I am beginning, as I grow older, to be more aware of mortality.
I feel a compulsion to record and share things like memories that come to me all of a sudden, that often pop into my head through association when I am writing, or which occur to me when I am out walking.
This brings to mind an observation which my mother, Elinor Handy Smith, once made to me.
It was something that her father, Ralph E. Handy, said to her — that, as regards the question of immortality, maybe it’s hard to believe in it from a religious point of view, but we can say with certainty that people do live on in our memories.
In recording things about my family and friends, I am doing so, not only in the hope that it will prove of general interest, but that it will be preserved for posterity. After all, all we have left of departed ones is our memories.
If my father once made to me a comment about Beethoven or Mozart (which he did), told me he read all of War and Peace one summer (which he did), when my mother told me about her favorite novel and favorite symphony and about the books she loved as a child, I regard these as priceless memories.
It seems so often that this is true of the details, especially — that preserving memories in as much detail as we can is of great value.
Because I remember such things, because they reveal something about and are part of my personal history, I am hoping that, maybe if I write them down and share them with others — such as my children or other survivors — they will be enabled to read, learn, and remember.
My first dog was Sugar, a mongrel, in fifth grade. We had a problem because Sugar was chasing and biting college students on bikes, so my parents took the dog back to the pound. I was very upset. This was in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Then we briefly had another dog, Cougar, which could not be housebroken. So we had to get rid of Cougar.
Then we got a wonderful dog, Missy, a shepherd collie, when we were still living in Cambridge. We moved to the suburb of Canton, Massachusetts and Missy had puppies. My mother assisted with the delivery! The puppies were adorable.
Missy died in 1959 when I was in the seventh grade, shortly after we moved to Canton.
This devastated me. My father picked me up at the Eliot School. We were on double sessions then because of overcrowding of the schools, and we got out of school at something like 12:30. The first thing I said was “How’s Missy? When is she coming home?” He said, “She’s never coming home.”
I cried all the way home. For the next few days, I was in pain. I would go outside on the back porch, forget momentarily that Missy was dead, and expect to see her, then would remember.
It was a sudden death on the operating table of the vet, who was very sorry about what happened. Missy had had to have an unexpected operation involving a “female” problem arising post-pregnancy.
Right after, we got Robbie, a pedigreed Irish setter. I still have the pedigree. The price was $75, expensive back then.
Robbie died in the mid to late Sixties. Then we got Bambi, a great dog, loyal and smart. Bambi got hit by a car once on Chapman Street in Canton, but recovered. Bambi used to follow me all around the house and was totally devoted to me, as was I to her.
My parents both liked dogs and pets in general and were good with them.
My father taught Robbie, our big Irish setter, things like not to go onto the living room carpet. Usually, Robbie obeyed. Robbie would creep up to the entrance of the living room at the edge of the dining room and would lie there with his paws outstretched almost touching the living room carpet.
My father conducted choir practice at our house every Thursday night. During one choir practice, Robbie snuck into the living room. He used to like to stand up on his hindquarters and put his paws around my father’s neck. He did something of that sort. Whereupon my father said in a firm, loud voice, “Robbie, sit down!”
One of the choir members was Bob Fish, whose other nickname was Robbie. He was startled because he thought my father was talking to him.
— Roger W. Smith
January 2016
Robbie, Smith family dog, Canton, MA
Robbie, Smith family dog, Canton, MA
my sister with Missy, Mellen St., Cambridge, MA, August 1958
Charles McGlynn has, sadly, been deceased for many years. According to my fellow LRY’er Dick Hood, he was “a victim of his bad habit of two packs of Herbert Tarreytons a day.”
Charlie McGlynn had a very good influence on me, Dick Hood, and countless New England members of Liberal Religious Youth (LRY).
I remember numerous outstanding advisors, ministers and lay persons, and it seems that only in retrospect can l begin to really appreciate what an important influence they had on us adolescents in LRY; how dediacated they were; and how well suited they were for their work as advisors, for which I believe they received very little by the way of rewards and — I would suspect in most cases — remuneration.
Charles McGlynn, Mrs. Eileeen Day, Rev. John Coffee, Rev. Carl Scovel, Rev. Jack Hammon, Rev. C. Leon Hopper, Jr., Rev. Bill Moors, John Eartha, Rev. Elmer Stelley, Rev. Bill DeWolfe, and Rev. Orloff Miller were among the advisors I personally knew the best and admired the most, but there were many others.
