In June of 1865, John Doherty and Margaret Hart, neighbors in a small village in County Cork, Ireland, sailed with a group of friends and acquaintances for a new life in the United States. Their odyssey led them to Andover, Massachusetts, where John had relatives and Margaret joined her two sisters Hannah and Ellen, who had preceded her and were working as domestics at the Mansion House, which was located in the area of the present Phillips Academy campus.
According to family history, John, an accomplished landscaper and arborist, secured work trimming shrubbery for a lady who lived in a fine home on Main Street near the academy--this good fortune on his first full day after his arrival in Andover. His employer was so pleased with both his work and his diligence that she recommended him to several of her friends and John was self-supporting in record time. So well did he do that within a relatively short time he was able to take a bride. He and Margaret were married in St. Augustine's Church later that year.
John and Margaret had five children: Jennie, William (my father and the only one to marry), John, Mary, and Martin. While returning home from work in North Andover, where he worked on one of the large estates, John stepped off the train at the Andover station into the path of a train coming in from Boston. He was dead on arrival at the General Hospital in Lawrence. The incoming train crew had failed to stop before entering the station, where the train in the next track was discharging passengers directly into its path. Today, the widow would receive an enormous settlement. It is my understanding that my grandmother received nothing. That funeral procession---in September of 1887 --- was either the last to approach St. Augustine's Cemetery from a path through the woods from Central Street at a point about opposite Phillips Street, or it was the first to use the new route, Lupine Road. I have heard the story many times, but this book is not intended to be a documentary, and this is one of many facts or fancies that remains a bit fuzzy in my memory.
A few months later, Margaret and her five children moved to a large house with some land around it at 19 Harding Street, just above the railroad tracks. About twelve years later, my father William built a house on a portion of that lot, to the east, or away from the tracks, and it was to this house that he moved with his bride, Josephine Powers, my mother, in June of 1899.
Mary Josephine Powers, or Josie as she was called by friends and family, was a store clerk and department head in Haverhill's Simons & Adams department store. She was the oldest of three sisters. The others were Marguerite, who worked all of her life for the Haverhill Gazette, the local newspaper. Marguerite was the head bookkeeper, the bill collector, and just about whatever else she decided she wanted to be. To the end of her working days she remained one of the most colorful and best known personalities in the city of Haverhill. She was also my godmother. The youngest sister, Winifred, was married to Leroy Adams, who operated a specialty stationery business in Holyoke. He sold stationery to most of the prep schools and colleges in the Northeast and he also did a fantastic business with the Navy Department fleet admirals.
Roy and Winifred had two sons: Robert died in infancy and John Quincy Adams was my only first cousin. "John Q" as we called him, went to the Taft School, Yale, and Princeton Law School and served in the Navy in World War II. He is now retired and living in Florida.
Among some of my mother's better known relatives were "Bodger" Carroll, who coached many undefeated football teams at St. James High School in Haverhill and later at Salem High; Bernard Donahue, city clerk in Haverhill for many years; and Dr. Frank H. Lahey, founder of the Lahey Clinic, now located in Burlington. I go there twice a year for a routine physical check-up but have yet to receive the "Family Discount"!
My father was a carpenter by trade. He learned his skills working for Hardy & Cole, a construction company in Andover in the late 1800s. His first construction job as a foreman was the house at 15 Chestnut Street, built for William H. Higgins and more recently occupied by his son Bill, my brother, and his wife Muriel. I recall that the architect for this house was Perley Gilbert, a good friend of my father. Perley had attended Phillips Academy, where he played end on the football team. The other end on that team---although reputed to be inferior in talent---was a lad named Shevlin, who was a four-time Walter Camp All American at Yale. Perley Gilbert went on to train for architecture at M.I.T., where there was no time for such foolishness as football.
Incidentally, in those days, there were only a handful of colleges with top grade football teams. Most of the glamour and ability resided at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Walter Camp, a Yale alumnus, picked the All American teams for nearly forty years, and until the 1920s the Big Three Ivy Leaguers dominated the picks.
Dad built the house at 21 Harding Street into which my mother moved as a bride and where we were all born and reared. It must have been quite a culture shock for my mother to move next door to all of her in-laws. She came from the relatively progressive and commercialized city of Haverhill into the small, rural, Yankee, and rather intolerant town of Andover. I'll deal with the Yankeeness and the intolerance later in this volume.
