RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

Lowell Politics: December 28, 2025

There was no Lowell City Council meeting this week due to Christmas, however, today we’ll look back to the December 16, 2025, and the departing remarks of Councilors Paul Ratha Yem, Wayne Jenness, and Corey Belanger.

Here is what each of them had to say. I’ve slightly edited the transcript for clarity and readability.

Paul Ratha Yem ran unsuccessfully for city council in 2015 and 2017 under the old, all at large system. He ran again in 2021 in the first year of the new hybrid part district, part at large council. That year, he won the District 7 seat. He was reelected in 2023, but this year (2025) lost to Sidney Liang.

Councilor Paul Ratha Yem: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Over the last four years, it has been the honor of my life to serve as the city councilor for district 7 and the vice mayor of our city. I leave with gratitude and humbleness.

Many of you know that I came to America as a young man with no parents, no siblings. So, all my councilor colleagues are my siblings. It’s a family of eleven. We will have disagreements, however, each one of us on the council has one ambition. It to make Lowell the best place to live, to raise a family and to start the business.

Each one of us has a vital role. We are parts of one body. Just like with a human body, the eyes cannot say to the hands that I have no need for you and the head can say to the feet that I have no need for you. All of us come together to serve one body. If one member suffers, all of us together suffer. If one member is honored, then all rejoice together.

I’m so very proud to have you working together with me even though we disagree. We have   strengthened our city, the Acre particularly and District 7. We expanded affordable housing. We also supported veterans. We promoted economic opportunities. We lifted Lowell onto the national and global stage through the Front Runner City program. These achievements belong to all of us.

I say to my colleagues, thank you for your love and support. Thank you to the residents of District 7 and the city of Lowell who trusted me and elected me to serve in the past four years. Your honesty, your candidness, even some of your complaints, helped me to be a better counselor and to understand the needs of our city and our district.

To the staff, the city  staff, Manager Golden, his team, and all the rest of the city officials, your dedication, professionalism, and your work is the backbone of our city. I can’t thank you enough for what you do day in and day out. You may never get the thanks you deserve but know that your hard work is appreciated by everyone including myself and my family.

While my time ends in this seat tonight, my commitment to Lowell never ever will end. I leave with no regrets, only gratitude, pride and hope for the city’s future. May God bless you and your family. May God bless our city. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor.

The first campaign for Wayne Jenness was in 2021 when he ran for and won the District 4 seat. He was reelected in 2023 but lost this year (2025) to Sean McDonough.

Councilor Wayne Jenness: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I’d like to start with just some quick thank you’s. First, I want to say thank you to my wife, Kerry. In my first campaign speech, I forgot to thank her, and I want to make sure I didn’t do that with my last council speech. I don’t think anyone can appreciate how much work and stress it is for the family of people who serve. Kerry has done a lot so that I could be here, and I just really appreciate that.

Also, I want to say thank you to my co-workers and my boss at my day job who’ve given me the time to step away from that role to serve the city. There’s a lot of stuff that happens through the day, whether it’s a quick phone call or a Zoom meeting or something, and being able to have that flexibility in my day job to get things done for the city, I can’t express how much that means to me. U

I also want to thank all the council colleagues that I’ve had the pleasure of serving with.  Everyone in the room tonight and councilors Drinkwater and Leahy who also spent time in this room with me. I also want to thank all my colleagues on the NMCOG council and staff. Serving on NMCOG for this past year or so has been a great experience. I’ve learned a lot in that role and really appreciated the time there. So, thanks to the mayor for that appointment. I really appreciate it.

I’d like to thank the city administrations I’ve had the pleasure of working with, both manager Golden, your administration, as well as Manager Donoghue and all the staff who are too numerous to name. I don’t want to start naming them because I will forget somebody and I will feel terrible. I would like to specifically mention Clerk Geary and Auditor Oakes who are of course council-reporting employees. I really appreciate all the work you guys have put in making these a successful four years. So, thank you.

I want to thank my neighbors, friends, city residents, businesses, all the nonprofit and educational partners in the city as well neighborhood groups and of course the voters who put their trust in me to serve two terms on this council.