Charlie McGlynn, a lay advisor, was close to being the best, if not the best, advisor in New England, which was a center of LRY activity.
I first became aware of Charlie unexpectedly.
He was involved in a program to help prisoners reform, get out of jail, and adjust to life outside of prison. He came to a meeting of our local LRY group in Canton, Massachusetts in around 1962 for a lecture/presentation. With him and one other adult who I think was some sort of probation officer was a recently released prisoner named George. George was well dressed and groomed and his shoes were shined. He was articulate. I noticed that Charlie was supportive but not intrusive and that he was soft spoken.
Charlie was from Medfield, Massachusetts, where there was a strong and active Unitarian parish led by a dynamic, liberal minister, Bill Moors. Charlie worked for the Massachusetts bureau of motor vehicles in some capacity. He got involved with LRY and in 1963 was elected by the members of the New England Regional Committee (NERC) of LRY as an advisor.
His election, and that of his fellow advisor, Eileen Day, came at a time of great contention among various factions over issues concerning youth autonomy and what were regarded by some adults, a conservative faction of the Unitarian ministry and church membership, as transgressions of morals, either real or suspected, by LRY’ers.
Charlie was a voice of reason and sanity in the midst of these disputes. He leaned towards the liberal, rather permissive side, but he was not a zealot.
We LRY’ers used to sing an improvised refrain from an LRY song: “Oh, it’s Charles McGlynn who justifies the sin, in the halls of LRY!” We sang it all the way on a round trip bus ride to Continental Conference in Greensboro, North Carolina in the summer of 1964. Charlie found this amusing. The best way to put it is to say that he was bemused.
He went to the March on Washington and — afterward one evening when we were getting ready to bed down in our sleeping bags in a church hall during a NERC meeting — he told us how powerful Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech was, especially the peroration.
At that time, this was something new to me. I hadn’t read about the speech.
Charlie was very liberal on issues such as civil rights. Yet, despite his strong feelings, he never lost his equanimity or sense of humor. He told us a story once about a black acquaintance of his who was a graduate of Howard University. He said that when people asked his friend where he had gone to college, his friend would reply, “H—-ward,” deliberately slurring it, hoping his interlocutor might think it was HARVARD.
Kids were always eager to talk with Charlie during recesses, and he was always willing.
Charlie once told us a story from his World War II service. I don’t recall it precisely, but basically what occurred, according to Charlie, was that he was on guard or patrol duty with some other soldiers at night, and they observed a Japanese soldier walking close by, in their view, probably in an area where you could shoot at the enemy. He said they decided not to shoot and to act as if they hadn’t observed the Japanese soldier.
Charlie testified at a hearing of mine before my draft board in 1968 when I was applying for conscientious objector status, which was granted. He was very convincing. He spoke in his usual humble, soft spoken, sincere, and non-confrontational fashion.
I had a lot of trouble with cars back in those days. I had one particularly bad second hand car, a station wagon, for about two months which I bought in my senior year in college. It was a real lemon and was always leaking oil.
One Sunday, I was on Route 128 and, as usual, was having serious car problems. I had to pull over and was on the shoulder of the highway with the hood up.
Who should come along but Charlie McGlynn? He recognized me right away, pulled over, and helped me.
In August 1962, between my sophomore and junior years in high school, I was selected — I do not recall the reason for or process behind my selection — as a delegate to the International Religious Fellowship (IRF)-Student Religious Liberals (SRL) Conference at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts, a week long conference. I may have been selected to attend by the Norfolk-Suffolk Federation of Liberal Religious Youth (LRY), of which I was a member and by which I had just been chosen as a representative to the New England Regional Committee (NERC).
There were few other members of LRY in attendance. The conference was mostly for college students and slightly older people who were affiliated with the two organizations, namely, IRF and SRL.
I lived in Canton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. The train trip to Springfield took around two hours. I took a train to get to the conference. It seemed like a big trip then, like going far away from home.
I was one of the youngest attendees. I felt a little strange at first, but I learned something valuable. I decided that I had no choice but to take the plunge and get to know people. It worked. I made some very good friends there. There was a fellow from Ghana, J. K. Ohene, a very nice man whom I befriended and who came to visit me in Canton during the 1962-1963 academic year. There was a Scotch guy named Frank. And, a German guy named Joe, who, in retrospect, I thought might have been gay. He was a very nice man.
