11/22: That other awful day

The ornate condolence certificate, autographed by the President, arrived two months after the sudden death of my father—a combat veteran who helped overthrow the Japanese in the Philippines but never discussed it with any of his four inquisitive children.

That letter brought radiance into our home on an otherwise dreary late November day.

So, suddenly transformed into a proud 8-year-old, I pestered my mother for the honor of bringing the document to school the following day. My pragmatic Irish mother denied the request--worried I could lose or damage the precious parchment.

Friday began as unremarkable as a hundred before: Morning prayers chanted effortlessly, the Pledge of Allegiance parroted as we stood with our right hands over our hearts facing an American flag.

I was having trouble concentrating on the curriculum, typical for a Friday when the weekend beckoned. But this time all I could think about was a letter that had arrived just yesterday from a revered man who could have met my father less than a generation ago.

With only an hour of captivity remaining, a high-school boy suddenly entered from the right door bearing a message. Snatching the note from his hand the nun appeared almost angry at the interruption. I could, however, see her face suddenly turn white—matching the mask-like habit all ‘Sisters of St. Joseph’ wore.

She crumpled the memo with one hand while reaching back to grab her desk with the other, slumping as though absorbing a blow from a heavyweight boxer. With a trembling voice she said, “Please stand.” Although puzzled, we responded immediately.

“Now extend your arms sideway, shoulder high, and hold them there,” she said still struggling to gain control. So there we stood, 26 of us, rooted near our desks like cemetery crosses wondering, as our shoulders started to ache, what could possible cause such a break in routine?

She regained the commanding voice of authority to announce, “President Kennedy has just been shot” Tears trickled down her cheeks as she concluded, “He needs our prayers.”

At St. Michael’s school in the year of our Lord 1963, President John F. Kennedy was fourth on the list of most beloved: just under the Holy Trinity and tied with Pope John. And in my home he was tied for second with St. Patrick just under my recently deceased father.

The big yellow bus rumbled back to Amherst with an interior as quiet as a crypt. The astonishing event blurred short-term memory like one too many drinks. I began to question whether the letter from the now martyred leader was actually real, or did I simply imagine it?

Bursting thru the front door I quickly spied the prized possession lying on a cluttered kitchen table. With relief and reverence I held it aloft, taking in the brilliant gold calligraphy etched on a pure white background: “It is with deepest sympathy…”

A feeling the entire nation now shared.

A Thanksgiving Story

Only in Arlington would posing for the greatest illustrator in American history on assignment for media juggernaut The Saturday Evening Post pass for routine.

Richard (Dick) Hagelberg returned to the family dairy farm after surviving five years in the 9’th Army Air Corps, flying 65 treacherous daylight bombings missions over Europe, including D-Day.

One summer morning he sat beside his 51-year-old mother Saara (Finnish spelling) for an hour of modeling; and two generations later, the scene still resonates.

Rockwell desperately recruited the Hagelberg’s at deadline. Initially they refused, but acquiesced when he offered them each $15. After publication, as he often did with models, Rockwell offered to gift Dick the original painting. He respectfully refused.

Last year Rockwell’s ‘Homecoming Marine’ sold at auction for $9.2 million and ‘Breaking Home Ties’ (a farmer sitting on the running board of a pick up truck with his son dressed in Sunday best clothes heading off to college) brought an astonishing $15.4 million.

Rockwell’s 1943 ‘Freedom from Want’, an extended family gathering around a sumptuous turkey dinner, would prove more popular than the minimalist “Thanksgiving, 1945: A mother and son peeling potatoes.”

But the earlier Post cover had a distinct advantage.



Part of Rockwell’s public relations war effort, the epic series of illustrations based on FDR’s 1941 State of the Union speech, ‘The Four Freedoms’ heartened a battered America still reeling from Pearl Harbor’s infamy.

The US Government originally rebuffed Rockwell’s sponsorship proposal so he settled on his regular employer, The Saturday Evening Post. The blockbuster results appeared over four consecutive weekly covers from February 20 to March 13, 1943.

