In this chapter, I am going to look at certain facets of life in our town. To start with, I'd like to give readers a little insight into Andover's religious life. From its very beginnings, Andover has always had strong religious communities.
The first congregation in the area was, of course, what we now know as the North Parish Church, which faces the Old Common in North Andover center. In time the South Parish was established, and after the two towns split in the 1850s, the South Parish became the dominant church in Andover. It was the congregational parish and became the anchor of Protestantism in the town.
A small group of the faithful broke off in 1846 over the issue of abolition---no church in the area would take a stand against slavery, so a new church that would was founded, under the leadership of John Smith and John Dove, of the Smith & Dove Mills. These Scotsmen named their new church after the Protestant Church in Scotland, the Free Christian Church, also an appropriate name given their antislavery beliefs. The Free Church, located on Free Church Road---now known as Railroad Avenue---in time built a beautiful brick Colonial structure on Elm Street and the Doherty boys---Bill and Jim---have been proud to call them "our neighbors." This is not to say that the rest of the Dohertys are not proud to have them next door, but Bill always felt that he got a better pro-rata share of votes from the members of the Free Church congregation than he got even from his own.
From the venerable Frederick Wilson, who was the earliest pastor in my recollection, I've known the Free Church ministers down through the years---Herman Johnson, Frank Dunn---who ran successfully for the office of town moderator but served only one year. He was a great fellow, a loyal friend to both Bill and me. He told me at the time that he would not run for re-election because the meeting took too much out of him physically and emotionally. And he never had to contend with a couple of the town meeting characters who regularly try to ring my chimes.
The present pastor, Jack Daniel, I consider one of my very good friends, and I truly believe that the parish is most fortunate to have him as pastor. The Free Church has suffered at least two severe fires in my lifetime, as well as hurricane damage to the steeple, but the members have always repaired and rebuilt and renovated. The church's many fine parishioners are a credit to themselves, to their church, and to the town.
The Andover Baptist Church at the corner of Essex and Central Streets has always been a smaller congregation, but a very active and close-knit group. It has been my good fortune to know many of them over the years. In the 1930s the pastor was Lorentz I. Hansen, and the most prominent. Baptist family, it seemed to me, was the Clinton Stevens family. The children were in high school with me, and Clinton, the father, became the clerk of the local draft board in 1940. He had the dubious "pleasure" of sending several hundred of us to the armed forces reception center in Boston between 1941 and 1945.
One of the pastors whom I became aqquainted with and liked was Rev. Nelson---he was here in the mid-1950s but I cannot remember his first name! As an interesting tidbit, I have never been in the upstairs of the Baptist Church. I was in the basement---or vestry---in the early 1920s when it contained Hetherington's Dry Goods store, and more recently when it was used as the polling place for Precinct 2 on election days. Someone is sure to observe that I was not able to climb the steps to get in---but that is not true. It always seemed to be a very devout and dedicated congregation. I have always respected them. The members never seemed to be involved in any local controversies. The town, in my view, is fortunate to have them.
Let us now proceed down Central Street to the two churches located there. First we come to the Christ Church, Episcopal, across the street from my alma mater, St. Augustine's School. The church building itself follows the distinctive design and architectural beauty of most of the small-town Episcopal churches that we see around New England. In my earlier years, when the Rev. Charles W. Henry was rector, the congregation seemed to me to embrace many of the more well-to-do families in the town. At the same time, the church's Sherrill Club included most of the non-Roman Catholic teenage boys who liked baseball. The Sherrill Club, and the St. Augustine's Trojans played a lot of games during the summer months. Fr. Branton always insisted that our team members had to attend Sunday Mass, but I used to wonder at times whether some of our opponents knew where their church was located. Whether they attended services or not, the system worked, and we all kept busy sharpening our skills on the ballfield, rather than getting into trouble with the law.
We didn't have any uniforms in those days; oh, everyone had a glove, but few of us had spikes and God forbid that we ever had more than two unbroken bats and rarely more than one baseball that could be used in a game---each team was supposed to supply one.
Eddie LaFebvre from North Main Street usually umpired for all our games. Eddie, father of eight or nine children, thoroughly enjoyed the game. I don't think he ever got a cent for his efforts---although he certainly contributed to the development of all of us---and never got any credit for it, except in our memories. One of Eddie's sons recently coached a teenage baseball team in one of the area leagues, and his daughter Ann married Bill Lucey, Jr., the business manager of the Eagle -Tribune.