In any event, "Ma," or "Da" as she was called by her grandchildren, survived in fine fashion. She was a wonderful mother-the best ever. And she was extremely involved in her community: a bookkeeper for her husband's business, a charter member of the Andover League of Women Voters, a charter member of the Bon Secours Hospital Auxiliary, a charter member of the Catholic Daughters of America, and very active in many other public, religious, and social functions during her sixty-four years in Andover.
From the time that women were first allowed to vote, 1920, until about two years before her death, when a second broken hip slowed her a bit, she never missed a town meeting and never failed to vote in a primary or election. In 1960 at what would prove to be her last town meeting, Stafford Lindsay offered a resolution, memorializing her attendance record and the entire assembly gave her a standing ovation. On the way home she allowed as how it was nice to be recognized, but she was only performing her civic duty, no big deal. Oh, do we need a few hundred people like her now!
My parents were never hard to live with in the sense that there was never any corporal punishment meted out. I do not remember ever being slapped or spanked by either parent. They worked hard. They taught by example. They always went to Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation. They didn't send us and then skip it themselves. A lot was expected of us children. We were expected to do well in school. Neither parent was an intellectual giant, but they expected their offspring to follow the college preparatory course of study in high school. They sent us to the parochial school as soon as it was opened in town. We all just seemed to realize that a "look" from my father was all the discipline that was needed---a quiet threat that did not have to be vocalized.
My brother John was the first of my generation. Born May 5, 1900, he was the first baby to be baptized in new St. Augustine's Church. He was always the "big brother" in the truest sense of the term-always there to help, advise, encourage, and on rare occasions, to gently admonish. Because John was fifteen years my senior, it was not until I had reached my late teens or early twenties that I really began to appreciate him. He died just before Christmas in 1985, less than a year after the death of his wife Peg, to whose care he had devoted his entire energies during the last fifteen years of her illness. As my story of Andover unfolds, John will appear in these pages from time to time.
My sister Winifred was born in 1902 and died at the age of three in the spring of 1905.
Needless to say, my only knowledge of her brief life span has come from John and my parents.
Brother Bill was born in September 1905, a few months after Winifred's death. Because of his impact on the public and business life of the town of Andover for a half century, I will not dwell on his accomplishments at this time. It was Bill who really should have written this book. He experienced all the historic events; he reported them as a reporter for the Lawrence Eagle and Tribune (two papers, morning and evening, under the same ownership) and he served on the school board during its most expansive years. Just when I had persuaded him to dictate some of his experiences into a tape recorder, he was cut down by a heart attack. And although he survived for another two and a half years, he never regained the strength to tackle the project.
Margaret, or Marbie as she was called within the family, was born in 1908 and was always a rather "unknown" in Andover. She went to Emmanuel College in Boston and worked about thirty years at Harvard Medical School. She thus had very little contact in town and all her friends and associates were in the Boston area. To this day, many people in town, even those fairly close to the family, are amazed to learn that the four Doherty brothers have a real live sister. Margaret married Dr. Richard Chambers of England, a noted neurologist, who is on the staff at the Jefferson Medical Center in Philadelphia. His reputation in his field has caused him to be widely sought after for prestigious medical seminars and conferences throughout the world. Marbie may not be recognized by many on Main Street in Andover, but she and her husband are much traveled and enjoy a host of friends in many countries.
My brother Joe was born in July 1910. He attended St. Augustine's School, graduated from Punchard High and Boston College, received his M.A. in education from Harvard and had completed most of his requirements for his Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut when he came back to Andover to join Bill and me in the operation of the realty agency. Joe had taught at Punchard before the war and was assistant coach of football and baseball as well as faculty manager of athletics. In those days there was no remuneration for this extra work. During the war, Joe served in the Department of Training in the 1st Naval District, and retired, I think, with the rank of commander. After the war, he served in school administration in Connecticut---the last five years as superintendent in East Hampton. Joe retired from our organization in about 1978 and now resides in Florida.
In the summer of 1915, most of Europe was ablaze with war and President Wilson had so far been successful in keeping us out of the conflict. Andover was a small, sleepy, agricultural town of about 7,000 souls and perhaps almost as many cattle. It was into this quiet scene, on September 16, the hottest day of the year, that I was born midmorning in the house at 21 Harding Street. The schools in town closed that day at noon. Could there have been any connection between the two events? Nevertheless, both are well documented in the town records.
My early recollections are a bit hazy. My father owned a horse (most tradesmen in those days had a horse and wagon just as most of their present-day counterparts have a pick-up truck). My father's mother died when I was about eighteen months old---I have no recollection of her. All my other grandparents had died many years earlier. Grandmother Doherty died on Good Friday, April 6, 1917, the day that Congress, called into "extraordinary session" by President Wilson, issued a declaration of war. She was buried on Easter Monday amid an unseasonal storm that left a foot of snow on the countryside.