It was an international conference, and many of the delegates were from abroad.
It was an invaluable experience for me. I was already a tolerant person and an internationalist by nature. (My mother had instilled these types of values in me.) But I learned a lot about relating to people, and I liked them so much. They fully reciprocated my friendship.
–– Roger W. Smith
January 2016
Note: J. K. Ohene was author of Handle us with great care (Some religious questions answered) (Accra: The Ghana Society of Religious Liberals, 1965).
I visited Iceland in July 1972 on the way to Luxembourg and Europe via Icelandic Airlines.
After a brief stay in Reykjavík, when I was about to depart and fly to Luxembourg, I was, for some reason, at the front desk of the main hotel. It had something to do with my airplane ticket, since the bus for the airport departed from the hotel. I wasn’t staying there.
It was early evening.
As I was standing at the front desk (it was small and narrow), about to ask a question — all alone with no one else there but one young woman desk clerk — there was suddenly a commotion and someone burst into the lobby with one or two other men trailing behind.
It was Bobby Fischer, who was quite tall, thin, and gawky and at that time still young looking, thirtyish. I recognized him immediately.
He had just won what turned out to be a crucial game in a very close championship match against Boris Spassky. Fischer was staying at the hotel. The match was being held elsewhere, in some hall in Reykjavík.
Fischer burst into the lobby, strode briskly to the front desk, and kind of thrust himself forward. The young woman clerk said to him politely in good but accented English, “Congratulations on your victory Mr. Fischer.”
He was rude and abrupt, ignored the remark (basically ignored her), and blurted out something like, “where’s my key, is room service available?”
Then, taking his key without any further comment or discussion, he turned and strode off.
The game was on Sunday, July 23, 1972. I remember that it was a Sunday. The headline in The New York Times (then priced at 15 cents) the next day said, “Fischer crushes Spassky, Takes Lead in Title Match.”
I was extremely interested in the Fischer-Spassky match. All the games and the tournament overall were given a great deal of coverage in The New York Times, and I read it all avidly, this despite the fact that I can hardly understand chess and can’t understand analyses of chess games technically.
A big part of my fascination was the seeming connection of the Fischer-Spaasky showdown to the US-USSR superpower confrontation.
The obituary gives the facts of his family, his activities, and his professional accomplishments, all of which are impressive. I would just like to say something briefly about Russ, the person I knew in high school, based on my memories of him.
Russ was in all my classes. He was handsome, a great athlete, and a very good student. He was a true scholar-athlete.
He was a truly nice person. He was soft spoken and modest. He never had a bad word to say about anyone. He was good natured in general and took kidding well.
We used to call him Rusty.
We were in math class together with the legendary teacher Martin J. Badoian. Russ really liked the class and Mr. Badoian. I believe math was his favorite subject. Mr. Badoian, in turn, liked Russ. When he found out that Russ had a girlfriend, he used to kid him about it. Russ, as usual, took the teasing modestly and well.
I was reunited with Russ briefly at our 45th reunion in 2009. He was one of the people I was most glad to see. He looked great then. No doubt no one knew then of his impending illness.
Often at such events, one can be apprehensive about seeing people again after all those years. With Russ, I felt completely at ease right off the bat. I was so glad to see him. He was so friendly, so well spoken. He made it plain that he was glad to see me.
At that time, Russ told me a little about his student days at Penn State, where he played football under Coach Joe Paterno. He said he really regretted quitting football because of an injury. I appreciated Russ’s candor. I could relate to what he said because there are things I regret not having done when I was young, when I had the opportunity.
I sent a letter of condolence to Russ’s wife Carol a few weeks after his death, having learned about it from a former classmate.
Carol Minkwitz responded with a Christmas card to me in which she wrote, “Russ bore his suffering with nobility and never complained.”
This is a brief piece of writing involving diverse reminisces which, in my mind, are somehow connected.
I guess I will begin with newspapers.
My parents subscribed to the Boston Herald. It was a Republican newspaper. The Boston Globe was the Democratic newspaper.
My parents were originally staunch Republicans. This all changed, totally, during the 1960’s, when they became liberal Democrats.
The Herald was a good newspaper. In editorial stance, it was like the Herald Tribune in New York.
I was an avid reader of the sports pages. I recall, to give just one example, reading about pro basketball games in the 1960’s. I used to marvel at Wilt Chamberlain’s point totals. In those days, he seemed to be averaging fifty points a game.
