RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

Lowell Politics: December 7, 2025

The agenda for last Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting was so brief that councilors had to take a recess 20 minutes in because the rest of the agenda was finished before the 7 p.m. start time for public hearings arrived. However, brevity does not equal insignificance, for the council took a momentous vote by refusing to raise the money needed to complete the Lowell High School project.

Here’s what happened: A public hearing was scheduled on a loan order to borrow $40 million (in addition to the $382 million previously authorized to be borrowed) to pay “the costs of designing, constructing, equipping and furnishing an additional and renovation project at Lowell High School.” Most of this additional money is needed to pay for fixing the floor of the 1922 and Coburn Hall buildings, which sit between Kirk Street and the Merrimack Canal.

When contractors (and I’m using “contractors” to cover architects, agents, subcontractors and everyone involved who doesn’t work for the city) began work on the northern end of the 1922 building last summer, they discovered that the soil underneath the basement slab had washed away, leaving a void that had to be fixed before work could proceed. This discovery came as a complete surprise to the contractors, so the cost of fixing it – which involved removing the existing concrete floor, adding sufficient fill to eliminate all voids, and installing a new floor through the two buildings – was not included in the budget for the project. Not only would extra money be needed, but because of the late discovery, it is highly unlikely that the state building authority will provide any reimbursement for this portion of the project so the cost will be borne entirely by the city.

When this was first discovered, and again on Tuesday night, councilors criticized the contractors for not discovering this flooring problem during the design phase of the project. Councilors have been particularly critical of the contractor for drilling just one test hole through the floor to assess what was underneath. The contractors have pushed back saying that they followed accepted practices in their field; that the city’s concerns about disrupting student learning curtailed the number of holes that could be drilled in the floor; and that the floor had no cracks or depressions of the type that would be expected if there was nothing but empty space beneath the floor. Tuesday, the contractor categorized some council criticism as “Monday morning quarterbacking.”

When the roll call was taken, Councilors Wayne Jenness, Rita Mercier, Kim Scott, Paul Ratha Yem, Corey Belanger, Sokhary Chau, and Mayor Dan Rourke voted for the loan order, giving it seven votes. Voting against it were Councilors John Descoteaux and Erik Gitschier. Significantly, Councilors Vesna Nuon and Corey Robinson were absent.

A matter that deals with spending – like this one – that comes before the council requires a super majority of two-thirds of the eleven-member city council to pass. Two-thirds of eleven is 7.33. Since a fraction cannot be a vote, you must round up to the next whole number. That would be eight. So, for the Lowell City Council as now constituted to pass a measure that requires a two-thirds majority, eight councilors must vote for it, regardless of how many are present at the meeting. In this case, only seven councilors voted for the loan order, so it failed.

It feels apt to be writing about this on Pearl Harbor Day because the outcome seemed to come as a complete surprise. For example, when the public hearing was opened to those wishing to speak in favor of the loan, no one said anything. When councilors were debating the loan, no one questioned the city manager about what would happen if the vote failed. Even after the vote was taken, I’m not sure many of those in the council chambers realized the vote had failed. Everyone just moved on to the next public hearing without comment.

I won’t speculate about the many dire consequences that will result if this outcome is allowed to stand since the real-world effects of this vote will be apparent soon enough.

Coincidentally, on Friday, the Lowell Sun reported on the most recent meeting of the Lowell High School Building Committee which was held on November 20, 2025. (See “Progress, problems with school rebuild project” by Melanie Gilbert, December 5, 2025, print edition.) The committee learned that Phase III, which involved the northern half of the 1922 building has been completed. Over the coming Christmas break, classrooms that have been in the other half of the 1922 building and the adjacent Coburn Hall will be moved into the newly renovated portion. When students return to school in January, they will be in this new space, and renovations will begin on the rest of the 1922 and Coburn Hall buildings. Together, they constitute Phase IV, the final part of the project. Unfortunately, the subfloor problem discovered in Phase III also exists in Phase IV.

One of the uncertainties of the council’s rejection of the funding vote on Tuesday is whether this phase of the project will proceed on schedule or will be halted due to lack of money. Seemingly unaware of the impending council denial of funding, the School Building Committee cancelled its December meeting and is next scheduled to meet on January 22, 2026.