Rev. Henry left Andover perhaps around the early 1930s and moved I think to a parish out in the Chelmsford area. He was succeeded by the Rev. John S. Moses. Mr. Henry, as I remember him, was a bit reserved, while Mr. Moses was the opposite, very much the outgoing personality. He served Christ Church for many years and it is interesting to note that he and Fr. Thomas B. Austin, pastor of St. Augustine's from 1935 to 1944, were great fishing buddies, thoroughly enjoying each other's company. After Fr. Austin was transferred to California, Fr. Henry B. Smith, a younger curate at St. Augustine's, became very friendly with Mr. Moses. Andover clergy practised "ecumenism" long before it became fashionable under Pope John II in the 1960s.
I have had a lot of good friends at Christ Church. My next door neighbor, Syd Pollard, was a lay reader there, and Syd and I almost cut a deal that would have allowed the Christ Church Sunday School to use classrooms across the street in St. Augustine's School on Sunday mornings, as an alternative to building an education center, which after all was built a few years later, at considerable expense. (Now, nobody asked me to express an opinion, but I think Christ Church would have been better off to keep their nice grounds instead of jamming that building in on their lovely lawn. I realize that it is none of my business, and perhaps I should have skipped it, but I feel I am old enough to express my opinion about something even if it is not called for.)
It is not germane to the issue that the Roman Catholic liturgy is now observed in the spoken language of the country rather than in traditional Latin. Some thirty to forty years ago, Doherty insurance employed a special agent named Clyde McCarthy, who represented one of our fire insurance companies. It seems that Clyde had an Irish Catholic father, who died when Clyde was young, and a Scottish Anglican mother, who brought Clyde up in her church. I have no idea how it came about, but one day Bill asked Clyde how anyone with the name McCarthy ever happened to be Episcopalian, and Clyde, with a twinkle in his eye, responded, "I flunked Latin."
Needless to say, from that day on, with his quick wit and sparkling humor, Clyde was the number one company man in our office. He was also a graduate of M.I.T., and a very astute master of the fire-rating manual, which was virtually the Bible of the industry until the 1950s, when the packaging concept entered the business.
I have no idea of the size of the congregation at the Christ Church; it has fluctuated over the years, but the church has always remained a strong and willing arm of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts and I am pleased to count many of its members, past and present, as good friends.
Beyond Christ Church and across School Street is the South Church, the original "South Parish," as opposed. to the "North Parish," which still faces the Common in the Old North Andover Center. When I was younger, it was called "South Congregational," but now it is the United Church of Christ. I understand, although I could be wrong, that in the late 1950s the Congregationalist churches merged with a mid-western group and formed the new denomination.
My earliest recollection of the South Church was that the minister was named Stackpole, and I think he was succeeded by Fred Noss. It seems that there should be someone in between, but I have drawn a blank there. Since Mr. Noss retired some years ago, several others have served. South Church used to have a women's group known as the King's Daughters. I remember them because when I was laid up with pneumonia at the age of six, they sent me a basket of fruit. Interesting, isn't it---I can't remember the ministers but I do remember that Lottie Hill was head of the King's Daughters, and I got the basket of fruit.
When we were in high school, the organization that really counted was the Junior Courteous Circle of the King's Daughters. Any girl who was anyone---or ever hoped to be anyone---belonged to that group. I can't believe that the phenomenon was anything more than the "in" crowd trying to flex their muscles.
In the New England towns of long ago, when the only church was the Congregational, and Calvinism was the way of life, the annual meeting of the parish and the annual town meeting were one and the same. The meeting was regulated, or moderated, by a "moderator"---hence the title of the presiding officer of the town meeting today. Every male adult attended and voted, and the refreshments were provided and served by the women---who did not vote until 1920. As far as I know the annual meetings of the South, Free, and West Parish churches are still presided over by a moderator.
The moderator and the clerk, or secretary, of the parish were often the individuals who exerted the most influence in the parish affairs. The pastors were, and still are, I guess, basically employees of the congregation. They can be hired or fired by the will of the members. This always seemed to me to be a very precarious position for the minister and for his family, especially so when we realize that factions in most of these parishes were, at one time at least, politically oriented. If the minister made some wrong choices and landed with the "outs," he could be sending out his resume in short order.
Unless he had some strong "angels" who could exert influence on the congregation, it could get a bit messy. I know it certainly happened a few times in years gone by---but it would serve no useful purpose to pursue the point further at this time: I don't think that it is a very serious factor now. (I will discuss the issues of "Church and State" later in the book.)
The West Parish Church, the stone edifice at the intersection of Shawsheen and Reservation Roads, was established in the last century and served in the early years as a "mission" for the South Church. The farmers in the outskirts of town wanted a place of worship in their own section of town, and so they were accommodated. For many years the South Church paid part of the salary of West's minister and served as a sort of sponsor. The first pastor I remember was Newman Matthews. He was a small gentleman and a much loved and highly respected member of the community. He has been succeeded by a long list of pastors down the years, but he was the only West Parish preacher I ever really knew.
