History

Angela Merkel: An Appreciation

Today we venture into the field of International Relations, a rare topic for this site. The prompt for writing is the departure of Angela Merkel from the office of Chancellor of Germany, a position she held for the past 16 years. As I’ve written previously, I have an interest in…

Read More »

Pearl Harbor Day

The following was first posted on December 7, 2017. U.S. Navy photograph of battleship Arizona sinking after being hit by Japanese air attack on Dec. 7, 1941. National Archives photo. Today is the anniversary of the surprise attack by the Japanese navy on Pearl Harbor. By the time the attack…

Read More »

November Football Memories

November Football Memories By Dean Contover The first Lowell High School game I attended was when I was a young boy living in New York City with my parents. In November 1958, my relative George Tsanezakos and his friends came down from Lowell to stay in our home. They were…

Read More »

The Lessons of History

I delivered the following remarks on November 11, 2018, at the Greater Lowell Veterans Council Veterans Day ceremony at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. The Lessons of History By Richard P. Howe Jr. Thirty-eight years ago this Wednesday – November 14, 1980 – I boarded a plane at New York’s JFK…

Read More »

I Hear You Lima Charlie

“I Hear You Lima Charlie—How Me?”:  A Radio Transmission From The Jungle War By Bill Crawford The electric crescendo overhead went strangely silent as the thunder and lightning gave way to the drumbeat of rain on the rusty tin roof. The Hawk feverishly spun the dials on his old field…

Read More »

Visiting With Two Very Special Veterans

  Visiting With Two Very Special Veterans By Steve O’Connor (Originally posted on May 24, 2009) In the following essay, originally read on UMass Lowell’s Sunrise program on WUML, Steve O’Connor remembered a day spent with two very special veterans, Edwin Poitras and Jack Flood, both of whom survived unsurvivable circumstances…

Read More »

An American in Paris

An American in Paris By Louise Peloquin On September 16, 1940, the US passed the Selective Service Act allowing the draft of eligible men for military service. Hence, Laval U. Peloquin, one of nine children born to French-Canadian immigrants Joseph and Marieanne, was plucked out of civilian life and deposited…

Read More »

Annexations to Lowell in the 19th century

The original grant for the town of Lowell only included about 20 percent of the land that makes up the city today. Over the rest of the nineteenth century, the Massachusetts State Legislature annexed portions of Tewksbury, Dracut, and Chelmsford to Lowell to give the city its current configuration. Here…

Read More »