RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

An accomplished journalist’s candid memoir by Marjorie Arons-Barron

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

Lost and Found: Coming of Age in the Washington Press Corps by Ellen Hume captures the idealism of a young reporter, from her early days as a cub in California, moving to the L.A. Times and its Washington Bureau, and her intuitive skills in ferreting out the truth behind the headlines and press releases.  As she got traction, she moved on to the Wall Street Journal, broadening her contacts and sources in the political world, fighting the ingrained sexism of the news media establishment, and unearthing the hypocrisies in centers of political power.

She embraced the aphorism which guided my profession as a journalist, namely, that the mission was “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”  (Chicago Evening Post editorialist and humorist Peter Finley Dunne had put the original line in the mouth of his fictional wise bartender, Mr. Dooley.) Increasingly it is the comfortable who have the power to call the shots regarding what to cover in the news and how to present it. She also reflects on the compromises that are made when writers are having dinners and socializing regularly with those whom they are covering.

Full disclosure: Ellen is a friend, one whom I admired from afar before I met her personally. While she is a little younger than I, I took delight in this book because so many of our experiences overlapped. Hers, of course, were on a larger landscape. So much resonated. When she was pounding shoe leather covering the nuclear event at Three Mile Island, I was involved in a program debating the fate of nuclear power for The Advocates on PBS.  We both cut our Washington reportorial teeth covering Jimmy Carter’s Presidency. She accompanied her husband, John Shattuck, when he became U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic, and I smiled at her observation of how previous ambassador Shirley Temple Black’s dog had stained the expensive carpet in the palatial ambassador’s residence.  My husband and I had met that dog, a gassy boxer, when we spent an evening with then-chain-smoking ambassador Black in Prague, along with other editorialists in 1990.

We were both lucky to be in journalism before the market was fragmented by cable, the onslaught of Fox News brand of tabloid journalism, and the ugliness of social media, which is inherently inimical to the dispassionate discussion of civic issues. The idea of “alternative facts” was not a serious reality. And working in the media in the post-Watergate era conferred on practitioners a sense of important mission.

Hume worked for the dominant national print media. In what passed for the Golden Era of broadcast journalism, there were just three networks, NBC, CBS and ABC. On the local level, I had the advantage of working for the dominant station in the region, with a potential market every night of three million viewers.  Back then, in print and broadcast, there was a firewall between straight news and opinion writing, which many readers and viewers failed to understand, but a journalist could make a difference on both sides of that divide.

Hume also had a major impact in academia.  She taught at Central European University in Hungary, at MIT and Harvard. She was one of 12 commissioners of the White House Commission om Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy. She remains a civic activist today.

The beauty of Hume’s memoir is her candor about her struggles in a male-dominated profession, the sometimes- insurmountable stresses a high-pressured job can place on a marriage, the pitfalls when one makes mistakes, and the disillusionment that happens when an institution or a source lets you down.  She is also honest about the perks of access to people in high places and the gratification of celebrity. And she is clear-eyed and passionate about the failures of journalism today and the hopes she places in young and aspiring journalists upon whom democracy depends.

This book is nearly 600 pages, but Hume’s chapters are short and her writing is lively. I tore though it in six days and enjoyed every moment.

Lowell Politics: June 29, 2025

The Lowell City Council met on Tuesday night. As is often the case with the summer schedule of just two meetings per month, the council did not get through the meeting agenda before its 10 pm deadline. Although the council can waive the 10 pm rule, doing so requires a roll call vote and if only two councilors object, then the meeting must end immediately. That’s what happened Tuesday night when Councilors Wayne Jenness and Kim Scott both objected, so the meeting ended with unresolved items.

Often last summer, the council did not waive the 10 pm deadline so it should not have come as a surprise that it happened again. However, this time before that vote was taken, Mayor Dan Rourke pleaded with his colleagues to allow him to take up a couple of items he said were “time sensitive.” Notwithstanding that request, the council opted not to go beyond 10 pm. When that happened, Rourke wordlessly walked off the chair while one or more councilors futilely moved to adjourn. But with no one then chairing the meeting, no more votes could be taken and the meeting just faded out.

