next fall he would be bussed to who-knows-where.

The Boston bussing experiment, to solve de-facto segregation, was in a state of confusion and emotion. Do you risk your child’s future if you can afford to do otherwise? In addition, city life was becoming personally risky because of escalating racial tensions.

In retrospect, I think we made the correct decision. Conversely, Paul and Jane Callahan stayed, and I believe paid a price for their loyalty to a wonderful Catholic parish they so strongly supported and enjoyed. Two daughters married quite successfully, but their son became addicted to drugs that led a heartbreaking downward spiral. Did city life cause this? Who knows!

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efore I begin the story of suburban life in Needham, I’d like to digress to a segment

of my life that was separate from family or business. This five year experience caused a conversion of the mind that guides my thinking to this day. I began to see a world I had been blind to even though I was right in the middle of it.

Chapter Three ~ A Whole New Life

A Digression

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I

t occurs to me that I should dedicate a completely separate section of this story to an

aspect of my life that was so different from my traditional social and business life. This third aspect was idealistic era that drew me in to a serious involvement in the social changes of the late sixties. This five or six year experience embedded in me a political and personal philosophy that clicked with what I had learned from all those years in church. This change took me from thinking narrowly based on personal piety to accepting a wider responsibility of putting those very familiar principles to work.

However, this sixties activism and questioning type of thinking has put me out-of-step with many of my peers, especially in Wolfeboro and more recently in Naples, FL. Opinions of retirees with suburban backgrounds seem so fixed. To this day my attitude is changed about government policy and how to understand and empathize with people who did not have my opportunities. My political thoughts continue to drift even more to the left as I read more about world problems and measure our country’s obligation and opportunity to make a difference. Conservative opinions seem so rigid, so power driven, so uncompromising and so selfish. I disagree with over- using the “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” philosophy, even though that is what I did.

M

y church and community involvement peaked during the early years of my marriage to

Elaine, and it could not have blossomed without her support. We started out together in 1960 when I was twenty-nine and Elaine was twenty-four. My strengthening social conscience and action agenda had begun a few years earlier. It was a little different for Elaine. Her small town upstate New York background did not sensitize her as much for the tumultuous city upheaval of the sixties. At first she just trusted my opinions in her wonderful, non-prejudicial way but today we think pretty much alike on social and political issues. Neither of us are currently activists, but we are empathetic.

The prior influence on my thinking had originated with those nice, honest hard-working folks at little St. Andrews Methodist Church as well as my conservative family roots that date back to Celtic rugged individualism. Dick Horan also had a major influence on softening some of my New England Protestant views. His Irish Catholic philosophy that emphasized compassion, moderation, and compromise was my initial mind-changing influence. However in retrospect, the influence by sixties activist liberals was even more mind-expanding. Their radicalism opened up such a wide world of thought for me tugging at my Protestant-rooted tendency to “mind your business”.

My entrance into the relatively new world of social responsibility was timely because the sixties brought about enormous changes. Much of it I came to agree with because my work experience Chapter Four ~ A Digression

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88

placed me right smack in the middle of controversies that dominated the news. I was making deliveries on those streets. For me it was up close and personal. Sometimes I volunteered for a new cause and at other times my community business exposure obligated me. I had not previously hungered for social change but when negative changes were occurring right in front of me, I just could not turn away. Two basic philosophies provided the impetus. I was a believer that it was important to put your religion to work during the week and not just on Sunday. Plus, as a small business owner, I felt a responsibility to give back to the community from which I took my living.

By the late Fifties, Jamaica Plain was noticeably changing for the worse, economically. My peers had been steadily moving from traditional city apartments to fast growing towns ten- to twentymiles away. Lois and Al were typical. They moved to a small, ranch house in Framingham because the GI bill allowed them to get a 4% long-term mortgage. Even considering inflation, a new house costing only about $80 a-month was pretty attractive. The Vater’s monthly payment for a brand new home was only about $30 a month more than the rent for their four-room apartment. Who wouldn’t choose that housing opportunity?

A

n additional factor driving relocation to suburban greenery was the massive Federal

Road Plan of 1948 that allowed small towns to be connected to cities by time-saving, limited-access roads. The traditional method of traveling to work on public transportation was fading fast. This large shift of work type and work location contributed to a burgeoning development of a middle class but left a community spirit void in cities like Boston. Many families that had contributed so much to the political and cultural life of Boston for many generations, watched the newest generation leave their roots behind.

The result of this exodus of potential leadership was that mature organizations as well as long held cultural assets were greatly diminished along with the tax base. The spirit that had made Boston great for one hundred or more years was not being renewed by the next generation. I recall one poignant and repeated comment. “Last person out turn off the lights.”

The Federal Government recognized this countrywide pattern and funded programs that brought professionals into communities like Jamaica Plain to try to rebuild the social fabric that had been lost. The first professional that sought me out around 1956 was a community organizer named Jim Hooley. I was immediately attracted by his conviction. He had been the starting center on the Boston College basketball team, so Jim was shunning much more lucrative avenues to save a community headed downhill.

Chapter Four ~ A Digression

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I

may have been Jim’s earliest contact as I was young, available, and eager, plus my new

office was only a few hundred yards from his cubicle in the dreary, old Red Feather Neighborhood House. Our first project was an attempt to increase the scope of an old organization of professionals that served the community. This coordinating group ranged from social workers to juvenile police detectives to the local newspaper editor. Our aim was to bring in some new business people who might lift this group out of its overly bureaucratic nature. They needed the input of business people because for far too long businesses had taken out of Jamaica Plain and not given back. Few business owners resided anywhere near their business.

W

e had some success in enlarging the mission of this professional group so it could

better meet modern problems even though our enthusiasm for change was not always supported.

Professionals, no matter how well motivated, get into the ruts of their own bureaucracy and are very suspect of those seeking change. As I reflect, I now better understand that I was intruding into their careers and challenging their experience. However, the basic concept of mixing professional opinion with business and lay opinion has survived. The Jamaica Plain Community Council that emerged still exists.

Soon after my bonding with Jim Hooley came another close connection. My little Methodist Church merged with two others and become one. This was a merger born out of financial necessity, and I was closely involved. These dying congregations had become more like clubs than vibrant organizations looking to serve their community. Most who attended lived a distance away and, because of long family attachment, felt very possessive. Old traditions were revered while changes in the surrounding community went unrecognized.

T

he merger of three small Methodist churches had one very important advantage.

Each congregation no longer had to be served by a part-time student pastor. We could now afford a full-time, ordained minister. Our first one, Reverend Harvey Smith, was all the congregation had hoped for, but he moved on after a few years. The next one was some surprise. Inspired by Harvard Theological School, Don Campbell arrived charged with an activist theology. He promptly and vigorously challenged many of the old traditions. The young Reverend Don Campbell made sense to me but not to many of my fellow members. He was intense and scary- bright expanding my world of social change ideas but blurring the lines between social work and religious purpose.

Chapter Four ~ A Digression

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90

Don Campbell involved himself in community work even more than me, much to the dismay of church members who felt strongly that he was paid to serve their personal religious interests.

Don teamed up with an equally liberal spirit at a nearby Catholic Church, Father Tom Corrigan. Both of them saw their religious work and the community change challenge as one. I was impressed but my defense of these views, so new to our congregation, became a balancing burden for me.

Then an issue exploded that trumped racial integration, crime, affordable housing, and every other social issue. A monstrous new Federal highway was announced that would plow straight through Jamaica Plain. To this day it boggles my mind that a proposal this monumental could not only be drawn up, but that multi-million dollar funding could be allocated for design and land-taking before considering the impact on the communities involved.

T

he majority of the post World War II public had become so focused on “bigger is better”

that most of us were clueless about the impacts of this massive decision. Another factor causing ambivalence was that the most stable of residents had options. Middle class white people had the option to move to the suburbs and leave community responsibility behind. Moving out had not been an option of prior generations of working class folks who did not own automobiles nor was moving out to the suburbs an option for newly arrived minorities.

This new expressway idea seems laughable now, but it was serious then. An eleven-lane highway elevated forty feet in the air up on steel was to go straight through Jamaica Plain. The plan was part of a larger road plan that would triple semi-circle Boston and its suburbs with offshoots similar to spokes on a wheel. The concept was to put order into a system of roads that started out in the sixteen hundreds as cow paths extending out from Boston Common.

It was hard to disagree that some type of transportation change was desirable because Boston, like other cities, was changing. It once was a quaint city bordered by large gaps of land between its surrounding historical towns. Boston was now beginning to grow into a megalopolis as development began merging the city into the towns that semi-circled it. So much so, a Metropolitan District Commission was formed to address common needs resulting from this erasing of town borders. The roadways in between the city and surrounding towns had increasingly become a maze of traffic laden small roads and stop lights.

T

he proposed solution to this dilemma had few comparables because the new road de-

sign proposal included mass transportation as well as auto traffic, a very novel idea. The new

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Southwest Expressway plan included four auto lanes on either side with three mass transportation lanes located in the median. It was a transportation designer’s dream but a community planner’s nightmare. Our community was oblivious to its enormous effect because words like impact were not yet in common use.

Luckily, the professionals who were starting to come in to our community recognized the impact of this monster plan. Someone contacted a Quaker based group in Cambridge that was committed to helping fast changing communities like ours. I believe it was called Urban Planning Group. It was directed by a very bright and committed gentleman named Jim Morey.

In all the intervening years, I have never experienced a more genuine and dynamic group than these folks. This low key group comprised some very interesting people, some of whom had day jobs as state road planning engineers. These were professionals that disagreed personally with a road plan that could destroy one of the most beautiful cities in the world. They could not understand why an immense urban project was being planned no differently than one passing through a cornfield in Kansas. There were hundreds of pages of construction and traffic details available, but not a single word existed about the enormous effect this road could have on Boston.

T

he first thing this Quaker group did was to draft an impact study for us. It was a seventy

page document that was ours to edit, put our name on, and run with. This group was very careful not to dominate our cause. Their mission was to offer us tools to deal with a government bureaucracy that could easily overwhelm our emotional arguments with reams of technical statistics. I attended some of the early meetings at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. We would leave these meetings feeling quite inadequate about stopping this plan or even understanding its rationale. The new multi-million dollar Southwest Expressway was on a fast track with land-taking already in progress. An implied attitude of road planners was “who were we to stand in the way of much needed progress?”

This new community impact study by the Quaker group became our threshold tool because it made our “Stop the Expressway Committee” effort look legitimate. We were no longer just wellintentioned community people who did not understand complex change. We now could speak the jargon of road engineers and intelligently explain the impact of this project. This small study overcame the inertia hurdle because, prior to our study, there was a strong feeling of inevitability of this road among most voters and politicians. There were some good reasons for this feeling of inevitability. Attracting federal road money was a feather in any politician’s hat, plus a blue collar community, like ours, welcomed the lucrative union jobs that road projects generated.

Chapter Four ~ A Digression

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92

The second and most important gift these folks gave us was a strategy. The Urban Group counseled that there was far too much momentum behind this road plan for a residents’ group to think they could stop it. We reached out to those similarly affected along the route including people from Hyde Park, Roslindale, and Roxbury, but this did not give us enough clout as road routes tend to pass through the poorest and politically weakest areas. The Urban Group’s suggested strategy was to drop the concept of “stop’’ and adopt a concept of “depress.” This idea turned out to be brilliant and another lifelong lesson for me.

O

ur new strategy was “Ok, we give in! Build your road but build it below street level,

not forty feet up in the air on ugly steel that will scar the appearance of Boston for the next hundred years.” Our strategy was one that only a road engineer could see through. Depressing this road would have involved the design difficulties of a moon landing plus the cost was not even calculable.

Luckily, city and state politicians didn‘t care about design difficulty or cost because the federal government was paying ninety percent. Local politicians could now have it both ways. They could be in favor of a project that brought jobs but not be perceived as being in favor of something that would damage the community.

“Depress the Highway” had much more appeal than “Stop the Highway.”

We still faced an uphill battle to get a large cross-section of the community fired up enough to get the attention of decision making politicians. These important politicians were the ones who had the formidable power required to interrupt a project already in the pipeline, especially one that had momentum. Our job was to drum up voter support. Thanks to exceptional support from the local paper, we organized a community meeting at the Mary E. Curley Junior High School and packed the place. We attracted not only people being displaced by the road, but many others who could now see Our First Flyer

that this plan differently. The issue was no

longer about a few people losing their homes but how this project was going to seriously affect the culture and property values of the entire southwest portion of the city.

The Saint Thomas High School band opened up our rally-like meeting and Mass. Department of Transportation Commissioner Frank Sargent closed it. Luckily he was running for governor Chapter Four ~ A Digression

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so he was not hostile, but even sympathetic. Later, as governor, he helped us considerably.

I occupied the center portion with a slide show displayed on a large screen on the school stage. I’m still proud of this accomplishment. It was my first attempt at a presentation and I had put many hours into taking and selecting slides that could vividly demonstrate the enormous impact this road would have.

I showed slides of the overhead electric train structure on Washington Street and how a wide swath of blight lasting ninety years followed its path. It would have been so inexpensive in the early nineteen hundreds to make it a subway and how costly the result of those meager original savings had been. I took similar slides of the nearby railroad built in the late eighteen hundreds on a high embankment creating scary under passes at every intersection. Blight paralleled these tracks as well.

The centerpiece of my presentation was pictures of a more recent project, our existing Southeast Expressway. It was built up on steel just after the war because it was cheaper to build that way and, at that time, the state had to bear most of the cost. Now Uncle Sam was paying 90%. When taking pictures underneath an interchange near Faneuil Hall, I was astonished to view the creation of acres of land that would never see the light of day. Overhead, there were steel beams, cutting out the sun, and heading in every direction.

How could anything but blight exist anywhere near these ugly structures that sprawled over such important land? Could this be the only way to move traffic through a city?

S

ince the proposed

Southwest Expressway was

Note: In this early sixties article the DPW said an elevated road could be built for $24,000,000 but a depressed one might cost $74,000,000. That’s a pretty funny estimate after reflecting on the 15 billion dollar costs of the “big dig” that are finally in.

going to be at least double the impact of the already built Southeast Expressway, the pictures I was taking, stunned me. Those engineering drawings that looked so innocent at the Department of Transportation were going to translate into something so horrible. I wondered how our small group could ever open the decision maker’s eyes to the magnitude of their willingness to repeat such well-documented road design mistakes of yesteryear.

Well, the slides turned out to be worth a thousand words. So much so, my oratory was not Chapter Four ~ A Digression

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94

crucial to the argument. So for the first time many people saw this project for what it was. Residents outside the road path became abuzz about something they had not understood prior. The meeting and the slide show turned out to be a major opinion-changing event. The slides dramatically told our story and our well-planned agenda kept the meeting civil. Attendees walked out realizing that opposition to this plan was not confined to sympathy for some poor people losing their homes.

Opposition to this massive project was really about ruining a large and important part of Boston

M

ayor Kevin White was the first politician to buy into the idea of depressing the road.

After viewing the slide show, he invited our group to his office in the just completed Boston City Hall. His office, in the rear, faced Boston Harbor, but the view was blocked by the current Southeast Expressway. He walked to the window facing east while telling us our plan to depress the road was starting to make a lot of sense to him.

A

s Mayor White looked

out that window he pointed to how the waterfront, a half-mile away, was beginning to be expensively developed, but it was on the other side of the expressway from his office. I’ll never forget what he said. “Here we are Mayor pushes Governor

spending all this money to invigorate

the decrepit Scollay Square area with a new City Hall and a Federal Building complex. However, we can never connect this wonderful improvement to our waterfront because of that ugly expressway that lies in between. Government should never again repeat the mistake of looking only at the initial cost of road construction. Long term impact on the community is a huge issue and it’s not getting enough attention.”

This was a major victory. Even though Mayor White had no control over state and federal road decisions, he was enjoying popularity and was ready to move to a higher office. Our small group now had established not only more credibility, but also more clout. State politicians did not want to openly challenge Mayor White. An interesting aside is that his assistant, who helped us, was Barney Frank. He has gone on to be a powerful United States Congressman.

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The interesting aspect to our strategy was that our Quaker group probably knew very well that a sub-surface road proposal would fall of its own weight. I’ll never know how many of the politicians understood that promoting the idea of depressing this monster was our method of stopping it. However, most picked up quickly on what a great idea it was to depress this highway. The later year’s experience of the “big dig” (depressing the Southeast Expressway through downtown Boston) certainly bears out my suspicion that the Quaker strategy of promoting depressing it, would kill it. The Southeast Expressway depression, recently completed, has turned out to be the most expensive in road building history. Depressing our proposed Southwest Expressway would have easily trumped that cost. God love those Quakers.

A

n interesting anecdote is that the “big dig” had its origins in our loosely structured

group. One of the people helping us was a recent MIT graduate named Fred Salvucci. At the time Fred was an entry-level Department of Public Works employee. He commented that the Southeast Expressway should never have been built up on steel and should now be torn down and depressed.

People thought that statement mad.

Ironically Fred went on to become head of the Massachusetts Department of Public Works.

He continued to espouse this idea, and forty years, billions of dollars, and much political maneuvering

by Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil and others , a depressed Southeast Expressway is a reality. I think time will prove the “big dig” to be a good value. The New York Times agreed in a recent article in its Sunday edition. It talked of the “big dig” as re-making Boston in the same way as the Las Ramblias did for Barcelona and the Embarcadero did for San Francisco. The Times correctly credits Fred as the person who conceived this idea and shepherded it through a multi–year odyssey.

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y contribution to stopping this monster was nothing like Fred’s or that of volunteer

Winky Clougherty who spent so many years pushing this Southwest Expressway cause through tortuous legislative hurdles. I believe I was the first president or vice president and was actively involved for three or four years until my business work load interfered and a third child arrived.

However, I consider that involvement the most important one of my life because I was able to make a difference in an important public issue.

At the beginning, the prospects of stopping this proposed monster were so bleak and the final result so wonderful, I term it a miracle. Instead of an eleven-lane wide highway smashing through residential neighborhoods of Boston forty feet up on a steel superstructure, there is now a three rail-wide depressed public transportation corridor passing through Hyde Park, Roslindale, Chapter Four ~ A Digression

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96

Jamaica Plain, and Roxbury. There is no blight near this lovely community asset. You hardly know it is there.

Interestingly the Hughes Oil property that I purchased from Frank Mello was related to the Southwest project. It was in the path of the proposed expressway. That Hughes Oil property was taken by eminent domain. That is how Hughes Oil wound up on Spring Street in West Roxbury, a much better location and a springboard to the suburbs. This is another example of change. When is it a problem? When is it an opportunity?

M

ixed into my involvement with the expressway were other causes that I believed in

and felt I should assist. However, this effort at continued broad social change did not enjoy the same level of success for me because the goals were more elusive and my time not as abundant. All those nights out, and all that emotion, was trying Elaine’s patience now that she had two small kids and pregnant plus a large house to care for. Something had to give and it was not going to be family.

I do not know how Elaine stood a distracted and missing husband for as long as she did.

One of the efforts I was involved with, however, was the League of Women Voters. The League of Women Voters received a $100,000 grant for community organization in Jamaica Plain.

I was a natural board prospect. These women were so bright and so committed it was hard not to help. They even sent me to Washington to attend a low income housing seminar. Jamaica Plain is currently such an expensive and sophisticated community, it’s hard to believe we had vacant buildings then and minorities could not find housing.

I was also partially involved with the Jamaica Plain APAC, the local arm of President Johnson’s War on Poverty. APAC epitomized one of the excesses of this era. The federal government threw money at instant solutions to problems that needed so much more time to solve. Professionals flooded in to cities concocting programs to attract federal dollars. Not all had the conviction of my original contact Jim Whooley, or Don Campbell or Ron Hafer, who crafted a very effective multi-year housing program out of this menagerie. Ron’s program still exists.

D

uring my involvement in these social causes, one big frustration I dealt with resulted

from trying to temper demands of some black leaders who seemed to prefer headlines over progress. At times I could not figure out who they represented. I agreed that there were times when making a lot of noise and tossing around accusations was a correct strategy, but confrontation should be a calculated plan, not a constant style. For example, the police captain you call names at a meeting tonight for not protecting the playground better is still going to be the police captain Chapter Four ~ A Digression

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tomorrow morning when he has to compromise something to find that extra patrolman in his budget.

There were similar issues on the expressway project. It was a real struggle to get black leaders to accept the idea of depressing the expressway. They thought they had the power to adopt a strategy of “stop.” Notions of black power were prevalent then. I thought those notions counter-productive. I was no advocate of “Uncle Tom” attitudes but did come down on the side that progress was far more important than theatrics.

However, the problem of equality for blacks was real. People having black skin were boxed into public housing projects and other blighted areas because of their race. A black-skinned person could not work hard to improve his standard of living and move to the suburbs like I could. I empathized with my young, black counterparts who became alienated and angry. A black person’s chance of financial success was so much more limited than mine. My small involvement in trying to change this dynamic made me realize racial equality was an awesome challenge.

W

orking directly with blacks for the first time in my life confirmed the concept that there

is no common denominator linking blacks anymore than there is a common denominator that links whites. White liberals of that era tried to invent a black ancestral culture connection to Africa symbolized by African Dashikas and other cultural items. I thought this idea was counter-productive because it was not legitimatized by the average black. The only common racial difference I noticed was that almost all blacks were victimized by white prejudice whether they were a doctor or an illiterate. Other than that commonality, blacks were as varied as whites. Why was Boston so slow in reacting to this simple truth about individuality. For example, the Red Sox were the last team in baseball to field a black player, little known second baseman Pumpsie Green.

Most of the whites I knew seemed to have little appreciation of how discrimination feels.

Jews of that era certainly did. The strong prejudices of the era baffled me. I found myself treading the line between League women who overreacted by rationalizing a black person using the “f” word at a meeting as “telling it like it is”- to the other extreme of my peers who really thought there was no problem of racial inequality to be addressed.