Funeral processions in those days consisted of horses and hacks, and the drivers needed a great deal of skill to keep the horses under control and the wagons from overturning.
At our house next door, my mother was not able to go to the funeral because I had contracted pneumonia. There were no wonder drugs in those days and the only hope for my survival was prayer. In fact, Dr. Walker had given up on me, and his nurse, Miss Reed, came "only to be with the mother."
Charlie Keefe, the funeral director and a cousin of my father, came back to the house, fully expecting to take me out to join my grandmother. Well, I was still breathing, although not much more, so he went back to Lawrence to be on call.
Shortly after noon, a young priest from St. Augustine's, Father Daniel Fogarty, came to the house. Remarkably, he was one of four brothers who were priests. He knelt at the foot of my crib and spent almost three hours in silent prayerand at about 4:00 o'clock I began to stir and show signs of rallying. Call it what you will, I truly believe that my recovery from the brink of death at that point was a miracle---that God had rescued me for a purpose. Fr. Fogarty died a year later in the dread 1918 influenza epidemic. I never got the chance to know him, but I say a prayer for him and all his Augustinian brothers quite often. His brother, Fr. Thomas Fogarty, served in Andover both as a curate in the 1920s and as a pastor from 1944-1950. The two other brothers celebrated their first public Masses in St. Augustine's in the mid-1920s and I served as an altar boy on that occasion.
That event, at the start of my life, has had a progressively profound impact on me. In my later years I have felt compelled to get out to daily Mass on cold or stormy mornings, even to attend more than one Mass on many days. In short, because someone else got down on his knees for me, the least I can do is get down on my knees to thank God that I am able to get down on my knees to thank God.
As you read that last sentence, it may seem as though the typesetter repeated a line, but if you read it carefully again, I think that you will get my meaning.
My earliest, clear recollection is of Armistice Day, November 11, 1918. Word had been flashed by wire that the war would end with the signing of the armistice at the appointed time. My Aunt Mary and Uncle Martin took me up to the head of High Street at Elm Square to see the hastily called observance, on the steps of the Memorial Hall Library. I was three years and two months old at the time, and people have said to me that I could not have remembered it, that I was too young. They insist I must have been told about it, and that I repeated it and now believe that it is really my own recollection.
My answer is that I remember that the men on the steps removed their hats at one point, perhaps while a minister gave an invocation. At any rate, that image stuck in my mind. I remember nothing else about it and I don't recall ever discussing it with Mary or Martin.
My next recollection is of standing on the lawn in front of St. Augustine's School in the early summer with many other children, waving a small American flag, as the returning soldiers strode up School Street from the railroad station, turned left onto Central Street, and marched up to the square. It must have been the Andover boys who had served in the Battery from Lawrence in the 26th Division, because there were a lot of them---or so it seemed. Here again, I have in mind a particularly vivid image. I remember nothing more of the parade, but after all the rest of the children left, while Mary Doherty (no relation) and I waited for family members to call for us, Sr. Margaret Cecelia fed us homemade cookies and milk in the convent.
Later, in 1919, came the events that caused so much pain and sorrow in the community, the military funerals. The first of these, and perhaps the biggest, was for Michael Joseph Daly, brother of Jimmy, the founder and owner of Daly Drug in Lawrence, and son of a very well-known and respected family in town. In those days the flag-draped casket was carried on the artillery caisson drawn by four horses. All the veterans, turned out in full uniform, presented a very stirring sight. After the Daly funeral, a Carter boy from Barnard Street was buried, and several more followed in succeeding weeks.
Many of the young men who served in World War I from Andover entered service at the same time. They served in the 26th Division, with a Field Artillery unit mustered from the Lawrence Armory on Amesbury Street. They served together overseas, returned home together to Andover, and stayed here and figured prominently in the political and business life of the community.
As a contrast, in World War II, the boys were inducted in groups over a long period of time; they traveled to the reception center at Fort Devens, were processed, shipped out to different training stations, based on their IQs and basic aptitude scores; most never saw their fellow townsmen again until after the war was over.