Last summer, agenda items that were not reached due to time constraints were simply appended to the start of the next regularly scheduled meeting. That created cascading delays through the summer since the next agenda would never be any shorter than the one that wasn’t completed.

That will not be the case this time. A special meeting of the council has been scheduled for this Monday, June 30, 2025, at 5:30 pm. The agenda for this special meeting is lengthy so it makes sense to wrap it up Monday rather than condemn the next meeting to spilling over. Of course, that assumes the council will complete the full special meeting agenda before 10 pm. With this council, one never knows.

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The early part of Tuesday’s meeting was dominated by a presentation on the increased cost of the Lowell High School project. Earlier this year, contractors discovered that much of the dirt underneath the cement slab that formed the floor of the 1922 building (the yellow brick structure along Kirk Street) had either settled or washed away leaving voids that had to be filled before renovations could continue. This came as a surprise and was not included in the existing budget. Back on April 13, 2025, I wrote about that presentation. You can find more details about the construction issues and the history of the various buildings in that newsletter if you want a refresher.

This week the contractors informed councilors that the added cost of this unforeseen work would be $40 million. A detailed PowerPoint presentation (available online) broke down the costs as follows: $2.4 million for Skanska (the city’s project manager); $2.1 million for Perkins Eastman (the architect); $13.2 million for Suffolk (the general contractor); $6.0 million for subcontractors; and $1.3 million for increased insurance bond, all totaling $20.5 million. Then there is an additional $14.8 million for “construction contingency” for a total additional cost of $39,850,848.

This was just an informational session for councilors so they could ask questions of the parties who all had representatives present. As is typically the case in televised meetings, councilors mostly used it as a chance to chastise the contractors for this disappointing news and, for a few of the councilors who had supported the Cawley Stadium site option back in 2017, to say “I told you so.”  Mayor Rourke was particularly pointed in his remarks, saying the city was relying on our state house delegation, especially “our State Senator” (Ed Kennedy), to get proportional state funding for these added costs “since he is the one primarily responsible for this” by which Rourke meant the high school staying downtown and all the costs that have flowed from that.

Here’s some context: Talk of a new high school in Lowell began in 2014. Over the next two years, studies of possible sites identified two: the city-owned land around Cawley Stadium in the Belvidere neighborhood and the site of the existing high school in downtown which could be fully renovated and supplemented with some new construction.

After a bitter and divisive campaign between advocates of the two sites, in June 2017, the city council chose the Cawley Stadium option by a 5 to 4 vote. Voting for Cawley were Councilors Rita Mercier (still on the council), Rodney Elliott (now a state representative), Dan Rourke (still on the council), Corey Belanger (still on the council), and Jim Leary (out of politics). Voting for downtown were Ed Kennedy (now a state senator), John Leahy (now working for the school department), Bill Samaras (out of politics), and Jim Milinazzo (out of politics).

Notably, 2017 was a city election year. Some incumbents and a few challengers who supported Cawley believed that however controversial the decision may have been, the June vote would be old news come November, and the election would turn on other issues. They were mistaken. Instead, the city election became a referendum on the high school location.

It was literally a referendum because the November ballot contained this question: “The City of Lowell is reviewing several options for its high school project. Do you support extensive renovation and rebuild at the existing Lowell High School location, at 50 Father Morissette Boulevard, Lowell, MA 01852?” The YES votes won by a 61 percent to 39 percent margin (7,254 voted YES and 4,629 voted NO).

More importantly, the field of 18 council candidates was evenly split with nine supporting Cawley and nine supporting downtown. City voters elected seven pro-downtown incumbents and challengers and just two pro-Cawley councilors (Rita Mercier and Rodney Elliott). The three other incumbent councilors who voted for Cawley all lost. They were Dan Rourke (who returned to the council in 2019), Corey Belanger (who returned to the council last year when he was appointed to fill a vacancy), and Jim Leary.