One experience of what it might feel like to be a minority occurred when Dick Horan and I received invitations to the wedding of Bishop Tom Week’s son. Tom was the leader of a wonderful group of Jamaican people, many of whom were customers because of Tom’s respect for Dick Horan’s prior work at Mello Fuel. Both the Horan’s and the Hughes’ attended, and we were the only white people in a group of about five hundred. I remember sitting in that church among those gentle, beautifully-dressed people and saying to myself, “Ah! This is how it feels.”

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98

There were certainly racial problems in the sixties, and they were of long standing. However, some integration attempts were puzzling. For example, watching elementary school children being bussed around the city made me sad. I watched hundreds of busses weave through city traffic with frightened little white and black heads peering out. I thought these kids should be sitting in a school near their home instead of breathing fumes inside a bus, wondering where they were.

A generation of Boston kids received an inferior education because of this experimental idea. Not much social progress resulted from it.

T

his six-year experience of being around people unlike me changed me forever as it

erased prideful convictions embedded during my childhood. Growing up “knowing your place” was accepted by my family and my peers. I now felt I had outgrown that old shackle of “don’t get involved.” I could never have acted as extremely as some of the radicals of that era did, but I tried hard to understand and generally came down on their side, even though some of their tactics made me cringe. The most enlightening revelation for me was to understand that even the slightest public social change originated with somebody’s “way-out” thinking or action. I learned that I should not automatically dismiss radical thoughts about solving injustices. I learned that radicalism often has to be the style to get even a small degree of movement in long established prejudice.

Not everyone can just pull themselves up by the boot straps. Living in places like Needham, MA; Wolfeboro, NH; and Naples, FL lets you think social problems are overstated by a liberal media and are not a government responsibility. However, if you have the courage to venture into urban and isolated poor areas, you will change your mind.

The idealism of the sixties was a wonderful period if you truly believed every man was your brother. However, the government’s role needed to be reined in a little and it was. Unfortunately, here in the early 2000s, the Bush administration has governed in the opposite direction convincing barely a majority that the strong should look out for themselves and that the end justifies the means.

Terrorism is different so let’s ignore our Constitution until we feel safer. WHAT A CROCK!

I

also worry that a lot of the social progress of the sixties is being unraveled by hard core

conservatives who seem to care more about winning their opinion than the effect their changes may have. The hard learned lessons about how to resist war by maximizing diplomacy and making the sacrifices of time and money to reduce suffering may be fading from memory. Are we entering another “me” era?

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Jimmy Carter’s recent book about losing our national values is worth reading and heeding.

National values are well worth discussing and identifying because we have a constitution to guide us as along with our various religious teachings, many of which form the intent but not the exact wording of our Constitution. One of the Supreme Courts finest members, Sandra Day O’Connor, a staunch Republican who cast the deciding vote to get Bush elected, is appalled by the Bush administration. She terms many of its actions after 9/11 “lawless.” Most of his actions have finally been rebuked, wasting much money and time that could better have been spent at getting at the roots of terrorism.

The new political term “family values” that George Bush and Karl Rove invented bothers me. To me family values are quite different from political views. They apply internally to the way we want our families to live, not to government policy. Our neighbor’s family values can be quite different from ours and still conform to the intent of our Constitution. We are no longer a White Christian country and that’s fine with me.

All too often family values turn out to be just a cover up for letting personal and local prejudice seep into our laws. Unfortunately this strategy of appealing to the worst in us has gotten George Bush a lot of votes. It took me a long time to make substantial progress in getting beyond the prejudices embedded from my childhood, so it bothers me to see attempts to turn the clock back on hard earned national progress. We should be putting our best effort into how to untangle ourselves from Iraq, helping the suffering in Africa, and finding a way to make the same health care available to Congress, available to every citizen and then move on to how to integrate the illegal aliens into their deserved mainstream status.

P

erhaps the biggest lesson to impart here is to get involved if you think change is neces-

sary. Don’t be a sucker for TV sound bites or professional prejudice promoters like Rush Limbaugh.

There are some real problems out there with some wonderful people trying to solve them, and the US Government is the hope of the world.

Chapter Four ~ A Digression

~Transitioning~

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T

he decision to leave the city for the suburbs was pretty obvious. As much as we loved

the Moss Hill area and as much as I felt a responsibility to help stabilize the city, from which I took my living, I could not risk my children’s future. We decided to move to Needham. This lily white upper-middle class town was then, and still is the very essence of stability. Even though it was adjacent, Needham had escaped all of the post World War II ills that Boston suffered. As a further personal bonus it had a substantial Protestant population for us to church with.

After years of feeling so obligated to continue supporting a dying inner city Protestant church, Elaine and I joined the biggest church we could find in Needham, even before we left Jamaica Plain. It was the Needham Congregational Church. For a while we were able to hide out among its 1,500 members because in this church people vied for volunteer positions as capabilities and energies abounded. Just showing up for a service and feeling no obligation to accept some duty was such a delightful change. We just put the kids in Sunday School and attended.

After initially feeling no obligation to sign up for duties, I later agreed to manage the church buildings for a few years to accomplish a downsizing of excess Sunday school space that was over-built during the church-going fifties. I remodeled the heating system and converted excess school rooms into office space. A lot of fuel was saved plus we were able to rent former Sunday school space to a mental health organization. It was a win/win deal that netted the church about $30,000 a year and a fulfilling experience for me. For a few years I sang in the choir, which was really fun because the choir was big, the director top notch, and the organ powerful. The Needham Congregational Church was quite a change from little St. Andrews Methodist in Jamaica Plain.

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hile looking for a home location we scouted the section of Needham closest to the

Hughes Oil office in nearby West Roxbury. We were looking for a location that fit our needs and our values. We did not find an existing house that we liked in the area we chose, but we found a small, easy-to-care-for lot on which to build. Small lot size was a high priority for me as beautiful 98 Moss Hill Road mushroomed into a maintenance monster. After buying the cottage on Winnipesaukee, I started to resent doing summer lawn work while home alone on weekday nights while the family was in Wolfeboro.

The lot we chose on 120 Laurel Drive, Needham was perfect. It was only eight thousand square feet surrounded in front and down one side by a six foot high stone wall built years ago to wall off an estate. I could not establish a lawn on this lot, even if I wanted to, because of the stone wall and the tall pine trees. A combination of bark mulch, bushes, a nice brick sidewalk plus a Chapter Five ~ Tansitioning

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paved back yard for skating and basketball fit my maintenance vision perfectly. This four bedroom standard colonial had to be placed sideways on the lot hiding its beauty a little, but that was okay as understatement fit our comfort zone.

Along with the convenient commute to 120 Laurel Drive, Needham

work, and fitting our living needs, this location fit our values. Laurel Drive was one of the older

streets near town center and contained a wide mix of people living in small homes on small lots.

Some neighbors had grown up there, some worked for the town, some were retired, and some were young, first-time owners like us. Even though ours was one of the most expensive, it did not stick out because of the way the house was sited.

Elaine and I had made a conscious choice not to live in one of the newer and more prestigious neighborhoods. Because of my job, I often visited customer’s homes in the newer sections of suburban towns. I felt many folks in these developments lost touch with the real world because they experienced only people that lived just like they did and had similar incomes. To me, many suburbanites had forgotten their roots. The tradition of never forgetting where you came from can run deep. In my case it was easier “getting the boy out of Jamaica Plain” than it was “getting the Jamaica Plain out of the boy.” I’m not sure this anti-suburban feeling was completely accurate, maybe just my own insecurity, but Elaine and I felt very comfortable on Laurel Drive.

B

uilding the house in Needham was an inter-

esting experience. We bought the land from a man named Joe Savignano. Joe was a proud man who worked as a

Back yard Skating Rink

Boy Scout official. His wife Ellie was a lovely and very special person. She compassionately nursed a wealthy and childless couple in their late years who lived in the main house of the adjacent former estate. Our house lot formed one of the back corners. Even though Joe’s Dad had been the gardener of this estate, when the Pearson’s died they left the entire estate to Joe’s wife, Ellie.

Joe Savignano then became a developer. He sold me the first lot and had a schoolteacher/builder put our house up for $55,000 including the land. Even though that was $12,500 more than I sold the Moss Hill Road house for, seventeen years later we sold this 120 Laurel Drive Chapter Five ~ Tansitioning

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for the tidy sum of $450,000. Even considering inflation and the fact that we put a $100,000 addition on, that is still a lot of gain. This experience is not out of the norm, and it’s why I conclude that many of my generation have been financially lucky.

I

n just the third year we were in Needham, Elaine’s

Mom Edna died suddenly from a heart attack. She was living in an apartment in Syracuse and a neighbor discovered her dead in the hallway. This was such a sad, but at least painless, end to a wonderful woman who always put me on a pedestal and rarely asked for anything. Her life had not been easy, only partially of her own doing, but she rarely complained. For the third time, I made another mistake in emotional judgment about

Edna Posler

funeral arrangements. We did not take the kids to her services in Syracuse. I guess Elaine and I thought it impractical or not good for them. Upon reflection, it was just wrong. Don’t shield kids from sad things.

Sometime during this period Elaine decided to give up smoking. It had been about five years since I quit, and she was ready. It could not have been easy but she made it look that way.

She signed up for a smoking cessation clinic at the local hospital. She had already quit by a couple of weeks but the program required she go back to smoking, pick a date to quit, and be public about it.

She picked a date, told every one she knew, and has not smoked since. There was one brief scare for me but not her. When we were visiting Lynn in Austria, Elaine decided to light up with Lynn in a smokefilled casino. I was so shocked that I bet her $1,000 she could not stay away from them for a year. She did not even finish that cigarette and one year later I paid. Lynn stopped smoking shortly after that.

I

n our sixth year in Needham, we experienced a momentous weather event. It dwarfed

all others storm experiences of my life, even the hurricane of 1938. It was the “Blizzard of 76.”

More than four feet of snow dropped from a northeast weather pattern that kept circling out to sea and back dumping more and more snow for three long and dark days. I recall that first evening as fifteen-yea-old Bob and I were the last to leave the office waiting to see if all trucks were safely in.

We almost paid a heavy price for underestimating warnings. I had maneuvered my way through many storms in the past, so how bad could this storm be? The answer turned out to be “Real bad!”

It was white out when we set out from the West Roxbury office in my rear wheel drive Nash Chapter Five ~ Tansitioning

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Matador, a car not known for handling snow very well. The direct road to Needham was blocked so we began a series of lefts and rights trying to avoid drifts, abandoned vehicles, and inclines. I charted a round-about course toward Dedham circle, which I thought might have plows operating.

It did, but the plows were no match for the amount of snow falling.

I was desperately trying to avoid stopping for any reason as I feared we would never get enough traction to start moving again in this sea of white. As we passed under Route 128, which was now a fifty-mile parking lot of trapped commuters, Bob yelled, “Stop! Dad, stop!” There, almost hidden by the whiteout, was a shadowy figure in a white coat in the middle of the road waving us down. I stopped, but then wondered, how will we ever get going again.?

The stranger turned out to be a beautiful thirty-five-year-old blonde named Joan Lesperance who had been stranded in her car for hours up above on Route 128. She had family a halfmile away and had decided to risk walking there rather than remain with the stranded car.

However, as the blizzard worsened and the cold intensified she realized that she would never make it walking in light clothing, so she took refuge in the underpass hoping some one might come along. She was very lucky as Bob and I did not see another car moving on the road during our three-mile ride to that location.

J

oan was in our car in a flash and luckily we got the wheels moving again in the ever in-

creasing and drifting snow. I breathed a sigh of relief because we now had a chance to make it home. Thank God I knew the next mile to Laurel Drive like the back of my hand because there was no road to follow. The road was level and straight, so I just plowed on weaving and churning from one side of the road to the other.

I did not know how we would make the turn on to Laurel Drive or navigate its small incline, but we did. As we whirled in to our driveway and the garage door went up, I skidded to a stop, barely avoiding plowing through the family room wall, a cheer went up. We had survived against bigger odds in a storm than I had ever faced. There were a number of lives lost that night in the area we had just traversed. When Joan got inside and hugged Elaine as tears flowed even though it was afirst meeting. Bob and I felt pretty good, too. Joan stayed a few days. We kept in touch for a few years, then busy lives took over.

For the next week only emergency vehicles were allowed on the road, a most unusual circumChapter Five ~ Tansitioning

The Garage we skidded into

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stance. This was to allow National Guard bulldozers and other special contractor equipment to clear snow depths impervious to ordinary plows. Hughes Oil trucks were allowed on streets that were opened, but many were clogged not only with snow, but also with abandoned cars. Many of our customers watched their tank gauges descend with no hope of an oil truck being able to re-fill it. For those with electricity back on, our people lugged five-gallon cans through snow drifts to keep heat on in many homes.

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e kept our trucks operating twenty-four hours a day so everybody who had ever driven

one was put to work. I volunteered to drive after midnight to load up trucks and to deliver full truckloads to some commercial accounts. What a thrilling experience to pass through empty Boston or travel down an empty seaside parkway at 2:00 am with the moon over the water. It was the last time I ever drove a truck, but it reminded me how much I loved the working man’s life and how little I enjoyed being an executive.

Most of our family life in Needham was ideal. I believe all three kids were reasonably happy there although they do not recall it as positively as me. We even had a cat. Bob and Barbara were involved in competitive sports.

Lynn liked individual things like riding lessons and gymnastics. Bob and Barbara envisioned

The kids and smoky the cat at 16 Laurel Drive

being athletes while Lynn was imagining a life as a rock star. She may get there yet.

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he Needham schools were excellent for public schools but the seventies were an ex-

perimental era for public education as permissiveness replaced regimentation. The open classroom idea spread far and wide giving young kids more options than most could handle. The Hughes kids were involved in this concept and did not get all they could have out of school. I should have remembered the value of a small school from my own history. I learned so much from the little Methodist Church in my early teens, and then later floundered in an oversized public high school.

In retrospect, I should have tried harder to get our kids into private school even though I had little influence and even less experience in this area. Another obstacle to admittance was that Bob and Lynn had developed weak study habits. Barbara did well in the big school atmosphere, especially in her early high school years. All three kids were smart, but sometimes settled for only Chapter Five ~ Tansitioning

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average grades. I now see that a stronger effort on my part to find compatible private schools would have helped all three considerably.

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he girls continued on to Needham High, but Bob went to Catholic Memorial High School

across the street from the office in West Roxbury because I felt it offered a more disciplined approach. It was a large, all-boys school run by the Christian Brothers order. This is an Irish based order that runs schools all over the world. These brothers are dedicated to educating average students with an emphasis on discipline and sports.

Bob did well here plus it afforded an opportunity for him to ride to school with me and work afterwards at Hughes Oil. I wish I had thought to hold him back a year as he got his major growth spurt a year after graduation. Like me, he was small all through high school, which makes sports very difficult, especially

A “no name” hockey player

in a large competitive school like Catholic Memorial.

A sense of strong allegiance to where you grew up did not transfer to the Hughes kids, however. I believe that spending all summer in New Hampshire is the reason. Most of their friendships were forged in Wolfeboro instead of Needham. This makes sense as I recall many of my childhood friendships began and were strengthened by mutual summer boredom or the excitement of sports or gatherings in summer vacation.

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laine and I may have got a lot more out of Needham than our kids did. The local

nine- hole golf club was fun, plus we enjoyed activities at the YMCA and the church as well as socializing with some great neighbors. Monday nights in the winter were special for me as I played hockey with a great group of over thirty guys.

We called ourselves the “no names.”

Bob

MacEwen kept this group organized all the years I lived in Needham and then some. He only stopped playing in recent years. A big article appeared in the Boston Globe to celebrate his many years of organizing fun for guys like Paul on the right Chapter Five ~ Tansitioning

me.

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One lasting friendship I made through the hockey group was with Paul Branzetti. He and I were the same age and had many common interests. This relationship blossomed to include Elaine and the kids as well. Thirty years later, Paul’s son Eric remains Bob’s best friend, and Marylyn Branzetti and Elaine enjoyed many happy times Greg Branzetti, a very special friend of both Lynn and Barbara, never fails to call when he is here from California. The Branzetti’s and the Hughes’s spent many happy hours together in both Needham and Wolfeboro.

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nfortunately, for Elaine the first ten years on Laurel Drive were not her healthiest.

She struggled with migraines that had begun when she was a teenager plus with asthma and allergies that set in after she gave up smoking. This scenario did not seem logical, but we have heard since that nicotine is natural anti-histamine that can mask allergies. To her credit, Elaine never considered going back to smoking.

She often suffered in silence the way son Bob does now from those debilitating migraines.

When we were on vacation trips, she would wind up in darkness for two days while painfully retching. At home, the allergies occasionally put her in an ice tent at Glover Hospital. I’ll never forget analytical me asking the local allergy specialist to pin down the reasons. His response was memorable. He said “is

George and Ann Maling

she better after she comes here?” When I answered, “Yes,” He responded, “That’s my job.” I learned there is a big difference between a treatment and a cure.

How mysterious migraines and allergies are! Test after test, trial after trial, humidifiers, electronic air cleaners, and more, Still the spells came. Each time we thought we had a clue as to the cause, it turned out to be wrong a year later. Magically the migraines disappeared the year Bob graduated from Rollins and while we were visiting with George and Ann Maling in Clearwater, FL. After twenty-five years those awful migraines were suddenly gone, never to return. The allergy disappearance coincided with Elaine giving up milk. We will always wonder why.? Of course George Maling took full credit for her cure pointing out the miraculous abilities of his special liquor concoctions.

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laine’s brother Dick also struggled during this period. He had lost his job in a Syracuse

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moving out of the country. This destabilizing change caused Dick to again experience a depression that originated during Marine Corp duty. We did the best we could to help him although he never asked for help. A lot of time went by with him living alone in an apartment in Syracuse. A wonderful landlord and her family looked in on him so lovingly that Dick spends every vacation with the Fleisches to this day. What a compassionate group of people. The Fleischs’ are my model for solid, blue collar values. A stranger in need is a friend indeed.

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ne day, Dick’s VA-sponsored psychiatrist, Dr. Gershaw, called us. Dr. Gershaw

really cared about Dick. She suggested that he look into a late-life vocational change. Religion was his dominant interest ever since a Catholic priest befriended him in the Marine Corp. A lightning bolt went off in my head! Why hadn’t I thought of the very obvious idea that Dick work with a Catholic order sooner? Factory life was not for an intelligent, highly sensitive individual like Dick, a daily communicant, who had a passion for classical music. No wonder he felt his life empty.

Elaine enthusiastically agreed, and with Dick Horan’s help she lined up a number of appointments with various orders in the Boston area. For a few weeks, Dick Spencer and Elaine traveled to various Catholic orders for interviews. I was quite impressed with the process. It varied from order to order, but all were steeped in traditions of admittance designed to separate applicants who were just curious from those ready to make the necessary commitment.

I discovered that Catholic orders were not in lock Brother Dick Spencer

step; they were quite individual. The only commonality

was recognition of the Pope. For example, I visited an order in East Boston with Dick. These young priests were housed in a three-family house and seemed much like the sixties-era activist liberals I had known. They were on the city streets daily. On the other extreme, Elaine got to visit a group housed in a magnificent estate on the South Shore and shared an impressive lunch with very charming older priests living out their last years.

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ick finally chose the worldwide Stigmatine order. The provincial, Father Deeker, was

a most impressive person who recognized the qualities, talents and commitment Dick possessed.

What seemed so sad was that Dick was to be the first Brother joining this order in the last twentyfive years. This wonderful organization that has done so much for humanity is fading. However, for Dick, entering the Stigmatine order allowed him to provide more than twenty-five years of service Chapter Five ~ Tansitioning

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to mankind and to keep himself in good health. Elaine and I are proud of him. More importantly, Dick is proud of himself.

In 1986, while still living in Needham and just two years before leaving Hughes Oil, I suffered a minor heart attack. It happened in the late fall, so the kids and Elaine came up with a great remedy to complete my recovery. They decided to get me a puppy for Christmas. They researched a book about the qualities of various dogs and concluded that a Laja

Finnish Spitz was the ideal choice because it was

listed as “having no known disadvantages.” I later discovered the operative word in that statement was the word “known.”

It was some scene on Christmas morning. As Elaine and the girls set a scene of suspense, Bob came out of the living room cradling the cutest, little puppy I have ever seen. Elaine had located this rare animal in Texas, and he was shipped by plane. I never asked how much this Christmas present cost, but Elaine’s assumption that she could save my life with puppy love was hard to question.

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or the first few weeks of the puppy’s adjustment to his new home, he was virtually silent,

evidently terrified in his new surroundings. The Christmas present designed to relax me seemed to be working. However, my antenna went up after reading information from the breeder, a Dr. Tom Walker from Texas. He said the intent of this breed was hunting. In Finland, this Finnish Spitz would flush out a grouse and after it fled up into a tree, the dog would bark until the hunters arrived to shoot the grouse out of the tree.

What really caught my eye was a comment in material sent along that this dog had won barking contests. Well that was a new one to me! Imagine calling a friend and saying, “Hey, Joe. I have an extra ticket to a barking contest. Would you like to go?” I guess the Finns are a lot different than the Boston Irish. If I had the guts to make that phone call to one of my pals, the laughs on the other end would continue into seizures.

Reality set in after a few weeks as that dog’s natural personality emerged. Laja, a name we found in a Finnish dictionary at the local library, barked most of the time he was awake.

When I put him out on a rope, the neighbor’s cat teased him, staying just twenty feet from the end of his rope. Laja would bark until I brought him in. It certainly wasn’t relaxing listening to Chapter Five ~ Tansitioning

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Caldeira’s and Hughes’ in Utah my dog noise-polluting the neighborhood. In fact, this dog really tested my patience. In the middle of one particular night, the dog, caged in our bedroom, started barking and would not stop. I got so frustrated, I kicked the cage. In our entire married life, Elaine was never madder at me. I thought she was going to boot me out right then.