In my own case, I left Fort Devens about May 1, 1942, and met only one Andover resident, except while home on furlough, until I was separated at Fort Devens in January, 1946. My duties included delivering a USO troop from Sebring, Florida, to the Air Transport Command base at Morrison Field in West Palm Beach. As I waited for my drivers to gas up and get a bite at the mess hall before heading back to Sebring, I was talking to my counterpart at the base the early stages of the show. Two of the young performers came off stage, surrounded me, and had me on stage with the help of my new "friend" for an audience participation act. I was no sooner off stage and collecting myself than a short, bald-headed GI came up and greeted me with, "Jim Doherty, I was up back but I was sure it was you!" Higus Asoian, high school classmate, football and baseball teammate, and a prince of a fellow, was the only "Andover Boy" I met during almost four years in the service. Higus died about a year ago, and as I write this, I am reminded of all the fun we had back in our high school days. "Gus" was one of those fellows you read about---Eddy Stanky/Marty Barrett types---who couldn't hit, run, carry the football, tackle, punt, or pass, but he sure could beat you. He was a team player who was genuinely appreciated by his teammates.
My real intent here was to point out the difference between the wars. In the first war, most of the boys returned home, settled, married, prospered, died, and were buried here. In World War II they traveled farther, saw more, met many people, realized opportunities, grasped them, settled down, and never returned. This has all led to a more nomadic life-style. Today, as a native-born who has spent a lifetime here in Andover, I am a bit of an oddity, a member of a vanishing race.
In a sense, this is why I sit down to write this memoir. There are relatively few people left in town who remember it as it was fifty years ago and even fewer who can still remember the large elm tree---and yes, the circular bench that went around the tree---at the north end of Elm Square, near where you turn right to go down North Main Street. As I sit here and scribble these lines and ramble on, I am reminded that I have lived through a most interesting time of change in Andover. At the end of World War I, this was a small agricultural town, a town of 32 square miles, diminished in size in the previous 75 years by the cutback of some of its northern border through the establishment of the industrial complex that became the city of Lawrence and the division of the North and South Parishes, which became North Andover and Andover.
Let me say here, parenthetically, that I wish that the breakup of the "Andovers" had never occurred. We here in the South Parish even to this day have a lot in common with our friends and neighbors in the old North Parish. To mention any consideration of re-alignment would, I am sure, be met with swift opposition, but we have so much in common, we really should be talking. I'm sure I won't live to see even the serious dialogue, but I predict its time is almost here.
But to get back to the make-up of Andover as I first remember it, there were about fifty herds of milking cows throughout the town. Several of the farmers had their own delivery routes, while most sold the milk to the Hood or Glennie dairy or to one of the smaller retail outlets. On our own Harding Street, one-half mile from the town center, Olaf Benson had two cows across the street from our house. My mother bought her milk for 10 cents a quart. It was neither certified nor pasteurized, but we all seemed to thrive on it. When Benson grew too old and had to dispose of his "herd," we "took" from David Scott, whose "farm" was on the same side of the street but on the other side of the railroad tracks. Mr. Scott also had two cows. It was a treat as well as an education to visit the barn occasionally where Mr. Scott milked the cows, same time every day. Both farmers had their cows serviced by the big, nasty bull at the Stevens farm at the corner of High and Haverhill Streets. I was much older before I figured out why and where that little calf came from each spring. That bull once chased my brothers and some of their berry-picking friends across the pastureland where the Andover-North Andover YMCA now stands. The boys all dived safely over the fence but left some of the berries behind.
Andover was also one of the chief providers to the Boston Market for fresh garden vegetables. Most of the farmers in those days owned a big truck that would be loaded up with fresh picked produce each day. The drivers would come downtown stop at Flanders Lunch for something to eat before heading for Boston. The strategy was to get into the city early, get a good spot in the truck line, sell the produce at a good price quickly, and get home in time to catch a short nap before starting the next day's work. Anyone who got into Boston early enough might even sleep in the truck for two or three hours.
Flanders Lunch later became Andover Lunch, operated by Greg and Steve Christie. Greg's daughter, Bessie, is Mrs. Charles Liponis of Andover Tractor Trailer School. Greg sold out to Don Lee from Littieton, N.H., who operated as Lee's Restaurant of Andover, Inc. The restaurant site was later turned into The Gift House by the Anderson family, then a shop called Mooselaneous, and now it is Andover Beauty Supply. (It seems that I am going to ramble on this way, and record a lot of downtown history and geography as I try to tie in other items.)