Here are the results for all 18 candidates in that race:

1. Vesna Nuon – 7518 – challenger – Downtown
2. Edward Kennedy – 6483 – incumbent – Downtown
3. John Leahy – 6114 – incumbent – Downtown
4. Bill Samaras – 6094 – incumbent – Downtown
5. Rita Mercier – 5730 – incumbent – Cawley
6. Jim Millinazzo – 5688 – incumbent – Downtown
7. Rodney Elliott – 5447 – incumbent – Cawley
8. Dave Conway – 4974 – challenger – Downtown
9. Karen Cirillo – 4973 – challenger – Downtown
10. Sokhary Chau – 4756 – challenger – Cawley
11. Dan Rourke – 4729 – incumbent -Cawley
12. Cory Belanger – 4722 – incumbent – Cawley
13. Jim Leary – 4666 – incumbent – Cawley
14. Joe Boyle – 4170 – challenger – Downtown
15. Martin Hogan – 4082 – challenger – Downtown
16. Matt LeLacheur – 4055– challenger – Cawley
17. Dan Finn – 3920 – challenger – Cawley
18. Robert Gignac – 3524 – challenger – Cawley

As soon as the new council – which contained seven Downtown supporters to just two Cawley supporters – took office in January 2018, it reversed the high school location decision and voted to proceed with the downtown option. As they say, the rest is history.

The outcome of the 2017 city election, both in the referendum and the vote for city councilors, chose the downtown option. When current councilors who supported Cawley say, “I told you so,” they are really telling the electorate, “Don’t complain, you are the ones who wanted this.”

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The council also authorized the city to take by eminent domain the land and building at 40 Market Street which is currently owned by Align Credit Union and used for office space. This is the large brick building across Market Street from Brew’d Awaking Coffeehaus.

The council also voted to authorize the borrowing of $4.2 million to pay for this building. In response to questions from Councilors as to why this was an eminent domain taking rather than an outright sale of the property, Manager Golden explained that the city and Align Credit Union have been in talks about the purchase of the building for many months. They both agree to the transfer but are not entirely in agreement on the price. They mutually agreed that the cleanest way to make the transfer in these circumstances is through a taking. I got the impression that Align is not inclined to judicially challenge the amount to be paid which is based on an independent appraisal. Golden deemed it “a friendly taking.”

Golden further explained that the city’s Department of Planning and Development will move from its current home in the JFK Civic Center and occupy two-thirds of this building and that other city departments with smaller footprints will occupy the rest. Since some of those departments are currently leasing privately-owned space, the city will no longer be paying rent for those facilities. Also, with DPD vacating the Civic Center, the police department will expand into that space which Golden said will be a lot cheaper than building a new police station.

Constructed in 1837 jointly by the city of Lowell and Middlesex County, this building was historically known as “the old market building” because its first floor was intended as a public market in which local grocers could sell meat, butter, cheese, eggs and vegetables. The upper floors were to be used for the county courts (Superior Court and Supreme Judicial Court when it sat in Lowell) and the Lowell Police Court (the predecessor to today’s Lowell District Court). The concept of a centralized farmer’s market proved unpopular, which undercut the purpose of the building. By 1870, the first floor was shared by the various businesses and by the Lowell Police Department which remained there until 1973 and the construction of its current home in the JFK Civic Center. The building remained vacant until 1980 when the city sold it. The new owners rehabilitated it and it has been used as office space ever since.

Of historic note, the rear of the building which faces the Pawtucket Canal was also a “public landing.” Before extensive railroad networks, rivers and canals were the primary routes for moving people and materials from place to place. In the 1830s, a “public landing” was a place where anyone could tie up and load or unload their boat and move cargo or people ashore. Today, there is an excellent walkway that runs along that bank of the canal from Central Street to the far end of the Market Street parking garage. I’m not sure if the public landing is noted or identified but it should be. I’m also not sure if the walkway is currently open due to security or maintenance concerns. Hopefully when the city takes ownership of the building, these omissions will be rectified.