The town Grange Hall was located just to the rear of the church, on Shawsheen Road. This was the meeting place for the farmers in the area, and at one time was a strong and vital organization. As the farms disappeared, so did the influence of the grange; the hail was razed about twenty years ago and the space is now used for church parking.
Among the prominent families in the West Parish in my early years were the Herbert Lewis family and the Carters. Herb Carter taught school in a Boston high school and served on Andover's school board with my brother Bill. Herb's wife was Phoebe Barry, daughter of the Sam Barry who had a farm at the corner of High and Haverhill Streets. Her sisters were Katherine, Burton Flagg's secretary for years and eventually George Haselton's partner in the company; Gertrude, a math teacher in Andover; and Helen, who taught in the business school in Lawrence.
Many of the Armenian farmers who came to town before and after World War I, worshiped at West before their own national churches were established in Lawrence. As I write this, the parish is in the midst of an expensive restoration project, replacing the supports and part of the beautiful steeple that has graced the West Andover landscape for these many years.
In Ballardvale there used to be two Protestant congregations: the Union Congregational located on Church Street in a structure that burned about fifteen years ago, after it had been turned into a paint store, and the Methodist Church, which was located at the corner of Tewksbury and Marland Streets. Both parishes struggled during the Depression and through the war years. About twenty years ago---I hope my memory is not too far off on time---the parishes "united" and formed the Ballardvale United Church, with a new building at the corner of Hall Avenue and Clark Road.
The Methodist Church was helped a great deal by the Browns---Ed and George and their wives. The Union Congregational was the larger congregation and one of its staunch leaders was George Haselton, a broker in the Smart & Flagg Insurance Agency. (You will note the names of people who influenced policy in these Congregations because I will refer to them later.) The only pastor from the Ballardvale church whom I ever had the pleasure of knowing was Gary Cornell, who served the united parish up until about a few years ago.
You all may wonder how and why I, a solid Roman Catholic, should have a knowledge and insight into these other denominations, Well, back in the 1920s and 1930s, when Bill was covering the town for the Eagle-Tribune, it was his practice to call the ministers on Sunday evenings to get the calendar of events for the week. In those days it was customary for the reporter to seek out the news. Church happenings were important and formed an important part of the Andover news in the Monday evening Tribune. As you may imagine, there was no such thing as a forty-hour week for reporters in those days; a town reporter was responsible for his town 168 hours a week. So if Bill wanted a weekend off, or if he were sick for a couple of days, I always covered for him. We called the police and fire stations and the Lundgren Funeral Home six days a week at 1:30 p.m.---the last minute before the paper went to press. I think I started as a pinch hitter on that job when I was about a sophomore in high school and kept it up until Bill retired from the newspaper in January of 1948---almost twenty-two years to the day after he was hired for the job in 1926, just six months out of high school.
In more recent years the town has been blessed with the establishment of several new houses of worship. The Christian Science group set up their own quarters, using the November Club on Locke Street first, and then very quickly built their own church on North Main Street near Shawsheen Village. The Unitarian and Universalists came in soon after, and they now gather at the November Club. The Lutherans have a modern church on South Main Street opposite Ballardvale Road. The Jewish community built a temple on Haggett's Pond Road near Bellevue Road. And some other denominations are getting settled in even as I am writing this. They will be chronicled by some younger member of the community some years down the road.
Whatever their names or variations in belief, the town is fortunate to have them. As long as people come together to worship their Maker and try to make their own lives and the lives of those around them better, I must applaud them. We are all on this earth for a common purpose and a common goal, and if we all agree on that basic tenet, we will all be better---and the town and the world will be a better place. I guess that I believed in ecumenism long before it became a popular word and concept. I always remembered who sent me that fruit.
This brings me now to the church with which I am most familiar---St. Augustine's. It is not my intention to recount a history of St. Augustine's parish. Bill himself put most of that down on paper during his last ten years. He lost his drive too soon and was unable to collate it. Almost all of the data has been collected and some young English major might like to finish the job. I will confine my efforts to some of my own experiences.
St. Augustine's was founded by the Augustinian order of priests, who came over to town from Lawrence in 1852. Prior to that time the few Catholic families in town had to drive, by horse and carriage, to Lawrence for Sunday Mass. The first Catholic church in Andover was off Central Street, on the right, just across where Phillips Street takes off. That burned and was replaced in about the 1880s by a new edifice just about where St. Augustine's rectory is located on Essex Street.