Although I am disappointed to be leaving, I have no regrets. I’m proud of the accomplishments large and small that we’ve been able to realize over the four last four years as a council and as a city. I tell everyone that politics is a team sport. You can’t really get anything done on your own, and although all eleven of us seldom fully agree on how to get somewhere, we’ve all done what we can to improve the city and make it a better place. And you know, I’m proud of the work that we’ve done there. I believe the city and its residents are in a much better spot now than it was when I joined the council four years ago. That’s a testament to all the hard work put in by the city, the staff, this council, all our  all our boards and commissions and the work that they put in as well.

Furthermore, I know that everyone will continue to push forward the city and accomplish more things. Although I won’t be in this seat, I’ll be watching and  you know, I’m around and I will be continuing to pitch in and do what I can to help. I’ve truly enjoyed working on behalf of the residents of Lowell, and I fully have every intention of finding ways to continue to give back and contribute to the city and its residents.

Thank you for making these last four years the best job I’ve ever had. Thank you.

Corey Belanger ran unsuccessfully for the city council in 2011 but was elected in 2013 and reelected in 2015. However, Belanger lost in 2017, largely due to his support for moving Lowell High School to Cawley Stadium. He sought unsuccessfully to return to the city council in 2019, and again in 2023, when he ran for one of the three at large council seats under the new system. However, when District 3 councilor John Leahy resigned from the council early in the 2024-25 term, the other councilors appointed Belanger to serve the balance of his term. Belanger then ran for the District 3 seat in his own right in this year’s city election but was unsuccessful.

Councilor Corey Belanger: Thank you, Mayor Rourke. I want to commend my outgoing colleagues. That was nicely done, gentlemen. Very proud of you.

The time has come to say goodbye, but it’s without remorse, for sure. It has been a great experience working with all of you. And as Councilor Jenness alluded to, one councilor can’t move this city forward, but eleven can. And more times than not, we’re often in lock step. You know, there may be differences along the way, but we almost always got there on a lot of things.

You’re all hardworking, dedicated. It’s been a pleasure serving with you. It really has. Uh to Mr. Manager, you and your administration are among the best. I am in awe of how hard you all work, how committed you are, how responsive you are, and how you’re result-based you are at the same time, because we have to go back to our constituents at the end of the day. And you made us all look good.

But elections are a funny animal and you never know how it’s going to work out. But certainly, I want to thank you all for everything and I’m cheering for all of you for sure. I know the city’s in very good hands and the residents at home need to know how committed you all are. Yes, you’re all professionals. Thank you for your commitment and service.

But in just under 24 months, I’m very proud of the work that’s got done. As I travel through my district going forward, I’m going to see tangible results, improvements in sidewalks and parks and in all kinds of places. That was through the work of the district itself. It was an honor to serve such an engaged district, a very involved district. It kept me very busy and I wouldn’t want it any other way. Absolutely. But in the end, we all got results. When everybody, residents, councilors, administration, all row in the same direction, that’s how you get results because I like results at the end of the day as well.

So, it’s been a great experience. And it’s just the timing, of how I got here and what’s going on, what’s in the pipeline here with the Front Runner City, the LINC Project. You know, we have the potential here to be one of the best mid midsize cities in America. That’s no exaggeration. And I know with the leadership of all of you, including Councilors-elect Juran and Councilor-elect McDonough is here tonight, that we will get there. But it’s going to be a lot of hard work and I like to think I played a little role in getting some of the stuff moved forward. I’m part of a team. That’s how I always looked at this.

So best of luck to all of you. I’m cheering for you. Uh, there’ll be civilian roles to play and you can bet I’ll be in the front lines of that. So, thank you again. Good luck everybody. Thank you very much.

****

When it comes to the volume of motions each councilor has filed during the year, I’ve long maintained that quantity does not equal quality. In fact, too many motions can cause top city administrators to spend so much time drafting motion responses that they are kept from their primary task of managing the city workforce. Still, each year I’ve reported the number of motions each councilor has filed at the midyear point and again at the end of the year, for whatever that information may be worth.