For those asking, “is it possible to scale back the rest of the project and finish it with the money already appropriated?”, the contractor addressed that on Tuesday by saying that would violate the agreement with the State Building Authority and could potentially jeopardize the state’s reimbursement for the entire project. Furthermore, contracts have already been executed with subcontractors for Phase IV, so cancelling them now would be costly to the city. For those and other reasons, scaling back on the project now does not seem like a viable solution.

Regardless of the ultimate resolution of this most recent High School funding issue, it seems that the FY2027 city budget, which will commence on July 1, 2026, will be a painful one. City Manager Tom Golden indicated that in his remarks on Tuesday. He said that the first 1.6% of the overall budget will go towards the indebtedness for the high school project. While this latest $40 million adds to that, the budget shock has other causes. Golden said that from the beginning of this project, the city chose to “backload the debt” making it all come due in FY27 rather than incrementally in the intervening years. He also said that beyond the high school, the city has been “doing a lot with roads and firehouses.”

A recurring theme of this newsletter over the past three years is that this council and its predecessor have been spending a lot of money. Perhaps the reason city roads were not in tip top shape is that keeping them in pristine condition is expensive, but fixing roads has been a priority for this council and that comes at a fiscal price. With rare exceptions, this council has added new positions to the city workforce without much regard for the future budget impact of more employees. Finally, past councils have been the beneficiaries of millions of dollars in federal funding through programs like ARPA and ESSER which landed the city an entirely new fleet of fire trucks; nearly a million dollars each in renovations to eight city parks (one per council district); countless improvements to school buildings; and much else that was funded entirely without city funds. Beyond the future of the Lowell High project, this council vote is a sign of the fiscal chaos that will engulf the city in the coming year.

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As mentioned above, today is Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. It is not a federal or state holiday, but if you look at many wall calendars, December 7 will be so marked. That is largely through the efforts of the late Henri Champagne who died in 2006 at age 86. Born in Lowell but a Dracut resident for most of his life, Champagne was at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, aboard the destroyer USS Phelps. He served on the ship throughout the war and then was active in Greater Lowell veterans affairs for the rest of his life, especially his calendar advocacy.

Henri Champaigne was not the only Lowell resident at Pearl Harbor on December 7. Two men from Lowell were killed there by enemy fire. Clifton Edwards, a 1936 graduate of Lowell High who lived on Merrill Street, was a 24-year-old seaman on the USS Curtiss, which was one of the few ships to get underway that morning. The ship’s movement and the intense anti-aircraft fire coming from it attracted the attention of the Japanese and the Curtis was hit by several aerial bombs, killing 19 of its crew, including Clifton Edwards. The second Lowell man to die that day was 23-year-old Arthur Boyle of 28 Ralph Street. A 1940 graduate of Lowell High, Private Boyle was an aviation mechanic stationed at Hickam Field, the main US Army air base in Hawaii. Boyle was killed while trying to get an American fighter plane airborne to counterattack the Japanese.

Pearl Harbor received enhanced attention in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. In both instances, assaults from the air came completely by surprise although there was ample evidence in advance to have uncovered enemy plans. In both attacks, thousands of Americans lost their lives. And in both cases, the United States launched long and costly wars in response to the attacks.

Today, World War II has assumed greater geopolitical significance. As President Donald Trump aligns the United States closer with Russia and China (our antagonists for the past 80 years) and further away from Germany and Japan (two of our most reliable post World War II allies), both Russia and China are pushing World War II nostalgia to provide Trump with an intellectual underpinning for this mammoth geopolitical shift.

Specifically, this year China has repeatedly cited its role in World War II as the key American ally in the defeat of fascism in the Pacific. Left unsaid but certainly implied is that Japan was the fascist country that had to be defeated. It is no coincidence that Japan which has made clear its intent to intervene militarily if China moves against Tiawan, is being framed as the bad guy by the Chinese.