‘Freedom From Want” hit the stands on March 6, 1943, so unlike ‘A mother and son peeling potatoes’ that appeared on November 24’th, 1945, it was not simply a seasonal Thanksgiving tribute.

The Office of War Information printed and distributed millions of full-color reproductions of the ‘The Four Freedoms’ and sponsored the originals on a War Bond Tour of major cities that raised $130 million.

Americans adored ‘Freedom from want’; but with Europe in ruins our struggling and beaten allies didn’t want a reminder that America’s heartland escaped war’s devastation.

For his Thanksgiving, 1945 cover Rockwell journeyed to Maine for a change in scenery, starting work in mid-August--the day Japan surrendered.

Rockwell drafted a 16-year-old boy for the veteran and a friend’s wife acted as his mother. When the illustrator returned to his Arlington studio he couldn’t make it work—the young man didn’t exude the stress of war.

Rockwell recruited two more locals but once again didn’t like the results, considering it too staged. Fortuitously, Dick, recently returned from battle, arrived to deliver milk fresh from the nearby Hagelberg farm. The illustrator had his subjects.

Rockwell originally posed Dick in a wheelchair striking a pensive pose imitating Rodan’s ‘The Thinker’, but decided it was too sad. The selected scene is still slightly incongruous, as Dick is performing one of the military’s more despised chores—KP duty—yet he radiates contentment.

Saara Hagelberg’s loving expression—the look only a mother can give—to a son who survived the ravages of a conflict that had claimed so many sons, personifies Thanksgiving.

Rockwell rejoiced: this time the handsome young man had weathered the misery of war; this time his real mother sits by his side.

So why refuse to accept the original painting? Rockwell, as he often did with models, took liberties with Saara adding twenty pounds and twenty years to her appearance. In fact, Hallmark later used her Thanksgiving image for an “I love you Grandma” card.

The dutiful son knew his mother—although proud of the overall result—was mad.

Saara Hagelberg died of cancer only two years later, a few months before the birth of her first grandchild. By then a priest had purchased the painting and he donated it to an American Legion Post in Winchendon, Massachusetts.

A Rockwell Museum expert rediscovered Thanksgiving, 1945 in the late 1970’s; aghast it hung in a smoke filled building with no fire suppression. The Museum borrowed it, where it remains to this day.

In 1988 the Hagelberg family returned from Stockbridge, Massachusetts disappointed the painting was not on display.

In an apology letter curator Maureen Hart Hennessey explained, “The museum has almost 500 paintings in its collection and can only exhibit 40-50 at one time. We also rotate paintings for conservation reasons to help preserve them for future generations.”

A few weeks later the Hagelberg’s enjoyed a private showing.

In 1993 Dick Hagelberg, after helping build a home for his daughter Nancy high on a hill overlooking the family farm that he also built, succumbed to cancer. His wife Olga, a proud WW2 Marine veteran, still lives in that home in Arlington, Vermont.



And lately, even around Thanksgiving, she briefly struggles…but then vividly recalls—keeping alive those magnificent memories.

Two steps forward, one slide back.

Alas, my annual membership fee to The People’s Republic of Amherst is up 33 cents this year—that is 33 cents per $1,000 of valuation. Thus I will pay the Politburo $3,800…and it doesn’t even include a personal masseuse.

If a tornado uprooted my humble abode and plopped it down in Hadley, the membership fee there would be about half that ($2,095).

Last night, rather late, Town Meeting took baby steps towards economic development. We extended the business district a smidgeon to include the Lord Jeff Inn and some other Amherst College owned properties in the immediately vicinity thus paving the way for the stately Inn to expand by at least 33%.

Currently valued at $2 million the Lord Jeff membership fee to Amherst this year is $32,000 and they also pay the 4% hotel/motel room tax something the tax-exempt Umass Campus Center Hotel (with room sales last year of $919,382) ignores.

Thus the Lord Jeff expansion is a double win for Amherst: a significant increase in property tax valuation and increased sales subject to the local room tax.

But we narrowly failed to muster the two-thirds required (100-53) for a slight loosening of restrictions to allow hotel/motels in the downtown business district. A great night for Amherst College, as now there is little likelihood of increased lodging competition.

