Tuesday, August 31, 2010 | View Comments
Richard Doyle likes to keep busy. The retired Newburyport High School history teacher (he taught for 37 years, 17 of those years simultaneously teaching theatre arts) had just published his facetiously titled teaching memoir, “Winston Churchill Was a Catholic Priest” when he spoke with Newburyport Today last year to share anecdotes and insights into the world of teaching. (The title of his memoir is taken from an actual student answer to a test question.) Now Doyle has just finished writing a book that profiles his family’s genealogy. “Erickson Family History” is a rich exploration of Doyle’s Swedish lineage, following the bloodline and family heritage passed to him through his mother.
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Tuesday, August 24, 2010 | View Comments
I had received the tip that Steve Dodge is “YEAT from top to tail,” so I was happy that this townie graciously made time in his schedule to chat with me for Newburyport-Today. (In fact, at the close of our interview, Dodge—being of good humor—modeled his red YEAT T-shirt, probably to the chagrin of his wife, who had advised her husband against donning the quaintly silly attire.)
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Thursday, August 19, 2010 | View Comments
“What am I going to do with this gift called life?” It’s a deeply personal question that Steve Rankin, owner of Gram’s Ice Cream, says that each person should ask of oneself. Philosophy is an unexpected and inconspicuous ingredient in the flavors that this unassuming and self-effacing ice cream parlor proprietor serves each day. But Gram’s is not your typical, nor corporate, ice cream operation.
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Tuesday, August 10, 2010 | View Comments
Steven Bradbury has an innate connection to the community that he serves. He grew up on Lime Street, played sports on the Perkins Playground, fished from the waterfront with his chums, and “bicycled everywhere.” The neighborhoods he traversed as a young boy are the same neighborhoods—even if some bear little resemblance to those of his boyhood—that he now protects in his role as Newburyport’s deputy fire chief. Sports have also carried into Bradbury’s adult life. As the city’s youth football commissioner, Bradbury coaches new generations: building stamina, shaping attitudes of perseverance, and cultivating the enjoyment derived from physically excelling.
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Tuesday, August 3, 2010 | View Comments
Provident Bank president Charlie Cullen was wearing his puffy white “poet’s” shirt—a signature garment to the uniform of town crier (Cullen’s alter ego during Yankee Homecoming week) when we spoke. He was between engagements, having “cried” the day’s announcements from his podium in Market Square earlier in the afternoon and now taking a small break, beneath the shade of a tree, on the grounds of Atria Merrimack Place before going inside to help crown Yankee Homecoming’s senior king and queen.
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Tuesday, July 27, 2010 | View Comments
When Liz Schofield laughs, it is with full abandon. She has the type of laugh that rises from her core and emanates from every fiber of her body, reverberating on sound waves to knock over anyone nearby.—Only a slight exaggeration.—I’ve sat in the chair of the hair stylist-proprietor of Atlantis Salon, so I’ve experienced her laughter up close. Whether telling jokes or funny personal stories that I can’t write about, Schofield embraces humor as a life philosophy. Instead of reciting inspirational lines from a divine text, she laughs from her heart—a lot.
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Tuesday, July 20, 2010 | View Comments
Fittingly, Davis Lee joins me at Plum Island Coffee Roasters after his morning swim off of Plum Island. He doesn’t appear to be waterlogged; in fact, he’s looking crisp in his striped summer shirt and light-colored trousers. Then Lee tells me, as if fessing-up, that although he typically swims for three hours, he swam for only two this morning. That’s two hours, propelling his body through the ocean, an exercise that he began shortly after 5:00 a.m. (I wonder how a short-changed hour could possibly lessen this feat.) Though he’s a driven guy, Lee is humble. The wellspring for his humility may lie in a little swim that he has planned for this September: the English Channel.
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Tuesday, July 13, 2010 | View Comments
Gardiner Bacon is an enigma. He would take it as a compliment if you were to call him a lounge lizard (he told me so)—not that Bacon hangs out in dimly lit bars wearing a gold lame suit, though he might like such a suit. Rather, his cultivated persona is one of cool, hip, alternative aloofness that gravitates toward what Bacon coyly describes as “sleaze noir.”