I even recall swatting this animal under the kitchen table with a broom to see if I could get him to stop barking. After that crisis, common sense began to prevail. It became obvious that one of us had to go. Considerations of why we bought this dog finally surfaced. If Laja could have supported the family, I think it was me that would have had to go, but Elaine agreed to call the breeder, and acknowledged that his warnings about buying a Christmas puppy were correct. The breeder located a young, Finnish couple in Connecticut who already had an older Finish Spitz.

They showed up on a nice Sunday in May, and Laja was gone. It was Mother’s Day, but father’s relief. Maybe Finns are deaf.

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uring all of this time in Needham, our family was enjoying Wolfeboro during summers

and also winter ski vacations. The Caldeiras came at least once a year and occasionally we joined the Kelleys’ but mostly our social life consisted of the Vaters’ and us in Wolfeboro. Access to a beach on beautiful Lake Winnipesaukee and a boat were the most significant attractions for the first fifteen years. Like in Needham, our Port Wedeln neighbors were hard-working, middle class folks who were just great to be around.

The prime summer activity for the Hughes kids was water skiing. All three kids skied well, and both Bob and Barbara went on to water ski competition. Barbara started out so young and so Chapter Five ~ Tansitioning

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small that the tow rope dragged in the water. Water skiing on Winnipesauke was a more relaxing activity for us as parents because it rarely had the competitive intensity that sports in Needham had. Water skiing was mostly family fun.

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typical Saturday afternoon for me was a six pack of beer and a tank of gas as I owned

one of the few boats in our development. I would run that 19’ Century inboard/outboard until there were no more kids waiting on the dock for their turn. What was so funny was a few parents bought their kids water skis even though they had no boat.

In downtown Wolfeboro, a couple of wonderful water ski enthusiasts named Bill and Becky Swaffield organized a water ski club. What great memories we all have from that. Each year the club put on a show at the town docks right after the Mount Washington sightseeing ship pulled out.

The ski show may not have been quite as professional as the one at Cypress Gardens in Florida, but most shows were pretty darn good. A big crowd gathered for the many oohs and ahs.

For parents the most anxious moments were wondering if the last person, often lightweight Barbara, was going to climb to the top tier of the human pyramid without all Don Hughes

Bob Hughes

seven people dumping. A

cheer would go up as she slowly made her way to the top timed to happen as the towing boat passed by the crowd. Some other events were also on the scary side as skiers crisscrossed at high speed with ropes just clearing heads, occasionally creating some dramatic wipe outs.

B

ob and Barbara continued into slalom ski competition, which required precise, athletic,

high-speed cuts around buoys. I do not have a picture of Barbara’s style, which was similar to Bob’s, but there sure is a contrast between - father on the left and son right. The slalom ski winner was the one who accumulated the most buoys as the line was shortened and shortened.

Contrary to many other ski experiences, this was a holdyour-breath competitive event. Barbara did very well in competition, and Bob went on to be Eastern Seaboard champion

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and then to ski on the Rollins College varsity team.

However, none of the ski competitions in all this time equaled the annual ski show for excitement.

The 6:00 am practices, the crowds, and the ingenuity involved in designing new acts was thrilling. Bill and Becky Swaffield should get medals for all those years Mary Barkas and me

of showing young kids how to work together and

amaze themselves. Since Barbara was small, athletic, and had a daredevil nature, she usually wound up selected to climb carefully to the top of the pyramid. Lynn was often in the middle tier and Bob an anchor position.

There is lots more to remember about Port Wedeln, such as twenty-three years of enjoying the Vaters, wonderful neighbors, and just waking up for a morning swim and saying, “There is nobody in this whole wide world better than me right now.” Evening cocktails while watching a magnificent sunset are forever burned into my memory as are the Friday night “sing alongs” at the Lakeview restaurant.

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unday afternoon horseshoes next door at Jack MacLeod’s were pretty funny, especially

when Joey Scavera was around. Joe’s quips almost made you drop the shoe on your toe. I just do not recall a time when Port Wedeln, Wolfeboro was not enjoyable.

In addition to our vacations spent in Wolfeboro, we also got to do some international traveling during this period. In the late seventies Tom and Missy Cavanaugh, new friends of ours from the Needham golf club, invited us to join a group trip to Ireland. This trip turned out to be quite memorable and cemented a strong, rewarding, long lasting friendship with the Cavanaughs.

It was on this trip that I experienced the best day of my life. At least, that’s what I termed it then. Many years later I still think that designation correct. The best day of my life started with the self-determination that I was not going to ruin one more day of vacation playing golf. Instead, I was going to find a genuine Irish pub and chat up some locals. As the bus pulled away from the charming country hotel we were staying at, I just waved at the golfers heading out to one more day at some famous golf course. Some felt bad that I would be left alone all day, but Elaine assured them not to worry. Loneliness was a rare occurrence for me.

It was a day of typical Irish weather with occasional showers, so I threw a light jacket over my shoulder and headed toward the town of Killarny. Along the way I was greeted cheerily by everyone I passed and I stopped occasionally to talk to horses and other animals that occupied Chapter Five ~ Tansitioning

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front yards. I do not recall ever being happier as I walked along this pastoral route in no rush to get anywhere. Close to town, I passed a funeral parade. It is the Irish tradition to march, after mass, to the cemetery with a piper playing. That seemed to honor the dead more appropriately than a line of cars with their lights on.

I was looking carefully at every building, trying to avoid a tourist trap and pick a place the locals frequent. Then, right in the middle of the town square, I spotted my destination. The pub was in a building that was at least a hundred years old, so in I went.

T

his pub was everything I imagined. There

was not a thing in the place less than many years old and behind the bar a charming woman was working the day shift. I ordered up a Harp on tap and noticed that there were only two others in the pub at 11:00 am.

I sent two Harps over to the table in the corner, which Tom and Humphrey

got an immediate acknowledgement and introductions.

Tommy O’Leary and another thirty-something young man had been perusing the employment section of the newspaper. They were starting their day out at their usual place, which they nicknamed “the library.” However, my appearance altered their plan quickly as the two men abandoned their job search to teach me something about Irish tradition. You will never buy an Irishman two drinks in a row. Beer for beer will be traded like a ping pong ball until someone hollers “uncle.”

This picture is of Tom on the left and Humphrey on the right, who came in later in the afternoon and joined us. I later found out that due to keeping me company, Humphrey missed a meeting with the priest for his upcoming wedding.

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om O’Leary regaled me with a bottomless supply of Irish stories. I just listened and

laughed with tears running down my cheeks. The next six hours included more Harps than I could count and even more trips to the men’s trough the back. At some point, another young man who had joined us, suggested we go next door where he kept his guitar and they serve food.

We never went outside. We just walked from one pub to the other. We pulled up to the bar and ate while the guitarist played. We sang some great Irish songs, like a scene right out of an old movie. Later on we played darts, but by this time I had trouble even hitting the board, never mind the target. I clearly remember that Tom O’Leary remarked, “Jeeze, the Yank is only one beer behind” - the ultimate compliment.

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At about five o’clock, I staggered out promising to meet Tom O’Leary the following night.

Since there was no possibility of walking back the way I had come into town, I found a cab. When I got back, Elaine told me there was a cocktail party next door, but unfortunately I could not communicate very well. I kept repeating, “Lainsey, thish is the greatest day of my life.” She got me dressed, and I attended. However, the side effect of a recent operation sent me home early with an embarrassing, grapefruit-sized stain on the front Missy and Tom Cavanuagh

of my camel hair pants. Why Elaine never gets mad at me I will never know.

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he next night, we went with the Cavanaughs to that historic bar, and it was packed with

traditional Irish musicians and lots of young people. It was quite a scene. Boy do they have fun.

Elaine got engrossed in conversation with a handsome young German, which made her evening.

When I caught up with Tom O’Leary, he pointed to the bar. There, in between bottles, was a 12 inch long object that I later found out was a hand-made model of an Irish fishing canoe complete with the eight sets of oars required to battle the rough North Sea. Tom was beaming. He said, “That’s yours.” Horrible as it sounds, at first I thought he was selling it to me. No! He was giving me a present. His dad had made this intricate Irish canoe by hand. Thirty years later, it still occupies a prime location in our new condo.

If I were to try to describe the Irish, the above story tells it all. Tom and I have communicated every Christmas and St. Patrick’s Day for thirty years. Before I die, I want to get Tom O’Leary and his wife to visit just once.

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ur relationship with the Ca-

vanaugh’s led to meeting Charlie and Betty

The Bakers, The Cavanuagh, and us.

Baker, the tall gentleman with wife Betty on his left. This has been an experience in intellectual growth for both Elaine and me. Charlie was a Harvard friend of Tom’s whose experiences ranged from Washington to places all the way around the world. Charlie was, humorous, humble, and interesting. For example, when we traveled to London Charlie gave us experiences like playing golf Chapter Five ~ Tansitioning

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on the Royal Swindley and dining at the famous East India Trading Company. Betty Baker was Charlie’s intellectual equal. It’s fun to listen to her deftly challenge some of his conservative views. Our relationship with the Cavanaughs’ and the Bakers has continued for many years. It has been marked by events ranging from Harvard Hockey games to interesting golf and dinner dates.

Elaine and I have so enjoyed the Cavanaugh affection and those strong Catholic values I admired growing up. Just recently I was looking over pictures of their 50th wedding anniversary. There were twenty-four young adults and kids in those pictures, all getting along, all a credit to society. I said, “Wow! What an accomplishment.”

Elaine and I at Brancachio Castle

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nother great memory is our trip to Italy. Three years before we left Needham, Elaine

and I celebrated our 25th wedding in grand style because it coincided with a trip to Italy run by our New England oil dealer association. The director, Charles Burkhardt, ran these trips, and they mirrored his German perfection and pride.

Charlie always ended these trips with a grand banquet. On this trip, the banquet was in Rome at the Brancachio Castle, the most elegant place I have ever experienced. Elaine and I were presented flowers, and we waltzed to a fine orchestra in a magnificent ballroom. We had not enjoyed that level of celebration before or since.

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oward the end of the time we lived in Needham, my business life was changing. The

stress of so much new to learn and wondering if it was all worth it, was starting to build. I loved driving a truck, working with the tools, and learning the technical aspects, but learning to be an executive was not natural. Being boss to an increasing number of people was not doing anything special for me. I thought it was a burden. In the old days, I was just Hughsie who drove the truck.

Now there were too many new details and only one me.

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O

ur move in 1970 from Jamaica Plain to Needham began the kids’ formative years

as well as the transition for Elaine and me to a suburban life. The seventies turned out to be another good stretch of my life, a continuation of my lucky streak. Elaine and I were living in one of the nicest towns in the Boston area and enjoying a cottage with the Vaters in “America’s Oldest Summer Resort” on weekends and vacations. What could be better? I carry not the slightest tinge of regret about the lifestyle choices we made in Needham and Wolfeboro. I would make these choices again.

However, toward the end of our time living in Needham, I woke up to some adjustments in family life. The girls became teenagers and Bob, encouraged by his success in waterskiing, slipped off to Rollins College in Florida. The prior decade of family life in Needham are a somewhat of a Bob, Lynn & Barbara when we left Needham

blur for me as Hughes Oil dominated my thinking. This left Elaine practically alone to fill the emotional needs of three

young kids while I was grinding away at work.

Looking back on the kids’ younger years, I did my best parenting early on with Bob as he and I shared a mutual involvement in hockey. We enjoyed early morning trips to Natick Comets practices in his pre-teen years. Later on it was the Needham hockey program that sustained our communication. During his high school years, he rode with me to work because his school, Catholic Memorial, was located across the street from my office. Many projects, such as turning the back yard into a skating rink, kept me and Bob close. Lynn and Barbara enjoyed those back yard events as well.

H

owever, Lynn and Barbara got dragged into attending Bob’s

youth hockey games, sometimes against their will. For several years on Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons, they wound up in hockey rinks all over Eastern Massachusetts. Bob did not sustain any hockey injuries of note, but the girls had some serious bumps from falls caused by playfully running up and down concrete stairs at rinks.

Lynn in High School

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F

rom her mid-teens to twenties, Lynn’s battle with bi-polar depression was very significant.

It was not tragic, but not fun either, especially for her. It was tough on her being involved in various therapies and not feeling great much of the time, but she rarely complained.

Well meaning friends and family often inferred that we were too soft and that consistent discipline was the answer to eliminating her mood swings. Elaine and I got some relief from our self-imposed guilt when Lynn’s therapist recommended we see a compatible therapist named Steven Berk. We learned that Lynn’s depression occurrences were genetic and that accepting guilt for them was counter-productive. Steven Berk insisted that we should leave Lynn’s treatment to the professionals.

This advice turned out to be correct, but Lynn had to endure some tough treatment to beat this curse. I’m so proud of her for that as well as for her musical talents. Lynn has a beautiful voice. I also learned a lifelong lesson from our therapist that there are self-imposed obstacles to avoid called “baggage.” Folks let perceptions of slights or rejections gnaw away at their attitude and spoil their lives. I vowed not to let that happen to me. I’ve tried hard to remember that what is over is over. A couple of retirement

Barbara’s Graduation

issues were to test this promise sorely.

Energetic and upbeat, Barbara’s late teens and early twenties years were easier to deal with. She played trombone in the marching band as well as for the stage and jazz band. I went to her soccer, baseball, and lacrosse games and even to the practices, but I probably had the least father-child involvement with her as she was quite self-sufficient. Bouncy Barbara was always busy and positive.

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eedham felt safe and it was. However, we did have a burglary that at first was dis-

turbing, but later laughable. We all went out one night for only about an hour and returned to find our bedroom drawers open and jewelry missing. As usual, the outer doors were not locked. We were going to call the police until Barbara spoke up and said, “Dad, I think I know who did this.

Give me a day.”

Sure enough, she came home from the high school the next day with a brown paper bag containing Elaine’s jewelry, my watch, and items we did not remember having. Turns out it was the school superintendent’s adopted son who knew the house from one of Barbara’s unauthorized Chapter Six ~ Winding Down Suburbia and Hughes Oil

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parties. She confronted Brucie and threatened to turn him in, so he finally admitted the theft and gave her the loot. This is a good example of Barbara’s gutsy personality. She is the family confronter. The rest of us are wimps by comparison.

I

have some regrets regarding my share of mind for the kid’s schoolwork and what was

going on in their lives. I should have had more time for them during the school year which unfortunately coincided with my busiest period at work. I’m not clear what I might have accomplished by giving more time other than to provide more hands on encouragement of stronger study habits and trying harder to get them into a private school. Good private schools build confidence and help young people develop broader interests than their parents might possess. I learned much too late that a private school education provides a lot more than just being able to get into a better college.

In contrast to my own life, my kids incurred no financial or family relations hardship, which in some ways is too bad. I believe that my struggles in early life jolted me out of the complacency of my late teenage years and forced me into a lifelong advantage of personal discipline. I discovered that the public schools are just not equipped for customized motivation of average students.

Back then, I had not recognized the void in inquisitiveness and motivation a public school has no resources for. I conclude that I did not adequately fill the parental guidance gap between school and home. I could afford private school but had overrated the public education of that era.

Toward the end of the kids’ childhood, a very special automobile came into our lives. It was every bit as exciting as the DeSoto convertible I bought in my single days. That car was followed with a long line of boring, business-use Chevys. This indulgence in a luxury car, some thirty years later, came in the form of a 1984 metallic-blue Jaguar. This model was the last year of the easily recognized, classic Jaguar lines, so this car got a lot of attention. I loved it because Elaine loved it. I felt proud that she was finally out of those family station wagons that rattled and swayed while transporting kids to lessons and sports.

Within weeks of buying this elegant vehicle, we drove to Nova Scotia and circled the province. The car drew comments at every gasoline stop partly because of the unique gas fill-up arrangement. It had two twelve-gallon gas tanks accessed through heavily chromed, artistic gas caps mounted conspicuously on either side of the trunk. In rural parts of Nova Scotia, some gas station attendants had never seen a Jaguar.

The highlight of this trip was a stop at the ruggedly scenic, five-star Keltic Lodge located on the famous Cabot Trail on Cape Britain Island. This majestic, castle-like hotel sits high on a Chapter Six ~ Winding Down Suburbia and Hughes Oil

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bluff overlooking the sea where hundreds of feet below lobstermen ply their laborious craft while foaming, cold waves smash and spray onto the surrounding rocks. This hotel was one of a series across Canada owned by the Canadian National Railroad. Built in the early nineteen hundreds, the venture almost caused bankruptcy.

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ur second day there was crystal clear, and as mild as it was memorable. Elaine

and I decided to visit a small, empty beach we had spotted in a cove nearby. The hotel packed a spectacular lunch of fresh lobster, cheeses, fruit, fresh baked apple tarts and a bottle of their best wine for us. We must have sat on that isolated beach for two hours, devouring the feast and the wine while staring into the wonders of that rugged sea as the sun warmed our backs. Occasionally, we ventured out from our sandy perch to dip a toe in the frigid water, but mostly we just sat transfixed by this magic moment of reflection. The kids were mostly grown up, we were healthy, the business was going well, and our marriage, unlike so many others at mid-life, was getter stronger. We will always remember the joy of sitting there pondering our past and visualizing our future together.

It was during the kids’ time in Needham that Hughes Oil was changing rapidly because a revolution was brewing in the oil business. For the first twenty-five years of my business life, the delivery of heating oil and oil burner service could be classified a “no brains” business. Lots of hustle was required, but there were not many complications. In those twenty-five years, the per gallon price of heating oil escalated a miniscule ten cents. Home heating oil went from costing twenty cents per gallon in 1948 to about thirty cents per gallon at the start of 1973. Talk about price stability!

In addition, suppliers begged for your business, shortages were unheard of, and environmental considerations were non-existent. If you spilled oil on the street, the local Fire Dept washed it down a storm drain with fire safety being the only priority. I wonder if anyone cared then that the storm drains all emptied into Boston Harbor?

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hen came the Arab oil embargo of 1973 changing my life and our nation’s. Within a

few months, the wholesale price of oil rose by a factor of five. Fuel oil was suddenly a premium product; shortages turned our suppliers from friend to foe. Suppliers now demanded their money in ten days or less, and we had to beg them for a monthly allotment of oil sufficient to keep our customers’ homes warm. Our bankers and suppliers suddenly had more control over our business life than Dick or I had. Problems arose that could not be solved by the old method of just working harder. Now we had to work smarter.

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It was pretty scary to have our trucks turned away at a wholesaler’s terminal on a very cold day because that particular supplier had no oil in his tanks. What would happen if a nursing home or some other temperature-sensitive customer ran out of oil on a bitterly cold day and we could get no more that day? In fact every customer was a sensitive one as unheated buildings freeze up, and no one can survive Boston in mid winter without heat. This nightmarish possibility kept me awake a number of nights.

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or years, Dick and I shunned having our own large storage tanks. Oil was so easily avail-

able; it was more economical to load trucks at locations close to where you were delivering it. Now the convenience of an oil pick up location became a minor consideration. When competitor Bob Fawcett asked Dick at an association meeting if we wanted to go in with him on a partially abandoned oil terminal, up for sale in Jamaica Plain, we jumped at the chance to partner. Their solid, Yankee-bred Fawcett family ran a large, old line company based in Cambridge that was in its fourth generation. The Fawcetts were an ideal joint venture partner for Dick and me. At Hughes Oil, our thinking was more conciliatory Irish by nature. A little bit of shrewd Yankee ingenuity could be very useful in theses stormy waters.

Thus the Arborway oil terminal was born. With a two million-gallon capacity Arborway Terminal

split between the two companies, we all could sleep better. When those surprise

supply shut offs occurred during a cold snap, we drew from our own storage. Dick did a great job juggling contracts and suppliers. His sharp mind and multitude of contacts paid off. We even helped out some competitors.

For about five years after the Arab embargo jolt and the continuing rise of OPEC’s monopolistic grip on oil supply, the federal government intervened with regulations that changed almost daily as they tried to protect the consumer from the possibility of price gouging. It turned out to be an exercise in futility for a government body to try to regulate a worldwide market in a basic commodity. How can a government regulator paid $40,000 per year outwit an oil company executive paid hundreds of thousands per-year? The answer is that they could not. Oil moving by tanker on the high seas often changed ownership a number of times to subvert freshly minted rules.

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After much exasperation, the concept of Federal regulation to control the price was finally scuttled. However, it took a lot of Dick’s time helping our trade association guide government policy to this conclusion. As much as Senator Ted Kennedy favors the poor, he was helpful to small business people like us because he saw how the government could only make things worse trying to control something that was uncontrollable. To this day, no government agency has again tried to control the price of oil worldwide.

The complex challenge of buying oil was one of Dick’s strong suits, and so was arranging the purchase of small dealers who for various reasons wanted to sell their businesses. Some just walked in the door because of having to face increasing complexity. However, owners’ family situations often required careful handling. Dick was persuasive in dealing with these prospects but, as the business became vastly more complicated, the organization required to meet the challenge of a much bigger business fell mostly on my shoulders. Initially this challenge energized me.

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inally it was hooray for my concept of quality service being the attraction for new accounts

instead of our appeal being dependent on the lowest price. The high cost of oil now encouraged consumers to spend money to improve how efficiently oil was burned. A whole new world favorable to my personal interests was opening up. This new public focus on heating efficiency landed me on the “This Old House” show a couple of times. Bob Villa was the host then. Every so often a friend will call to say they just saw me on TV on “This Old House” classic re-runs. All too often they add, “Your hair looked so different then.”

