REMINDER
The Pittsfield High School Class Of 1966 50th Class Reunion
will be held in the Pittsfield Congregational Church vestry on
July 23rd from 3-6 p.m. Light refreshments will be served. If
you can attend call Pete Riel at 603-269-8861.
The Northwood Parent Cooperative Preschool (The Center School)
has openings for this fall. We also have exciting changes
happening! We have two new teachers, Ms. Danielle and Ms.
Kelley, starting this fall and extended hours! Please check out
our website
www.northwoodcenterschool.com for information about tuition,
curriculum, our new hours and to access our registration packet.
We also invite everyone interested in
information about The Center School to come by our booth at The
Bean Hole Bash, Saturday July 30th at the Northwood
Congregational Church next to CBNA. We hope to see you there!
Congratulations to Hannah Herter of Northwood, a sophomore
at Salve Regina University, who has been named to the Dean’s
List for the Spring 2016 semester.
To qualify for the Dean’s List,
full-time students must earn a minimum grade point average of
3.5 without receiving a grade below a “B” in that semester.
Congratulations to Lily Allen, a
resident of Northwood who has been honored with placement on the
Dean’s List at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, for the
spring 2016 semester.
Lily is a member of Wheaton’s Class of
2017 and the daughter of Thomas Allen and Laura Holmes.
Congratulations to Abigail MacCallum,
a resident of Northwood, who has been named to the Spring 2016
Dean’s List at Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I.
Full-time students who complete 12 or more credits per semester
and earn a GPA of 3.4 or higher are placed on the Dean’s List
that semester.
The Veterans’ Corner
Submitted By Richard Doucet
Communication Officer VFW Joseph J. Jeffrey Post 7217
Northwood Post votes to start dialogUE with town to help with
cemetery upkeep.
During our regular meeting on June 7th the subject of the
appearance of some veteran’s grave makers was discussed.
That led to a vote to open a dialog with the town to see if our
post could help rehabilitating some of the cemeteries and
veteran grave sites. It was then proposed that as the
communications officer for the post that I see what I could find
out…I had a new mission.
I was able to contact The Chair of the Northwood Cemetery
Trustee Committee, Mr. Stephen Bailey, and I met with him on
June 14. Over breakfast I soon found out two things. The
first thing was I realized very quickly how much “I did not know
that I did know” about cemeteries. The second, over our
hour plus long conversation, was that the few things Mr. Bailey
did not know about the towns cemeteries he knew whom to contact
to find out.
Some of the first facts I was made
aware of is that of the 69 cemeteries in Northwood only six
belong to the town, all the others are privately held and
designated as family cemeteries.
Mr. Bailey then explained to me that none of the towns six
cemeteries, stones and monuments are maintained with town tax
money. The town does provide a small maintenance fund to
deal with things such as the removal of storm damaged trees or
erosion due to flooding. The cost of regular maintenance,
mowing and trimming, is paid for from The Cemetery
Perpetual Care Trust Fund. When a plot or grave is
purchased that cost, by vote of the town, goes to the fund
and the interest gained by that fund is what is used to pay for
regular maintenance. The rules and procedures for the
cemeteries and the functioning of this fund are dictated
by the State of New Hampshire. The town is also helped by
volunteers who do some of the grass cutting and brush trimming.
These volunteer hours are donated by students at Coe-Brown and
other community services.
As for the 63 other cemeteries, they are the responsibility of
whoever owns the land, which is why some of the veteran sites
look less than well kept. In most cases the people who own
the land now are in no way descendants of the original family
who buried their dead in the family cemetery. While the
State does not come down with a heavy hand to force land owners
to spend money to maintain the cemeteries, it does provide that
no cemetery can just be “removed” by a land owner. This was the
case with one land owner who, since there were no living
relatives to complain, simply removed the headstones so he did
not have to look at the cemetery.
Mr. Bailey told me that human remains are still being found in
some towns, some with a marker still remaining but others with
no markers. In the early days it was not uncommon to bury
someone on the family land with only a wooden marker.
Later, for whatever reason, the land was abandoned, the wooden
marker rotted and the nature reclaimed the land hiding any
evidence of a grave. These are sometimes found when land
long left to nature is purchased and excavation for new
construction started.
The only type of burial ground that
Mr. Bailey believes is not recorded in Northwood is one of
Native American origin.
How does all of this relate to our
discussion during our meeting about the state of some veteran
grave sites and markers?
