Dawne Fusco
of Body Sense
by Kathleen Downey
Dawne Fusco, owner of Body Sense
Potions, lotions, and perfume oils line the shelves of Body Sense, where proprietor Dawne Fusco has been mixing customized concoctions for her loyal clientele since 1987. The brown glass bottles with simple white labels affixed are reminiscent of a medieval apothecary shop. Indeed, the narrow store with its wares of lightly fragrant soaps, bath crystals, shampoos, and other body elixirs offers a plethora of soothing remedies for body and soul. But the infusion of Newburyport panache is a little more subtle; that is, until the sound of Fusco’s laughter fills the pleasantly cramped confines.
A conversation with Fusco includes a lot of laughter, especially when she is reminiscing about people and events in Newburyport’s not too distant past. “The newer people in town, who’ve moved here for the natural beauty and the lovely homes, have no idea of some of the colorful characters that were once a distinct part of Newburyport,” Fusco says. She rolls her eyes and gives a short, mischievous laugh.
“One day some years ago, during Yankee Homecoming, I looked out my shop window to see a neighborhood gentleman dressed in white lace fishnet tights, wearing ski-gloves, and standing in the middle of State Street,” Fusco laughter starts to bubble. “He had taken it upon himself to direct traffic—with a flyswatter!” I ask if this gentleman had been a Body Sense customer. “Oh yes!” Fusco shouts, laughter now overcoming her, “He would come into the shop to purchase Daffodil Oil; he said he need it for his trip to Oz.”
Fusco loves being downtown, whether inside her shop or sitting on a bench in the bullnose. “I love to sit with a bagel from Abraham’s in the morning and watch the Starbucks crowd. In the evening, when I close shop, I’ll often sit in the bullnose and watch the crowd from the ‘Whale.” It’s the blend of people who rub elbows with one another on the city’s brick sidewalks that appeals to Fusco and infuses her with an essential tincture of Newburyport. Like the essential oils that she blends in her brown apothecary bottles.
But nature’s essence most deeply resonates with Fusco. “As a girl, growing up in West Newbury, I would play along the Indian River,” she tells me. Fusco recalls the turtles, frogs, ducks, and other creatures she would encounter in the verdant patches of wetlands. “I’ve always known that all these little pieces matter,” she says. Fusco’s passion for the beautiful patchwork ecosystem that was her childhood playground and an understanding of its fragility have stayed with her. Today she serves as chairperson for the Conservation Committee and is a member of the Open Space Committee, both in W. Newbury. One of her proudest accomplishments is orchestrating the recent replacement of a culvert bridge that had fallen into severe disrepair with the passage of years. It’s the same river culvert where, as a young girl, Fusco would lie on her stomach on the grassy embankment and admire, in the shallow water, the turtles she so loved.
Her love of animals led Fusco to adopt Molly, a fluffy black and white cat who was as haughty as she was beautiful and routinely peed in her husband’s slippers. She laughs, remembering her husband’s outrage.
Fusco met her husband while attending her first and only Red Sox game when she was 18. She remembers, “My date bought me a hot dog with mustard after I had told him, no mustard!” Having overheard, the young man sitting beside Fusco with his own date volunteered that he liked mustard; so he ate the offending hot dog. Ultimately, fate would bring Fusco and the chivalrous mystery mustard man together again so they could fall in love and marry.
As I say good-bye to Fusco, a young woman comes into the shop and exclaims, “I’m so glad to see that this store is still here!” The woman explains that she’s lived away for the past 20 years but as a high school student in Newburyport, she would often shop at Body Sense. “Oh yes, I’m still here!” Fusco smiles and assures her. I leave, having given my own assurance to Fusco. I promise not to write about the mildly scandalous stories that rattled the glass jewelry cases in her laughing and retelling.
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Kathleen Downey is the features editor at Newburyport-Today, she can be reached for comment at kathleen@newburyport-today.com