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Tuesday, July 6, 2010 | View Comments
Affable with a sly sense of humor, Frank Serwon is the only townie whom I’ve spoken with thus far who has been chased through the streets of Newburyport by a former mayor. I met with Serwon in his North End home on a steamy June morning. His lovely wife Dot sat on a sofa in close proximity, every now and then interrupting her husband to gently admonish him for the outlandish stories he was telling me—some of them true. The couple will celebrate 55 years of marriage this September.
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Tuesday, June 29, 2010 | View Comments
He’s not dastardly like the 1980s TV villain and Texas oil baron J.R. Ewing of Dallas fame, with whom he shares an initialism. But J.R. Gallagher is delightfully devilish and a smidge irreverent—in a sweet kind of way. He’s also very funny, sincere, and comes across as a really good guy.
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Tuesday, June 22, 2010 | View Comments
Ilene-Harnch Grady has townie in her bloodline. Her father, an 18-year city councilor (14 of those years as city council president) even has a throughway named after him, “Harnch’s Way” that crosses in front of Famous Pizza. And he was also the Harold who owned and operated Mr. Harold’s Beauty Shop, where The Pizza Factory is now located.
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Tuesday, June 15, 2010 | View Comments
Vicki Hendrickson is a force of nature. The community whirlwind escorts me into her cramped office, with its walls adorned with images of all-things Newburyport, and settles behind her desk. As Director of Newburyport Adult and Community Education, she is excited to show me the newly printed Summer Camp for Grownups brochure with its cover design by local artist Alan Bull. Offering courses that are both fun and educational, Hendrickson hopes that the curriculum will pique and engage the interest of greater Newburyport’s adult citizens.
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Monday, June 7, 2010 | View Comments
Warm and generous, Linda Garcia shapes and nourishes community through bagels, pizza, and a deep sense of caring. As proprietor of Abraham’s Bagels & Pizza…
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Tuesday, June 1, 2010 | View Comments
Leo Finnegan is a humble man whose modesty holds his tongue, lest he portray himself as too big a deal. So it was with a very much down-played air that he shared, toward the end of our interview, that he had rescued someone from a burning Kent Street home while serving as a firefighter for Newburyport’s Call Fire Department during the 1960s. “I helped to drag outside a person who had collapsed on the floor,” he told me. Though the memory of his heroic act rests upon Finnegan as simply a small service that he provided many years ago, to the unnamed townie whose life he saved, Finnegan’s selfless act was no doubt huge.
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Tuesday, May 25, 2010 | View Comments
A sharp business acumen, civic mindedness, and a philanthropic tincture are melded attributes of Curt Gerrish, president and CEO of Rochester Electronics.
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Tuesday, May 18, 2010 | View Comments
As a youth, Rick Bayko says he was a “skinny little guy whom none of the other kids ever picked for their teams” in school sports. Today, the proprietor ofYankee Runner has 25 marathons to his sports resume, 12 of those in Boston.
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Tuesday, May 11, 2010 | View Comments
A quiet, determined, and compassionate force coalesces and elegantly emanates from Lorraine Leary. But it is the “fire” that sparkles in her blue eyes that hints at Leary’s intrinsic, tireless drive for helping others. I met with Leary in her comfortable apartment at Heritage House to learn about this doyenne of charitable giving.
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Tuesday, May 4, 2010 | View Comments
This expatriate-townie love story began at the Port Rec Center on Story Ave. more than 40 years ago.
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Tuesday, April 27, 2010 | View Comments
As sheriff of Essex County, Frank G. Cousins, Jr., traverses the physical and social landscapes of more than 30 cities, towns, and villages in Northeastern Massachusetts, helping officials from local law enforcement keep their communities safe. But the sheriff has also been instrumental in developing behavioral and educational programs to help rehabilitate criminal offenders, so that upon their release from the correctional facilities that house them, they can become positive, contributing members of society.
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Tuesday, April 20, 2010 | View Comments
Dorothy Fairweather wears her simple elegance and altruism unpretentiously. Compassion and caring rest upon her small shoulders, ready to propel a quiet, steadfast resolve that has led Fairweather to accomplish large acts of kindness.
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