Similarly, in justifying its invasion of Ukraine, Russia invokes the need to de-Nazify that country, which relates back to World War II when several thousand Ukrainians joined the German military. What is left unsaid is that an equal number of Ukrainians fought the Nazis as partisans or as members of the Soviet army. By highlighting the US and Soviet alliance in World War II and by portraying Ukrainians (and Germans) as heirs to Nazism, today’s Russia seeks to influence American policy in a pro-Russian, anti-Western Alliance way.

As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” By which he meant that past experiences, both personal and historic, are not gone but actively live on, affecting current realities and choices.

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Yesterday I made the rounds of downtown retail establishments which included the Hive Public Market at 101 Paige Street, Pop Cultured at 58 Prescott Street, the Brush Gallery and the National Park Visitor Center Gift Shop at 246 Market Street, and lala books at 189 Market Street. Christmas shopping in downtown Lowell is alive and well at these and other places, so please consider visiting them in the coming weeks.

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Finally, if you haven’t already read it, please check out The Rag Man, a nostalgic Lowell story by Rocky Provencher, the newest contributor to richardhowe.com.

Jack Kerouac’s baptismal record now an open book

Jack Kerouac’s baptismal record now an open book

By Benie Zelitch (by Annie Powell)

Archives Assistant Savannah Miller (left), and Reference Associate Kathleen Allen (right), at the Archdiocese of Boston Archives in Braintree. They are reading page 80 of the St. Louis de France Church record book with Jack Kerouac’s 1922 baptism entry.

When he was seven days old, author Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) was baptized at St. Louis de France,  a French-speaking church and parish in Lowell. This knowledge is widely known as a few biographers reviewed his records at St. Louis before it closed in 2005 after a century of service. But thanks to an incidental comment made a few days ago at the home of the record, the Archdiocese of Boston Archive and Library in Braintree, it’s easy for anyone to see the original or a scan.

The arrow points to the two-page entry of “Jean Louis Kirouac.” Due to the fragile binding, the archivists decided to restrict scans to a partially closed record book. This is a smartphone image but there are plans to send it to a company specializing in archival scans.

Courtesy of Archdiocese of Boston Archives, Baptisms, St. Louis de France (Lowell), 1918-1926, p. 80, no. 56.

The archive and library were happy to share their “discovery”—which almost didn’t happen—on social media.

With this new publicity, Kerouac’s many passionate admirers around the world have gained a revised connection to the author. The record book is a physical reminder of his first public appearance as the newest member of the church. It may also hold some details of the writer’s biography.

Today, the archivists of the Boston Archdiocese mainly provide local Catholics with sacramental records to prove their Catholicism. This is particularly relevant to events like church marriage ceremonies or annulments. Director Violet Hurst told me that about once a month a researcher spends time viewing their extensive collection of church publications and ephemera, including photographs. That is why in early November I spent an enjoyable morning studying the archives of former Lowell Catholic churches. I was furthering my research into Lowell photographer Annie Powell (1859–1952).

After finding a few important Powell-related images I readied to leave. I said to Violet, “I bet you’re tired of people asking to see Jack Kerouac records.” After a long pause she said, “I didn’t know he was Catholic!” During her five years at the archives his name was never mentioned. “But if you tell me his church, I can find his baptismal record pretty easily.” I did and she found it.

Kerouac’s record has legibility and language challenges. With the grateful assistance of others, I offer this working transcription. Corrected words have strikethroughs. The Latin column title translations appear in bracketed italics as do French translations:

In addition to featuring the names of Jack’s parents, the record tells us that his godparents were Leo’s brother Jean-Baptiste (1887-1969) and sister-in-law Rosanna Dumas Kirouac (1889-1940).  The baptism was performed by Rev. Donia W. Boisvert (1892–1968). Born in Lynn, MA, he served as a chaplain on the Western Front during World War I, then as assistant pastor at the French-speaking St. Joseph’s Church in Waltham before reassignment to the Lowell church at 257 W. Sixth Street. He held that post from 1921-22 and with Reverends Eugene J. Vincent (1887-1967) and Francis X. Gauthier (1893-1963), acted as assistants to Rev. John B. Labossiere (1864-1940), pastor. In addition to overseeing confessions, baptisms, and funerals, they and one lay teacher would have been busy supervising the instruction of the 481 boys and 608 girls attending the church school (The Official Catholic Directory).