During the five or six years following the close of World War I came the development of a dream or vision of the president of the American Woolen Company. William M. Wood, the Portuguese immigrant boy whose accomplishments have been chronicled in the book Mills, Mansions and Mergers by the late Edward Reddy, professor at Merrimack College, set about to build in Andover a model, self-contained "Village." He was the soul of the giant company that had been assembled over a period of about twenty-five years. The main components of his textile empire were three mills in Lawrence: Washington, a relatively small one; the Ayer, with the famous tower and monumental clock; and the Wood, the largest worsted mill in the world.
With profits, it was said, made on the sale of cloth to outfit the military in the war, Wood set about to build the village about a quarter of a mile north of his home, situated on a rise of the hill on North Main Street. During the first half of the decade of the twenties, Frye Village as the area had been known, was agog with workmen and tradesmen of every type. Houses were moved to accommodate the location of streets. The town Poor Farm, now the Argyle Apartments on Burnham Road, was purchased from the town, and the farm, which had grown produce to feed the poor, homeless hoboes who came in off the railroads when the weather got cold, was cut up into streets----York, Carisbrooke, Argyle, and Arundel. The bed of the Shawsheen River was straightened and a new dam constructed. Two garages were also built, along with a drug store and ice cream parlor with an adjoining outdoor dance floor, which eventually became the corner wing of the home office of the Andover Companies. An indoor dance hall, the Crystal Ballroom, is now the headquarters for Bill DeLuca's auto sales, leasing, and rental empire. Further, there was a laundry on Haverhill Street, now part of the Woodworth-DeLuca Main Street complex. The Flatiron Building that dominates the square and sits between North Main and Poor Streets, housed a post office in the front and a meat and grocery market in the rear.
During all this time the giant Shawsheen Mill had been built, the Hardy Brush Factory, for the manufacture and supply of textile brushes---with a built-in market and the big general headquarters building situated between Balmoral and Haverhill Streets. It later was used as a boarding school for boys and it is now a residential condominium complex.
Meanwhile, the growing population in the area soon called for additional school facilities. The company made a gift of a parcel of land between Sherborne and Franklin Streets, on the side of the hill, in the shadow of a dangerous overhanging gravel bank, for a school.
In those days whatever was good for the American Woolen Company was good for everyone. This is not to imply that there was not a great deal of benefit, in the long run, for the town and its citizens, but to those of us who were of an impressionable age at that time, the stories of waste and political maneuvering would curl your hair. There were stories galore, such as the one about a load of brass plumbing under a low area in the lawn. An hour later a truckload of loam was dumped on top of it---and another---and eventually graded over.
Now this may be only a story, exaggerated many times over, but eyewitnesses and observers said it was merely an indication of what went on in those days.
In the early 1920s it was not customary for voters to be checked off the voting street list. Everyone voted. No one moved out of town and no one moved in. On Town Meeting Day, the second Monday afternoon in March, all Andover-resident employees of the American Woolen Company who could be spared were excused from work at noon. The company sent monitors to the meeting to check attendance---and also to observe the voting. If you attended and voted the right way your job was reasonably secure. If you went home, or attended but voted in opposition to the wishes of management, your job could be history.
This is how streets were built, high-rise mill buildings materialized, and the large, fertile town farm land was secured in return for a second-rate structure in Carmel Woods.
It was said that the only person whoever stood up to Billy Wood in all the Village was John Fleming, Sr. Fleming had three sons, John Jr., who converted the old Remick property on Maple Avenue to several apartments, now owned by Donald Richmond; Dr. William Fleming, a dentist in town for many years; the third son was, I believe, a plumber.
Billy Wood wanted to do something on the east side of the railroad tracks. I don't recall the exact problem, but it seems that a large tree on Fleming's property was in the path of progress. Wood made the mistake of sending someone else to inform Fleming of what was going to be done. That was the first mistake. The second was trying to buy him off with $500.00, a handsome sum in those days. So, Woods progress and development east of the tracks in the Haverhill Street area came to a slow death.
I do not want to leave the impression that everything at all levels was accomplished with money. Getting the wheels of government to move favorably, as it does now, took votes, and the master builder of Shawsheen Village had control of a block of votes that could elect a chairman of the board of selectmen. And the chairman, Frank Hardy, owner of Hardy Brush Factory, controlled the board. The other two members always deferred to him. (Incidentally, Frank Hardy was not related to or connected with Roy Hardy, a local product, who came along in the mid-1930s and was the point man for a completely new regime that ran all segments of the town for about twenty years.)
Life, I guess, was exciting in Andover during those glory days in the early 1920s. The mills and factories were busy. Any tradesman who wanted work could find it in the construction of the Village. The American Woolen Company had a fine soccer team that played in a national competition. There was lawn bowling in the little sunken area between the river and the parking area just north of the Spa (of late, the Andover Companies). There was outdoor dancing in the summer on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday at Balmoral Gardens.