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Another item that took up a substantial amount of time during the council meeting was a request by the Markley Group LLC to amend its fuel storage license to allow four additional 6000-gallon diesel fuel tanks to supply four emergency generators.

The Markely Group is a leading provider of data center services and cloud computing solutions. Essentially, they build, operate and maintain highly secure and reliable data centers where other businesses can house their critical IT infrastructure, servers, and data. As the world becomes increasingly digital and data-driven, the demand for sophisticated data center services continues to grow, making companies like Markley indispensable to the modern economy.

Lowell is lucky to have Markley Group located here. The company purchased the former Prince Spaghetti manufacturing plant off Moore Street in 2015 and opened its new data center in early 2016. A critical service Markley provides its customer is continuity of computer operations which requires, among other things, layers of redundancy, hence the need for generators with their own fuel supply in case of electrical outages.

Shortly after the Markley facility opened, I went on a tour of the interior and found it very impressive with security measures that reminded me of those found at Top Secret facilities I had encountered while in the US Army. Although I wasn’t there to assess the external noise level, nothing stood out as excessively loud. Still, I don’t live next door to the place so don’t have first-hand knowledge of current noise levels. Nevertheless, the use of the site for industrial purposes goes back many decades so I doubt many of the residents pre-date that type of use.

At the council meeting, neighbors spoke in opposition to Markley’s request, however, their entreaties were offset by dozens of Markley employees who are also Lowell residents (and voters) who urged the council to ratify the request.

In the end, the council voted by a 9 to 1 margin to approve the Markley measure. (Councilor Kim Scott, who represents the district in which the Markley facility is located, voted NO and Councilor Vesna Nuon was absent from the meeting).

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This week on richardhowe.com:

Leo Racicot shared his memories of local TV programs in the 1960s.

Louise Peloquin translated a 1925 article from L’Etoile that called on Lowell residents of French-Canadian descent to take pride in their ethnic heritage.

Television in the 1960s

Television in the 1960s

By Leo Racicot

My earliest memory of television is watching Big Brother Bob Emery, a local kids show out of Boston. Bob Emery was a broadcaster who hosted a live audience of children. My favorite part of his program came when Big Brother Bob told us kids to go to the fridge, grab a tall glass of cold milk and hurry on back to the TV. He had his own glass of milk. On the wall of his studio set hung a portrait of our president, at that time, Dwight D. Eisenhower. As Hail to the Chief began to play, Bob would turn, lift his glass of milk up to the portrait (we kids were to do the same) and raise a toast to “Ike”. Big Brother Bob’s show was must-see fare every weekday morning before school. His career came to an abrupt end when he was caught on what’s now called ‘a hot mic’ swearing at a kid.

Romper Room was another favorite daily morning show. Ours here in New England was hosted by Miss Jean, a pretty lady who played on-air games and such with her live studio audience of boys and girls. The fun part of the program was Magic Mirror Time; Miss Jean would hold an opaque mirror up to her face and say, “Magic Mirror, Magic Mirror, tell me today? Have all my friends have fun at play?” “Magically”, the opaque mirror would become a real mirror through which she could “see” us kids at home. She’d then say, “Oh, there’s Jimmy!” “There’s Todd!” “Oh, and I see Bobby and Helen and Tommy and Ruth!”  It baffled me that she never said, “I see Leo!”  I wondered why she could see all the other kids but not me. That never made me give up on tuning in every morning, in the hope that Miss Jean would see me. My first Life’s lesson in disappointment, I guess…