That building was destroyed in the mid-1890s and the present brick building was built and dedicated in late 1899. My brother John was the first baby to be baptized in the new church. The rectory was built about ten years later. The parochial school was built and occupied in 1918; when the first class was graduated in 1920, my brother Bill received the first diploma. My sister Margaret---Mrs. Richard Chambers of Philadelphia---was the first child enrolled in the school in August of 1914, and she and Joe attended classes in the convent until the school was completed about four years later.
Fr. Frederick Riordan, O.S.A., was the pastor when the school was started, serving until the school building---the original eight classrooms and assembly hall---was completed. His term as prior and pastor ended in the summer of 1918, and he was succeeded by Fr. John A. Nugent. Fr. Nugent was a handsome man, an accomplished preacher, an orator. Because he was also legally blind, he always traveled around the town, to school, or on any parish visitations accompanied by one of the other of his assistants---Fr. Thomas P. Fogarty or Fr. Patrick J. Campbell. Both of these curates returned to Andover in later years to serve as pastor.
Fr. Nugent had special permission to say the same Mass prayers---the Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary---every day. By way of explanation to our brethren, let me point out that the daily Mass includes many sections of liturgy that change from day to day, all found in the missal, or Mass book, and some that in those days almost never changed---and all were in Latin. Fr. Nugent had memorized the entire Mass of the Blessed Virgin, and it was amazing, as I look back now, to see him open the missal but never look at it as he recited the various prayers.
Those were wonderful years at St. Augustine's School. I entered the first grade in 1921, one of about thirty in my class. My classmates included Leo Shiebler, John Burns, Carl Keuhner, Tom Connolly, Austin Basso, Joe Sheehy, Ann Beer, Mary Driscoll, Rita Duff, Josephine Daly, Mary Doherty, and several others. We were inveterate marchers. We marched, all in white, in the 40 Hours Devotion processions and the Holy Thursday and Good Friday processions, and at the end of the year the entire school paraded up through the business district of the town in the annual May Procession on the fourth Sunday of May.
In those days the May Procession was the biggest event of the school year, always very colorful and impressive. The procession was led by the police chief and a detachment from the police department, followed by a band from Lawrence, and then every child in the school. We ended in the church with the coronation of the statue of the Blessed Virgin by the May Queen---the eighth-grade girl with the best record in conduct, church attendance, and general outstanding deportment. The last public procession at St. Augustine's was held in 1928. It may seem nostalgic of me now, but I don't mind saying that I miss it.
I graduated in 1929, about four months before the beginning of the greatest Depression of this century. Among my graduating classmates, picked up between first and eighth grade, were John Gallant, Carl Indeglia, Fred Sullivan, Frank Morgan (killed in World War II), Veronica Doherty, Billy Daly, Connie and Margaret O'Leary (twins), Rita Buckley, Lillian Carroll, and two or three others whom I am sure will come to mind before I finish this book.
Fr. Riordan had returned as pastor in the summer of 1926, but he was not well and had to resign and return to the infirmary at the Provincial House at Villanova. He was succeeded by Fr. Charles Branton, an excellent speaker, singer and actor. He organized a St. Augustine's Dramatic Club and a Boy Scout troop, reactivated the Holy Name Society, and supported many other activities. He really ran himself into the ground and was a sick man when his term ended in 1934.
He was succeeded by Fr. McAleney, who came to us from St. Lawrence O'Toole parish in Lawrence. However, he was already suffering from a stomach ailment when he arrived in Andover, and within a year he was dead. During this time I had graduated from Punchard High and had entered Boston College, in September 1933.
Fr. Thomas Austin came in as St. Augustine's pastor in 1935 to fill the unexpired term of Fr. McAleney. It was with Fr. Austin that I became very friendly; I worked with him very closely on several projects up to the time that I reported for military service on April 7, 1942.
On the Friday afternoon before Labor Day in 1941, I was on my way home to dinner at about 5:00 o'clock. We were closing the summer playgrounds and I had a little work to do at the Central playground on the Stowe School grounds. I was driving north on Main Street near what is now the municipal parking lot and stopped to let my friend, Peg McCarthy, cross the street through the heavy traffic. As I drove by behind her, I greeted her with the words: "Careful, Peg, you could get killed in this traffic." She smiled and waved me on.
Less that an hour later, Peg, her mother, and either a niece or nephew were killed as they crossed the railroad tracks going in to St. Augustine's cemetery. The southbound train passed and apparently she did not see or hear the northbound train approaching. Peg was a very fine person from a very fine family. Her brother Albert was a high school classmate; he married Anne Beer, who had started with me in the first grade at St. Augustine's.