Everything seemed to be peaches and cream until that fateful day when Billy Wood, Jr., driving a Stutz convertible and apparently racing friends in another car, failed to negotiate a curve on Route 28 in Reading, near the present entrance to Reading High School. Billy was killed instantly and one or two of the others died also.
The father never recovered from this blow. The son, albeit a bit of a playboy, was very smart and had a great rapport with the unions in the mills. He probably had the talent to take over the job of leadership from his father eventually. His home, built for him with such care, is now the Lanam Club, an elegant private facility since about 1957.
William Wood, Jr., was buried in West Parish Cemetery on a bright sunny afternoo---nsomehow I think it was a Sunday---and it seemed that most of the townspeople were at the graveside. I was present, aged about eight. As I reflect on things now, sixty-five years later, I feel that I attended and witnessed the end of a dream that day.
The loss was too great for the father. From that point, his drive and his will to go on diminished. It is true that he had another son, Cornelius, who died only a few years ago, and a daughter, who died many years ago. But William Jr. was the heir apparent, the Crown Prince, and the world seemed to have come to an end on that afternoon at "Deadman's Curve" on Route 28 in Reading.
Despondent over the death of his son, and beset by internal problems in the company, William M. Wood, the visionary, the dreamer, the master builder of the model village, captain of industry, and a man who certainly took care of his friends, took his own life in a wooded area off the highway in Florida, while his chauffeur waited in the car. This was the end of a golden era. Chaos and disaster followed.
Contending factions fought for control of the American Woolen Company. Work on the Village halted, the general offices were dismantled and returned to New York City. Funds that many directors and stockholders now claimed should have been spent on research, development, repair, and upgrading of machinery had been spent on the dream of the man who had, in his time, made all of them rich. They would never have questioned him when he was alive, but they were quick to condemn him for his folly as soon as he was gone.
As the twenties wound down and we passed in 1929 into the years of the Great Depression, perhaps we in Andover had already been prepared for hard times. The cotton mills left Lawrence and moved South, closer to the raw product and cheaper labor. The Smith & Dove Manufacturing Company, which embraced what is now known as Dundee Park, and many dwelling units in Abbott Village, like the thirteen duplex houses in Brechin Terrace, were sold to the Ludlow Manufacturing Company. And many families moved out of town leaving a void of three or four places in each classroom. I have often wondered what ever became of the likes of Fred McCarthy and Olive Harley. She was a cute blonde and I never really got to know her.
In any event things started to change in our town. We lost some construction in Shawsheen, but Phillips Academy picked up some of the slack when the school celebrated its Sesquicentennial (150 years) in 1928. That was a real gasser! President Calvin Coolidge arrived by train and I as a Boy Scout marched in the parade that accompanied the Chief Executive to the Academy campus, where he delivered an address from the steps of Samuel Phillips Hall.
That, of course, was a very important day. Brother Bill was covering the town of Andover at the time for the Lawrence Daily Eagle and the Evening Tribune (two separate editions). I remember helping him as he tried to coordinate the work of the photographer and at the same time get a running report of what the speakers said. There were no advance handouts to the press in those days and tape recorders were not even dreamed of. Reporters had to be able to write fast in their own private shorthand, then hurry up and type the copy, then get on the trolley car and deliver it to Lawrence.
The more lasting side of the 150th anniversary celebration was the announcement of a mammoth expansion program that would last for several years. The master plan included the construction of the Corcoran Chapel, a new Andover Inn to replace the old Phillips Inn, moving the stone Harriet Beecher Stowe house back down onto Bartlet Street opposite Wheeler Street, and building the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library, and many others. The projects provided some work locally, but the out-of-town large gifts usually brought in out-of-town contractors. However, it helped to ease the loss at Shawsheen and it was a case of the "hill" stepping in to replace the "mill" so that the "till" could survive.
I backed into that one, but let me explain. It used to be said that the town had three parts: the "hill," which contained Phillips and Abbott Academies, the "mill," which meant the manufacturing plants and all its employees, and the "till," or the Main Street business district. Be that as it may, nothing could stop the devastating effect on all three "Andovers" of the Great Depression that followed in the wake of the stock market crash in October 1929.