The record book shows that Kerouac’s baptism at several days old was the rule and not the exception. At a time before antibiotics when infant mortality was high, some may have viewed the sacrament which cleansed the soul of original sin as a safe measure against the unthinkable.

Before the record book found its permanent home in Braintree in 2005, biographers reviewed entries at the church, scribbled detailed notes, but shared no photographic images. According to longtime Lowell Celebrates Kerouac member and former president Steve Edington, Franco-American teacher and scholar Roger Brunelle (1934-2021), who attended the St. Louis School, almost certainly saw the original baptismal records as part of his research into Kerouac’s ethnic boyhood. Gerald Nicosia probably saw them in preparation for his seminal 1983 biography of Kerouac, Memory Babe. In noting the details of the record, Nicosia reminds us that the familiar spelling of “Kerouac” was often shown to have numerous alternates:

He was a man for whom nothing was secure, not even his name. He had been baptized Jean Louis Kirouac, son of Leo Kéroack and Gabrielle L’Evesque. In the rectory of the poor unfinished St. Louis de France Church in Centralville, the nicest French section of Lowell, Massachusetts, his name meant so little that even a priest could carelessly misspell it. All his life, in fact, people misspelled and often deliberately mispronounced his name. It made him so angry he determined to trace his ancestry…  with the minute curiosity of a lover…

The note in the last column tells us that at some point someone requested a certified copy. It might have been a biographer or Kerouac himself, possibly to be used to validate him for one of these events:

• 1946: Marriage to Edie Parker annulled
• 1950: Marriage to Joan Haverty
• 1966: Marriage to Stella Sampas

Lastly, the request for a baptismal certificate contains the abbreviation “C.A.E.”  This does not match the names of any clergy posted from 1922 through 1987 (the closest is Rev. Charles A. Cordier from 1941–45, but the initials “C.A.C” obviously don’t match “C.A.E.”).  A French-Canadian friend with first-hand knowledge of French churches and educational institutions recalls in her lifetime the abbreviation was occasionally used for Certifié Authentique et Exact (Certified Authentic and Accurate).

Other family member baptismal records

Though the Kerouac children’s baptisms were performed at two different French churches in Lowell, all records were eventually stored at St. Louis de France Church before being collected by the archdiocese archives in 1995. Upon request, Violet also provided the pages (below) for Jack’s brother Francois Girard (St. Jean Baptiste Church) and sister Caroline (St. Louis de France Church). Caroline’s record was updated later to note her marriage at St. Jeanne D’Arc Church.  Again notice the spelling variation for the family surname.

Archdiocese of Boston Archives Baptisms, St. Jean Baptiste (Lowell), 1916, p. 168.

Courtesy of Archdiocese of Boston Archives Baptisms, Baptisms, St. Louis de France (Lowell), 1908-1918, p. 988.

A warm thank you to Louise Brisson, Louise Peloquin, and Kurt Phaneuf for their French language and Kerouac insights.

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Bernie Zelitch is founder and director of by Annie Powell.

The Happy Accidents That Make Us Who We Are 

The Happy Accidents That Make Us Who We Are

By Stephen O’Connor

It’s interesting to consider all of those serendipitous events which bend the tree of our lives to grow in a certain direction, or that set us off, for good or ill, on roads where we find our lives. I like to think about those happy accidents that worked out in a fortuitous way—Dylan’s “simple twist of fate,” which earlier or more faithful writers may have seen as the workings of Providence.

Recently, I watched the documentary Zero Gravity, which tells the story of jazz saxophone legend and composer, Wayne Shorter. As a boy, Wayne was called into the principal’s office and asked why he was skipping school. After all, he was a bright student with a lot of potential. The boy explained that he skipped school to go to the movies because he liked the music. The principal considered this and sent for the music teacher. It was agreed that Wayne would join the school band. He was given a clarinet, his first instrument. Who could ever have imagined that this simple solution would lead to fame, a brilliant career with the likes of Art Blakey, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock and all the jazz giants? That he might win ten Grammy Awards, put out twenty-five albums, make guest appearances with Carlos Santana, Joni Mitchel, Steely Dan and others? Is it possible that this genius would never have been uncovered if the boy had not had the meeting with the principal?