As long as Amherst’s tax base remains 90% housing and 10% commercial, the annual membership fees will remain entirely too steep; and the only one that benefits is Hadley.

JUST THOUGHT OF IT NOW UPDATE: Interestingly, both the Town Moderator Harrison Gregg and Chair of the Planning Board Aaron Hayden stepped down during the discussion last night to avoid Conflict of Interest as they are both employed by Amherst College. Too bad our Select board members, who are employed by Umass (or immediate family), don’t have the same high threshold for integrity.

Turn About Fair Play

Since Mr. Kusner elicits laughs from so many people, I’m only too happy to hear that this blog amuses him. And I think it’s great he can use the bully pulpit provided by his honorable Select board position to address items found only here.

Stephanie O’Keeffe reports on Inamherst's Recap of the 11/15 Select Board meeting that Rob Kusner explained he recused himself from the liquor license change for Umass Faculty Club last week because he’s good friends with the manager and he and his department (Math would definitely drive me to drink) have accounts at the club. Furthermore, he’s descended from Vulcans, not Klingons as I suggested.

Yeah with all his brainy expositions over the years, I should have figured that. Hopefully he will give advance warning before that once every seven years "Pon Farr" blood fever thing.

The road not taken.

A perfect metaphor for our current form of government...

You scratch my back...

At a time when the People’s Republic is facing a $1.9 million deficit in the upcoming year and town officials desperately wished for a $2.5 million tax Override to make it thru this year, the Town Manager gifted Finance Director and Town Manager wanna-be John Musante with a new job description, ‘Assistant Town Manager’--including a retroactive raise from $90,000 to $96,000 this year and to $102,000 next year.

So how many other municipal employees will get a 7% raise next year? And where would we come up with the many millions needed to cover that?

Musante’s predecessor Nancy Maglione always acted as town Manger when Barry Del Castilho was on his frequent vacations or I-don’t-feel-like-coming-to-work days; and that was simply a part of her job description as Finance Director.

Musante collected an extra $10,000 last year (and an additional month of vacation) for acting as Town Manager when Del Castilho bailed out, with full pay of course, three months early.

At the Select board meeting of May 30 rookie Town Manager Larry Shaffer reported the Finance Committee’s Reserve Fund (supposedly set aside for “unanticipated emergencies”) was bankrupt, so the potholes (requiring about $10,000) that made Amherst resemble a B-52 carpet-bomb test range would just have to wait until July.

Of course the Cherry Hill Golf course--that both Shaffer and Musante championed--was sucking up $16,000 of the FinCom’s $50,000 emergency fund; and the Town Manager’s car/cell phone allowance of $4,200 also encumbered that fund because Musante neglected to include it when he put together his (or rubber stamped Del Castilho’s) FY07 $220,000 Selectboard/Town Manager budget.

So if Musante has trouble with a spare-change $220,000 budget, what else will he miss in a mid-$60 Million budget?

Seasons in the sun

Cherry Hill Golf course, too late to benefit the bottom line, is on a PR role (with the crusty Gazette anyway): yesterday’s puff piece about Frisbee golf--a sparsely attended non-revenue event--and today’s “back in the black” advertisement, errrr, I mean article.

With all the figurative lying cheating and stealing, the best town officials can conjure up is $26,500 over last year's Fall closing? Let’s see, they ignore over $20,000 in hidden costs like employee benefits and insurance, $15,000 in capital expenditures for a new fence and underground gasoline storage tank, and try to suggest the course can be managed by only one-quarter of one person when two years ago it required two full-time people.

No wonder operations are down. In FY06 they had purchased $6,200 of fertilizer/insecticide in the first half of the year but this year delayed that purchase until the second half of the season (this coming Spring), probably to make the mid-season report look good.

And of course the most important calculation the crusty Gazette failed to acknowledge: had the Town Manager accepted Niblik’s privatization bid last year the town would be GUARANTEED $30,000 profit thus freeing up the Recreation honcho and Town Manager to attend to more important matters.