While some cynics are incurable, I believe even his harshest critics should concede that Mayor Kevin Dumas knocked one out of the park with our city's recent centennial celebration and parade. Also deserving high praise and commendations are the designated planners who tackled the daunting logistics necessary to tie up the dozens of loose ends into one highly successful and enjoyable milestone for all.
Patti and I are fortunate to live in a house providing an optimum viewing area for all the parades, and on the occasion of this grand centennial review, the porch chairs afforded me, my wife Patti, our friends Dave Hardt, Fran Barrett's charming wife Linda (Franny had to work) and our granddaughter, Attleboro High School senior Cortney Brodeur, ringside seats. Since I had volunteered to help work the historic commission's table in the park at noon, and I had to wait to see our daughter Peggi and granddaughters Iris and Juliet on the Coelho and Hill-Roberts school floats as they passed, I needed a quick way to Capron Park. Lady Luck smiled upon me in the personage of a pleasant young lady named Sharon, who had an empty passenger seat in her food pantry van and graciously granted my request for a lift. Once there, so many friends stopped by that I will forget someone, I know, but there was Billy Morris, Gunther Ilic, Jim "Killer" Kane, Glenne (Rollins) Plante and her lovely daughter, R.N. Amy and her family, Joe Murphy, Bob Tracey, Attleboro police officer Bill Gosselin and brother-in-law, Sgt. Brian Witherell, (happy retirement, Brian) daughter Peggi with Iris and Juliet and fellow historical commission members Chairwoman Marian Wrightington, Betty Fuller, Evelyn Silvia, Brian French, Gerry Raposa and Vic Bonneville and his gracious wife Iona.
Over the long run, it seems this life accords us equal shares of joy and sorrow, triumph and failure; the exhilaration of the occasion and my pleasure at seeing so many friends was mitigated by some news I learned in conversation with Brian French. Brian related that I had lost a reliable and highly-valued friend, and our city has lost a walking, talking and encyclopedia of local history, a living treasury of trivia and amusing anecdotes concerning all things Attleboro.
Sometime over the past several weeks, Newton Woodworth, well-known popular lifelong area resident who operated L.H. Cooper over much of the 20th century with his also-recently deceased brother Ralph, "Coop," has himself passed away. As there has been no public notification of his death, I'm afraid many of his friends may be hearing the sad news here for the first time.
For a pair that ran what was arguably the communications center for local community news, the two brother's own lives were kept fairly private. But don't misconstrue their modest ways - the invaluable contributions they made were many, if unheralded.
Attleboro pre-dawn risers regularly saw Coop racing around in his open-air Jeep, surrounded by newspapers piled high as he delivered them to each and every local convenience store, and ensuring Attleboro's workforce got their morning news.
Then too, many elderly and/or infirm friends and neighbors living alone were briefly visited on a frequent basis by Newt, that he might assure himself they were well, and say, by the way, since he was going anyhow, did they need any things from the store? And oh, he really was headed to the market just as he said, but he'd never tell a soul that his errand was to buy bread and sundry provisions for local soup kitchens and food pantries. You see, Attleboro's people had been good to Newt, and he considered his good works to be his way of balancing the ledger - but much more, they revealed an integral and beautiful facet of his basic nature throughout his time among us.
As expected in this life, my sources of information for local history prior to my birth have departed this plane of existence one by one throughout the course of my life, and certainly the numbers have grown as I age as well. The true tragedy comes from the relaxation that much more than sources of information, they had all become true friends. The faces that come to mind are only fractions of the whole - my mother, my family, Bob Coelho, Joe Joyce, Ralph Bianchi, Gus Ferrara, Harold Berbarian, Bill Hannan, Jim Sullivan, "Bud" Blackburn, Roxy Pichi, Joe and Bill Marcoccio, Annie De Litta, Matthias "Mac" McKearney, Lenny Pickering, Pete Duffy, "Buster" Blanchard, Don Webb, Martha Nickerson, Merton Churchill, Tommy Birch, Alex Karol, Floyd DeSantos, Charlie and Irma Rigby, Zoltan and Lillian Bajnoci, Warren MacKinlay, Mary Stanton and sons Henry and Richie, Fran Driscoll, Franny Hynes, Kai Shang, Cy Brennan, Bob Warren and Jeanne Blaine Morin are only some that added some measure to my apprenticeship for these weekly musings. They are just the proverbial 10 percent of the iceberg. Now, Newton joins that long list, and it leaves me and my old hometown a little emptier. Vaya con Dios, old friend...
Later in the week, I read that yet another old friend and former roomie, Patrick O'Brien, had died on the Cape at the age of 63. Though we had been out of contact for quite some time, Pat will always be recalled with great fondness by my wife and I. Sincere condolences to his surviving family, retired Attleboro police officer Tom O'Brien and wife Barbara, brother Kevin and wife Janice, sister Carolyn and husband Arthur, and Pat's three sons Michael, Daniel and Kevin, and former wife Mary Beth (Barden) O'Brien.
Pat's lifelong devotion to the needs of others has surely seen him through the gates of paradise.
Be kind to one another, this world puts burdens on us all. Peace.
Thomas McAvoy writes about Attleboro's past on Tuesdays. Contact him at [email protected].