The Arab Embargo disruption also provided a lifelong business lesson for me, and that lesson is about the upside of complexity. When this dramatic change in rules took place in our industry I, like so many others, railed against all this government interference. However, when I reflected some years later, I concluded that complexity worked in our favor. I learned there was opportunity when we were confronted by complicated challenges beyond our control. For example, in the early “no brains years,” a couple of brothers working as firemen with lots of days off could buy a used oil truck and undercut our prices considerably because they had no overhead. The new rules and increased customer expectations now overwhelmed this simpler type of competitor. The lesson for me was, a business that is easy to get into is also just as easy to enter for too many others. If you are not afraid to tackle the unknown, complexity can work for you.

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ew sales opportunities started to open up. For many years prior, Hughes Oil was al-

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solely on price, often so low that we did not want to compete. Now, at greatly increased prices, many of these buyers were ready to listen to our cost/benefit story. A few pennies more per gallon could now be justified by the savings in gallons that our superior service, engineering, and installation techniques produced.

But this windfall opportunity was not without consequence. The Arab embargo opportunity did not mean just doing more of the same old thing. This abrupt change in the price of the product also brought with it new business challenges. We now had to

160 Spring Street, West Roxbury

start organizing and planning internal

operations for a more rapid growth plus deliver on our promise to reduce oil use for an increasing list of customers who had higher expectations.

Dick recognized this reality, but my desire to jump into this organizational challenge with both feet turned out to be more intense and began to illuminate our personality differences.

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s I looked around our industry, I noticed that growth produced two very obvious results.

Some originals like me, dropped dead trying to run faster and faster using the same old “hands on” approach. Others let the standards that built their companies slip as fast growth took place. Very few small companies our size absorbed fast growth comfortably so we had no model to follow.

I was determined not to let growth spoil my vision of what our mechanical service should be. I could not rationalize financial success if Hughes Oil heating service was now going to be ordinary, or less than ordinary, like so many competitors were providing. On the other hand, I did not want to tempt a premature death by just working harder and harder. My theoretical model was McDonald’s. How did they open restaurant after restaurant, each run well, and financially successful?

The answer, I discovered through a friend who owned a McDonald’s, was documentation, documentation, documentation, and system, system, system. McDonald’s did not depend on hiring people who were experienced restaurateurs. They understood how rare and unaffordable that type of talent is. Instead they developed very detailed systems so ordinary people, who were smart and motivated, could manage for the desired result consistently without having had years of experience. McDonald’s understood that superstars were in short supply and unaffordable, but smart, Chapter Six ~ Winding Down Suburbia and Hughes Oil

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hard-working people who could implement good direction abounded. The challenge for me was to provide that top-notch detailed direction.

That theory set me off on many years of hard work to first learn how to do a particular procedure the best way possible, document it, and then pass it on. I read almost every trade publication, attended many seminars, and picked every brain I could find to learn everything possible about oil burners, heating systems, and training systems. I would then struggle to document what I had learned so that a person with brains and motivation could know as much as I knew but in much less time and effort than I had invested. This learning catch-up was where my head was for ten or more years. Elaine would occasionally comment, “Aren’t you ever going to read for pleasure?”

Information about commercial heating service and installation was in short supply, which was a frustration but also a competitive advantage for those willing to dig deep to ferret out what information did exist. Prior to World War II, major oil companies were the exclusive distributors of heating oil. As large companies typically do, they invested in professional training methods. They ran schools, produced top notch manuals, and carefully selected personnel. For example, a service manager often had a degree in engineering. Everything was by the book.

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owever, as major companies like Esso, Mobil, and Texaco phased themselves out of

the retail oil delivery business, starting around the mid-fifties, training systems and the resulting trained servicemen began disappearing. Unlike so many other industries that grow rapidly, quality in oil burner service began to wane instead of advance.

As large numbers of homes and apartments in the city converted from coal to oil, more and more were being served by start-ups like me using “seat of the pants,” experience-based learning to install and service heating equipment. Some gave free service to gain new accounts. By the time the Arab embargo occurred twenty-five years later, there were far too many bad oil heating installations in the field. This wide variety of heating systems, installed by us mavericks, was wasting a huge amount of oil.

However, the solutions were as varied as the oil systems that had been installed. Unlike plumbing and electrical trades that were regulated by strict codes, oil burner and heating systems had no rules other than simple fire regulations.

What make a heating system unique is that it consists of an assemblage of various manufacturers’ parts selected by a particular installer. Unlike an appliance or an automobile, which is fully engineered so each model is made exactly the same, heating installations are customized to a particular building and the whims of the installer. “Seat of the pants” comes to mind. When Hughes Chapter Six ~ Winding Down Suburbia and Hughes Oil

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Oil had grown to about 3,000 accounts, I recall lamenting, while similarities existed, no two of our accounts had the exact same equipment. New servicemen could be years into their work and say on many a day, “Never saw that combination of equipment before.”

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hat a challenge for me to understand such a wide range of irregularities and then to

pass it on to men who had far less experience than me. Our employees could not afford to learn the hard way as I did because Dick was selling on the basis that “we were the best” not that “Don was the best.” I agreed with this philosophy and was happy to implement it because it transformed a “no brains” business into an interesting challenge. Working smarter instead of harder was my new creed, quite a reversal for a natural work harder-type like me.

In addition to the challenge of first learning, then documenting, and finally teaching heating and burner service to new hires, there was the organization of the stockroom, to the parts and tools in the truck, to the service records kept, to a dispatch system. The era of the computer had made it possible to design business systems that put some order into a trade that heretofore had been performed more “by guess and by golly” than by a commonly shared development of proven experience.

For example, if you posed the same quiz to each member of a twenty-person service department you would probably get twenty different sets of answers because there were no common procedures manuals, no standardization of the parts men carried on their truck, or any company specified tools. Tragically, most new servicemen in the 1960 – 1980 era had to learn on their own by the trial and error method.

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y the mid-seventies, there was not much long experience left in the business. As

men trained by major oil companies died off, large independent competitors began treating service as a “necessary evil” rather than an opportunity to impress. Few large company managers were mechanically oriented so few understood the challenge of delivering top notch mechanical service.

The need to have burner service was still recognized as a sales tool, but all too often because of union resistance to learn anything new, providing top notch service was just too big a problem to be tackled.

Some companies resorted to sub-contracting, and some restricted what items in the heating system they would service while others closed their eyes and marked up the oil price enough to cover the financial losses incurred by making repeated service calls to fix the same problem. An industry-wide capability of providing quality of oil heating equipment service was plunging rapidly.

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y standard answer to the oft repeated excuse, “Hey, there is more than one way to

fix a particular problem” was “Not as many as you think!” In response to the dilemma of no standardized procedures, I would do research and boil solutions down to one or two methods, then document and enforce the selected method. Enforcing became painful when I had to let a man go who had long worked for a company we bought and a person who had been considered satisfactory in the past.

Many old dogs just could not learn new tricks and that is why I chose to create a Hughes Oil serviceman from scratch rather than hire mechanics away from other companies. But finding candidates worth training was not easy. Ours was dirty work in often poor conditions and included family-disruptive night emergency service.

In order to determine the best candidate of a group who answered a newspaper ad, I used the services of a personnel consultant named Jack Ginter. His work fascinated me. He supplied three tests that would be completed by the applicant is less than an hour. He evaluated these tests and would know more about the applicant than I was to discover by working closely with them for a year. I could never have made the insightful judgments he made from those tests from just an interview. During an interview everybody looks good. Unless you have personnel training, you often hire the most personable candidate. This assumption could turn out to be the worst choice possible if the objective was to select someone who had the potential to develop into a good trouble shooter.

The tests never changed. Consistently and accurately, they brought out a person’s intelligence, personality traits, and mechanical aptitude. Since the training process involved a lot of my time, and judgments of progress were difficult to make for many early months, I needed to be sure I was not wasting a big effort trying to put a square peg in a round hole. Over time, seeing the men he recommended come to work, I saw how accurate his evaluations were. I relied on Jack Ginter’s work exclusively to make hiring decisions.

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ith my confidence in the validity of Jack Ginter’s work high, I took a daring step. I

took his tests under another name and included my job description, so I could be judged accurately.

Well that was an eye-opener! The test results came back saying that I was well qualified for the position but to watch out for my employee relations. Scratched on to the single sheet he returned was, “Could have been a West Point drill sergeant,” and- “Can be overly critical and blunt.” I took these comments to heart but I would have to ask Dick, Rich Horan, Jack Gill, or Donna Radosta if Chapter Six ~ Winding Down Suburbia and Hughes Oil

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I ever made much progress in this area. Dick and Donna tried the hardest to help me. I did not want to be the person Ginter thought I was.

One distinction I noticed while training mechanics is that curiosity levels vary widely. Curiosity is the grand separator between becoming an ordinary mechanic and progressing to become a top-notch problem solver. Many depend on their experience and natural mechanical ability to fix what is right in front of them. The holes are drilled straight, the pipes are level, and the wiring is neat. However, analyzing an unseen symptom is a rarer talent that is obtained only by curiosity.

That is why, for many, five years of experience amounts to no more than one year of experience repeated four more times. This is not a play on words but a phenomenon I experienced that causes many to peak early in their careers. Some stop learning when they get the job. The rare ones have a thirst for knowledge that cannot be quenched.

I concluded that the answer is not intelligence or the training process or the supervision but the level of curiosity a person naturally has. So many times when a mechanic came back from a job, that I had been on previously, I would ask, “ Did you see the way that expansion tank was piped?” Or I might ask about some other observation that just leaped out at me as being very unusual. I could tell by their eyes when the answer was “No.” I concluded after many years that the “wonder why” factor is huge in learning. It separates those with a passion for learning and an inquisitive nature from those comfortable in learning only what they need to do today’s job. Even Ginter’s test did not always reveal this personality trait.

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nother large factor in solving mechanical problems is information. In many companies,

there were no service records to guide solutions. Often a customer of a competitor would tell me, “Five different servicemen have been here this month and each solution proposed was different.”

A major reason was that the fifth serviceman answering to the customer was unaware of who had been there before and what had been done. There was no accumulated knowledge being put to work. No wonder there were so many repeat calls. It was all guess work. If hospitals kept records this way many patients would not have a chance.

The erosion of quality service was especially evident in commercial buildings such as apartment houses, churches and other businesses. These buildings had complicated equipment requiring experienced on-site people, but smaller buildings could not justify that type of expense. A new question for managers of multiple properties became; “Is getting the lowest price on oil worth the problems that the accompanying poor service produces?” There were many consequences for building managers if heating equipment was neglected or the service uncoordinated. There Chapter Six ~ Winding Down Suburbia and Hughes Oil

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was loss of rental income, damage from soot, premature equipment replacement, having to deal with a myriad of specialty service providers, and most of all, the waste of an expensive product.

The Hughes Oil message was “Give us your oil business and we will take over all of your heating service needs.” For me, this was a scary promise to be making. Could we really solve all the problems thrown at us?

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ne company that kept handing us commercial business because of their service in-

eptness. It was embarrassing because that company was headed by a good friend of Dick’s. John Griffin ran one of the city’s larger unionized companies. John had come up through the ranks, like so many others of the Post World War II era, by the strength of his personality plus a strong work and personal ethic. A common belief of that time was, and may still be for some; “It is not what you know but who you know.” I was never a fan of that philosophy because I did not have the dynamic personality or the political connections to implement it. For me, what I knew was far more important than who I knew. John Griffin identified for me the difference between two business terms that had always confused me. Those terms are “marketing” and “sales.” Are they the same?

Dick’s definition was that a sales approach focuses on the needs of the company while a marketing approach focuses more on the needs of the customer. For example, if you already have a warehouse full of widgets, you need to sell them whether or not anybody needs them. That challenge requires a pure sales approach. Be glib and hustle! Conversely, a pure marketing approach focuses on the needs of the customer. You respond to proven needs.

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here the most emphasis goes in a particular business between sales and marketing

varies greatly based on the product or service offered and more importantly the personality of the owners. A basic question for any business owner is where to put the most emphasis: “Serving em” or “Selling ‘em?” I came down strongly on the service side. I’m more comfortable encouraging people to beat a path to my door instead of me persuading them to buy.

In John Griffin’s case, he operated way over on the sales side. He employed articulate sales people who sought influence with buyers. This philosophy had worked for him for years. Oil was oil, so price and personality were the factors that brought in the business. However, after the Arab embargo John started getting calls, for example, from a monsignor of a large Catholic parish who said, “John, you have long been a good friend, but I have some very large heating problems to face in this old complex of buildings that only Hughes Oil can solve. I just cannot get any good technical answers from your people.” Patriots’ tickets and a visit from a smooth talking salesman were not Chapter Six ~ Winding Down Suburbia and Hughes Oil

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going to cut it any longer. Performance in the boiler room was now the largest priority.

The downside of this radical shift was that it began a long period of questioning for me about Dick and I being able to share the work load equally. When we started out together, sharing the workload with a “You bring ‘em in - I’ll keep ‘em in” philosophy worked great. I did not realize it then, but I had chosen the marketing side while Dick had accepted the sales side. Slowly I found that the marketing workload was becoming the more strenuous side. I had chosen my own work trap because my standards were so high and the resources available to implement them were so low. High quality service was our prime marketing tool, but easier said than done. At Hughes Oil, top notch service was a lot more than a slogan.

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uring the early seventies, the ability of computers to handle paperwork more easily

and accurately was growing fast. The entrance on the scene of the mini-computer was part marvel and part curse. Previously, we used a service bureau that did our billing and delivery schedules on IBM main frames overnight. Now, thanks to the Digital Equipment Company, we could customize our systems and do that work in-house. The desk-sized mini-computer was such a big help in delivering oil efficiently and keeping track of credit.

However, good computerized systems for oil burner service were not yet available because the variations in the field could not be documented by strictly mathematical systems. Computer programmers were very much like accountants and engineers. One and one always had to equal two when I was looking for trends. Early attempts at service systems reflected this unnecessary precision. They produced phone book sized reports that were numerical encyclopedias, which did little to guide the service person.

Dick and I chose a particular computer system design company and were joined by other companies with compatible attitudes, so we formed a group that could collectively refine computer systems for our mutual benefit. Our group could now afford more specialized programming by splitting the costs for labor intensive programming ideas.

Like most software companies, the one we chose had already established a very good oil delivery system, an excellent credit system and an accurate accounting system. More importantly, this company had the capacity and the attitude to perform constant refinement. Thirty-five years later this same company still does the Hughes Oil work. Competitors that bought less expensive fixed packages came to regret that decision as they outgrew standardized systems quickly, losing the opportunity to steadily develop the features they came to want.

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service system any better than the others. As a result, I was given the opportunity to work with the top programmer to institute my “less exact” concept. I did not need a computer to make technical conclusions for me. I wanted that magic machine to spot trends worth looking into. At first it was hard for me to convince the programmer that for a computerized service system to work he had to forget the concept of precision and design for approximate measurement.

For example, it was impossible to track every part from where it was bought to where it got installed, so my inventory control system randomly tracked major parts most likely to be stolen or not charged out. The report that was generated did not prove anything conclusively, which makes accountant-type managers nervous. However, it performed the role I assigned the computer. I wanted it to only generate “red flags” for the service manager to decide if he should look closer. I wanted my reports to reveal a warning system because service managers rarely had time for lunch, never mind studying voluminous reports.

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t the center of the concept was a computer generated work order with a great deal of

information on it about the customer’s worth to the company, plus the heating equipment in the home or business, plus a history of the service work performed previously. This information was a tremendous tool for a good service manger to decide who should go on the call, and how important or difficult it was. For the experienced serviceman, before he left on the call, he could know what he was up against so he had the right tools and parts. When he got to the job, the record of previous work would help him avoid trying solutions that did not work before and the service history would help him spot a trend that could be corrected only by engineering changes. Doing absolutely nothing mechanical, but recommending equipment corrections was sometimes the best use of a serviceman’s time as well as the customer’s money and patience.

Wasting the customer’s time and ours trying over and over to fix the unfixable was now on its way out for Hughes Oil. In addition, when the work was complete on a particular service call, the service manager could review the work order and compare what was done with what he thought should have been done. Having good information in front of him helped him solve problems more accurately. Our service manager, Jack Gill, often called the customer before the customer called back to say, “It’s doing the same thing.” “By guess and by golly” was slowly giving way to professionalism.

The secret to implementing all of these changes was Hughes Oil’s ability to avoid being unionized. In talking with unionized competitors at conventions, they would lament, “I cannot do what you do because the union will not let me.” The industry union representing both truck drivers Chapter Six ~ Winding Down Suburbia and Hughes Oil

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and mechanics was the Teamsters, not a very progressive organization. For example, within a short time after the hiring, a unionized employer had to pay a mechanic full-scale while the mechanic was not required to take any sort of training. Union companies were often stuck with new hires for life, many of whom who had no interest in learning.

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ontrary to long-held assumptions that employees do not care about learning, I found

that training was our primary motivational tool. I found that many people initially resist training out of fear of embarrassment. However, if you carefully bring good people around to the notion that they really can learn something new, personal pride takes over. Training sure beats scolding.

However, I also discovered that there is a good side to unions. They push employers to pay what is right. It is all too easy for employers to say, “We can’t afford that.” I doubt if we ever would have paid the wages and established such generous benefits if fear of being unionized was not always lurking in the wings.

To compete

financially with the unions and still have the freedom to train and evaluate our people was our goal. I’d like to think benevolence was our prime motivation, but I’m not so sure how honest that statement is.

Another marketing philosophy I was trying to implement was a concept that all customers are not created alike. All customers should be treated fairly and respectfully, but some are much more profitable to the company and should get the red carpet treatment. For example, if the wife of the manager of a large building we serviced wanted us there quickly, we dropped everything and responded. We could now make these judgments because we had good information right in front of us. Many competitors’ employees did not know the weakest account from the strongest.

Inadvertently, some ignored good accounts to please complainers. One of my annual chores was weeding out accounts that, from good information, I felt we would always lose money on.

The sacrifices needed to make the time to develop systems are an important observation for young people beginning an entrepreneurial career. How much effort should you put into systems training and delegation because this work is usually in addition to your day-job? This extra effort is a difficult judgment to make and applies to both business and professional people. Must you get Chapter Six ~ Winding Down Suburbia and Hughes Oil

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more and more organized as you grow, or can you hover over it personally a little longer? The answer is not easy. Finding the right level of organization and planning for a business at a particular stage is very personal. Do you want to be the best first and biggest second or vice versa?

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his organizational judgment was different for Dick than for me. When a crisis occurred,

Dick could perform like no one else, but I saw extending the “hands on” approach differently. I thought we needed to delegate more of our day to day responsibilities to increase time for the tedious work of developing systems. We needed systems that prevented crisis and, more importantly, ones that maintained our quality of service without exhausting us.

Dick did not disagree, but growing time pressures from outside activities during the lateseventies to mid-eighties limited his extra time. He served on a number of non-business related boards, even serving as president of a bank as well as a trustee of Boston College. He also took care of an aging aunt. In addition, he had seven children of his own plus he was one of eight siblings for whom he was often the go-to person. I kept thinking, “Maybe next year he will have more extra time for organization work.” What is so interesting is that Dick rarely sought these outside relationships. Instead, many important people sought a relationship with him. Dick is that charismatic.

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he significance of this observation is

Me and Dick at Me and Dick at Hughes Oil’s fiftieth anniversary in 1984

to explain how our personality differences, long an asset, started me thinking it was time to either

sell or change my way of thinking about how organized we needed to be.

I eventually came to the conclusion that my current vision of semi-retirement was not realistic. It was not only Dick being so busy, but there were other reasons as well. The person who took Al Vater’s job was not working out as expected and son Bob’s heart was in Wolfeboro, not Boston. It was also was not fair to employees to consider limiting growth. Changing my exacting standards should have been considered, but I did not know how to change myself.

I was implementing the ideals I learned in accepted books and seminars, but I had no experience with the realities of other companies or a degree in business management to refer to.

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asked myself, “Was it better to be just a little bit better than the competition?” “Was I a hopeless perfectionist?” Or was I following the Lexus idea of continuous improvement regardless of the competition? I’ll never know this answer.

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y guess is that the general answer of how to run a business resides in the level of

pride a person has in how his business or profession operates. Too much pride drives everyone around you crazy. Too little makes for a sloppy operation. For Dick and me, the bottom line was never the only measure of success. I witnessed some poorly run operations make a lot of money by responding only to the competition and not the customer. As long as they did not lose any business, they changed nothing and used that time for some personal opportunism. Neither Dick nor I ever subscribed to this mindset but we did differ on how organized we needed to be.

There is a balance to be achieved about how fussy to be, and I’m not sure I did. Dick felt I did too many things the hard way, and often he was correct. Once in a while a simple phone call to a person with special knowledge was so much easier than my starting from scratch with a custom solution for each problem. Dick first went to much simpler solutions and sometimes they worked.

He and I picked a number of brains saving many hours and avoiding lots of mistakes. However, I remained convinced that we could not always look for an easy way out and that is why our service to the customer remained in a class by itself.

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arly on in my career I learned a lot from many competitors, but as the business got

more complicated there were fewer and fewer sources. This conclusion was confirmed for me recently at a party to celebrate (or mourn) the final take-over of Hughes Oil by the James Devaney Company. Jim Devaney started out much smaller but is now five times bigger, all through acquisition of other companies. Jim was a professional irritant for many years as he copied to the letter almost every idea we had and constantly pirated employees who I had painstakingly trained. I always tried hard not to over-react, but I would have loved just once to learn some new idea from him.

While Jim was sitting at our table on that evening he openly, but humbly, bragged that he admired almost everything Hughes Oil did and that is why he copied so closely. “How easy for him,” I thought! No wonder I was working so hard. I had no one to copy to meet the challenges of the post-Arab embargo years. As it turned out, I was flailing in the weeds allowing people like Jim Devaney to spend their time focused on financial opportunities that I should have seen.