We have to start in the year 1768, the year that Northwood was
incorporated. As Mr. Bailey pointed out to me people just
did not show up in the “wilderness” and put up a hut wherever
they wanted and set up house keeping. Land was surveyed
and use of that land dictated including cemeteries. Family
cemeteries were also allowed.
Though we think of 1776 as the start of “American” veterans we
have to remember that as “Colonial Militia” many citizen were
veterans of British military service in the founding and defense
of what would become the United States. All of the
cemeteries in Northwood contain the remains of veterans; some of
these remains date as far back as the American Revolutionary
War, but some may have remains dating to 1768. I note here these
are the remains of “veterans” who died after returning
home from a war. It is only very recently that
remains of those killed in combat are returned home.
Exceptions were generally made only for the high ranking and
wealthy or, during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, when
someone died in a battle close to home.
These grave sites are as much part of our history as any
museum that contains the artifacts that represent the wars they
fought in. While museums and historical societies have
“things”, grave sites hold the remains of those who were
actually there. They had names, they have stories, they
represent in a very real way the suffering and privation that
was needed to forge this nation and in its continuing defense.
Their resting places are due at least as much respect as
the artifacts that were part of their life and service.
So what to do? There are any number of ways that you can
help both the town and the owners of family cemeteries to clean
up and refurbish both sites and specific veterans graves.
Need a class history project? How about studying the life of a
Civil War veteran with no living family to remember him and
while you are at it fixing up the site or headstone? Are
you a civic organization that has funds for this type of work?
How about paying for the restoration of a veterans head
stone? Are you a Boy Scout working toward your Eagle
Scout? How about organizing friends to clean up a family
cemetery that the owners are unable to maintain? And who
can lead the way? Veterans organizations such as the VFW,
The American Legion, and The D.A.V. can take up the cause
and encourage others to do the same. The list can go on but I
think I have made my point, however, I want to add one last
project suggested to me by Mr. Bailey.
There was a family cemetery that had to be moved. In this
cemetery there were a number of headstones but one
headstone had no remains corresponding to its location.
The veteran had died in battle and the body buried near the
battlefield. Nonetheless, the family erected a headstone
in the family cemetery in his memory. When the cemetery
was moved it was decided that since there were no remains that
there would be no marker for that veteran in the new location.
This native son of Northwood, a combat veteran, is now lost to
history and memory. This may be a cause for a veteran’s
organization to take up.
We spend large sums of money and time to collect and house
“things” that have some relevance to our past. We
take our children to see artifacts from events long past that
took place far away; should we not spend some money and
time to protect the resting places of people right here in
Northwood who saw those places, used those artifacts, and were
present at those events?
I think that if we show our children
the well maintained resting places of those veterans they will
see those events, that took place so far away and so long ago,
as much more relevant and real, perhaps stirring an interest in
learning more about the veteran leading to a more human
understanding of the events.
If you are interested in doing any project Mr. Bailey has one
piece of advice: private cemeteries are just that…private.
Showing up without permission to do anything is trespassing.
Approval for work in town cemeteries is also required. Mr.
Bailey should be your starting point for any project. He
can be contacted through the Northwood Town Hall. He is the
center of a web of people who can assist any young Indiana Jones
start an exciting adventure right here in Northwood.
Cemeteries, aside from their religious meaning, are not for the
dead as much as they are for the living. In a museum we
keep “things” to help us remember events in our history.
In a well maintained cemetery we keep the memory of people
who were at those events. When we can associate events and
places with a local person those places and events take on a
whole new meaning. And, somehow that seems equally important to
me as keeping “things”.
In closing a thank you to Mr. Bailey for making time for the
interview and for fact-checking this piece. And, a thank
you also to Chief Drolet of the Northwood Police Department for
facilitating the meeting with Mr. Bailey.
Letter To The Editor
Less What?
I write this on June 29, the 60th anniversary of Eisenhower’s
signing of the act to create the Interstate Highway
System. Those highways stretch over 47,000 miles and
tie our country together as much as anything else.
I’m old enough to remember a
pre-Interstate trip from Baltimore to Boston in the early 50’s.
It seemed like – to a 9-year-old – that it took forever,
crawling up Route 1 to the New Jersey Turnpike. But once we got
through New York City, and to the end of the Merritt Parkway in
Connecticut, it was back to crawling up Route 1. I encourage you
to drive out to the coast and try a few miles on Route 1 to
replicate the experience!
I am moved to write this because
Deerfield’s John Reagan has written a short piece for this paper
announcing his candidacy for State Senate District 17. Within
it, he calls for “less government” without specifying exactly
what he wants less of.
This troubles me.