Fr. Austin was devastated by that unfortunate accident. He talked with me about it, asked for my help. So we started in late November to lay the groundwork for our plan: we wanted some sort of warning signal installed at the deadly train crossing. We knew we couldn't get a crossing gate and attendant, as was in operation at Essex Street and at Andover Street in Ballardvale. However, we hoped for a bell and red signal light. Instead we met with our first setback. Fr. Austin was told by the B&M railroad officials that the State Public Utilities Commission would not authorize or permit such installments only at public ways, not at private crossings.
Although it hurt us, the decision made sense. Otherwise, every private property owner who wanted access across the tracks would be clamoring for the service. Someone, I don't remember who, came up with the idea of getting our "right of way" made into a public street. This is when the work really started.
We needed twenty-five feet to be deeded from the Lawrence Gas and Electric Company and twenty-five feet from the Cross Coal Company to the "Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston, a Corporation Sole" so that we could get a street laid out, running from Lupine Road to the railroad tracks. As the errand boy, I made several trips between Bob Patterson's office in the old Gas and Electric building at the corner of Essex and Ainesbury Streets, and Jerome Cross's office down around 270 Essex Street in Lawrence.
Bob Patterson was the resident vice president of the utility company. A very fine gentleman, he lived in Johnson Acres at the time. We became such good friends that he had our insurance agency appointed as the broker of record for insurance on property belonging to the utility in Andover. (It was customary in those days to send a small commission check from the Boston General Agency that handled the business; as I recall, it amounted to about $100 per year.)
Jerome Cross, father of Jerry who a couple of years ago sold his book store to Bill Dalton, was one of the finest civic-minded gentlemen of his day. He was very quiet and friendly. As owner of Cross Coal in Lawrence, he had a coal pocket and side-track of rails just south of the cemetery entrance.
We had no trouble getting the strips of land conveyed, but it did take time. It was at this time that I first met Attorney Arthur Sweeney, Mr. Cross's lawyer, who later, after the war, served the town as moderator for three or four years. We had excellent cooperation from the selectmen and the board of public works as we proceeded. It was when we went before the planning board that the fertilizer hit the ventilating system. (I am spending a little extra time on this episode because it had a profound bearing on my later years as I studied and participated in town government.) The chairman of the planning board in those days was Walter Lamont, agent of the Wood Mill in Lawrence. He lived in the house next door to the Richardson School on Lowell Street. You younger people will recognize that as the first, "aborted" site of the Penguin Park playground for preschoolers. I wonder if the planners consulted any of the old playground supervisors who worked that playground in the good old days.
Well, as was and still is the custom, we had to appear before the planning board for a hearing on the proposed street acceptance. The meeting was held in the old courtroom in the Town Hall. Chairman Lamont sat in the judge's chair behind the huge desk. Ed Hall was there, and Roy Hardy, member of the board of selectmen, just dropped in because the selectmen's office was next door. Things were going fine until the chairman stopped the discussion to advise us that the whole concept was wrong because we had no turn-around at the end of the road. I countered that if anyone were to cross the tracks, there were ample roadways for several turnarounds, but he was insistent. The other board members tried to reason with him, but he refused to budge.
Finally, perhaps in desperation, I said that I was not aware of that interpretation, or words to that effect. Well, that was it. Pointing his expensive cigar right at me he said, and I quote: "Young man, before you go before any town board, you be sure you know what you are doing." I walked out of the meeting that night with those words ringing in my ears.
In time, we got the approval of the boards and I moved acceptance of the street at town meeting that year. I also moved the appropriation of $1,300, which was one-third of the cost of the lights and the gong. The railroad paid one-third and the St. Augustine's parish paid the final third. A month later, I was in the service, but I never forgot Lamont's words because the unkind way and the superior tone in which they were spoken did not endear his memory to me.
I will grant Walter Lamont one thing. He made a lasting impression on me, and when I returned to Andover from the war almost four years later, I set about the task of studying my town and its government. I like to think that I have a fair idea of what makes the system work and I have learned to work within the system and with those who have to make it function.
Incidentally, because all of our streets are not properly identified with signs (we used to consider street-sign theft one of the lowest, cheapest tricks that anyone could commit), that stretch of road from Lupine to the tracks is officially designated as "Austin Way."
About a year before all this happened Fr. Austin got permission from Cardinal O'Connell to buy the Cricket Field from the Indian Ridge Realty for $1,500. The land consisted of about eight or nine acres surrounding an excellent baseball diamond. It was next to the cemetery and the sales pitch to the Cardinal was that the property would be used for the future expansion of the cemetery. The only stipulation by the Cardinal was that parish funds could not be used, so to raise money Fr. Austin and I set up a Fourth of July extravaganza, complete with a bonfire and a midway. It was a grand success. All the boys who played on the CYO teams pitched in; everyone had a marvelous time, and we made about $1,400. Somewhere the pastor got the other $100. Unfortunately, with Little League and Senior League and all the rest we don't have any use for sandlot ball anymore.