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without a heavy personal involvement. Selling the company started to look like a better option than trying to change things I could not change, including myself I started remembering the promises I had made to myself during the years I was killing myself establishing the early visions Dick and I had carved out. Years back, I had promised myself that I was not going to die with my boots on. For my sake and Elaine’s, I was determined to “smell the roses.” I was going to beat Elaine just once at “Jeopardy” because I had read or experienced an answer on something other than a business subject. Maybe I could become a person of more worldly experience and not just an oil heating expert.

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nother big thought that kept getting my attention was the escalating value of compa-

nies like Hughes Oil. Traditionally, small oil dealers sold their business to another dealer on a cents per gallon basis of retained business over a period of time like five years. That is how we had bought small dealers. However, a young man in New York City, who had investment banking connections, went on a buying spree in the early-eighties paying cash up front. He had discovered that there was little risk of losing many customers from the list of accounts that he purchased because purchasing fuel oil was much different than most businesses. Customer loyalty to an oil company was much stronger than most of us in the business had ever assumed. Customer loyalty turned out to be almost bullet-proof because of automatic delivery.

For most people, choosing a heating oil dealer is a one-time decision. Home heating oil is delivered automatically and as long as people are warm they rarely consider calling the dealer to cancel this automatic delivery arrangement. In addition, effect of the Arab embargo had weeded out a lot of the tough competition. It was mostly “good old boys” that were left. At times competition almost dipped to the level of collusion.

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o better understand the tremendous change in the sale price of an oil delivery business,

consider this. We had bought businesses for five to ten cents per gallon but this gentleman, named Eric Sevin, was now paying more than fifty cents per gallon and paying it up front. As his buying spree continued and others joined in, the possibility of me going out at the top was looking better and better. Hughes Oil was in the best organizational shape of its life, so employees and customers might not suffer from a change if we selected a quality buyer. I was now becoming freer to think about myself instead of the employees I had long felt so responsible for. I also started to consider what effect the slight heart attack I had in 1986 would have if I continued piling on self-inflicted stress. Would there be any roses to smell?

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Another factor that made it easier to contemplate a sale was family.

Lynn and Barbara did not seem interested in the business, or maybe I was not enticing them enough. Bob was doing very well at Hughes Oil working through a few jobs in the field and in the office. However, his heart was in Wolfeboro, so much so that he went there every weekend. Even when he had worked on a Saturday, he would drive two hours or more to Wolfeboro Saturday night and return Sunday night. This was before he met Jodi, so it was not j romance that made him embrace Wolfeboro so strongly. Wolfeboro was home to him.

Bob was much loved at Hughes Oil. He and Rich Horan, Dick’s son, had a great relationship and did some nice projects together. The above staged picture of Bob dispatching shows the image Bob was portraying at that time of, a tension free environment.

If Hughes Oil was in Wolfeboro, both Bob and I would still be in the oil business together.

I have never felt he had any regrets about his decision to leave the company some months before he found out it was going to be sold. He said recently that he never felt any pressure to follow in his father’s footsteps. I was very sensitive about this, as I had seen a number of sons have a miserable life trying to do what they thought family expected of them. I had garnered a lot of respect from forty years of working up through everybody’s job in the place. What a tough act to follow! I started at the bottom, but Bob could not do the same unless I stayed for many more years. I have always thought his decision to relocate to Wolfeboro was wise.

B

ob’s decision set me even freer to make my own, so Dick started in earnest to solicit

proposals. The most comfortable one came from our peer Fred Slifka. Fred was our age and typified the realization that if you took all the wealth in the world and distributed it evenly, within ten years the same small group would have it all back. Like me, Fred did not attend college. Anther similarity was that Fred took over a very small business from his father in the Boston area. Unlike

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me, he kept his focus on earning a profit, which makes a huge difference in wealth accumulation.

Fred was a natural entrepreneur with boundless energy and an uncanny knack for analyzing opportunity and acting on it. He never got down to the marketing details, but he sure was facile with the financial details. In fact it was Fred who sold us the Arborway tank farm. This old storage facility came with an oil delivery company Fred had bought. This inland storage facility once served by railroad cars was just excess real estate for him. Just twenty-five short years into his career Fred already owned a very large waterfront storage facility near the airport that took oil in directly from ocean-going tankers and had perhaps a hundred million-gallon storage capacity. He also owned a number of other delivery companies.

F

red was big time. He made the Forbes list of the country’s most wealthy, but was also

someone I admired for his ethics. He did not run as strong a customer-oriented company as Hughes Oil, but I learned a lot from him as he remained the same person as a small businessman all the way up to becoming a billionaire. Early on I recall asking him how he learned to make million-dollar deals. He said, “The same way you decide on ten thousand -dollar deals.” I never forgot that. One of Bob Hughes’ laments is that many folks who participate in real estate transactions, let their ethics slide south as the dollars increase north. This was not true with Fred. He was a good bargainer, but a deal was a deal and there was no reason to change ethics if the dollars involved just happened to be high.

Fred, Dick, and I met at Dick’s house in Wellesley. Fred showed up in a red Ferrari. I had never seen one and got a chance to sit in it. Our meeting was not long as proposals like this are based on a simple offer with due diligence to follow, plus there was trust between us. He offered seventy cents a gallon for our retail priced gallons and proportionately less for discounted commercial gallons. He said that what he offered us was the most he had ever offered anyone, and I believed him. He had always admired the way Hughes Oil was run but, unlike Jim Devaney, made no pretense of copying. For Dick and I, the loss of one account was personal. For Fred it was numbers. If he added more accounts than he was losing, he was ok. Sometimes I wish I could have been more like Fred, though most times I’m happy being me.

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ick and I discussed selling out to Fred idea a few times and since I owned 70% of

the stock, the decision to sell was mine. Since Dick rarely discloses his personal thinking, I thought he was comfortable with selling, and I was ready to say yes. However, one day when we returned from lunch and talked in the car outside the office, as we had done at least a hundred times before, Dick sprung a surprise question. “If I can get the financing will you sell to me at the price Fred Chapter Six ~ Winding Down Suburbia and Hughes Oil

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Slifka offered?” I believe my response was a fast “Sure, if that’s what you want to do.”

At the time we were banking with Bank of New England and the president, Dick Driscoll, was a long time friend of Dick’s. The next thing I knew, one of the bank’s top deal-makers had cancelled his vacation and was putting together a complicated financing package for Dick. This was 1988 and the peak of an era of imaginatively financed buyout deals. This deal was to be no exception. Even though Dick had much more capital in 1988 than when we first started out together twenty-eight years prior, he still did not have enough to do this deal. The complicated loan package that was put together

by Bank of New England contained a lot more risk for me than a risk-free cash sell out to Fred. However, this was an opportunity for me to help Dick, and-more importantly, a sale to Dick would potentially have the least harmful effect on employees and customers. I would be missed for my uniqueness, but Dick was very capable with lots of his own strengths and has since proven it.

I will never forget the day of the sale. Rich Horan Jr. had rented a limo for our ride to the fancy offices of the bank’s attorney. The law firm was in a new high rise overlooking Boston Harbor.

We were ushered in to an impressive conference room where coffee was served in china cups around a table befitting of the comic strip “The Little King.”

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ur regular company attorney had to represent Dick, so Bubba Kelley was my attor-

ney. If you have ever been to a real estate closing you will understand what I will tell you next. The seller does very little, the buyer does a lot. At one end of the table, Dick was engaged for at least an hour signing a mountain of documents. At the other end Bubba was regaling Bob Hughes and Rich Horan Jr. about the old days of delivering ice and coal. It was a scene out of a Robin Williams or Jonathan Winters movie. It was serious business at one end of the table; it was all comedy at the other.

To put into perspective what Dick had signed up for, his legal bill exceeded $50,000. That pays for a lot of paper and its trail haunted Dick for years. Dick and I were used to signing bank papers without looking because we knew there was little chance that the myriad of options that bank papers often contain would ever be implemented because of our record of performance and our personal relationships.

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ell didn’t that buddy-buddy era come to an end in the following year. Imaginative

banking came to a swift close as the bubble of ever-riskier lending burst in 1989 and banks, weighted down with failing imaginative financing deals, started folding up. Bank of New England was taken over, and the familiar faces that had done handshake deals with us in the past all left.

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embedded in that mountain of documents he had signed. In addition, the sale price of oil businesses dropped about 30% during this era. However, Dick stayed in for the long-haul without a complaint and has been rewarded some eighteen years later. I have been very pleased about his deserved success.

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number of people wondered how energetic, fifty-seven year-old Don Hughes, who

had made Hughes Oil his life, was going to function out of the limelight. The answer surprised me.

Very easily! All those years of having a head full of Hughes Oil were gone along with the daily responsibility of producing a result. I missed the people very much, but I missed the job not at all. I was proud of what I had accomplished, had no regrets about leaving and was looking forward to being the husband Elaine deserved. Going out at the top is a recommendation I would make to anyone. Be not afraid of what will happen next. My life has always been one of not knowing what was going to happen next. So far I’ve enjoyed the surprises.

Instead of pondering what I was missing after forty years of building a dream, I was now thinking about what I was gaining. I can remember thoughts from the first few months of living fulltime in Wolfeboro. On Sunday night I would pour myself a scotch and revel in the idea that I did not have to make the two and a half-hour drive back to Boston. And the next morning, while driving into town to get the morning paper, I would say to myself, “Wow! I no longer vacation here. I live here, lucky me!”

Hughe Oil 50th Anniversary Party at Lantana’s in Randolf

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I cannot leave the topic of Hughes Oil without mentioning the relationships I left behind and how much these relationships mattered to me. I was very proud of what we had all accomplished together.

Since I have talked about “Mr. Steady,” my brother-in law Al Vater, I’ll just quickly mention Al Vater--“Me Steady” and Dexter Marsh

his contributions to Hughes Oil. Al Vater is not an easy person for me to explain. We went back

so long and so deep, I doubt if I can put down my feelings accurately. I have mentioned previously our relationship sharing the Wolfeboro cottage. The work relationship was not much different. Al locked onto his job as credit manager/office manager but even as he saw the company grow he did not seem to see himself as competing for a bigger role. Here he is on the left with a pal from Wolfeboro and Needham, Dexter Marsh.

“Mr. Steady” was such an asset for more than thirty years. What a blessing to have him.

It took me so long to understand that he wanted to be only a role player and was comfortable performing that role consistently without the slightest ripple. In busy times, you would never know if Al worked late unless you came by the office at 7:00 pm or later.

He just stayed until the place quieted down and the emergencies were settled.

At the heart of every successful company, I think you will find an Al Vater quietly keeping things together.

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ichard Horan Jr. (Rich) is

The team at the Spring Street Office This is the group I worked closest with at the Spring St. office.

Sitting down center is Nancy Prue, to the right is Donna Radosta, the men left to right are son Bob, me, Dick, and his son Richard

more like his quiet mother, Joan, than his outgoing father. Rich is almost shy, studious, has a strong work ethic, and is very caring. My affection for him runs deep. Other than Bob Prue, who I knew before colon cancer did him in, Rich grew to be the first person who knew more than me about heating. What a thrill it was for me to go to Rich for answers. Rich married his equal or more in class and compassion, so it’s been another long Hughes/Horan relationship.

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It was Rich Horan who mirrored my version of marketing, not because I talked him into it, because that is how he felt. We started out working together on many custom solutions to heating problems, especially complex commercial challenges, and then he took over on his own. Rich was never satisfied if only the customer thought we got it right. No, satisfaction for him came only after he agreed we got it right. That is how reputations are built.

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ich critiqued this story for me and gave me some interesting insights. He offered an

observation on the stark difference in attitude at the Devaney company, who recently bought out Hughes Oil. After spending some time, there he compared the culture at Hughes Oil under the direction of Dick and me as partners, and then for many more years under Dick alone. He concluded that the Devaney company has “little soul.”

That’s a pretty nice compliment for the way Dick and I operated as Rich did not intend to demean his new employer, just identify the old one. His “little soul” comment also explains the surprises I experienced in later business transactions in Wolfeboro. I never realize it while there, but Hughes Oil culture was quite different. I have been spoiled by that experience. Thinking win/win is not universal.

I should say a something about Bob Prue who I referred to previously. Bob was a tribute to the post World War ll work ethic. He had drawing and drafting skills inherited from a father who designed store windows. With experience, Bob learned how to render accurate drawings of the most complicated of heating systems even though he was not a schooled engineer. Bob Prue was the one who convinced me we could get into larger commercial installation of heating equipment as an adjunct to our growing ability to provide service to a varied array of small commercial accounts.

His first project with us was a new eight story glass office building on Speen Street in Natick not more than a quarter-mile from where the Vaters lived. It was an account Bob had done work for previously for another company. Bob Prue laid out the heating and cooling for this large building owned by a man named Dick Strehlke. Dick was typical of the times. He and his brother were in the flooring business and cashed in on the enormous growth of Framingham, MA. The site was typical. It was a former nursery. For Hughes Oil it was our first venture into the big-time HVAC installation business. I was pretty nervous about this new responsibility, but it worked out well.

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ob Prue was my idea of a hero. His commitment to produce for his company was

deep. He worked almost up to the day he died knowing he had no chance of survival. I’ll never forget visiting him in the hospital days before he died. In a voice almost inaudible, he finally got Chapter Six ~ Winding Down Suburbia and Hughes Oil

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through to me that in the plans he had designed for the new heating system at St. Thomas Church, the parts list did not quite match the layout in the blueprint. That is where Bob’s head was when he knew he was dying. Bob’s wife, Nancy, worked for us for a number of years, and I saw her recently at the Hughes Oil wind up. Nancy is an equally solid gold person. I’m quite proud to have known and worked with both of the Prues.

In no particular order, because choosing an order is so unfair, Jack Gill is the next working relationship I want to remember because it was one of the longest.

I do not know what year we began but the beginning is forever imbedded. I was always on the lookout for serviceman prospects and was at the counter of Mattapan Supply Company, when I engaged the person beside me in conversation.

This tall slender person was a sub-contracJack GIll

tor for a number of companies, so common

then. He mumbled something, and the next thing I knew he was gone. I have no recollection of how I got Jack Gill to come to work, but in retrospect his arrival was one of Hughes Oil’s greatest moments.

I cannot explain Jack Gill accurately, but I must try. Jack was not the slightest bit interested in patronizing you but, oh, was he determined to do his job as he understood it. It’s hard to convey to the uninitiated what a service department feels like on a freezing cold Friday afternoon when there are far more “no heat calls” than can be possibly covered by the personnel on duty. This is panic time. Jack would take off in his service manager’s van to fill the void. By 6:00 pm or later this miracle worker would have the heat back on in some very important places. Jack never blamed somebody else’s errors, which was usually the truth. Jack Gill got the job done regardless of the cost to himself. Jack and his wife, Fran, represent my image of the class of city life and what are termed working people. That image is of hard work, humility, and a deep compassion for others.

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onna Radosta, who ran customer service, was a “jewel.” I think if Donna had showed

up years earlier I might have stayed longer. Donna was a working mother, which I found to be the greatest source of management talent. Women who learn to juggle the emotions of a husband

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and kids, find business management simple. Donna is one of those unusual people whose first inclination is to say, “I’ll take care of it,” and she does.

Donna had worked for a small company owner focused strictly on making money. She served the owner well but grew tired of the inconsistency that comes from someone who is “all about me.” What a load Donna took off me. No matter how difficult the customer, no matter how complicated the technicalities, general direction from me was all she needed. Later on, the need for general direction was rare. What a joy to meet with someone who was prepared, and for me to know that after the meeting something was going to happen. If complications arose, they were hers. Donna was my breath of management fresh air.

Buddy Fiore

Buddy Fiore came on board as our

second fleet mechanic in the early seventies. Our first truck mechanic could not duck his responsibility fast enough. Buddy was the opposite. He was in your face to accept the responsibility for Hughes Oil delivery and service trucks to have an appearance and a performance all their own.

Those dark green trucks with “Hughes Oil” boldly lettered on a pure white background became legendary in the Boston area. Regardless how bad the weather, no matter how busy we were, you never saw a vehicle that was less than spotless or saw one that was damaged. Buddy had intense pride, and it showed. Having a damaged or dirty truck on the road was intolerable. Whatever it took, working nights or whatever, the Hughes Oil fleet always looked special and performed the same way.

B

ob Baxter came

to us with an acquisition. He had taken over a small family business during the Arab embargo days when small businesses were impossible to operate and decided to sell to us. Bob was very bright as evidenced by sons graduating from Harvard. Bob ran the delivery department and Arborway to perfection. 

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Since Bob Baxter’s supervision was Dick’s responsibility, I did not get the opportunity to work closely with him other than to appreciate his talent and his quiet integrity. What a record he has compiled. He worked Buddy Fiore, left; Bob Baxter, center; Walter Haskell, right

closely with Walter Haskell,

the only Arborway employee. Walter knew every pipe in the oil terminal from 40 years experience.

A quiet dedicated individual who cared deeply about his job.

I cannot think of any employee more warmly than I do Glenn Cosgro. Glenn started working summers cleaning boilers while still in high school. He never left, and now two of his sons are working as Hughes Oil servicemen. Glenn is my vision of what an oil burner technician should be.

He works smart, he works clean, he fixes all the problems, and in a permanent way, plus he has a great company attitude, which he conveys to the customer. He respects his service manager and even though he has the seniority, he still accepts tough calls. Whenever Glenn leaves a commercial boiler room that has been serviced by other companies, Hughes Oil has a new client for life. On top of all these attributes, he is a lovely person.

A

ny company could use a lot of Glenn Cosgros, but having one was enough for me to

know that my vision of customer service was possible. He exemplified it.

Although there were many fine employees along the way, another should be mentioned in a special way. Mike Kelley came as a young truck driver in the mid-seventies and has stayed on as a dependable, first-class driver. Mike is a kind person who does his job well, rarely complains, and never knocks the company. If Mike has a concern, he comes to you and gives you a chance to straighten it out. The strength of any company is the people you can count on day in and day out like Mike Kelley.

The last person I mention is not the last one in my thoughts but because he worked parttime for many years. Gerry Palmer, pictured

Glen Cosgro

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here with his wife Joan, was a spirit in the mold of my close friend Bob Kelley. Gerry was the purest salesman I ever knew. He worked his territory relentlessly and was so proud of Hughes Oil that it came across easily. He was always a joy to be around and has deep Christian values that he does not bore you with; he just lives them. Money was not what Gerry

Gerry and Joan Palmer

was all about. Gerry tithed to his church and charities his entire life while raising a large family on a modest income. On a visit back to one of the old pubs in Jamaica Plain a few years back, a loud comment came -from the bar, “Hey, Hughsie! What’s the difference between Wolfeboro and Jamaica Plain?” I thought a minute and said, “Heart.” Gerry Palmer is my vision of what that word means as a human quality.

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astly it’s Dick Horan who may have had more influence on my life than even Elaine. I

do not recall a single argument but personalities as diverse as ours, and working as closely as we did, are bound to produce some differences of opinion. Many people wondered how we got along so well, but we always managed to accomplish this. We shared similar values and had great respect for each other. A recent transaction explains the depth of our relationship. Here is a perfect example.

My son Bob and I ran into a cash crunch because our new Depot Square Condo project was not selling well, and banks were in a foul mood to loan more. So I wrote Dick to ask if he would take a mortgage on one of the unsold units. He was both busy and sick at the time, but called back to say, “Don, we have to get this done. Give me a few days to get rid of this fever.”

Sure enough, he gave me the check before the paperwork was complete, and he would accept no more in interest than he was receiving. This was trust and generosity occurring almost twenty years after buying me out.

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It’s not easy to conclude my thoughts about Hughes Oil. I was thrown into it as a young man and forty years later chose to leave, still a fairly young man. I was a big part of its success, but so were a lot of other people. The attributes I tried to bring to Hughes Oil were energy, openness, and a willingness to listen and to learn. Perhaps my greatest strength was my level of curiosity. Since I had no formal education, I assumed I knew very little and therefore had to work harder than everyone else to learn my job, which kept changing.

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iming is often the biggest factor in financial success, and I had no control over that. It

turned out to be right. What I did have control over was the relationships I made, and that is my proudest accomplishment. It’s quite an exhilarating feeling to return to your old company time and again and get treated like you never left. Plus, eighteen years later, a number of Hughes Oil folks visited me and sent cards when I was sick.

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T

he initial retirement mode I adopted in late 1989 was to stay in Needham four days

each week and travel to Wolfeboro for the other three days. Another lifestyle change was a need to manage newfound money, so I bought my very first personal computer and arranged for a Babson College student to instruct me on spreadsheets. I could now effectively keep track of the money I came into by cashing out of Hughes Oil. My accountant had recommended a money manager, but I wanted to learn how to control my own financial destiny. In retrospect that was not the best financial decision, but it gave me a chance to learn something new and keep my mind working. Sitting around waiting for a monthly check from annuities was just not me. More importantly, Sunday school taught me that money had to have a bigger purpose than accumulation. What I invested in and not how much I accumulated was my perspective.

Learning about the world of investing with all of its jargon was a challenge because for the previous forty years any money I made over and above salary disappeared back into the business.

In those years, Elaine, as she was signing the annual tax forms, would say, “If we make this much money where does it go?” That dilemma of never seeing much of the money I made, because it disappeared into new trucks and equipment for the company, was another reason to sell Hughes Oil.

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n that first year of retirement, I came to understand my personal risk level for investing in

stocks versus mutual funds. As it turned out, my personality favored mutual funds, which spread the risk. Conversely, Elaine liked to invest in individual stocks. This difference in our level of comfort with risk-taking differs to this day. When Elaine goes to the casino, she quickly forgets her losses but remembers her wins vividly. I can still remember stocks I should have bought or should not have sold. For me losses are indelible and gains are easily forgotten.

I also got it out of my head rather quickly that I would not be doing much business consulting. This must happen to a lot of people who spend a lifetime acquiring tons of valuable knowledge in a specific field. You think the phone will start ringing with requests for you to share this hard earned knowledge, but you don’t get a single call. You ask, how can they, the whole industry, be getting along without me?” The answer is; “Just fine!”