Continuing this practice, I’ve listed the number of motions each councilor filed for the second half of 2025 and then for the entire year. My totals come from looking at each weekly agenda and counting the number of motions each councilor made that week. If two or more councilors made a joint motion, it counted as one motion for each of the moving councilors. Also, the number of council meetings are not divided equally between the two halves of the year. Because the second half of the year includes the every-other-week summer schedule and big holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, there are fewer meetings from July to December than there are from January to June. For instance, in the first half of 2025 there were 23 council meetings while in the second half of the year there were just 15.

Number of motions filed by councilors, 2nd half of 2025:

Corey Belanger – 20
Sokhary Chau – 1
John Descoteaux – 11
Erik Gitschier – 39
Wayne Jenness – 23
Rita Mercier – 9
Vesna Nuon – 9
Corey Robinson – 34
Daniel Rourke – 5
Kim Scott – 23
Paul Ratha Yem – 11

Number of motions filed by councils, all of 2025:

Corey Belanger – 41
Sokhary Chau – 4
John Descoteaux – 16
Erik Gitschier – 89
Wayne Jenness – 37
Rita Mercier – 16
Vesna Nuon – 37
Corey Robinson – 91
Daniel Rourke – 12
Kim Scott – 42
Paul Ratha Yem – 25

****

The Lowell Sun recently reported that UMass Lowell will soon issue a request for proposals for the construction of a hotel and a skating rink attached to the Tsongas Center. The ice rink will provide a practice venue for teams like the UMass Lowell Riverhawks that use the Tsongas for their home games. Now, practices are held on the main rink which prevents it from being used for other purposes such as trade shows and conferences. Similarly, the hotel would include conference rooms that would permit breakout sessions and ancillary gatherings for groups using the arena for things other than sporting events and concerts. The hotel would also provide lodging for those visiting the arena for any reason.

This undertaking falls within the LINC project (Lowell Innovation Network Corridor) which strives to supplement the university with related businesses and housing, all in the same place. Having an active entertainment site like the Tsongas and nearby LeLacheur Park will make living on the LINC campus more desirable.

The original plan for the Tsongas Arena contained an adjacent practice rink for the same reasons, however, that was eliminated when the actual cost to construct the arena exceeded the money that had been appropriated, so the project had to be scaled back to fit within the budget. Also cut were luxury boxes and other amenities within the arena. The Sun story suggests that some of the omitted amenities could be added to the building now as part of this project.  (See “UMass Lowell plans hotel, ice rink at Tsongas Center” by Melanie Gilbert, December 18, 2025.)

This is good news for the city of Lowell for several reasons. More events at the arena should put more paying customers in the adjacent city parking garage. Lowell should have a downtown hotel, but in a place and with a business plan that gives it a chance to succeed financially. Finally, this project might jump-start the Riverwalk, a beautiful pedestrian walkway running along the riverbank from Bridge Street to Merrimack Street that opened in 1996. However, from the time it opened, the Riverwalk never reached its potential, which is a shame since most cities in America would embrace the opportunity to have such a prime waterfront walkway. Regrettably in Lowell, the Riverwalk has been mostly ignored by city government. Perhaps this project will help change that.

Morning Song

Morning Song

By Jim Provencher

Waking to predawn summer stillness,
A pleasant coolness, the town asleep in river fog.
A few night-perch birdcalls try the darkness,
throat-clearing chortles, signalling, I’m here.
Adrift in the night, whirring and whispering
an overture of small sibilant cries.

This tentative faltering reminds me
I have less to say but something to sing.
Nothing better than to plumb the silence,
sound the darkness, join fellow first singers,
shy twittering gabbers whose prompt churring
cheers me to know in singing not to sing.
So I launch a high whining trill, chiming
dawn songs begun in darkness and delight.