In a similar way, I remember reading that Niels Bohr, the Danish theoretical physicist, became interested in science because an uncle gave him a compass for Christmas. He wondered how it was that the needle, no matter where he stood, pointed in the same direction. He was told that there are invisible magnetic fields that blanket the earth which the small device could detect. He was fascinated. The Christmas gift was the catalyst for an interest in physics and a world-renowned career.

Jascha Heifetz at the age of three was given a miniature violin by his father. It turned out to be a gift to the entire world. Amelia Earhart had no interest in flying until she attended an air show in Long Beach, California in 1920, at which her father convinced her to take a ten-minute airplane ride. It was an exhilarating and life-altering experience for Earhart. Three years later, she had her pilot’s license, and though it all ended in a sort of Icarian tragedy, for a while, as Edna St. Vincent Milay might put it, her candle burned brightly and gave a lovely light.

Last week I heard Scott Simon interview Anthony Hopkins on NPR. The iconic actor related how, at his school, the students were required to report to the assembly hall one Saturday night to watch the film of Laurence Olivier’s “Hamlet.” He said that as Olivier recited the lines, “Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, resolve itself into a dew,” he had an epiphany. “Something in me clicked. I remember thinking, ‘That is what I want to do in my life.’” Twenty years later, he was Olivier’s understudy at the National Theatre. When Olivier went into the hospital, Hopkins stood in for him in Strindberg’s “Dance of Death.”

It is not just the famous who experience the simple twists of fate that shape human lives. We all experience them. A chance meeting here. A small decision there. A moment when we happen to encounter someone or something that resonates in our deepest selves.

Geert Lernout is a Belgian friend from our university days at UCD in Dublin. Geert was raised speaking Flemish, but had also learned French and German. English is his fourth distinct language, and he speaks it well with a soft accent.

I asked Geert at what point he became interested in learning English. He answered that when he was fifteen or sixteen, he chanced to see Orson Welles’ Othello on TV. He had only a bit of “Beatles English,” but he found Welles’ soliloquies, though incomprehensible, the most beautiful language he had ever heard. As Anthony Hopkins would say, something clicked. Motivated study ensued. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto and became a university professor in Amsterdam and Antwerp, and one of the world’s foremost authorities on James Joyce.

We see a certain film, take a class with a certain professor, play for a particular coach, hear a musical performance, or encounter a talented practitioner of a craft or trade or art, or the art itself, and because of the timbre of our own natures at that moment in our lives, it is a transformative experience. My older brother Rory, while in high school, had to write a report on an American author. So it was that I began to read the note cards he had left on the desk in our room, and eventually, his copy of Walden. Within a year, I was totally immersed in Thoreau and considered myself a young transcendentalist. My world view was fundamentally altered. I honestly don’t know who I would be if I had not happened on those writings.

We’re left to wonder. Personal transformation, like love, is unanticipated. As the Beatles sang:

Had it been another day
I might have looked the other way
And I’d have never been aware

I daresay most of us have been lucky enough to encounter such books, such people, such events or such art. The result may not be the world fame of Wayne Shorter or Amelia Earheart, but it is a profound and consequential experience that leaves us changed, and perhaps even awestruck, as Keats once was in reading Chapman’s translation of Homer.

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

The Rag Man

THE RAG MAN

By Rocky Provencher

My mother’s parents were English and French-Canadian. Both her parents were the first generation of each family to be born in the United States. My mother was born in Lowell. My father’s parents were both French-Canadian. My father was the in the first generation to be born in America, and he was also born in Lowell. My parents were married at Saint Jean Baptiste Church. I was born in Lowell too and baptized at that same church. For a while, we lived with my mother’s family on Cabot Street. Then, we lived near my father’s family on Middlesex St. in Notre Dame De Lourdes parish. And later moved to a third floor apartment on Merrimack St. in the block right next to Saint Jean Baptiste Church, where the Cabot Cash Market was on the corner. When I started school, we moved to the uptown end of cobble-stoned Market St., a six-family at number 629, not too far from the intersection of Market, Cabot, Salem and Adams Streets. I went to school at St. Patrick’s on Adams St. I always tell people that I am a French kid who grew up in a Greek neighborhood and went to an Irish school!