I did have one investment/consulting involvement. My friend Tom Cavanaugh’s son Steven wanted to open up a Buffalo chicken wing delivery and take out business. He named it “Wing IT.” It was in the college student apartment section of Commonwealth Avenue in Allston. I funded and advised, hoping the management style of the business would not mirror its name. I hounded Steven Chapter Seven ~ Retirement

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to establish simple little systems to track sales and profits on a weekly or monthly basis so adjustments could be made in time to stay in business. He did just that, paying me back every cent.

This was a rare post Hughes Oil success story for me.

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aying close attention to the numbers was not easy for Steven who had an entrepre-

neurial and impulsive mind. He would think nothing of sleeping all night on the sidewalk to get tickets to some important sports event and then peddle the tickets for outrageous mark-ups. I admired him for this but cautioned him just as strongly not to always “Wing It.” Wing It succeeded and was fun for me because Steve listened and worked hard. For at least five years, Steve and his buddies ran a fast-moving business that had imagination. The sauce on most anybody’s Buffalo wings is usually pretty spicy but one of their choices was called “Suicide.”

It smoked! Steve has since moved on to surplus electronic part sales, locating hard to find items and matching the finds to buyers. However, almost twenty years later the original business is still going under the “Wing It” name. A Korean family operates it now.

Before the first year of retirement came to an end, Elaine and I grew tired of packing up to go to Wolfeboro, then a few days later pack back up to return to Needham. Each change in location required a car full of stuff, which made us ask, “Why are we doing this?” Trying to answer that nagging question is how we decided to sell our house in Needham. As much as we loved Needham, it was time to go. We sold to a lovely, young professional couple who were delighted to purchase it for three times what we paid eighteen years earlier. 1989 offered much better real estate appreciation than 1970 when we sold Moss Hill Road for a $5,000 loss. Timing is everything when it comes to investing, maybe in buying or selling anything. Luck can be more powerful than wisdom.

Prior to selling Needham, we had worked out an arrangement to buy out the Vater’s half of the cottage in Wolfeboro. Living together for 25 years on vacations was one thing, but planning to live together in retirement was a horse of a different color. As usual, we made our deal with no conflict. As part of the deal the Vaters bought the lot behind us, which Elaine and I owned separately. The Vaters then built a lovely, year-round home on this lot, which suited their needs.

T

he original cottage we now solely owned was already equipped for year-round living,

plus just a few years back we had put on an addition that contained two master bedroom suites.

It was now very comfortable, but me being me, could not leave this 1970s-style home alone. Time on my hands and money in my pocket made a recipe for change.

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Another factor in choosing to remodel was my contemplation of a new hobby as a developer. As part of my rather vague concept of what to do with the proceeds of Hughes Oil, I had decided to invest half of my new money in property in Wolfeboro. This had little to do with increasing my wealth but was a more interesting alternative to the task of manipulating mutual funds and stocks. I had little interest in imitating Bernard Baruch sitting on a park bench each day studying the Wall Street Journal.

Re-modeling existing houses fit my interests better because it was more visual and more fulfilling. I thought I could contribute to making Wolfeboro a better place and still make a little money. Only the part about helping Wolfeboro worked out, as a market correction many years due, was occurring. For example, if I bought a property in the early nineties for $200,000 and invested $50,000 in improvements, the property might then be worth only the same $200,000 after I completed a remodeling I was proud of.

During this period, admiring the results of the construction work was an emotional gain but a financial question. Luckily most of the theoretical losses did not occur because with no mortgages I could wait until the market picked up. It took about six years. If I had bought just Winnipesaukee waterfront and sat on it, I would now be rich. But accumulation is not where my head was then.

As so often in my life, I was more concerned with the naïve notion of making a difference.

S

oon after 1989, I got that chance to make a difference in youth hockey, a lifelong pas-

sion that has continued onto my grandchildren. I noticed, that in 1990, youth hockey in Wolfeboro was in the same position that youth hockey was in the Boston area in the 1970’s, lots of kids with great interest but scarce facilities.

It takes an energetic leader to get something started. Bob’s youth hockey experience began with a start up group called the Natick Comets. Within ten years this group grew from less than 100 kids using rented time at the old, wooden Needham YMCA hockey rink to 1,200 youth using a modern, double-rink complex of their own in Natick. A local barber was the energetic initiator of this success.

His counterpart in Wolfeboro was an insurance man named Bill Antonucci. Billy had grown up in less than favorable circumstances but had a heart as big as all outdoors, limitless energy, plus he was smart.

The Wolfeboro Back Bay hockey program started in the eighties on a former town dump site. The ice was outdoor natural ice with makeshift boards, which made for a real short season.

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was funded and put up on another piece of town land. Having under cover was a big improvement over total outdoor exposure, but the program was still dependent on natural ice. This was some headache scheduling games. With natural ice, the biggest competition is not the other team, it’s Mother Nature.

W

hen Bill Antonucci discovered I had prior rink experience, he called one May day to

ask if I would travel to Andover, MA with him and Peter Brewitt, our town Recreation Director. The purpose was to look at some used equipment for sale from a dual-rink complex that was closing due to the overbuilding of suburban rinks around the in the late seventies.

We toured the facility guided, not by a salesman, but by the company that serviced the equipment. Both sets of equipment were priced at $25,000. The service company person confided that one compressor had recently been rebuilt at a cost of $5,000, but the other had not. He also told us that a group from Burlington, Vermont was interested but had not yet made a commitment.

I asked for 24 hours. New, the equipment would cost at least $300,000 I will never forget adjourning to lunch at a nearby Burger King. We three agreed that given time we could raise $25,000 but could not meet the timing of this opportunity. What I say next is not intended as bragging but rather as a life lesson for most of us not comfortable with stepping up. I said “I’ll loan the money provided I get verification from the person now running the old Needham rink that my pal Dexter Marsh and I ran for a few years. I surprised myself by making this offer because there were so many unknowns..

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phone call validated the bargain. so I called next day to say “cash the check.” Almost

immediately, Bill Antonucci’s brother Fred took his heavy contractor’s trailer to pick up all the equipment. I will never forget seeing our new, but used, equipment sitting in the sun beside our natural ice structure at the bottom of the Abenakee ski hill and wondering , “What happens now?”

The answer to that question is; the Pop Whelan rink was born, a tribute to a much-loved Brewster Coach. An amazing group of tradesman in the area volunteered to install equipment they knew nothing about previously. Night after night that summer, they showed up after a hard day’s work following Steve Hale’s leadership to meet a November opening-game deadline. If they failed, that hockey season would be history because contracts at other rinks were cancelled in anticipation.

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got to his shop everyday at 5:00 am to work on the hundreds of steel piping welds needed to connect a matrix of miles of plastic refrigeration tubing. He never complained: he just tackled this mountain of work each day with a smile I’m not sure of the year the new Pop Whelan Rink opened, but it was on- time , a miraculous feat. What is interesting is that the equipment we bought and installed lasted more than 15 years, having been replaced just this year. Another important point is that the Selectmen decided to have the town operate the rink. Rinks usually run deficits so that decision was inconsistent with frugal Wolfeboro. Just this year taxpayers invested $500,000 in an upgrade. Hockey is important here.

On a less important note, I did not have much success in bringing my Hughes Oil training principles to the Back Bay program. I did not have to invent a program to train coaches like I did mechanic training at Hughes Oil. A USA hockey training program sponsored by the NHL was already in place, so I bought the videos and copied coaching instruction technique manuals that I thought priceless. Wouldn’t volunteer coaches with minimum experience welcome an opportunity to standardize instruction and maximize their teaching effectiveness? After all, ice time is expensive, so the window of time for hockey instruction is limited. It’s not like baseball where you can stay out on the field an extra hour if needed. However, the “good old boy” style, so prevalent in hockey, dominated; ego comes first, accomplishment second.

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o the concept that I promoted at Hughes Oil of figuring out the best ways and everyone

that system, did not gain acceptance. Once again, I wanted to accomplish more than was possible because volunteers are not employees. They have strong feelings that motivate their reason to put in a lot of time. Even with this minor disappointment, I remain quite proud of my early efforts at Pop Whelan. Sixteen years later, it’s a thrill to visit the rink on a Saturday when it’s full of excited families and realize I was a bit player in something quite important.

Most of my Hughes Family Partnership construction projects were also interesting but in a different way. Bob located a farm house, barn and seventy-five acres on Middleton Road which he and Jodi rented for a few years. The widow who sold it died shortly after we signed a purchase and sales agreement, but before we passed papers. Relatives were unknown for a couple of years until one was found in West Roxbury, MA. Interestingly, it was a Hughes Oil customer who turned out to be the relative we had been seeking. Since the market had dropped during the two years we had to wait for title clearance, we argued for a price reduction but the court disagreed. I finally bailed out with minimal loss.

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fter that Bob steered me to a crumbling farmhouse. It was a New England-style, ram-

bling, attached structure: little house - big house, - back house,- barn. We jacked the house up, put a new foundation under it, and built a new center section containing a big, new, country kitchen, and a barreled-ceiling master bedroom. We also rebuilt the barn. This turned out to be a gem. We planned to develop the

attached

seventy-five

acres into large-lot homes, but this idea was ahead of its time.

Eight years late, I sold seventy of the seventy-five acres to Huggins Hospital allowing them to develop the Sugar Hill Sugar Hill

retirement community.

I’m

proud of this accomplishment as well because assisted living was a recommendation I had brought to a three day Wolfeboro Planning Board charrette.

Bob and Jodi rented the Sugar Hill farmhouse for five years because we could not sell this building for anywhere near our investment. I finally sold this lovely property at my recovered cost a year after Huggins Hospital bought the land for their retirement facility.

Bob, Rich, and I did a couple of other unusual projects such as rebuilding a cottage in Alton.

Located on a steep hill, it had slid off its piers with only a large tree stopping it from cascading a few hundred yards down to a road. We called this project “the broken home”.

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nother project involved buying an old house at Nineteen Mile Bay that was due to be

torn down for a new mini-market. For many years, it was a seasonal country store called Pier Nineteen. We towed this old, Cape-style house across the street and rebuilt it. Jacking up a couple of houses in place was one thing, but jacking one up and then towing it across a road was scary.

We had utility coordination challenges plus permit troubles stemming from small-town jealousy.

As a result we had to tear up a new garage foundation and build another one on the opposite side of the new house location. In Boston, a $100 bill to the inspector would have solved the problem.

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was an idea born by a combination of my new interest in being a developer and trying to find an opportunity to involve my two daughters in a business with me. I had not had that opportunity previously or maybe did not take it while I was at Hughes Oil. Only Bob was involved in Hughes Oil through high school, college summers, and five years full time. So I made a plan to gift all three kids the IRS max of $10,000 per year provided they invest in this development idea, so they could learn from hands-on experience..

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nfortunately, the timing was wrong. The Hughes Family Partnership lost money be-

cause a five-year downward correction of 25% to 30% in housing prices coincided with The Hughes Family Partnership’s start. Losing money was not the lesson I wanted to teach the girls about thoughtful investment. I bought Lynn and Barbara out of the Hughes Family Partnership a few years later and dropped the yearly gifting idea. Bob still holds a pittance investment. It was a nice idea that did not work because of circumstances beyond anyone’s control.

Lynn and Barbara’s focus on chasing their dreams through music got in the way after that.

The girls and I were just not going to be in close contact through a mutual business involvement, at least one that I knew something about. My involvement with the girls would change to helping finance projects I knew little about, such as music festivals. Those projects were emotional lifts but financial downers.

As a parent, I’m not sure what I learned by helping my daughters with schemes that I had little confidence in. In retrospect, I wonder if I should have tried to exercise more control. For example, I thought it a questionable goal to search for happiness by dream-seeking. To me, happiness results from hard-earned success be it financial or artistic. I think I could have helped them more by being harder on them. But applying tough-love is just that - tough! It was far too tough for Elaine and quite often, for me.

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s I reflect, the experiences with the girls, their friends, their music, and their attitudes

kept me young and more tolerant than I had ever been. The sixties taught me that there was much more to life than the Protestant work ethic. That ethic encourages judgmentalism and grinding away at ulcer-creating disciplines to prove your worth. Now, there was a new level of tolerance for me to learn.

Some learning began when I renovated the upper part of my new, oversized garage into a sound studio. Elaine and I loved having musicians drop by to jam. As I drove in, if I observed a car worth less than $500 in my driveway, I said, “Ah, a musician is here!” The joy of talking with Chapter Seven ~ Retirement

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people whose priorities were love of people and achieving harmony, was refreshing.

I thank my daughters profusely for this opportunity to venture out of a more clinical suburban or business lifestyle and to experience a broader spectrum of life. It’s only a matter of time for financial success to arrive for them.

It was around this time that I saw the effects of AIDS up close and personal. It was eye opening. AIDS was not about strangers anymore but friends. For example, Barbara’s friend, Mathew Murphy, who had visited our house in Needham often, contracted this horrific disease from a blood transfusion at a Worcester hospital in the seventies because he was a hemophiliac, as was his brother, the only other child of a single mom.

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athew fought the good fight even traveling to Sweden to establish an AIDS commu-

nication organization. I will never forget Mathew’s last few days when a group of young friends kept a 24-hour vigil around his house. Then came the funeral. Since he could not have a service in his Catholic Church because of the local Church’s draconian attitude towards AIDS, the service was performed at a community center by a young priest who differed with his elders.

What an emotional experience. It was a gorgeous September day as a few hundred of us marched to a Dixieland band through Needham streets then on to the Community Hall. Mathew’s brother gave the eulogy knowing he would die soon of this same dreadful disease. I cannot imagine being in his shoes. He died within months. People who believe AIDS is a deserved decease should be given a fair trial and then hung.

Another interesting and equally emotional experience occurred in the same time period in Needham. Barbara’s closest friend came from a family that so typically makes this country great.

Dad “Arnie” was a dedicated high school teacher and soccer coach. Mom Harriet was a typical stay-at-home mom. The oldest brother was a good athlete and symbolized a suburban norm. Barbara’s friend Jen, was athletic and bright. She went on to be an engineer.

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he family’s youngest boy was not only gay but demonstrative, a flamer. I cannot imagine

how his dad endured his dress and his mannerisms while teaching in the same school. Joey only made it into his twenties, dying an agonizing death just after decorating for his sister’s wedding. I will never forget “not very tall” Barbara Hughes delivering Joey’s eulogy in a cavernous Catholic church in Newport Rhode Island, the home of his partner. In that high pulpit, she appeared to be speaking from heaven.

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would sustain Joey’s lover, who also had AIDS. This was not a family that had a lot of money.

Arnie, all by himself, built an addition onto his house that summer. Then he and Harriet administered love to one more person wasting away so painfully and so slowly.

Another interesting situation, Lynn and Barbara had a singer friend who changed from being a woman to becoming a man. Mary Beth was a lovely gal, and I guess Alex is now a nice guy with a man’s voice and mannerisms. This was a “wow” for me. The girls had many other very normal friends, so the above situations are exceptions. However, their empathy for the unusual continued to attract folks who marched to their own drummer. For Elaine and me, it was really heartwarming to be around young folks who displayed such loving, imaginative hearts as artistic people often do.

D

uring this same twelve to fifteen-year period, construction experiences kept restless

me energized because I was able to work closely with Bob and his friend, Rich Ferguson. Rich was a very talented carpenter, had wonderful design capabilities and was pleasant to work with.

Rich was even better than Norm Poisson who built our Port WEdeln cottage in 1966 from a “back of the napkin” design drawn up in the quaint Lakeview Inn dining room.

Later on, in the early eighties when Norm Poisson added the double master bedroom addition for us, a similar, loose, planning style was used, but at least we made a sketch. That sketch for the cottage addition was the last of my involvement with formal construction.

Most of the Hughes Family Partnership projects I did after that, including the large remake of our cottage, made all prior projects look finely detailed. My new operating mode with Hughes Family Partnership projects was to dream up the concept and then adjust the details each day. I loved it!

For example, Rich moved his tools in to Port Wedeln for what I envisioned would be a few weeks. He left after two years and $200,000 because of the domino effect. As each portion of the house was remodeled, it made the portion next to it need remodeling. I remember near the end being stubborn about replacing the lone window left after every other one in the house had been replaced. Sure enough, a year later I replaced that kitchen window at a great expense.

Before

After

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It wasn’t only the cost that wore me down from these projects but also the inconvenience of sawdust and plaster embedding itself in every part of the house including our clothing and dishes.

Constantly shifting furnishings around is another nuisance, but I couldn’t stop until I had restored all that has been torn apart. When this vision was finally finished, I made another of my loud predictions. “The only way I’m leaving this place is in a box!” So much for predictions, but we did enjoy this cottage to castle transformation for 14 wonderful years.

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s I mentioned before, my move to Wolfeboro in 1989 coincided with a downturn in

the housing market. Sales were so slow that prices slid 25% to 30% following an unrealistic runup that occurred in the mid- eighties. I felt bad because Bob was just starting out selling real estate and most of his friends in the trades were adversely affected. Many of these tradesman blamed what was a national recession on local causes. The target of their ire was over-regulation by the Wolfeboro Planning Board. When an opportunity came up to join it and change things, I took it.

This opened up another new career for me that involved a steep learning curve. Planning Boards tend to comprise about half technically-weak, self-interested people, and the other half folks willing to learn more about the job and work hard to implement their new knowledge. For example, some members opened their packet of information at the meeting while members like me had spent many prior hours absorbing the often complex technical information.

The professional who advised the Wolfeboro Planning Board was a woman in her thirties named Amanda Simpson and was she bright. I do not recall in my lifetime learning any more from one person than I did from Amanda. My learning was accelerated because I wound up as chairman so quickly. I was to start as vice-chairman to an experienced lay person, Becky Swaffield. However, dedicated Becky suffered serious heart problems within a week of her chairmanship, and there I was - a rookie chairman.

I

enjoyed this work but it was stressful, especially at the beginning, because applicants

who come before you present complex proposals for both refinement and approval. The process tends to be overly bureaucratic but necessarily so because decisions a planning board makes are long lasting. They are not undone easily. Decisions become a part of the deed and last for generations. Eyesores in any town can often be traced to weak action by a board many years past.

On the flip side, you cannot let this responsibility paralyze you so that you defensively try to find ways to say no to almost every proposal. A defensive stance can be so unfair to applicants.

Change cannot always be seen as wrong.

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About eighteen months into the job, I resigned as chairman, a most unusual move for me.

My reason was I felt I had become too controversial, which is not a good position for a chairman.

I thought some polarized members might vote against a good proposal for no other reason than to get back at me.

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art of my problem was my defense of Amanda. In a small town, having an intelligent fe-

male tell one of the “good old boys” he could not do something was unacceptable to persons steeped in a tradition that rights come before responsibilities. That type of person assumed I would discipline her. Instead I often complimented her.

Adding to the conflict over my leadership was my opposition to proposals offered by a nice but weak economic development committee. These folks harbored ideas that Wolfeboro needed economic diversification instead of re-enforcing the envious economy we already had. Ruining the appearance of the town by trying to diversify away from a natural economy was not my idea of progress.

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he “golden goose” of Wolfeboro’s economy is our attractiveness. People come from

all over the world to build lovely places here and pour money into all segments of our economy because they love to spend time here. Back in 1890, Brewster Academy and our town hall were built because of the generosity of John Brewster who loved to summer here. Wolfeboro has a long history of people financially rewarding its attractiveness, even if they do not spend large amounts of time here.

To panic in a recession and try stupid things like attracting manufacturing or RV parks or mini malls in order to counter a countrywide housing downturn would be disastrous. Towns all over the country would kill to attract the kind of money Wolfeboro does. A large percentage of every dollar spent here is not earned here. It is brought in by folks who enjoy our unique natural and man-made beauty as well as a new found vibrancy resulting from the establishment of so many new cultural organizations.

The money generated from financially self-sufficient people that locate here does not stop with new construction but continues on to be the financial staple of every business in town.

Wolfeboro would be an economically depressed area if our economy was dependent on the plumber doing business with the electrician and the store owner with the painter. Outside money fuels our economy.

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cause my biggest antagonist refused to be chairman, and the job fell to a young rookie board member. He drove us all nuts with his outsized ego. I continued to work hard on this board as a regular member and luckily no bad things happened for the town because of his actions. In retrospect, I may have accomplished more as a regular board member. A chairman’s role can be confining.

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or example, during the next five years I worked hard to organize our Master Plan. These

official plans are mandated by the state but not enforced. Our Master Plan had not been updated in more than ten years. Master Plans contain chapters on land use, population growth, social and economic needs, and so on. Some chapters are done completely by professionals and some by lay people who come together at various community meetings. The Planning Board sorts this information out and makes recommendations for implementation. I put a lot of time into this process because I had the most time. The results were mixed. Like so many things in life, great changes more often spring from seeds thrown to the wind than from a rigidly directed process.

The town docks were replaced and doubled because a committee looking in to parking had a go-getter named David Booth on it. I doubt if anyone but David could have achieved this most necessary expansion. Certainly town government could never have mustered David’s skill and persistence to accomplish this complex task. Our expanded docks are now a major asset.

David continued on to perform many other miracles for the town. Encouraging David to join the board may be my greatest contribution to Wolfeboro.

Joyce Davis, my closest companion on the Planning Board, started a pathways committee.

Like Donna Radosta at Hughes Oil, Joyce was common-sense bright with high energy and integrity.

Her pathway’s idea caught on and we now have a seven-mile path on the old railroad bed plus a number of beautiful cross-country ski trails. All of this was accomplished by private groups working independently for an idea that was introduced by Joyce.