Bozo the Clown was on every afternoon, after we got home from school. Bozo was played by Frank Avruch who later went on to host Channel 5’s Great Entertainment, a late-night program in which he showcased classic films from the Golden Age of Hollywood. On this program, Frank wore a classy, snazzy tuxedo, carnation in his lapel, black, shiny dress shoes. No wild red hair, clown face. gigantic feet. The Bozo Show had a parade of regulars, one of whom was Judy Valentine. Judy played a fairy princess and would sing songs like I’m a Little Teacup and Bend and Stretch — Bend and Stretch. Reach for the Stars. There goes Jupiter! Here comes Mars! Our mother knew and had been pals with Judy (real name, Norma Baker) when both were young girls. I thought that was so neat. Actually, I used to think our mother was some kind of celebrity; she was in the same high school class as Jack Kerouac at Lowell High School. Jack once asked her out for an ice cream soda at Teddy’s in Cupples Square, but she turned him down. Our father also knew Jack from Lowell’s Little Canada and the Moody Street neighborhood. But I digress… I credit Avruch’s Great Entertainment with my lifelong love for and knowledge of classic films. I later wrote movie reviews for The Brattle Theater and Harvard Film Archive, Cambridge, when I lived there in the ’90s and 2000s.

No roster of ’60s TV. shows would be complete without a mention of Captain Kangaroo. Bob Keeshan was The Captain. Keeshan had begun his career in entertainment playing Clarabell the Clown, a silent buffoon who communicated by honking a series of horns attached to his waist. But Keeshan’s longest-running success was as Kangaroo. I tried never to miss his show. I loved all the regulars: Bunny Rabbit, Grandfather Clock, Mr. Moose. One wrong word from Mr. Moose and tons of ping pong balls would rain down on The Captain’s head. You never knew what treasures Captain would pull out of his oversized pockets. Mostly, he’d dig out a bunch of carrots for a very hungry Bunny Rabbit who expressed his gratitude by banging his head on the counter. Mister Green Jeans was The Captain’s farmer sidekick and comic foil. He was played by Lumpy Brannum, a local performer. Brannum was gay and years later, I got to know him a bit at Jacques, a gay bar in Boston’s Bay Village. He was as gentle and soft-spoken as his character, Green Jeans.

When TV trays and frozen dinners were introduced to American culture, one of my favorite things to do was to bring my supper into the living room and watch television while I ate and did my homework. At first, Ma was reluctant to let me; she wanted me to concentrate on my homework. But once she saw that watching while studying wasn’t affecting my grades, she let me do both. Some of my favorite shows were The Jetsons (a cartoon about a family living in the space-age future). I also waited with bated breath every week for Star Trek (the original) and the adventures Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and other members of The Starship Enterprise encountered throughout the galaxy.  I got a kick out of The Flintstones and looked forward to The Munsters and The Addams Family spookfests.

Our family always had a black-and-white TV set — our mother had read that the new color sets could be harmful to the eyes, and they were expensive, so she never did buy one. Years later, when I’d watched Time Tunnel and Lost in Space on DVD, it was startling to see that they were filmed in color; I’d only ever known them in black-and-white.

Other popular shows of the ’60s were Mannix, Bewitched (we all tried to wiggle our nose like Samantha Stephen’s and make magic but that, of course, never happened).  After watching the now-legendary live broadcast of Peter Pan with Mary Martin, I was inspired to fly through the narrow back of a kitchen chair (like Peter!) and got stuck halfway through. To pry me loose, Aunt Marie had to take the backing off with a screwdriver, all the while scolding me for thinking I could fly.      I loved That Girl with the delightful Marlo Thomas as an aspiring actress in New York City. That show put the idea into a lot of fans’ heads that we, too, could move to Manhattan and become big stars. Thomas’s character, Ann Marie, never did become one, and neither, alas, did we. I still like to binge-watch all seasons every couple of years and got to meet and chat with Marlo at a personal appearance in Boston’s Borders Books and Music. She even asked me to help her off with her coat.