I had just graduated from St. Augustine's School. One of my classmates, John Burns, son of Attorney Joseph L. Burns, was already enrolled at Phillips Academy. About the time high school classes started in September, our pastor at St. Augustine's, Fr. Charles A. Branton, O.S.A., had convinced my mother that I should go up to the hill and take the entrance exams at Phillips (these were the make-up exams for those who had failed in June). Alter all, I had led my class, I was awarded the general excellence medal and I was supposed to be showcased---I guess. Well, I was excused from high school for a day to take the exam. I had already reported for football at Punchard High, and frankly I was more concerned about missing practice that day than I was about missing classes.
I took the exams in English and arithmetic and went home. I was not particularly interested in the outcome so I did not ask any questions. About three days later, with no word forthcoming, my mother went to Phillips and talked to Oswald Tower, the assistant headmaster. It seems that I had turned in the best arithmetic exam of the day and my English exam was what they would have expected from a sophomore, or second-year student.
The upshot of the discussion was that if my family came up with $375 the following morning, plus book expenses and some incidental fees, I would be accepted; otherwise, try again next year. Now at the time I had one brother in college, and my sister, who had graduated from college the previous June, still had not found a job. My father, a carpentering contractor all his life, was beginning to show signs of his hard life, so they might just as well have asked for a million dollars.
I have never regretted the fact that I was not able to attend Phillips Academy. I have, however, often wondered what life would have held in store for me. Would I have ended up in the same business in my home town that I have always loved? Perhaps, but I will never know. My friend John Burns distinguished himself in academics at Phillips and later at Harvard University. He became a writer (we should have gotten together!), and penned a somewhat controversial book called The Gallery about his observations in the service in World War II. John died shortly after the war, before he could complete his research and writing on the life of St. Francis of Assisi. His sister Cathleen, Mrs. Elmer, lives in the Rose Cottage opposite St. Augustine's School at the corner of Central and Chestnut Streets. A brother, Tom, is a very competent and successful trial lawyer in Boston. I have lost track of the rest of the Burns family.
My eight years at St. Augustine's were happy and rewarding. I was at or near the top of my class from about the fourth grade on. The entire faculty was composed of Notre Dame nuns complete with habit and beads and signal. That signal was used as a near-lethal weapon on the knuckles of any boy who stepped out of line. Failing that, the eighteen-inch ruler across the palm of the hand a few times could make a believer out of any of us.
Actually, there never was any problem with discipline. No one was ever sent to Sister Superior, the principal. If you stepped out of line, justice was meted out immediately by the nun in the class, regardless of her size or the size of the offender. No one ever dared go home to complain, because the punishment there would have been worse. Discipline and self-respect were something that we all cherished and expected. There were no threats of lawsuits, no complaints from parents, and somehow it seems that none of us were any worse for it. Where have we gone wrong in this culture today? We lack respect for authority, for the rights of others, the rights of ownership. In short, we are raising generations that lack the most necessary ingredient of all---self-respect.
We dress like bums and morons so we cannot enforce dress codes in school. We try to cheat at everything we do, and the only wrong we see is in getting caught. We condone scandal in public life and among those whom we select as leaders. Promiscuity and premarital sex are the norm rather than the rare exception.
We oppose capital punishment for murderers but we approve of abortion because we are unwilling to accept the consequences of the natural law when it will be burdensome. In short---and I had no intention of getting off on this tangent---as I reflect on Andover in the twentieth century, I feel compelled to say that we will all one day have to account for our lack of moral fortitude.
Andover in the 1920s was a very interesting town. Not only did that decade witness the development of Shawsheen Village, the twenties saw a hopping "uptown." Electric cars with the overhead trolley lines ran through the heart of the Main Street. Coming over South Broadway in Lawrence was a double track that shunted off to a single track at the Andover line. There was also a "turnoff' double track for a short distance so that the first car into the turnoff could wait for the car coming in the opposite direction. A system of signal lights warned the motormen of cars approaching from opposite directions. The first of these turnoffs was at the Old Ink Shop, on the east side of North Main Street at about 371 North Main. The next was in front of the current Washington Park complex, with another just above the raliroad bridge . . . and you all wondered why the road was so wide at that point. The next turnoff was right in front of the Town House; another cut through the grassed area of the Academy campus where the road is divided now. As I recall there was one just south of Bancroft Road and the last in Andover was near Bill Carter's farm at the corner of Rocky Hill Road. The line continued on to Reading and Stoneham and, I believe, connected with the Boston Elevated---now the MBTA--somewhere in the vicinity of Spot Pond.