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ne summer, Amanda, Joyce, and I developed an award-winning, three-day, planning

charrette modeled after Roman charrettes where in a set time period an art competition takes place. The objective was, in a strict three-day time period, to develop a plan for an 800-acre area close to town that had been ignored and had the potential to have unattractive developments wind up on it. Out of this charrette came the Sugar Hill Retirement community run by the hospital, the Taylor Home complex run by an experienced non-profit plus the genesis of the “Nick,” an incredible recreation facility. Town government was not involved in any of these projects as government rarely ventures outside of the box. Two gentlemen, Jesse Putney, an acquaintance from Wellesley, Chapter Seven ~ Retirement

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and Bob Hopewell, a Wolfeboro original, were instrumental in this retirement community idea as well as the recreation complex.

However, the rest of the Master Plan collected dust as they do in most towns because Selectmen get consumed with meeting the budget. Selectmen get pressure from some pretty vocal people to put everything off until next year. Here in 2007, Wolfeboro is paying a high price for past postponements as we play catch up on infrastructure problems. New Hampshire towns have the added burden of school costs being included in their real estate tax base rather than having the school costs appear in a county or state budget. This abnormality makes our real estate taxes look higher when compared to other states. School costs comprise a little-understood seventy percent of our total tax.

All in all, the seven years I spent on the Wolfeboro Planning Board were rewarding as there was quite a bit of accomplishment, albeit not enough to completely satisfy me. I should have lowered my expectations because it’s easy to accomplish much more as a majority owner of a company than you can accomplish being just one of many equal citizens. The biggest factor that slows progress in town involvements, and frustrates people like me, is the huge difference in experience between committee members. You often serve with people who do not know what they do not know. Some view you as a “know it all” to be put down.

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eople like me often forget that we make decisions from a wide base of experience. I

hesitate to speak unless I really know, but when I do, I speak with assurance and that bothers some. In a business group, that attribute would get respect. In a small town setting, confidently sharing experience might very well result in resentment. I would have stayed to complete ten years, as I signed up for a final three year term, but I was defeated by eight votes due to a controversy over an airport purchase.

A wake up call that the culture in Wolfeboro was much different than all my prior life experiences occurred shortly after I started to live full time in here and became a member of the Kingswood Golf Club Board. My good friend Paul Arruda, who was president at the time asked if I would be a director. Even though Elaine had made me promise no more big volunteer involvements, she approved this one because Paul’s wife Sue is a close friend, and Elaine loves golf.

This was to be an enjoyable involvement.

I

seem to have a knack of arriving in organizations at a time of change. Some friends

might claim I advocate change, but at least this time, I did not. Little did I know when I became a Chapter Seven ~ Retirement

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director that this seventy-five year-old club was just beginning ten years of change and controversy the likes of which it had never before experienced.

Kingswood is not a prestigious golf club. Its early roots stem from the 1920’s and comprised the elite in town like all golf clubs did during that era. However, for the past fifty years Kingswood’s membership has been a mix of local working people, affluent folks who belonged to several clubs, plus a newly arrived retired group, many of whom entertain the silly thought that a golf club membership is a reward for a lifetime of work.

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hen I first came to Wolfeboro in 1958, Kingswood Golf Club was a pretty casual place.

You could play when you wanted, stop for a sandwich, and start in again without interfering. Membership was not anywhere near full so long-time pro, Dave Pollini would use his well practiced talent of persuasion to encourage you to take out a membership. However, by 1990 golf had blossomed all over the country. The Kingswood membership list was now full with a waiting list.

This national expansion of golf interest meant the same course that accommodated 150 golfers in 1950 had to serve 600 some forty years later. Flaws in the course became so obvious that a group of younger visionary golfers put through a proposal to hire an architect. This sparked some old-timer worries that something might change. The architect’s recommendation was to spread the course out onto some empty acreage adjacent to the northern side. Instead of nine holes squeezed on the small, original, sixty acres on one side of the road, the course would now have twelve holes on the larger ninety-acre side across the road. Only six holes would remain on the original smaller side.

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cceptance of this new plan won by a small margin but left a bitter taste in the mouths

of the older golfers many of whom I finally concluded were the smallest minded people I have ever experienced. I also discovered why most organizations require large majorities for capital improvement projects. A simple majority vote for big ticket items is a recipe for war. Too many vocal people become losers using a simple majority vote. A war is inevitable!

Guess who got the job of coordinating the new plan? At the time I did not object to taking this on because I believed that all of us could have fun if we talked it out. My life experience was that truth eventually won out. I felt I could win the opposition over by holding information meetings where the architect, who was very talented, would explain his reasoning and then be open to input.

Doesn’t knowledge and openness blunt controversy?

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most exclusively from the older crowd who played a lot. They lived by the expression “Don’t confuse me with the facts; my mind is already made up.” I held meetings and wrote newsletters but the rumors were always louder and more acceptable than my information. The opposition had zero focus on the long-term interests of the club. Like the insurgents in Iraq, their objective was to disrupt. They had little idea of what would happen if their idea won.

It was hard not to be affected by these doom and gloomers. When the bulldozers had ripped some of our land to shreds even I wondered if an acceptable golf course would ever re-appear. Some days I thought - “they” could be right. Thank God the new course did re-appear right on schedule due to the best of design and the wonderful work of local contractor, Fred Antonucci, as well as the unselfish and dedicated involvement of course Superintendent Steve Hale.

The course turned out to be beautiful and the cost was some bargain. We remodeled all or significant parts of twelve holes for about $800,000. It was so interesting working with a talented architect. I would occasionally tour the course with him, my committee, the course superintendent, and the contractor as work progressed. I learned that every detail cannot be put on paper when you are working with hilly, rocky, and wet topography. There are many challenges that cannot be foreseen and must be eyeballed for adjustment as they appear. In contrast to the attitude of the naysayers, this working group was calm, respectful, and dedicated to the best result.

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t the time of the course reconstruction, the architect selected a location for a new

clubhouse that would be compatible with the new course layout. It was located in a part of our unused land that bordered 900 feet of shorefront on a small lake. Even more important than being scenic, the prime holes, numbers 1, 9, 10, and 18, could be located close by for course control.

By contrast, the existing layout had only the first hole nearby. Since the architectural firm we were working with did not design clubhouses, they merely provided a location they thought ideal. Building a new clubhouse was to be a completely separate phase of the renewal of Kingswood Golf Club.

Three years later with the pay off of the course renovation ahead of schedule and naysayer fears of bankruptcy dispelled, it was decided to replace the old clubhouse. The original clubhouse had once been a chicken coop and was now a sorry excuse for a golf clubhouse. Once more, I naively thought this new clubhouse would be fun to plan since none of the fears of changing the golf layout had materialized. I was no longer on the board, wanting no part of serving some of these people, but I agreed to help the board because of my prior experience in construction and my Wolfeboro Planning Board experience. Well this turned out to be a five-year war that made the conflict over the course change look like a slight disagreement.

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An opposition group soon formed to promote the idea of using the existing site instead of the new location that the architect had selected. This group held their own meetings and used amateurs to develop plans. Cost was everything to them while long-term benefits meant nothing.

Perhaps most distasteful to me was the selfishness involved. Almost to a person, the members in the 25-50 year-old age group wanted to explore the site selected by the architect. After all they would be the ones paying the mortgage off over the years. Most seniors just did not care about the future. It was all about winning their opinion. Those who felt they had lost out when the course reconstruction was approved five years back chose revenge. Yuck!

The end result was the old-timers won. Their clubhouse doubled their estimate of $400,000.

It cost $800,000 and is now a white elephant located in the wrong location. Kingswood golfers will have to live with this mistake for generations to come. The emotion of this experience caused me to be scarce at this club over the next few years. I did not want to openly show dislike for some of these people that I felt were visionless and selfish. I just wanted to avoid them. Thank God I liked tennis. We have a nice independent tennis club in Wolfeboro with hardly any members showing the intensity of opinion found at the golf club.

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ut no involvement is ever all bad. My involvement in Kingswood led to relationships

that have sustained Elaine and me for fifteen years. This came about initially because pro Dave Pollini organized trips to the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. On this island was located a resort called Jack Tarr’s. What an interesting place. It reminded me of the “everything included” resort Bubba Kelley and I visited before I met Elaine. During several Jack Tarr trips, Elaine and I bonded with some great people because of the relaxed atmosphere and so many things to do within a single complex.

Given my lifelong passion for singing, dancing, and storytelling, the folks we met opened up a new life for me. Contrary to growing up with few female friends because of attending an all-boys high school and traveling with my Irish buddies who valued humor above female companionship, I was liberated. By this time in my life there were more women around me than men. At parties the still breathing field of males became even narrower because so many men my age would not dance.

Chapter One ~ Reality

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W

ell God bless Elaine for recognizing this situation. For the next ten years she loaned

me out at parties to dance with women whose husbands were either rusty at dancing or gone from their lives. Elaine’s cardinal rule was “You can enjoy all of them but never one of them.” For me that was easy. I had so much fun and felt so appreciated. It was a relationship with women that I never previously experienced. Elaine also got some relief. She felt bad about her asthmatic breathing limitations when she was my only dance partner. “Ask so and so” was a common direction.

Another unforeseen controversy occurred around the same time. This conflict was over the little Wolfeboro Airport. I did not see this one coming either, and it trumped the golf club in intensity. After eighteen months of being vilified in the local paper, often on the front page, the controversy wound down in late 1999. However, the stress of the situation deeply impacted my health.

My Christmas present that year was a triple bypass.

I learned once more just how big a factor stress is in causing heart problems. In 1986, I had a slight heart attack during a period of frustration for me at Hughes Oil. Now in 1999, at the height of the airport controversy, more heart problems showed up. Fortunately I recovered nicely in a matter of months.

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here is just no way can I get into every detail of the airport fiasco because it would over-

whelm this story. I wrote a separate thirty-five page report as a catharsis for myself. The curious can read it.

Although this started out as a routine real estate deal, which Bob initiated, completion would have made both of us rich because of the peculiar opportunity that arose because of timing.

The difference between the controversy over the airport and the controversy at the golf club was that the Airport was about deceit and greed, not stubbornness. I was deceived by a person I thought I had partnered with, and slandered by group of people who had an agenda of their own that hid behind the guise of helping the town. I discovered that you really can “fool all of the people some of the time.”

Local folks named Fawcett, who could not afford to buy the airport themselves, used a ruse to try and steal the purchase and sales agreement that Bob had secured for me. I met a 24 hour limit to put up a large deposit to purchase the 100 acre airport property because the owner was going bankrupt. A speedy transaction was part of the deal. What I did not know was that an obscure, rarely enforced, state right of first refusal was on the books. The Fawcetts must have had some clout with the state because taxpayer money in excess of $200,000 was spent to stall us from exChapter Seven ~ Retirement

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ercising our rights until my agreement ran out. This was my first experience with an Attorney General’s office. I found it to be an ugly place where justice is not a very high priority.

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uki Fawcett, hoodwinked the state and local politicians and put on one of the largest

propaganda campaigns Wolfeboro has ever seen to try and take away our purchase and sales agreement and award it to Fawcett and company who were masquerading as saviors of the town.

If I had an enemy, I would sic Suki Fawcett on him. Truth does not hold her back. Suki’s “Save the Airport” campaign was successful in stopping me, but I was also successful in stopping her. When the dust settled, the original owner got his land back but Bob and I were out a lot of money.

I finally got much of our investment back by court action, but damage to our reputations really hurt. Many townspeople thought we had done something evil and were closing down a muchneeded facility for our own greedy interests. Nobody asked questions like “What is the reason to save this almost abandoned airport?’ Even worse, nobody asked us if we were planning to do what we were accused of. In actuality, we had no firm plans and were open to discussion, but no discussion was allowed because the state filed a frivolous lawsuit against us. Suki Fawcett was on a mission to destroy us, and our selectmen and local newspaper believed her. Nothing we said seemed to matter.

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nterestingly, this situation has come full circle. The airstrip is now closed and developers

are doing exactly what we were accused of and in a more intrusive way than we could ever have imagined. Local Realtor Chip Maxfield, so vocal in “Save the Airport,” now represents the developer.

What hypocrisy! I try not to think of this turn of events, but when I do it kind of turns my stomach.

This was the only time in my life that so many people did not believe the Hughes’. It made us realize we are pretty thin-skinned.

As if I had not learned my lesson about getting involved in Wolfeboro construction, a few years later I entered another project, which hopefully will be my last. The origins of this project date back to 1990 when Bob was in his rookie year as a realtor at Maxfield Real Estate. His first sale was a downtown business condo for my investment portfolio.

However, a few years later, this long two story wooden building burned to the ground. Since it had never been registered as a condo, the building was badly under-insured. As a result there was not much to distribute to the eight owners. Bob and I bought the remaining land thinking we could develop it someday and recover our losses. Nice idea, did not work.

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forward to buy it because expensive site work was required to build anything on it. The high cost of site work eliminated retail businesses as local merchants were feeling the crunch from Wal-Mart.

Additionally, office space in a small town does not attract big rent. Building ordinary dwelling units was also out because the current zoning for multi-family housing allowed for only five dwellings to be placed on that land that was formerly occupied by eight business condos plus a restaurant.

B

y 2003, I was getting itchy to bring this land, which had become a prominent eyesore,

to some conclusion. I was proud of every other project I had done, but I was not proud of this ownership. Bob noticed that a couple of factors had changed that might allow dwellings to be built on the land. First, a new ordinance had been passed to allow the Sugar Hill Retirement community to be built. Second, the waterfront was going to be re-assessed, which would triple already high taxes for some.

Bob and I concluded that there was a market for high-end condos, so we started a budgeting process with a friend of Bob’s who is an appraiser and has been a long time chairman of the zoning board of appeals. However, he was in over his head on this project. We paid him only $12,000 of $25,000 for marketing information that turned out to be pretty general and pretty weak.

Obtaining the permit to build enough units on this land to make the project financially feasible was a bigger challenge than I first thought. When we first spoke to town planner Rob Houseman, he felt that we fit the relatively new ordinance, which was developed for the retirement community at Sugar Hill. Since I had originally helped form this ordinance, we decided to proceed.

However, when we had our first meeting with the Planning Board they overruled their own professional, a most unusual move. My friend Joyce Davis led the fight against our plan because she truly believed “work force” housing should be put there not upscale senior housing. I could not shake her from this unrealistic stance.

W

hat should have been a simple process was dragged out for two years and required

some expensive legal work. I think there was a stronger focus by the Planning Board on determining if we were getting away with something rather than on what was best for the town. Does that sound familiar in a small town?

We eventually prevailed, so with permits in hand and based on the cost information Bob and I had at the time, we decided to proceed with final design for 2000-plus square foot condos to sell in the range of $400,000. Bob tried a sample mailing, and ten people put up $1000 no-risk deposits. I thought we had a winner.

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H

owever, I was to re-discover an old lesson learned when I was helping our trade asso-

ciation develop legislation that would help our industry. The lesson I learned back then was that getting involved in complex public issues is akin to jumping on a slide that has many unseen outlets at the bottom.

Once you decide to jump on, you are in for the ride with no way to know where you will wind up. Will you achieve anything resembling your initial objective?

T

Depot Square Condominiums

hat is exactly

what happened to us in the Depot project. Once you engage an architect, obtain permits and select a builder, you are in for a ride every bit as ďŹ nal as pushing off on that symbolic slide. In my case, there was no turning back without leaving a large embarrassment in the middle of town with my name prominently on it.

It turned out that our initial pricing estimates were way off as the condo price evolved to the $700,000-level from $400,000, and the list of prospects evaporated. The architect’s estimate of $75,000 to $90,000 wound up costing over $200,000, in addition to the cost of structural engineers, surveyors, and other specialists. For the site work, my builder felt certain we could parcel it out for a max of $150,000. It went over $350,000. In fairness to these professionals, this was a very special building to design and site work in the middle of a 250-year-old town can contain many surprises. I just wish people would ponder their estimates longer. There is a strong tendency in human nature to underestimate. Vendors, all too often, tell you what they think you want to hear, not what you need to hear.

In addition, the prospects that ďŹ t this opportunity like a glove have yet to realize they do. Since prospects are limited to seniors, I discovered we were trying to appeal to an age group that resists change. At this time, four units out of ten are completed, but only two are sold. A large share of my remaining money is tied up in the two unsold units plus the permits and plans for the remaining six.

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O

nce again I’m proud of the physical results, which will be visible for the next hundred

years. The struggle with the local culture will be long forgotten I’ve always enjoyed comedienne Joan River’s trademark expression, which she delivers while looking someone dead in the eye, “Can we talk?”

In Wolfeboro, the answer all too often is an emphatic “No!” Being proud of holding strong and unshakeable opinions is a conservative phenomenon that makes me relate much more closely to the style of liberals. I never thought I would be a member of the ACLU, but I discovered, after experiencing golf and airport controversies plus George Bush’s presidency, that there is a need to be open to all sides. Sometimes the lesser known side is correct.

F

rom the time I moved to Wolfeboro full-time, I have complained to Elaine about the arrows

in the back a person like me feels and how dominant money considerations always are. “How much?” is so often the first question asked here. Elaine’s retort to my ranting is always the same “You want to move?” she asks. That comment puts me in my place, and I reply, “No, I don’t want to move because there are too many nice people and nice places here.” So my challenge is to learn to be comfortable in the minority, and to not get overly involved in political or financial discussions. However, implementing this discipline seems to be counter to my nature.

Another of the values that I strain to accept is a strong sense of independence that is admired in New Hampshire. The slogan, “Life free or die,” printed on our car license plates for years, is a very Yankee way of thinking. Stephen Covey, in his book The Seven Habits of Effective People, points out that too strong a vision of in-dependence keeps many people from reaching the higher goal of inter-dependence.

D

espite some financially and emotionally unsuccessful experiences implementing proj-

ects here in Wolfeboro, it would be callous of me to portray my eighteen years here as negative.

My purpose in describing my failures rather than my successes, is that that type of focus keeps me learning. It also explains the cocoon I lived in for forty years at Hughes Oil. Attitudes like mine are now called “old school.”

Even though some good deals got away, there were eight or ten other deals that Bob found for me that had some profit, extending the time I had before I might run out of money. One example was our expanded Port Wedeln home. Bob priced it and Jodi sold it in three days for almost full price.

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A

nother important transaction was selling a 24-unit apartment building that Bob got me

into in the early nineties. It was only five years old at the time but had been abandoned as part of an institutional bankruptcy. We put it back together, and Spencer Hughes managed it. It was a good feeling being able to offer rental apartments in a nice building for much less than market rates and still earn some income. It was an equally good feeling when we sold it. This transaction eliminated the confiscatory 14% interest I was paying to a private mortgage person for the Depot Square project.

Both local banks, Community and Meredith Village Savings turned me down.

An involvement that stands in

contrast to negative experiences a classical chamber

music festival. Early on Elaine and I got involved with the festival, which was founded during the mid-ninties by a young couple named Peter and Rachel Krysa. Peter was born in Russia and was following in the footsteps of his famous violinist father. Rachel was born in Brookline, MA and had trained professionally on the cello in Europe. This was an interesting learning experience for me, because I knew nothing about classical music. However, this involvement was just a refresher course for Elaine.

Concerts were held in a beautiful, old barn in North Wolfeboro and featured artist friends of the Krysa’s. Most were string players but some great pianists and flute players also performed for crowds of up to one hundred. The majority of artists were on summer break from their symphony orchestras.

Peter Krysa and local friend Jim Weigel

E

ach summer for one or two weeks we housed artists who played. Peter Krysa’s mother

and father were our most frequent visitors. Peter’s dad, Ohla, was a renowned concert violinist who traveled the world with his wife, Tetiana, a concert pianist. We had some memorable summer evening dinners out on our gazebo following a concert. Ohla, in European tradition, would have carefully shopped that day for the particular wine for the evening. Sipping great wine and listening to him describe their world travels was so fascinating and so memorable.

Morning practices were also pretty special. Tetiana played our Steinway grand piano like it had never been played before. Neighbors would stop in for coffee to listen to this incredible talent in such a relaxed atmosphere. One visit, Ohla came with a Stradivarius violin circa 1600. I could Chapter Seven ~ Retirement

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not believe this rare instrument was lying on our dining room table. Evidently the owners of such ageless instruments loan them out to artists like Ohla because the instrument need to be played in order this type of music won out. Friend Bob Copeland and I offered marketing plans to bolster the festival, but artists are not business people and don’t always respond to their customers’ demands. Some of the music was melodic and short enough to enjoy, but some pieces went on for fifteen minutes and were dissident. Bob Copeland and I had little influence in getting them to limit the boring stuff or to understand money management. They played what pleased them to a narrow band of people who understood chamber music.

R

achel and Peter had a child shortly after the festival ended to join a handsome,

teenage son Peter had by a previous marriage in Russia. However, times were not good for them financially, the curse of the arts. Both played in pit orchestras to pay their rent, and then split up.

Recently Rachel died. I think at her own hands. Oh, the tragedy that so often befalls highly talented, artistic, and sensitive people.

Another great benefit of my retirement in Wolfeboro was the exhilaration of winter sports available in a way that I had never before experienced. Ski Mountains like Waterville Valley and Loon were only an hour and fifteen minutes away and I could go on any day of the week. All those years of being able to ski only when it was the kids’ vacation or my work allowed, made this new freedom a real luxury. For me, skiing in the northeast is great only on certain weather-friendly days. You have to be available on those days to get conditions that mimic normal western conditions. Bubba Kelley would ski in sub-zero temperatures on ice and in wind, but I never reached that level of skill or endurance. I was a fair-weather skier, and do not apologize for my chicken approach.

For more than ten years of my retirement, I had opportunities to go west for a week of fabulous skiing each year. Bubba Kelley had friends who got together on trips organized by a travel agent, Jim

My Ski Buddies

Breau. We went to Whistler in British Columbia, Banff in Alberta, Vail and Steamboat in Colorado, the mountains of Utah, and other exciting places.