My Christmases

My Christmases

By Leo Racicot

When I was a boy, a must do every Christmas was to go downtown to see the holiday lights on City Hall, and the manger display in front of it. Papa would take Diane and me down to see it. In those days, the entire facade, including the sides of the building, every inch of it, it seemed, were covered in multi-colored lights — a real treat for the eyes, eye-popping. It was and is still a tradition of many years standing although the lights are sparser, framing the edges of the edifice, and are all-white. The creche is looking its age and lacks the luster and serenity of when I saw it in the ’60s. But I looked forward every November of each year to being able to view it in all its festive glory. After the viewing, Papa (or Mama) would head us over to The Bon Marche Department Store on Merrimack Street, to its Toy Department on the 4th or 5th floor (I forget which). I know that, to reach it, we got to ride in the old-fashioned elevator conveyance, with the iron latticed cage,  complete with elevator operator. He seemed ancient to my young eyes and  I loved watching him pull open the accordion-like cage to let us in, announcing the floors and which goods could be found there. “Third floor! Ladies garments and Millinery!  Third floor!” I thought it was cool that the elevator said, Product of Otis Elevator Company; Aunt Marie worked in the Lowell office for Wilbur Bailey, whom we’d run into every summer browsing The Sunday Lowell Sun at Hampton Beach parking lot. In the Toy Department, Diane and I would go wild (well, as wild as our parents would let us which wasn’t much), so excited were we to see miniature trains, dolls, Easy Bake Ovens, cowboy outfits, bicycles, the colors, the lights, everything. Bob Clark’s 1983 comedy chestnut, A Christmas Story, offers a perfect depiction of the excitement inherent in this type of annual thrill in the scene where Ralphie stares, eyes agog with awe, at the many treasures to be had in the window of Higbee’s Department Store.  After, Diane and I would be taken to see Santa Claus, as I recall, a terrifying experience the first time involving instant tears and screams, but a visit to be looked forward to in ensuing years; getting to tell the kindly, bearded old fellow what we wanted for Christmas and to assure him we’d been “good, little children all year long”.

After the Santa visit, at home, Mama would go about putting stencil decorations on each window of our house, using Glass Wax. I don’t think stores even sell this product anymore!

As she did on Thanksgiving, Marie collected the three of us in her Rambler around 11 a.m. for a Christmas Day meal complete with all the trimmings. More than the food, I looked forward to visiting the different apartments she and Nana occupied in The Highlands section of the city. My favorite was the house on Branch Street with  its enormous, screened-in porch. Their landlady, Agnes Bogosian, was a large, hospitable bubbe of a woman, and always brought up for us exotic treats from her Armenian kitchen,

odd-looking pastries, candies from Ashtarak, the city she’d emigrated from. One item I bit into and was sorry I had was a ball of raw hamburger stuffed with peanut butter and garlic cloves, not a taste sensation I’d care to repeat. Agnes always smelled of garlic but in a good, kitchen-y way and would let loose with a big Ghost of Christmas Present laugh. Later, Marie moved herself and Nana to an apartment across from Tyler Park, a park I liked for its quiet serenity. While waiting for dinner, Marie would let Diane and me go for a walk there. I loved the sound of our boots crunching on the snow and the birds feeding beneath the trees. Their last residence was on South Walker Street where her landlords were Roland and Doris Phinney, who Marie always seemed to be at odds with. In years to come, the Phinneys’ son, Doug would gain local notoriety when he was accused of bashing in the head of a ULowell female college student with his camera. She lived in the house next door. While she slept in her bed. She caught Doug  in her room, peeping, clicking pictures of her. Diane worked with Doug at Astro Circuit and always said how creepy he could be, forever sneaking photos of her and other workers. Doug was tried, found guilty and spent many years in prison but on appeal was found not guilty and released. So, there was never a dull moment at Marie’s at Christmastime. We came to take for granted the always-scrumptious repasts she made us, the carols on the radio and record player. She always kept the house too warm but the warmest warmth came from being with Nana. If I close my eyes, I can still hear my grandmother’s clear-as-a-mountain-stream soprano as she sang along with the Christmas music. If she didn’t always know the words, she embraced the spirit of them. I’m finding words fail me here to describe the treasure she was, the love she emanated, the acceptance, her uncomplaining embrace of all that Life offered, the good and the bad surprises. I loved being in her presence. Nana was a one-woman safe house sanctuary against the blitzkriegs of childhood. Her presence made every Christmas special.