The Cricket Field had originally been used for cricket and later for soccer by the Smith & Dover teams in the early days of this century. Sad to say, it is no longer used for anything and the once lush green lawn that was the setting for some of our early athletic triumphs and failures is home to weeds, brush, and trash. The land itself is still zoned for general industrial use, I think, so that the $1,500 investment of fifty years ago might still turn out to be much more than just protection for the expansion of the cemetery.
Fr. Austin was transferred to Hollywood, California, in 1944, and was succeeded by Fr. Tom Fogarty, the same Fr. Fogarty who had been a curate here in the 1920s. Since Vatican II the associates or assistants to pastors are now referred to as "Parochial Vicars." Fr. Pat Campbell, who had served here with Fr. Fogarty as curate, came in to succeed Fr. Fogarty in 1950. The latter was ill at the time and died in October before he could transfer out. A native of Ireland, a truly saintly man, Fr. Tom Fogarty was a revered member of the Augustinian order and a highly respected member of the community during his years here in Andover.
Fr. Campbell was much different type of individual. He was a great friend to Cardinal Cushing, the great builder of the post-war era ---hospitals, Merrimack and Stonehill Colleges, homes for exceptional children, and shelters for the aged. Cushing died in 1970, leaving a monetary debt on the Archdiocese of about $80,000,000; a burden that has been wiped out over the last twenty years by his two successors.
Fr. Campbell had expanded the facilities of both St. Mary's and St. Augustine's (Tower Hill) parishes in Lawrence. While in Andover he redecorated the church interior and built exits on both sides of the forward part of the church near the sanctuary, a necessity to improve the task of clearing out the building in an emergency. Thank God, we have never had to face such a contingency, but it would be absolutely imperative under today's fire safety codes.
Fr. Campbell was succeeded in 1956 by a young priest who spent all but two years of his priestly life in the service of the people of the town of Andover. I say that he served the entire community because Fr. Henry B. Smith, O.S.A., practiced ecumenism long before it became the popular buzz word of the 1960s. Fr. Smith was ordained a priest in June of 1933 and was first assigned to a parish in Detroit. In the summer of 1935, he was transferred to St. Augustine's in Andover and I believe I was the altar boy who served his first Mass in Andover.
During the next 28 years, although never a well man, he toiled manually and physically as well as mentally and spiritually for the people in this community. In the spring and fall, he could be found cutting grass or raking leaves at the cemetery and in the summer, he would wield a paint brush at the school. All the time he cultivated the friendship and affection of many Protestants and Jews in the community.
Perhaps my good friend Stafford Lindsay expressed it best on the occasion of the public observance of Fr. Smith's Silver Jubilee as a priest at a reception and dinner at Phillips Academy gymnasium, attended by almost 1,000 friends and admirers. Stafford said, "Where else would you find the situation of an Episcopalian---Stafford---bringing the greetings of the town at a dinner served on the grounds of a Protestant school---Phillips---by a Jewish caterer---Harry Freedman---to a Catholic priest?"
It was, by the way, my pleasant duty and high honor to serve as toastmaster at that gathering and my friend Jim Devine was the general chairman. A cash gift was presented to Fr. Smith that night, intended for him to use to take a trip to Rome. A few weeks later we launched a fund drive in the parish for $350,000 to double the capacity of the parochial school. Guess where Fr. Smith's gift went. Right---he would not consider a trip until the school and the new convent were completed; his money went into the fund. Fr. Smith had a series of heart failures and died in July 1963.
Historically, almost all of the Augustinian priests who die in the Greater Lawrence area are buried in the Priests' Lot in St. Mary's Cemetery in Lawrence. Fr. Smith wanted to be buried in St. Augustine's in Andover. His wish was granted and his remains lie beneath the sod on the highest point in the cemetery.
Fr. Smith was succeeded over the next several years by Fr. Francis Maguire, a former president of Villanova, by Fr. Kenneth Kennedy, a good friend of mine, and by Fr. Gerry Holland, who came over from Merrimack College. He and I were never on the same wave length. I fear he would have made a very serious effort to close or at least curtail the parochial school during one financial crunch if I had not challenged him to try to close it "over my dead body." Well, I am still alive, the school is flourishing as well as ever, and Gerry Holland is pursuing other endeavors in California.