I was also aware of the tabloids, although I didn’t read them regularly.
One headline that made an enormous impression on me, on June 28, 1955, when I was nine years old, was “Harry Agganis Is Dead” (I believe in the Record American, a tabloid).
Harry Agganis (1929-1955) was an All American football player at Boston University who signed after college with the Boston Red Sox and played briefly for them as their starting first baseman. He died suddenly and unexpectedly.
The Red Sox players wore black armbands afterwards. This somber thing made a big impression on me when I was watching games on TV.
Another headline I distinctly recall had to do with the famous Brinx robbery. This must have been in January 1956, when six of the robbers were arrested just before the statute of limitations was to run out.
I recall one photo in the Herald of Boston Celtics guard Sam Jones making a jump shot with seconds left on the clock. It was the decisive basket in a deciding playoff game. In the photo, Jones was in midair; the shot had just left his hands.
There was a long time cartoonist on the Herald, Francis Dahl, who was very good. Among other things, he did cartoons about sports. After a Red Sox game or series, there would often be a Dahl cartoon. It would summarize the game. There might be a caricature of catcher Sammy White, say, who had just had an impressive day at the plate.
Dahl was not mean. He did not demean or make fun of his subjects. His baseball cartoons, for example, would usually feature a player who had done well. The cartoon would contain several panels that would give you a kind of capsule summary of the game. They were lighthearted and fun.
I remember another photo that was featured in the Herald sports section in 1957. It made a big impression on me. It was third baseman Frank Malzone’s first full season with the Red Sox. It showed Malzone (specifically, his legs and feet) diving into the stands for a foul pop up.
I was a paper boy, briefly, in the sixth grade. The salary was something like two and a half dollars per week. I had an afternoon route at first, and later a morning route.
The canvas bags, which you slung over your shoulder, seemed very heavy. You were supposed to curl the papers up and, somehow, by slapping them against your knee, configure them in such a fashion that you could throw them from the sidewalk onto a porch. Being naturally klutzy and inept, I never quite learned how to do this.
There were a lot of newspapers in Boston in those days, both morning and afternoon ones. I recall that one of the customers on my morning route in Cambridge was John Zimmerman. He was a musician, a bass player, and musical colleague of my dad. (See photo; John Zimmerman is on the right.) He subscribed to the Christian Science Monitor.
I had been told that Zimmerman, who moonlighted as a musician, had an advanced degree (Ph.D.?). So, I regarded him as some sort of egghead, which seemed to explain why he got a different paper from everyone else.
On the deck of the Boston Belle, a Boston-Providence cruise ship, mid-1950s. The musicians are Tony Sherbo, guitar, left; Alan W. Smith (my father), accordion, center; and John Zimmerman, bass, right,
I didn’t last long as a paper boy. Actually, I quit. I told our boss, Mr. Gladden, that I had to quit because of my parents, that I was waking them up when I got up early. “I haven’t heard that one before,” he said, not being for a moment fooled by my excuse.
Which brings me back, in a roundabout way, via newspapers, to Frank Malzone. But first another digression.
In the sixth grade, Miss Nancy Barnard, an attractive member of the North Congregational Church in Cambridge, to which my family belonged, organized a boys’ choir. She was a big Red Sox fan, a season ticket holder. As an inducement, she promised that any boy who joined the choir would get to go to a Red Sox game with her at the end of the school year.
I joined the choir, and, because I was a monotone (as was so determined), I was relegated with the other monotones to the back row. The first hymn that we performed was “Fairest Lord Jesus,” a beautiful hymn.
We were duly taken, as promised, to a Red Sox game at the end of the school year — which was also the end of the church year since the parish, inexplicably from my point of view, closed for summer vacation, and were in box seats right behind the Red Sox dugout. We got an autographed ball with the team members’ signatures on it. I believe one of the signatures was Ted Williams’s. (I took the ball out to play with a friend when I was a teenager and ruined it.)
The choir director knew the Red Sox players well, and several came over before the game to talk with us. One was the six foot six inches tall starting pitcher Frank Sullivan. I was very excited to meet an actual ballplayer.
“Frank,” I blurted out, “did you get hurt the other day when you fell into the seats?” He was momentarily confused. “Oh,” he said, laughing, “that was the other Frank [Malzone]!”
I was referring to the play, a photo of which I had seen in the Herald (as noted above), in which Frank Malzone had dived into the stands in the pursuit of a foul ball.