I’ll never forget the year aluminum Christmas trees came into vogue; Diane and I begged and begged our mother to buy one. She finally gave in. The branches of the aluminum trees were silver. They came with a color wheel. The colors of ours were red, blue, green and orange. The color wheel was placed on the floor at the base of the tree, aimed at the branches which made the silver twinkle and shimmer in those particular  colors. It was lovely to look at. At first. But we soon got tired of it. For one thing, the tree didn’t look so good if decorated with lots of multi-colored ornaments and lights, the way a real Christmas tree did. Ornament balls for the silver tree were of solid colors: all red or all blue or all what-have-you. Diane and I got bored with looking at it. After a couple of years, we told Ma we wanted to go back to a pine tree. She explained that the aluminum had cost so much, we were going to get as much use out of it as we could. So, year after year, that aluminum tree stayed, and stayed, and stayed. It did, after a number of years, begin to fade, lose its visual appeal, and became somewhat depressing to look at in its little corner of the living room. Ma finally relented and replaced it with a real tree. Phew!

I’ve written about The Christmas of the Bicycle before. I woke extra early one Christmas morning to find an English racer taking up most of the living room. It didn’t fit under the tree but seeing it, I literally gasped at the wonder of it. It was the most beautiful bike I’d ever seen. I was nine years old and kept scratching my head as to how Santa had gotten it down the chimney. The very idea of it was magical. Of course, Mamma was the magic but I didn’t know that. Not then. Magical, too, was when, every Christmas morning when the cookies she’d left for Santa Claus on our kitchen table the night before had been eaten, the milk, drunk. Years later, Ma admitted she’d been the one who’d eaten the snack even though she was not a fan or either cookies or milk.  I said to her, “But how come you didn’t just throw the food and milk away!” and she said, “In the Depression, we were taught never to waste good food.”

I still look back with fondness on the holiday gatherings Joe and his family included me in. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so well or found myself in the middle of such a spirited group of folks. One Christmas, Joe’s nephew, Peter, enlisted me as his coloring book partner and we must have worn down a couple of boxes of Crayola crayons. I remember Peter, who was maybe 5 or 6, chastising me, “You’re bearing down too hard, Leo!” Meanwhile, Joe was caught up in the obligatory holiday task of watching the same Christmas movie over and over with his nieces until dinner was ready  “Can we watch it once more, Uncle Joey!  Pleeez, can weeee?!!”  Joe’s mother, who was, God Bless her, the world’s foremost authority on fretting, and who was always worried for things to go well, did the holiday pacing. One Christmas, amid a sea of guests, she loudly blurted out, “Who cut the cheese!” She meant the cheddar but of course it sounded like something else. Joe and I still have a good chuckle about this. All-in-all, these were good times, memorable parties. I do look back and realize the Markiewicz’s likely felt a little sorry for me and included me in

their festivities; strictly speaking, I was an orphan, Good Christians that they were, and are, they took pity on me. Heaven Bless them.

For so many years, the Christmas of the Bicycle was my most memorable Christmas. That is, until the winter I was so ill and found myself in recovery on Cape Cod, in Hyannis. Over the long weeks, it got lonely there and I was bummed that Christmas was coming and I’d be alone, without family. Diane talked Rico into making the long drive to spend Christmas with me. This brightened my spirits and on Christmas Day, I looked eagerly forward to their arrival. But, it started to snow and I worried they’d have a hard time making it from Lowell to Hyannis, or even decide not to come. I was an absolute wreck when four hours beyond their estimated time of arrival passed and they hadn’t shown up. I was so worried about their safety and was climbing the walls when Head Nurse, Jackie Fossiano, a force in and of herself to be reckoned with, worse even  than the snowstorm, lost patience with my pacing and snapped, “A watched pot never boils, Leo! Go write in your journal!” and sent me to my room.