Does he want less Medicare? Less
Social Security? Less Food & Drug oversight? No Center for
Disease Control. No Transportation Safety Board? How about the
White Mountains National Park?
Does he want less Interstates? Shall
we halt the expansion of I-93 and accept rush-hour gridlock as
an irremediable fact of New Hampshire life?
The alert reader will note that these
are federal programs, but each has its state counterpart. For
example, our Department of Transportation and our state system
of roads and bridges.
It, like the federal system, is
underfunded and falling further and further behind its
maintenance schedule. How can New Hampshire – or the United
States, for that matter – prosper without robust transportation
infrastructure?
Next time you see him, ask John Reagan
how “less government” will address that issue.
Tom Chase
Northwood, NH
This Weekend’s Lrpa After Dark
Feature:
1945’S “Detour”
Join Lakes Region Public Access
Television at 10:30 p.m. this Friday and Saturday night (July 8
& 9) for our “LRPA After Dark” presentation of 1945’s dark film
noir thriller “Detour,” starring Tom Neal, Ann Savage and Edmund
MacDonald.
In “Detour,” we meet down-on-his-luck Al Roberts (Neal), an
ill-fated piano player who hitchhikes to California to reunite
with his girlfriend. Along the way, he gets a ride from Charles
Haskell (MacDonald), who tells Al an ominous story about his
recent encounter with female hitchhiker. Haskell suffers a
fatal heart attack in the middle of nowhere. Al, fearful that he
will be accused of murder, buries Haskell’s body, takes his
possessions, and assumes his identity. He stops at a gas
station, where he picks up a drifter named Vera (Savage). Vera
soon figures out the situation and uses it to her advantage,
threatening Al to join her in a scheme or to be ratted out to
the cops. Will Al be able to extract himself from this nightmare
series of events, or will Fate continue to dog him wherever he
goes?
“Detour” is an extremely low budget
thriller, shot in only six days by director Edgar G. Ulmer. At a
running time of less than 70 minutes, the movie packs a lot of
story into short film. “Detour” has a cult following among fans
of film noir, as it is often considered to be one of the most
gloomy and existentialist examples of that genre. Famed critic
Roger Ebert was a fan of this film, writing, “ ‘Detour’ is an
example of material finding the appropriate form. Two
bottom-feeders from the swamps of pulp swim through the murk of
low-budget noir and are caught grasping in (the director’s) net.
They deserve one another.” It’s a must-see! Grab your popcorn
and join LRPA after dark for this dark drama from the past.
You can’t find television like this it anywhere but LRPA TV,
MetroCast Channel 25. Not a subscriber? Then log onto Live
Stream through our website (www.lrpa.org) where you
can catch all the fun.
Obituaries
Christine “Tina” (Arlin) Avery
Christine “Tina” (Arlin) Small Avery,
95, of Woodstock passed away at Littleton Regional Healthcare
with family by her side Thursday, June 23, 2016 on the birthday
of her late beloved husband Newt.
Tina, born in Northwood, grew up in
Pittsfield, one of 13 children born to John and Florence Small.
She will be fondly remembered for her
hospitality and giving nature, her spunk, humour and lively
spirit. Tina was known far and wide for her delicious pies.
Tina was predeceased by her husband
Newt Avery, her second husband Davis R. Clark, her parents John
and Florence (Arlin) Small, brothers Gardner, Lawrence, George
and Elliot Small, and her sisters Marjorie Fulton, Barbara
Wyman, Shirley Noyes, Virginia DeLisle, Jo Ann Mogensen and
Elizabeth Ascani and her granddaughter Kerry Lynn Higgins,
son-in-law Bryce Higgins, family and friends.
Lovingly survived by her sisters
Rachel Wade and NancyAnderson. Deeply loved by her children
Sharon Higgins, Brian Avery and his wife Tita, and Kathleen
Vsetecka and her husband William. Adored by her grandchildren
Laura and Graham Higgins, Kristine (Vsetecka) Malingowski, Darin
and Timothy Vsetecka, and Samuel Avery Castillo and Christine
(Avery Castillo) de Alvarez and by her great-grandchildren
Melissa, Emily, Ian, Avery and Claire Malingowski, Cooper
Thorne, Raina DeStefano and Max and Camilla Avery.
A memorial service and reception was
held Tuesday, June 28, at the Pemi Valley Church in Woodstock,
NH.
Arrangements by Fournier-Hale Funeral Home, 144 Main St., No.
Woodstock, NH. An online guestbook is available at
www.fournier-hale.com.