I want to tell you about a time when was 6 or 7 years old and had the normal curiosity about life around me and what I saw. One day, I asked my mother “Why do so many ladies in our neighborhood wear black clothes all the time?” And she told me that they were widows, their husband had gone to heaven and that was their way to remember and honor them. I never had any problem with any of my neighbors, and these same ladies would often offer me home-made pastries and candy for some slight courtesy that I had shown them. I had some friends in the area and played in our small backyard or in front of my building. Not many people had cars then. No one in our building had one. My mother would walk to work at St. Joseph’s Hospital, and my father was picked up early in the morning to work at the Boston Naval Shipyard, and then was dropped off early in the evening. A neighborhood woman would watch me before and after school until my mother picked me up.

I don’t remember the first time I saw the rag man come by, but, as you know, a child is often off in his or her own world, playing and thinking of only him/her self. Every now and then something happens to capture, grab a child’s attention, and then the child will notice. There was nothing special about this particular day, and I don’t even know why I was home, but this is the day and that time the rag man caught my attention!

I must have been playing on the porch out front, or out near the street, when I suddenly heard such a clatter! I clearly heard a strong voice call out: “Rags, rags, rags, rags!” I’ll never forget that sound and the tone of his voice! I moved to the sidewalk and walked down the street to find out what was happening. “Rags, rags, rags, rags!” That voice getting louder and louder! And there! I could not believe what I saw! There, right in front of me, was the biggest creature I had ever seen closeup! A gigantic brown horse, clopping up the street towards me, pulling a great wagon with enormous, wooden wheels! And a wizened old man was holding the reins and yelling: “Rags, rags, rags, rags!” “Rags, rags, rags, rags!” I was fascinated! Never had I seen or heard such a thing! “Rags, rags, rags, rags!”

The rag man pulled tight the reins and halted the horse, and waited. Then, many neighborhood women, including the Greek women in their black clothes, brought out bundles of cloth of many colors, each bundle holding its own story. They lined up and patiently waited their turn at the scale. At his signal, each woman slowly stepped forward to hand their bundle of colors to the old rag man. He kindly greeted each lady and then turned to place the bundle onto his scales,slowly and reverently. He peered at the scale, noting the weight, and then reached into his pouch to count out his coins, and discreetly passed them to his customer, once again uttering kind words. Some women accepted them graciously and others seemed to quibble a bit with the old rag man. It appeared that he did right by them for each lady left quietly. I did not understand the language that they all spoke. All the while, the horse stomped and neighed impatiently, but did not move from his spot!

As I was watching, some young boys approached the old rag man with their own bundle of cloth. The rag man eyed them suspiciously. And when he took their offered bundle, he hefted it, seemingly to judge its weight, and then raised the bundle up over his head and shook it out. A number of rocks and brick pieces that were hidden inside the bundle tumbled and bounced out onto the street! He shouted at the boys and threw the bundle to the ground! But the boys had already begun to run away laughing!

Soon, when his customers were gone, the old rag man mounted his wagon, picked up the reins and, looking about, snapped the reins as he hollered to urge his horse to move out. Then the horse, the cart, and the man began rumbling and clattering forward once again. The rag man wheeled his horse around and headed back down Market Street towards the downtown area!

“Rags, rags, rags, rags!” He called once again as together they rolled off to collect more bundles of color from old widows and outgrown clothes from housewives in the neighborhood.

This is the day I remember when I saw the old rag man, my first recollection of a routine as old as time.

I can still hear him calling out:

“Rags, rags, rags, rags!”
“Rags, rags, rags, rags!”

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Rocky Provencher was born and raised in Lowell. He attended city schools from the Lowell Day Nursery through Lowell Technological Institute (now UMass Lowell). He spent his career working in Lowell’s mills and was a long time Lowell Folk Festival volunteer.