It was six in the evening when Diane and Rico pulled up in their SUV and spirited me away from the hospital for a few hours. The snow covered the landscape, making for a white Christmas. Rico drove to a spot near the ocean and parked. They brought out of the trunk all the gifts they’d bought me. I unpacked the bag of gifts I’d brought for them. The night was so silent and still. There, as we watched the boats on the water, decorated for the holiday with strings of colorful lights (a Cape Cod Christmas tradition), we opened our presents and ooh-ed and ah-ed. It was a freezing cold night; not even Rico’s heater could warm the car up. But I was so completely thrilled to have them there, have my sister

beside me, surrounded by all the festive wrapping paper and ribbons, the boats ahead bobbing on the cold, snow-capped water, that I was seized through-and-through by a joy I’ve never felt. Truly, a Christmas to remember…

Papa & Ma at Christmas, 1955

Leo at Lowell City Hall Nativity Display

Leo & Cousin Ed, Christmas 1959

Joe’s sister Jane with Christmas gift

Joe, Sam & Me: Markiewicz Family Christmas, 1983

Glass Wax

English Racer bicycle

Bon Marche, Christmas 1938

Boat decorated for Christmas in Hyannis

Antique elevator with cage

Agnes Bogosian

1960s-era color wheel for aluminum Christmas tree

Holiday Mosaic, Downtown Lowell

This article, slightly revised, appeared first in Merrimack Valley Magazine in December 2021 when Covid had become part of daily life. Invited to write a piece about holiday time in the area, I dialed back to my childhood and later college years when downtown Lowell was a magnet for people celebrating the season. —PM (12/22)

“Oh, Babe, What Would You Say?” A Holiday Mosaic

By Paul Marion

I have a short poem, “A Hundred Nights of Winter,” describing a loaded street scene of life-sized crèche figures in front of Lowell City Hall being hauled away in an orange dump truck of the public works department. The late Lowell artist Vassilios “Bill” Giavis made a painting depicting the poem and asked me to write the lines on the right side of the sheet of paper. People still talk about the painting, which became popular in prints that he sold at the Brush Gallery downtown.

Nativity figures, Lowell, Mass. by Vassilios Giavis

That manger set removal happened in 1982, a brutal winter which prevented city workers from dismantling the manger until early March. We were all ready to get out—not as dramatic as the current extended lockdown ordered to protect our health. We’ve been in a virus crouch for about 200 days now, with winter in sight. Imagine if the virus had hit us last November and soaked in while we were freezing and really stuck indoors.

A Hundred Nights of Winter

It’s been so cold and bad
that it took until last week
to dismantle the public manger.
From my office window, through flurries,
I saw an orange dump truck
pull away in traffic
with Joseph, Mary, shepherds, and angels
standing crowded in the back
like a bunch of refugees.
After a hundred nights of winter,
I’m ready to get out.

The thing is, that tough winter is not typical of my recollections of winter holidays in the Merrimack Valley. Born in Lowell, I grew up close by in Dracut (only place in the U.S. with that name, which comes from Draycot Foliat in England, dating from 1086 or earlier). When I was a kid, Lowell was downtown Dracut, which had no shopping hub to speak of except the affordable Beaver Brook Mills department store in the Collinsville section of town. My family is a Lowell creation anyway, with roots on both sides going back to 1880, when ancestors quit Quebec. Plus, my mother, Doris, always sold fashionable women’s clothes in Cherry & Webb at the corner of Merrimack and John streets.

We had our seasonal rituals at year’s end, one of which was a visit to the manger I would write about many years later. Those figures were probably the same plaster Joseph and Mary that I took in as a youngster in the ‘50s and early ’60s. Back then, Lowell, like other old factory cities (Haverhill, Lawrence), was the commercial magnet for surrounding town residents. Poet Robert Creeley, who grew up in Acton, recalls his folks taking him to Lowell to buy new school shoes in the 1930s. Up until the early 1980s, Lowell had Cherry’s, Bon Marché and Pollard’s department stores, clothes shops like McQuade’s, Lemkins, and Martin’s, Prince’s Bookstore, Lull & Hartford sporting goods, Birke’s for basics direct from the Garment District in New York (the owners were Holocaust survivors), Record Lane and Garnick’s for music and TVs, 5 & 10-Cent stores with everything from sewing materials to green parakeets, and many restaurants.