Next came Fr. Edward Robinson. "Rusty" had spent about fourteen years in the Japan mission. A real prince, he died tragically at Hampton Beach when he went out for an early morning stroll along the beach, had an apparent seizure, and drowned. St. Augustine's next pastor was Fr. Joe Keffer, an excellent administrator who worked with a small group of us to put the parish on a sound financial footing. A heart condition forced him to "retire" temporarily---he is now a pastor in upstate New York-and one of his assistants, Fr. Richard O'Leary, took over.
Fr. Rich was priest in the mold of Fr. Smith, in that he was continually reaching out to the "little people," both inside and outside the parish community. He is now located somewhere around the Detroit area. I enjoyed working with Fr. Rich, and he grew into his position very well. When he left in the middle of his term, Fr. Art Johnson, a Lawrence native who had taught for many years at Austin Prep, the Augustinian high school in Reading, had been acting as administrator of the parish. Fr. Joe Duffy, the provincial who served with me on the board of trustees at Merrimack, was of a mind to leave things that way until the next provincial chapter meeting, at which transfers and assignments were usually made. Leaving things alone, however, would have placed the parish in limbo, because we were in the midst of several projects that required the approval of a pastor. After a telephone conversation with Fr. Duffy---in which I did most of the talking---Fr. Art was installed as pastor. And that is how we got to where we are today.
This was not and is not intended as a mini-history of St. Augustine's Parish, but this book is a personal reflection on Andover in my time. Anyone who knows me knows that I have been closely allied with and keenly interested in all the houses of worship in this town, but the one that has had the most impact on me---and I on it---of course has been St. Augustine's. I have always had the utmost respect for anyone who gives of his or her time, energy, and money to his local church. The one sad note is that there are not enough such people to go around. My suggestion to all the community is simply this: "If the shoe fits, get a new pair of feet."
Just about the time that we finished the fund drive for the addition to the school, the chancery office in Boston decided that for the purposes of the Catholic Church the town of Andover should be divided---St. Augustine's should retain the eastern half as its parish and a new parish should be established in the western half. It was the opinion of someone in Boston and I never knew who---perhaps it was Cardinal Cushing---that the dividing line should be drawn roughly along Beacon Street, passing in front of the West Parish Church, down Reservation Road and perhaps over Oriole Drive to Argilla Road to Andover Street, along Andover to Dascomb Road to the Tewksbury line. Everything to the west of that line, using the middle of the roads as the lines of demarcation, would constitute a new parish staffed by secular or diocesan clergy.
This alteration would have emasculated our fund commitments, which were pledged for three years. It would have moved me, Jim Devine, Bill Richards, Joe Walsh, Tom Murphy, Larry Small, and several other stalwarts who had both solicited funds and had generously and cheerfully supported St. Augustine's, out of its flock. Fr. Smith, of course, was devastated and he was quite shaken as he related the decision to me.
I had an idea and I picked him up just after lunch on November 11, 1960. I think that he felt I was just as upset about being uprooted from my home parish, so he humored me by coming along. We spent about an hour and a half riding all over West Andover, North Tewksbury, and the eastern end of Lowell. I noted some of the times and distances between Haggett's Pond and St. Williams Church in Tewksbury and the Immaculate Conception Church in Lowell. When we came back to the rectory, I laid out a large sheet of brown wrapping paper about five feet square. I spotted the corner of Haggett's Pond Road and Bailey Road in the middle and proceeded to draw in all the streets in every direction. When I finished, we figured that five hundred Catholic families probably lived within about two and a half to three miles of that West Andover spot. I had no census figures to prove my point, but I suggested that we should move the proposed split line westward to Greenwood Road and Lovejoy Road, include parts of Lowell and Tewksbury, and locate the new church within a half-mile of that corner of Bailey and Haggett's Pond Roads.
Fr. Smith thought it was a terrific idea. "But Jim," he reminded me, "you are not making this decision. It has already been decided in Boston." Without a change of facial expression, I said, "Take this in to the chancellor, and tell him that I said this is what I want." In case you don't happen to remember how things used to be in those days---and still are, in general---a lowly pastor in the outskirts of the Archdiocese does not walk in to the chancellor of the Archdiocese, the chief executive officer of the Cardinal, the Prince of the Church, and tell him anything. He listens and waits and finally says, "Yes, Monsignor," or "No, Monsignor."
Fr. Smith liked my idea but was not about to get himself and the Augustinian order tossed out of town altogether. When I figured I had toyed with him long enough, I said, "Bob Sennett, Monsignor Sennett, the chancellor, was a classmate of mine at Boston College. We struggled through Latin and Greek together. I can't believe that he won't listen if you tell him that I said that he owes me one."