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T

he group were like the guys I had grown up with. What an interesting mix. Jim Breau

had been a priest who left the order to get married and then got divorced. Jim always brought other priests, who I thoroughly enjoyed. I often roomed with Paul McAntee, pastor of a large Catholic church in Watertown. Paul was a pure and gentle man who really did read the Bible before going to sleep. I so admired him.A large segment of the group was from Brockton, MA. They were of Jewish heritage and so much like my old, Jamaica Plain Irish buddies because Brockton was a working class place also. It proves that the type of area you grew up in has every bit as strong an influence on your values as does ethnic or religious backgrounds. I still get together with Teddy Belastock and Bob Sims.

The

humor and the caring they ooze is so familiar. They make you feel very close to them because you are.

Each trip was a thousand laughs.

Of course Kelley was the highlight, always up, always talking, always funny, always brave, always getting us involved in something unusual.

T

Bubba leaving the hospital

his above picture is Kelley leaving the hospital in Vail. He had severe pains in his chest

on the flight out, which he attributed to some sort of ski injury. The hospital diagnosis was a staph infection, a most serious condition that many people die from.

However gutsy Kelley was not going to have this get him down. In the picture, Teddy is playing the trumpet, and the rest of us are saluting him with crossed ski poles, anything for a laugh.

Bubba was sent home with a computerized drug-supply device embedded into his heart, which would remain there for three more months of complete bed rest. He hid his affliction well. As in the picture, Bubba would not look like someone headed home to a very uncertain future.

B

ubba also had serious cancer at this time. From the cancer’s cruel onset, he lived

twelve, courageous years, stopping skiing and ending his career as a trial lawyer only a couple of months before he died. I do not know how many chemotherapy groups he outlasted, bringing cheer to all he met at Mass General. Newcomers thought at first he was not one of the patients in the chemotherapy waiting area. Most first assumed he was a salesman waiting to see a doctor because Chapter Seven ~ Retirement

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he was so cheery and dressed in lawyer clothes. He hugged the women at each greeting and called them his lovely “wiffle ladies.” After one chemo group’s final session, he took them all out to lunch.

I experienced a number of overnights at Bubba’s condo in the Waterville Valley ski area.

One morning, Sims and I had gotten into the car, but Bubba kept us waiting. I said to Bob Sims, “What the hell is he doing now?” Sims replied, “Oh, he dry heaves every morning from the 23 pills he takes.” Just then Bubba jumped in the car shouting an energetic “Let’s go!”

A

nother hero story attached to this group is that of Mike Williams. Mike became an

amputee just below the knee from a hospital error after a bicycle accident riding with Kelley. Well, didn’t we all take advantage of his handicap. At Waterville we parked in the handicap area right next to the slopes and at Steamboat in Colorado all six of us would walk right by hundreds in the gondola line first with Kelley shouting, “Make way for an amputee!” We were the first skiers up the mountain each morning. Mike would ski the steepest slopes with his nose just inches off the ski. He never backed off a difficult trail or wore a hat.

I’ll never forget a incident at Waterville. Each morning, Mike would put on his prosthetic leg for general walking, which he slid on with a silk stocking. God, I would hate to have to do that every day, it was so time consuming. However, when he went skiing, he screwed a peg leg in so he could more easily take it off just before getting on a lift. The peg helped him get to the lift, but if he left it on while skiing it would drag in the snow and interfere with turns. As we approached the ski lift one morning, Mike was by my side as he unscrewed the peg. I handed it to the young, college girl helping people get on the lift saying, “Miss, would you hold Mike’s leg please?” I thought she was going to pass out.

Adding more fun to winters for me was that Wolfeboro had some great cross-country trails, plus the new rink was available mornings for public skating. For at least the first ten years of retirement, I was enjoying winter even more than summer. I even coached Pee Wee hockey.

E

ventually ran out on my involvement with winter sports. Elaine stopped skiing for good

reasons, plus there were years when Mother Nature rebuffed winter sports. I discovered that long stretches of gloomy weather can get you down. Some years I got a small glimpse of what Lynn goes through. I found that just a small sampling of depression is very painful.

Although winters in Wolfeboro have lost some their allure, summers are special. As the last ten years of life in Wolfeboro have become less athletic, our relationships with friends and family have become all the more important. The comfort of lots of good friends has made quite a Chapter Seven ~ Retirement

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172

difference. Elaine has her golf buddies who are not your typical ladies golf group. They love to gamble and have cocktails, and they place fun, not competition, highest on the agenda.

T

here were five years when golf friend Ethel Cote and her husband Claude invited us

down to their winter place in South Carolina low country for a very special tournament. They live on an idyllic golf--oriented Island called Callawasie. This very special place has carefully preserved those unique hundred-year old live oak trees native to the area. The memories of the Cote’s generosity and our mutual enjoyment will never leave us.

Golfing pals Claude and Ethel Cote at Callawasie

Friend Alice Rose, the ultimate organizer, put together small groups for wine barge trips which spawned relationships with folks like Doug and Lois McLean who became weekly “out to dinner” company along with the Arruda’s with whom we have long felt were part of our family. I discovered that signing up for trips is the best way to find socially compatible company. You get to experience people in a unique way when traveling together.

M

y golf and tennis experience has brought me other relationships that are equally en-

during. Gene Denu has organized our Wednesday golf these past ten years. Gene deserves a medal for keeping a diverse group of guys together. More importantly he has kept the objective of fun the priority. We have fun every single round and our socials are even better. Only my hockey group in Needham equaled this value of enjoying competition but never at the expense of fun.

Tennis and golf also led me to folks like the Lees and Weigels. These families exude genuine caring. They summer in a family compound on the lake that has a tennis court. It is a magic moment when I find myself driving my boat there on a summer morning for a tennis match saying to myself during the entire five-mile trip, “There is no one in the entire world better off than me right now.” I am, indeed, lucky.

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The Weigel and Lee parties are pretty special as they feature music and story like I remember in Irish Boston. Never ever are their parties boring. Our tennis buddy Bill Heske’s pianoplaying at these parties is right out of the movies. Bill’s piano skills give you a magical feeling.

O

n Alice Rose’s first wine barge trip in 2002, I met a very special person who reminded

me of Tom O’Leary who gave me the best day of my life in Ireland back in 1986. Eamon Dolan is originally from the old sod and lives up to the Irish tradition of belly laughs spiliing from a beaming red face and a generous heart. Eamon and I have laughed long on two bus trips to Prince Edward Island as well as at numerous parties. I never tire of Eamon who lets me relive those memories, which return me to my youth.

W

e discovered Florida in 1999 when another good tennis friend, Bill Foote, a Wolfeboro

native, told me about Marco Island on the west coast of Florida. Within days of arriving in Marco Island, I dropped the notion that Florida is for sissies. Walking that endless and expansive beach each morning made me forget the Colorado ski powder, something I had previously thought impossible.

We rented for a few years in Marco, and then followed Bill and Mary Foote to Naples. Our move to Naples coincided with Lynn and Barbara’s move there. One December night, I got a call from Barbara. She was usually the spokesperson for the girls’ traveling needs. The request was familiar. “Dad we are moving again and could use help with first month, last month, and security.”

This is a request that had been seared into my memory from prior experience, and it got a reaction.

I put down the phone and said “Lainsey, that is the last time I ever want to hear that phrase!”

How pompous and how ridiculous of me! However, in my frustration over the girls’ frequent moves, I ended up buying, over the phone, a four-bedroom, three-full-bath condo on Trophy Drive in Naples.

Lynn and Barbara lived there for three years. More importantly, the condo has been so enjoyable for Elaine and me in the winters. I now love Florida and the constant sunshine it affords. I feel great there every day. If it were not for our family living in Wolfeboro, we might entertain the idea of living in Florida all year.

A

lthough our first experience with a family dog back on Moss Hill Road didn’t turn out

so well, I have since enjoyed having Golden Retrievers. Bob purchased the first one, Spencer, when he first came to Wolfeboro to start a new career as a real estate salesman and heating contractor. Bob adopted the typical up country look, a pickup truck with a dog in the front seat. A little Chapter Seven ~ Retirement

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known fact is that Spencer Hughes Real Estate was named after a dog. In later years, people who asked for Mr. Spencer exposed themselves as new clients. Spencer died young as many Golden’s do. His replacement, Graham, is equally loveable and I walk him daily just as I did Spencer. Having the time to commune with these non- judgmental, loving animals is a reason in itself to retire.

In spite of all the joys of retirement, it is really a strange feeling to realize that I will no longer make money by working at a job or doing a project. What I have I have.

I sometimes question if I will outlive it. I do not obsess over this question, but still have to keep it in mind. My dad died at 48, but all of his siblings lived into their late-eighties and mid-nineties. This makes planning for having enough cash until I die a challenge. If there is any money left the kids can split it up, but I have no plan to assure any largesse for them because Elaine and I feel we have done our share

Graham and me

to equip them for their own financial independence.

A

s I complete this story my life continues to be lucky. I play tennis, I play golf, I write,

I enjoy digital photography, and most of all I enjoy the love and purpose of my life - Elaine. In addition, I have strong relationships with Bob and Jodi, their kids Dana and Jen, plus our daughters Lynn and Barbara, and my sister, Lois.

I am so happy to have lived long enough to experience my grandchildren. I realize that grandparents often overrate their grand children, but there is plenty of evidence to conclude thatmine are far above average. I get goose bumps being involved in their accomplishments. Their accomplishments are a book unto itself about unselfish loving attitudes, school marks, teacher’s comments, sports accomplishments, and most of all, a great sense of humor. Wahoo!

There are a few things out of my control. Bob and Jodi have decided on divorce. Elaine and I accept this but do not understand the basis. Dwelling on that type of judgment does not interest Elaine or me. Obviously, Bob is our son and will always be family. Jodi’s position is more unclear legally, but not emotionally. Jodi will always be our daughter and our pal.

Now we must sometimes share Bob and Jodi separately,

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Jodi and me

Jodi and Jen

Bob and Dana

That is another reason that living full time in Naples, Florida will not work. Jodi breathes life into my life without placing any responsibility on me. Bob and I stay as close as ever. Few father-son relationships are as solid as ours, and Dana and Bob are developing a similar relationship.

Dana and Jen are blends of their parents, but not clones.

I hope that I can enjoy at least five more years (until 2012) having an effect on my grandkids’ lives. Elaine and I are so grateful to be observing their teen years. I cannot imagine where these kids will take us in both spirit and in body. It’s going to be exciting.

L

ynn and Barbara’s career plans remain a little unsettled. Both have chosen music,

the arts, and personal entrepreneurialism as opposed to more corporate opportunities. Both have tried to make a business out of music, but that challenge is very difficult to meet. In my era a popular expression was “You’re a heck of a piano player, but don’t forget to keep your day job.”

This was not a reflection of an individual’s talent but the stark reality that the arts are a difficult career choice if you plan to use the income from it to support yourself.

My hope for both girls is they will let go of a tendency to look for that one, big career opportunity. This type of expectation is in conflict with my long-held

Barbara and Lynn

assumption that “It’s not who you know, but what you know” Bob also seems to lean towards the who you know tendency. Maybe most young are like that now. In my era, developing what you knew in order to take advantage of who you knew was where we assumed success was at. The

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expression “The harder I work, the luckier I get” worked out well for me as well as folks like Warren Buffet.

H

owever, I must temper the above advice

with a caution to avoid workaholic tendencies. It is easy to get addicted to work, I was. When the daily “to do” list replaces compassion and curiosity, you stop thinking and just react. I did that at times, and I don’t recommend it.

Our Naples Condo

Elaine and I have really missed Lynn and Barbara since they moved to Sedona. Naples was not meeting their goals, and we understand that, but their liveliness is missed. Nobody roots for their success and happiness more than I do. Some adventures the girls have been involved in have made me older, but many have made me feel younger. I have always wished for the opportunity to work closely with them, but no natural situation has ever arisen. Their interests have been so different than mine including where they have chosen to live.

My sister Lois remains in good health. Living in Sugar Hill keeps her happy and close to us.

She deserves some happy times because she had eight or more tough years with Al’s Alzheimer decease. So far I have not detected this genetic problem in the Hughes family. I hope it stays away.

Trying to live a long and less complicated life is going very well. Elaine and I now have a comfortable, carefree condo in both beautiful Wolfeboro as well as beautiful Naples, plus we have continually narrowed our excess stuff so cleaning up after The Shadford - Merchant family; Al and Lois, centersdfs

us should not be a burden.

A

s I wind down this final chapter I hope the reader will accept my perspective that this

is a story about my life and not an account of family history. There are lots of relationships and events that have not been covered. I can think specifically of the Shadfords and Merchants, with whom I spent so many family hours. I have felt so proud to be part of such a loving group. Susan and Stephen and Mike and Carol and Kerry and Jill and Julie and Kris are pretty special people.

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Our relationships with the Caldeira family are in a similar category. How lucky Elaine and I have been to be a part of these lives and to feel their love, respect, and especially their willingness to share tribulations. Greg, who lived with us for a while working at Hughes Oil, Lisa and her husband Dan, and sweet Christine feel like my own kids.

The Caldeira family

It’s time to wrap up this effort, which is already two years old. It is so tempting to sum up but that might spoil what I have written. I am so pleased to have been in good mental and physical health while writing this “Lucky for Life” memoir. I hope my words have been loyal to the promises made in the introduction and you agree with the central point. I have felt “Lucky” for as long as I can remember. I never thought I was owed anything or that I did everything myself. I feel the opposite. I’m the one who owes so much to so many.

M

ay God bless all of you who have enabled this “lucky” feeling to be so prominent for

me! Since I am completing this book just a week before Christmas the above point is driven home forcefully as I read card after card; some relationships date back more than sixty years. Tears flow down my cheeks as memories comes flooding back. The total of these memories is the reason for me to feel both lucky and loved.

However, my marriage to Elaine dominates all reasons to feel so lucky for so long.

FINIS

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Epilogue

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I

t is now five years later, 2012. Did my long time feeling of being lucky continue?

Well; the year after 2007 started lucky and almost ended the same. Barrack Obama became president in November 2008 and brought people like me the hope that the arrogance of the Georg W. Bush years was behind us. Perhaps the elder Bush’s vision of a kinder, gentler society would now prevail. However, months before Obama was even inaugurated, the nation’s financial system almost collapsed. Before he could organize a cabinet, Obama had to deal with the biggest financial crisis since the 1932 depression.

I give him high marks because, most of his bold and timely TARP plan worked. Most has been paid back. However, with so many having to pay off so much debt, recovery continues to creep along six years later in 2013. By comparison, the milder recession of 1990 took eight years for a full recovery.

I was as much to blame as anyone. I started the Depot Square Condominium project on high interest borrowed money plus the increase in value of the Naples condo plus margin borrowing on stocks. Others contributed to our debt crisis by taking home mortgages they could not afford, plus it became common practice to pay interest only on whopping credit card debt. The buy now pay later party was great until the bubble burst. Reality was then both swift and harsh.

W

hile Elaine and I were in Florida, I had financial wor-

ries for the first time in my life. As the stock market slid, I received margin calls from Fidelity. It’s not fun to have to prop up what you had borrowed by selling stocks for half what their value was a month prior. I thought a penalty like that was for stock market gamblers, not me. I always thought of myself as financially moderate.

We left Naples FL. that year in the usual May time period, but minus the deed to that lovely new condo and a golf membership, plus we were facing a healthy depletion of all of our stock values. Adding to my financial slide was helping Bob’s company,

Prudential Spencer Hughes

Prudential Spencer Hughes, weather the off the cliff reduction in sales of properties. For Bob’s agents, slow sales meant reduced income. For him, as the broker supplying the overhead, it meant deep losses. His overhead stayed about the same while commission income plummeted.

After the initial shock of the 2008 nationwide meltdown, the stock market started to rise, Epilogue

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180

but the financial woes of the Depot Square Condominium project continued. I experienced a steady drain from taxes and interest payments on unsold units. That end is almost in sight. The original decision to build Depot on a blighted piece of land in the middle of town was, once again, thinking with my heart instead of my head. It’s probably why a local bank would not finance me.

Recently our town planner stated that Depot has been the catalyst for wide spread improvements in nearby properties over the past five years. It’s nice to imagine heavenly acclaim for my contribution to the future of Wolfeboro, but retaining a bigger cushion of money while I’m alive, would have been smarter. I learned a big lesson about housing development. Once you put the first shovel in the ground, there is no turning back. Once you start, only God knows where you will end up.

Wolfeboro Town Hall

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nother of my follies was to think I could establish a new

career to put some money back into the leaking financial bucket. I signed up for classes to pass the real estate exam. It was not difficult, but it was comprehensive, lots of reading and remembering.

Well I passed with high marks, but three or four years later, my sales record is not good, partly because of the times and partly because I did not want to interfere with existing agents. Now my eyesight, as well as my hearing, limits me to occasionally helping daughter-in-law Jodi.

During this period, I tried old Hughes Oil ideas to help Prudential Spencer Hughes get a bigger slice of a smaller market. I worked on better quality content for the web site plus a direct mailing program. It was fun for a while, but like my marketing differences with Dick Horan and others, Bob’s priorities were not the same as mine. Still, we remain as close as Dick and I always have. The devil may not always be in the details as I have long assumed.

People skills are equally important.

A couple of more volunteer involvements came my way. A town hall renovation I thought was very important and fit my experience, plus a Libby Museum 100th birthday. A similar result occurred. I made some good contributions, and then backed out responsibly. Heart health was more important to me. I experienced frustration trying to collaborate with people I liked, but who did not share my decision making process. Some were satisfied with, what I term, a consensus of the uninformed. For decisions that are long lasting, I disagree with that type of consensus. Decisions Libby Museum Epilogue

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that chart the future are worth the effort of sufficient research and organization.

I was tempted to provide examples, but like the Airport issue in 1995, they are stories in themselves. My respected friend, Tom Bigelow, once told me something that puzzled me. “Don, you are ahead of your time”. I finally figured that statement out. Most new community ideas emanate first from places like New York and then spread. This is because big cities are the first ones affected by a need for change. My seventies Boston experience, with some very bright people, had enhanced my visioning capabilities. As a result, I was impatient with those who resisted change.

A

possible game changer for remaining

lucky came in January 2012. Elaine almost died.

After losing her energy, she was diagnosed with a stomach ulcer and successfully treated. However, within days she relapsed into much more serious weakness and was readmitted to our local

Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital

hospital. The diagnosis was an aneurysm (bubble) on her aorta near her heart. Very scary stuff.

The miracles of modern team medicine saved her. Local Huggins Hospital correctly diagnosed the problem and immediately sent her by ambulance to Catholic Medical Center in Manchester who further defined the type of operation needed. They then sent her by helicopter to Dartmouth Hitchcock in Hanover NH where a vascular team was waiting to put a sleeve inside her aorta. We did not know until a return visit, some five months later, that the bubble on the aorta had started leaking badly on the helicopter and somehow her body held it together. A burst aorta would have been fatal.

E

laine spent seven weeks in the intensive care unit at Dartmouth on a ventilator plus

all sorts of other tubes and machines. She then spent five weeks in a rehab hospital getting weaned off the ventilator that had been installed in her throat. After that, it was three weeks in a less intensive care facility to gain enough strength to come home.

An interesting incident occurred as Elaine was being elaborately bundled for the emergency helicopter ride. With a big medical team surrounding her and all that equipment being put in place, she was asked a final. “Any questions?” Her answer changed an intense scene to laughter and explains Elaine’s great attitude. Her reply was; “Will I be able to watch the Super Bowl?”

Even though this adventure took her back down to her wedding weight, she climbed back to her normal activities and mentally her old self. Although she was awake much of the seven Epilogue

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182

weeks in intensive care, she did not remember one thing. On a return trip three months after her discharge, she saw Dartmouth Hitchcock for the first time. God is good.

Bob and Lynn had set up a web site account for Elaine on a non-profit site called Caringbridge.org. The kids took turns writing updates on Elaine’s condition and the response was amazing.

For the twelve week period, there were over 4,000 inquiries and 450 e-mails of encouragement sent. If I never understood the power of prayer, I do now.

I

lived at niece Susan Shadford’s home near the hospital and had the experience of a life-

time observing modern medicine at work in the most dramatic architecture I have ever witnessed.

These stark white structures on a wooded hillside are so inviting, the sun pours in everywhere.

Each day, after lunch, and a one mile walk around this magnificent campus, I dozed in the sunlit atrium corridor and watched the medical world pass ass by. Some were medical professionals, some were caregivers and mixed in were the patients; all ages, races and genders, identified only by their infirmities.

I found this scene emotional and reflective. I thought about all the years of training required of the professionals, the generosity of the folks who created this facility, and then how much pain folks were experiencing fighting to get well. When I reflected on this incredible devotion and compared it to the national political discussion about healthcare, I realized how shallow our politics had become. In Sunday School I was taught that healing the sick was a basic life command. I do not recall being told, “only if it requires little financial sacrifice or does not offend your political ideology.”

O

n the bright side, the greatest lift to my spirits theses

last five years came from grandkids Dana and Jenn. Both have been summa cum laude students in high school and both excelled in sports. Their accomplishments seem almost too good to be true.

Reading the narrative of their school reports brings a tear to my eye while watching them play sports gives me tingles. I can take no credit for their success, but it sure is great to read the local paper Dana and Jen

and say to myself “yeah that’s my grandkid”

So now I really am retired from my old job; which was tying to make some sort of meaningful contribution to the world each day. Reading large print books is now what keeps my mind in gear.

Writing an occasional letter to the local paper stirs my soul. As the Republican Party agenda becomes even more selfish and less tolerant, I comment on issues like gun control, and health care.

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T

hankfully Elaine and I are in tune, so we enjoy thoughtful discussions. As for physical

fitness, walking Bob’s golden retriever Wilson is now my big program.

At eighty two, I have now logged five more years of being lucky enough to still be myself, and more importantly, five more years of enjoying Elaine. Don’t you think that’s being pretty lucky!

Lucky For Life

Lucky For Life