For me, the priorities were toys and sports equipment. The top floor of Bon Marché (later Jordan’s with the prized blueberry muffin recipe) transformed into Toyland in mid-November, not as big as the whole floor-sized Enchanted Village at Jordan Marsh in Boston, but more than adequate for the needs of kids from Billerica, Chelmsford, Tewksbury, and other border towns. Santa was up there, too, taking notes. Bon Marché stocked the toys local kids learned about from TV ads, the Sears catalog, and Christmastime broadcasts of the Uncle Gus kids’ show on slightly snowy Channel 9, WMUR, out of Manchester, N.H. If I was lucky, my parents would take me through the toy display at Bon Marché a couple of times between Thanksgiving and December 25. When my mother got word of my wish list, she might put the gift on “lay-away” with a deposit and pay it off over a few weeks. I pronounced the store name “Bomma-shay,” clueless that the French term means “inexpensive” or simply, “cheap.” My mother would have said, “a good buy.”

In college in the mid-‘70s, with my mother’s help, I got a part-time job running the manual elevator in Cherry’s. (There was a Mr. Cherry, but I never met a Mr. Webb.) All the stores downtown had Monday and Thursday night hours. The action picked up big-time for the holidays. This is before the mall era, before Burlington and Methuen shopping meccas drained much of the retail life out of Lowell—a pattern that would spread to similar cities. I remember the excitement in the heart of what we’d now call a “festival marketplace,” all the shops and stores with windows decorated, lights and garland, even small Christmas trees displayed.

Nineteen-seventy-two was a blessed year if you were eighteen years old like me. Not only did the Vietnam War draft get suspended just when I had a low number in the Selective Service Lottery, but also the legal drinking age dropped to eighteen and we got the right to vote, the first eighteen-year-olds so favored. This of course pumped up downtown life as young people flooded into A.G. Pollard’s brick-and-fern saloon on Middle Street: tall beers, giant crocks of cheddar cheese plus crackers, and all the peanuts you could eat, tossing the shells on the floor, so radical. The Old Worthen a few streets away drew crowds also with small beers at 25 cents and no free nuts but a distinctive vibe propelled by the belt-run ceiling fans from the old days.

One of our family rituals when I was small involved driving around Greater Lowell to see the houses lit up like birthday cakes—bright colors, gold stars, electric candles. Not every year, but several times, my father, Marcel, drove my mother, two brothers, and me to Boston on a late, darkening Saturday afternoon so we could marvel at the Boston Common lighting display. People came from all around to walk amidst the shining trees. If there was snow on the ground, all the better. Side visits to the S.S. Pierce specialty goods store filled with wines, jams, and canned delicacies and Shreve, Crump and Low jewelers (window looking only) completed the big-city tour. We’d get ice cream at Brigham’s no matter how cold the weather. This was a large deal. I knew classmates at Dracut High who had never been to Boston.

My ten-years-older brother, Richard, made things from the time he was a kid. Growing up in St. Louis parish in Lowell before we moved to Dracut, he’d walk home from school and rescue “good” items on trash day to create installations at home. He was an art guy who took the train to Mass Art in Boston and got a teaching degree. He married around the time that Lowell was rediscovering its history, and he and Florence were fixtures at all the Victorian Christmas events that were trending in the ‘70s in the lead-up to Lowell being crowned a national park. It was the age of Dickens in the city, top hats and long dresses. When he was younger, he collected mountain laurel and sprigs of red berries in Colburn’s Woods near our Dracut home to make wreaths that he sold to family friends. He showed me how to make Mexican God’s Eye tree ornaments (Ojo de Dios) with colored yarn and crossed sticks we picked up in the yard.