These electric cars were the main mode of transportation between Andover and Lawrence. They were prompt, clean, and ran from very early morning until almost midnight. The fare to Lawrence was twenty cents, reduced during the depression years to ten cents. The trolley was replaced in the very early 1930s by buses, which ran right through to the Boston Elevated station in Everett.
There was at one time a line that branched up Elm Street through North Andover and eventually into Haverhill. I think it was still in service after my birth but I have no recollection of it. The overhead wires were removed when the buses took over, but the steel rails were not taken up until the start of the war, when steel was needed.
The railroad also served Andover before my time. The main line came up from Wilmington and entered Andover down off Woburn Street. You can still trace the railbed through the Recreation Park, across Abbott Street and through Spring Grove Cemetery, up and inside that wall along the south side of Abbott. It crossed near what is now the intersection of Abbott and Phillips Streets, through the yards of those lovely new homes of Bob Finlayson and Irving Winn, out onto Central Street near School Street and eventually to the depot and the repair shop that in later years became the Colonial Theatre (Andover Playhouse), now the rear entrance to the library.
The line continued out onto North Main Street, off through Sweeney Court, to Hartigan Court, to High Street just above Harding. It then followed High to Waverly Road in North Andover, to the corner of Sutton Street and then off to Haverhill. When I was growing up on Harding Street, we always considered that High Street ended where it crossed Harding and Walnut Avenue. From there on it was known as the Old Railroad, and in North Andover, until a few years ago when someone's sensitivity was wounded, Waverly Road was officially Railroad Avenue.
When the Boston & Maine Railroad was licensed and took over the present railbed, the old line was discontinued. This all dates back a hundred or more years ago, so there will not be any quiz on it. However, fifty years and more ago when I was commuting to Boston to school, the B&M was a very viable line and the Andover station was one of the busiest on this main line. Most passenger trains stopped here going to and coming from Boston and in many cases, Andover was the last stop for trains going to Boston and the first stop for trains coming out of Boston. The express, as it was called, took 29 minutes to get from Andover to North Station and the same coming back out. The 7:30 express out of Andover in the morning from Haverhill with stops in North Andover and Lawrence usually had eight passenger cars and many mornings I had to stand, especially on a Monday. It was clean, efficient, reliable, and the Andover/Boston student ticket for a month cost $7.10. In my senior year when I reached the age of 21, my fare jumped to the regular commuter fare of $14.19. A single round-trip ticket was $1.00.
The 4:00 express out of Boston carried mostly students. All of the colleges in those days, with the exception of Harvard, Tufts, and possibly M.I.T., had no boarding students. Almost 100 percent of the Greater Lawrence students who attended Boston College and Boston University, Northeastern, Wentworth, Simmons, Emmanuel, and the business schools---Burdett, Bentley, Katharine Gibbs, Chandler, and many others---all traveled by train. It was a great way to get acquainted, and many a courtship and marriage got its start on the last car of the 4:00 express.
No one had much money and our families all had to scrimp and scratch to find the money to see us through, but they were great years. Every young person seemed to have a ready smile. We respected the older commuters, and they seemed to enjoy us. I virtually missed the first three months of my freshman year because I was playing football at Boston College. That meant getting my head knocked off two days a week in scrimmages with the varsity. The rest of the week we ran drills, did calisthenics, and practiced blocking and tackling for hours on end. As a result I rode home on the 7:00 "local" every night, got home at 8:00, ate supper, and fell asleep about 10:30 over Latin, French, Greek, or English. It was a long and tiring day, but I would not have been able to go to college without the help of my football scholarship. It sounds funny now in the early 1990s, when it is not unusual to spend $100 on a dinner for two at any number of good restaurants in Boston, but my football ability, such as it was, was good enough to get me a $100 annual scholarship for my first two years, until my left knee ended up under the torso of Dimitri Zaitz, the largest and strongest member of the squad. Dimitri later represented the U.S. Olympic shotput team in Berlin.
With the aid of my scholarship, and this at last is the punch line of this diversion, my tuition was reduced to $100. My scholarship was for $100 plus fees and books. Alter my first two years I secured a summer job as a playground instructor, which paid $160 for the season. That just about made up for the loss of my scholarship. I calculate that my total expenses for four years of college (tuition, fees, books, lunches, and transportation) amounted to just about $1,500. I'm not sure but I suspect that today that would cover about one semester at Pike School, and that is not intended at any slap at Pike! It is a fine school, filling a definite need in our community.
Depending on how you look at it, a good memory can either be a burden or a benefit. As my memory of Andover brings to mind these cherished people and places, events and times, I consider it nothing but a blessing.