Well, reluctantly, and with some misgivings, Fr. Smith went in to the chancery office the next day. When he returned to Andover, he came in to see me, said that Bob Sennett sent his best, and reported that Monsignor Francis Sexton, the vice-chancellor, would be out to visit me the following week; in return for the chancery buying my plan, I would have to find a site for the new church building.
Sexton came to Andover. We scoured the area together and finally decided on three possibilities. The first choice was a bit of high ground on High Plain Road at the corner of Haggett's Pond Road, across from where Rudy Johnson lived. The other two were also on Haggett's Pond Road, both lots owned by Fred Doyle. Our first choice was not available under any circumstances, so I went up to see Fred Doyle.
Monsignor Sexton had asked if I would need a "straw" to make the purchase. I responded that Fred Doyle was a dear friend, I had bought my house from him, I wrote most of his insurance, and that we enjoyed going to Red Sox games together. I would simply tell Fred what we wanted and why we wanted it. I remember saying that although Fred was a deacon of the West Parish Church, no one in town would be more fair and reasonable with the Archdiocese. Sexton said that he would have to leave that to me; and that was the only way I would have wanted it.
Well, Fred and I agreed on a parcel of about ten acres, and he just wanted to clear it with his son and business partner Russell. He called me in a few days and the Monsignor and I paid a call. Fred seemed to be almost apologetic at what he was charging us for the property. However, by today's standards, and, yes, even based on prices in those days, thirty years ago, it was a paltry sum. We left; I arranged to have Tom Murphy represent the Archdiocese and meet with Charley Hatch, Fred's lawyer. The property changed hands shortly after the first of the year.
St. Robert Bellamine Church was built in time and the first pastor was Fr. Francis Sullivan. He was succeeded by Fr. Frederick Coffins, and he in turn, this year, by Fr. Arthur Driscoll. I was well acquainted with both Sullivan and Collins, but as of this writing I have yet to meet Fr. Driscoll. After a slow start, the parish has grown and prospered, and the fields around it have sprung up with an abundance of fine homes.
Fr. Sullivan, the first pastor, is said to have been a close personal friend of Cardinal Cushing. In the early days, he seemed to have an antagonism for me after finding out that I had been instrumental in setting the parish boundaries. He felt that I was responsible for isolating him out in the "wilds" of West Andover, and he would never be able to assemble a large enough congregation to pay off the parish debt. However, as time went on, I was able to win him over, and we became good friends. After he retired, he lived with his sister on Carmel Road, and it was not unusual for him to stop in the office and visit when he walked downtown.
His assistant, or associate, in the early days was the young and energetic Fr. Paul Keyes. I think St. Robert's was his first assignment after ordination. He frequently visited my sister-in-law, Peg---John's wife---and he endeared himself to the whole family because of the attention he gave her. He is now, the pastor of St. Richard's parish in Danvers.
Fr. Collins, the second pastor, came to Andover from an assignment as headmaster of St. Sebastian's Country Day School for boys in Newton. A fine administrator with a very friendly personality, he completed his tour of duty this past year and I don't know where he has transferred.
Along about 1963, Arthur Heifetz, a high school classmate of Bill, and a brother of Phil, who had been in school ahead of me, came into our office on Main Street and introduced us to the new rabbi who was taking over the position at Temple Emanuel, one of the Hebrew congregations in Lawrence to which most of the Andover Jews belonged. This very pleasant young man was Rabbi Harry Roth, who was to have a very profound impact and influence on the Greater Lawrence community over the next quarter century. It was always a pleasant memory for both Bill and me to realize that we might have been the first businessmen in downtown Andover to meet the new rabbi and to welcome him to town. I don't imagine that he would have any recollection of that now, but to me it is pleasing to remember.
Some ten or twelve years ago, the congregation secured a piece of land on Haggett's Pond Road in West Andover and built a new synagogue. I have had the honor of attending all too many funeral services there, and it is a fine addition to the West Andover landscape.
In recent years, several other religious denominations and groups have established houses of worship in town: the Christian Scientists on North Main Street, the Lutherans on South Main Street, the Andover Bible Chapel on Lowell Street, the Korean Methodists next door to them in the former Unitarian building, and most recently the Greek Orthodox Congregation from Lawrence have turned the former Doyle lumber yard on Chandler Road into a beautiful church.
Andover is home to many churches now, and it is to the credit of the community at large that they all prosper and seem to expand. I applaud them all. In my youth there were only the Congregationalists, the Episcopalians, the Baptists, and the Roman Catholics. If more churches get more people closer to their Creator, more power to them. I fear that over the long haul some of the properties may have to be abandoned, but that is certainly not a concern at the moment.