People would be backed up ten deep to get into my elevator car—Going up. Going down. My freshly dry-cleaned light gold uniform suit jacket and required necktie. In my pocket an official elevator operator’s license (we got tested once a year). Coats, dresses, juniors, undergarments upstairs; bargains in the basement. The main floor featured hats, shoes, gloves, jewelry, and the magnificent cosmetics counter topped with many small mirrors and offering a plethora of powders, lipsticks, and lotions. The elevator crew from my time produced a future mayor of Lowell and a roadie for The Cars of Boston’s rock scene.

My first Christmas season in the store yielded a massive crush on a sparkling blonde Girl Officers’ colonel from Lowell High School, Leslie, who worked in cosmetics. She was clearly out of my league, but she gave me a chance. I missed the moment after a concert date to see John Sebastian without the Lovin’ Spoonful at Merrimack College in North Andover and a dazzling time at the store holiday party at the Speare House (Camelot-themed on Lowell’s riverbank) where we danced to “Oh, Babe, What Would You Say?”—a throw-back song by Hurricane Smith in the winter of 1972 sung in the style of a 1940s crooner. The DJ played it several times, excellent for a peppy slow dance, along with “Dancing in the Moonlight” by King Harvest and “Superstition” by Stevie Wonder (pick up the dance pace). Leslie wore a red-wine silk outfit with jacket and flared pants. She was gliding that night. Turns out I was not in the advanced math group for relationships. Leslie moved on to higher education in the Midwest. (I had to look up the song and was amazed to learn that Norman “Hurricane” Smith had been a jazz performer before going into record-making. He engineered 100 Beatles songs up through the Rubber Soul album. John Lennon nicknamed him “Normal” Smith. Who knew?)

Churches put on their best for the season, from Advent to the Nativity for Catholics. I was not worldly as a boy, so the Protestant church services and different holiday observances for Jewish families existed beyond my cultural horizon. Lowell had three synagogues and a related thick social tapestry. I regret what I missed, but didn’t know enough even into my late teens to appreciate the diversity of the community. When I got my driver’s license, it was great fun to stay up and go to Christmas Midnight Mass with a pile of friends. Even the few Methodists would squeeze into the back seat because we had well-dressed young women in there for the group date. We lived a parish-bound life in many respects, attending Catholic elementary school and the home church in Dracut, Ste. Thérèse, a French-Canadian spillover from St. Louis de France parish in the contiguous Centralville neighborhood of Lowell. Hundreds of returned WWII veterans used their G.I. Bill low-cost mortgage benefit to buy starter homes over the line in Dracut in the early ‘50s. I chose public high school in Dracut, but even there the group was homogeneous, the Harris family being the only African Americans in the school. Not much beyond Christian believers visible.

The Marion family realized the good fortune of having a turkey at Thanksgiving, a ham with canned pineapple for Christmas, and a roast for New Year’s. On the inside of one cabinet door above our kitchen counter my father always tacked up a calendar for the year—and behind the calendar he had scotch-taped a newspaper clipping of a ragged-looking boy about five years old looking out a tenement window. Dad said he never wanted to forget the suffering in the world, the misery that is often out of our sight. In the holiday season, he donated money to help needy families and contributed to the Jimmy Fund, the Red Sox charity for kids with cancer. He had studied to be a priest but left before the serious seminary training. The bishop should sell all the gold items in the church and use the money to help poor children, he said.

When I think about past holidays, the family gatherings, the celebrations, the comings together on sidewalks downtown, the gifts given and received, the Christmas music (no other holiday matches this song catalog), the feeling I get is one of community, being with familiar people or strangers in an open exchange. Joyeux Noel, Happy Hanukkah, Merry New Year’s, the greetings, the upbeat expressions, the sense of sharing that takes hold. We’re in a time of caution and distances and will be for a while. The cherished rituals will likely change, but not enough to be unrecognizable. It will be important to draw on our warm memories of less anxious days. No person, no power, can suppress the good will we want to express.

Paul Marion (c) 2021