My mother and I liked the same nighttime shows and always watched them together. David Janssen was a huge hit as The Fugitive, and of course, the whole country howled over Lucille Ball and her zany antics on I Love Lucy. The Honeymooners with Jackie Gleason and Art Carney was another staple of ’60s television. I loved television so much that when Ma told me it was time to go to bed, I’d hang off the other end of my bed (my bedroom was just off the living room with a clear view of the t.v.) unseen, at least I think Ma couldn’t see me, and watch The Jack Benny Show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and My Three Sons till I fell asleep.

Laugh-In was a runaway smash from the get-go, a cavalcade of attractive performers volley-balling one wacky zinger after another out to the home audience. Nothing like it had ever been seen on television. A combination of satire, parody and just plain irreverence, it made stars of Goldie Hawn, Ruth Buzzi and Judy Carne. It was so popular, everybody and his cousin wanted to be on it, even Richard Nixon who posed its famous signature line as a question: “Sock It to Me??” 

     No one, if they could help it, missed The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights. Sullivan, a newspaper columnist and unlikely host, was just peculiar enough to be entertaining. You never knew who you were going to see on his show. In addition to presenting the popular singers and comedians of the day, he booked acts from all over the world –clowns from Germany, acrobats from Japan, flamenco dancers from Andalusia. It was Sullivan who first presented The Beatles to American audiences. The girls in his audience that night were screaming and crying so loudly, you couldn’t hear The Fab Four singing. Total mayhem. Beatlemania. Unforgettable. A favorite spot was whenever Ed chatted with his little puppet pal, Topo Giggio, an Italian mouse. I also looked forward to appearances by Senor Wences and his talking hand, “Johnny”. “S’awright!”

A vivid memory — sitting on the living room floor with my bathrobed back against the dark brown hissing sputtering behemoth of a space heater watching Perry Mason solve the weekly question of Whodunit. Played by the brilliant Raymond Burr, Perry never lost a case, always got his client off-the-hook. (Interesting aside: while visiting writer, M.F.K. Fisher, I got to meet Burr and his partner, Bob Benevides, at their Northern California vineyard/farm where they cultivated grapes for Cabernet Sauvignon, also orchids. Burr  was old by then, of course, and had a wicked, mischievous wit and a big, raucous laugh, nothing like Perry Mason.

When we got tired of the usual shows, we’d sometimes watch talk shows. Arthur Godfrey’s avuncular way with a tale was amusing, as was Art Linkletter’s. Chat shows weren’t then what they’ve evolved into now. Hosts like Louise Morgan, Virginia Graham and Betty Furness, ladies whose target audience was homemakers and housewives, addressed such topics as How to Saranwrap Your Vegetables and How to Entertain Unexpected Guests. And though I loved talk hosts like Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin, especially Merv, they took jejune to a whole other level and certainly didn’t rock the boat the way Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher do today.

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Big Brother Bob Emery – 1962

Bozo the Clown

Captain Kangaroo (right) and Mr. Green Jeans

cast of the Perry Mason show

Family gathered around black and white TV

Judy Valentine

Miss Jean and her Magic Mirror on Romper Room

vintage TV tray tables

Virginia Graham’s “Girl Talk”

“More Pride Please” (1925)

“More Pride Please!” – (PIP # 74)

By Louise Peloquin

 L’Etoile regularly published pieces on Franco-American identity – being American of French-Canadian descent. On this June 24th, when French-Canadians north and south of the border celebrate Saint Jean-Baptiste’s feast day, here’s a throwback with an editorial excerpt.

L’Etoile – April 4, 1925

MORE PRIDE, PLEASE!

One wants to give oneself the appearance of being American and one believes that, in order to do so, it is necessary to betray one’s own and to deny one’s past. Does one honestly think that such an individual will be taken seriously? One would be greatly mistaken because the real American is the one who honors ancestral heritage, who stands tall, unashamed….

Fortunately, pride is not yet dead among Franco-Americans. Instead, it is somnolent. And yet, it would only take an energizing nudge to raise it up, exalt it and allow it to accomplish great things. (1) 

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1) Translation by Louise Peloquin.