Later, the choir director got Red Sox pitcher Tom Brewer to come and speak at our parish.
Frank Malzone was one of my favorite Red Sox players from that period. He played very briefly for the Red Sox in 1955 (20 at bats). In 1956, he had 103 at bats and batted .165. He blossomed and became a regular in 1957. That was the year I became a fan of his. He was an outstanding fielder and a good hitter with some power.
I recall an outstanding play of Malzone’s that I saw on TV, before instant replay. He made a diving stab of a line drive which killed a rally. It was just one play, but I remember it. Red Sox announcer Curt Gowdy (whom I grew up listening to) couldn’t stop raving about the play.
In those days, I was a devoted reader of Sport magazine. They had a feature article about Malzone in 1957. The article discussed Malzone’s disappointing 1956 season. It said that the reason he flopped was because he was despondent and couldn’t concentrate on baseball. His wife and he had lost a child in infancy.
I was wondering if the New York Times would mention this in their obituary of Malzone, who died, sadly, on December 29, 2015, at the age of 85, but they didn’t.
Once at a Liberal Religious Youth (LRY) conference at Star Island in New Hampshire, I was practicing softball in the lawn in front of the hotel. A fellow LRY’er, Tom Linehan, who admired me as an intellectual to be looked up to in that regard, was watching, unbeknownst to me. He said afterwards that I was scooping up grounders effortlessly and “looked like Frank Malzone out there.” The compliment and comparison pleased me greatly. I rarely got compliments on my sports ability.
One further note, George Plimpton’s book Out of My League, a fun read, is based on his experience and observations about baseball from pitching a couple of innings against a lineup of Major League all-stars. Malzone was one of the players in the lineup, which Plimpton pitched to once.
People I remember well from my Liberal Religious Youth (LRY) days in the early 1960s include the following:
Phil Pierce, Pam (Corley) Pierce, Dick Ryan, Alison (Titus) Ryan, Ellie-Lou Rutledge, Steve Cooper, Cappy Pinderhughes, Rev. John M. Coffee, Jr., Al Houghton, Melissa McQuillan (President, Norfolk-Suffolk fed), David Klotzle, Paul Klotzle, Kate Hickler, Bunny Day (Star Island), Bob Day (ditto; Bunny’s brother), Ron Hildreth, Dick Barnaby (Star Island), Richard Derby, Bob Doolittle, Chuck Forrester (president of Continental LRY), Bill Sinkford (1964 Continental Conference; later President of the UUA), Ruth Wahtera, Dr. Peter A. Baldwin, Bruce Elwell, Carl Laws, Ruth (Levin) Elwell (from 1964 Continental Conference), Rev. Dr. Carl Scovel, Rev. Jack Hammon, Dimity Hammon, Tom Linehan, Kathy Phair, Russ Weisman, Mrs. Eileen Day, Charlie McGlynn, Rev. Lawrence M. (Larry) Jaffa, Larkie Colebrooke, Paul Tinkham (Canton local youth group),, Rev. C. Leon Hopper, Jr., Rev. William R. (Bill) Moors, John Ertha, Dick Hood, Jim Bogle, Cal Mosher, Sandi (Mosher) Olivio, Brad Coady (Canton local group, Norfolk-Suffolk Fed), Linda Marsh, George Kaldro, Chris (Adler) Fernsler, Margaret Rich, Martha Chickering, Jane Uhrich, Rev. Elmer Stelley, Rev. William A. (Bill) DeWolfe, Kristin (Kris) Hanson, Stuart Hanson, John Fountain, William W. (Rusty) Park, Larry Ladd, Cindy Pratt, Lorna Laughland, Rev. Alexander (Scotty) Meek, Rev. Manuel R. (Dutch) Holland, “Moscow” Marx (from Star Island), Jon Palmer, Linda (Gulbrandsen) Goldsmith, Janice (Sanford) Brady, Ralph Sanford, Ted Roselund (Canton local youth group), Henry Cheetham (Star Island), Carole Smith (from 1964 Continental Conference), Norm Helverson, Jean Nichols, Lance Messinger, Herb Weeks, Jane Garside (Canton local group, Norfolk-Suffolk fed), Peter Robash, Chandler Newton, Wally Fletcher, Barry Crego (anti-nuke activist from Connecticut). Ruth Clarke (1964 Continental Conference, SRL), Rev. Orloff W. Miller (SRL), Randy Becker (SRL)
