This page was last updated: May 15, 2019
Lee Historical Society
Newsletter
Vol. 5, No. 11
November 2008
Lee Historical Society, Inc.
P. O. Box 170
Lee, MA 01238
www.leehistoricsociety.homestead.com
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When friends, neighbors or relatives move, downsize, or just clean house, PLEASE, ask them to think of the LEE HISTORICAL SOCIETY before they discard any old books, pictures, postcards, letters or memorabilia of the TOWN OF LEE. We are also interested in obtaining old Lee High School yearbooks and Town Reports.
The October Meeting was held at Memorial Hall on the 9th. Mr. Stephen Paterwic gave a delightful and informational talk on the Shakers of Tyringham. Mr. Paterwic has studied the Shakers for over forty years and supplied vast knowledge of their history to the audience.
The November Meeting will be held on Thursday, November 6, at 6:30 p.m. in the cafeteria of Crossway Village. This will be strictly a business meeting with nominations being presented for elections at December’s Annual Meeting. All members are invited.
The Annual Meeting will be held on Thursday, December 11th. After the business and elections are over, Judith Monachina will speak on part of the history of the paper mills in Lee at our last Program Meeting of the year. This meeting will also be at Crossway Village
New members to welcome:
Beverly Trombley, 115 Main Street, Lee, MA 01238
Dale Drimmer, 3 Whiteholme Road, Lee, MA 01238
Matt MacNayr, 70 Housatonic Street, Lee, MA 01238
Richard and Clare Proctor, 185 Stockbridge Road, Lee, MA 01238
(The Proctors’ live in England but spend part of the year in Lee)
Jeanne Brown, 281 Prospect Street, Lee, MA 01238
Thanks to new member Jeanne Brown for the donation of the Lee High School yearbooks and to Shirley Trimm for the old slides of Lee.
Condolences go out to Society Member, Dick Sitzer and his family, on the loss of his wife in early October.
NOVEMBER CALENDAR RAFFLE
By the time everyone reads their November Newsletter, the “November Calendar Raffle”, one of our two fundraisers will be in full swing. Winning tickets will be drawn every day of the month of November with many great prizes, gift certificates and tickets be raffled off. We will print a complete list of prize winners and prizes in the December Newsletter. We would like to express out thanks to the Raffle Committee (Marion, Dolores and Doreen) who chased down all the gift donations, the businesses and people who donated prizes and to our great “salespeople”. We give a special thanks to Doreen Bartini, who really pulled this fundraiser together and was our “Super Salesperson”.
The Prez sez, by Society President Gary W. Allen:
In the Fall. The Society’s year is coming down to a close, or at least down to the Annual Meeting. There is quite a bit that we have gotten done at the warehouse to house and store some of the things we’ve been given. We had programs, were part of Founders’ Day, and managed to add a little more to the treasury.
The one thing I’d like best in the next year is to involve more of us in the Society’s activities. The programs have been interesting, but not as well attended as we would like. The work parties have also been fun, but only for a few of us. We are fortunate to have a dedicated group on the Board and they’ve done good work. Next, we need to find a way to engage more of you as active members. Let me or one of the Board members know the kind of things that you would enjoy – we’ll organize them.
The thing I noticed this month was that history can be fun. One evening, I brought Augustus Lukeman to life, If you’ve been to one of the cemetery walks, or to Plymouth Plantation, or to any presentation where someone portrays an historical person, you have an idea of what I was doing.
My wife and Tom Daley from the Norman Rockwell Museum designed a program for the Stockbridge Library Historical Room. They picked a dozen noted figures from Stockbridge’s history. Eleven other people and I portrayed them.
I spent a fair amount of time over the past month discovering the history of Mr., Lukeman – the sculptor of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on South Street in Pittsfield and the Confederate Memorial at Stone Mountain, Georgia (which has the largest carved surface of any sculpture). As Mr. Lukeman, I spent a few hours talking with Andrew Carnegie, Mert Plum, and several other “ghosts”. I learned a bunch of history AND. I really enjoyed it.
If you have questions on the Society, or items you’d like to have discussed, please let me know. GaryWAllen@Earthlink.net, or Gary W. Allen, 250 Summer Street, Lee, MA 01238. Telephone 413-243-2140.
Gary
SAVE MONEY ON YOUR NEXT MEMBERSHIP:
You can now sign up or renew your membership for three years starting on October 1st. For the next two months only the memberships in the Lee Historical Society will be as follows:
(1.) Anyone signing up as a new member will get a membership for the rest of 2008, all of
2009, 2010 and 2011.
(a.) A Senior or a Student Membership for three years will be $12.00.
(b.) An Individual Membership for three years will be $27.00.
(c.) A Family Membership for three years will be $42.00.
(d.) A Business/Corporate Membership for three years will be $72.00.
(2.) Any present member renewing their membership will get a 2009, 2010 and 2011
membership for the same above rates.
Recollections V
By U. S. Navy Retired Commander Vic Mottarella,
a native of Lee
(Continued from the October issue)
Landings
The emphasis in Primary Training was controlled, slow speed, low altitude approaches to precision touchdowns. Every landing was full stall, three point, stick all the way back in your lap, and you had better land within one hundred feet of your selected aim point. This was all for the purpose of preparing one for carrier landings where you had to fly the airplane at slow speeds just above the stall. (Note: Stall refers to the wing of an airplane loosing lift because of flying too slow). Upon reaching the deck of the carrier the plane would have to be at the proper airspeed ready to engage a wire with the tail hook when given the cut by the Landing Signal Officer. Some lack of precision on touchdown was permitted in the early stages, but even then the landings were judged critically. A major survival tool was a simulated emergency – here the instructor would cut power to the engine and expect you to you to pick a good spot for an emergency landing. You would glide down to about one hundred feet above the ground before the instructor would again add power. You would be graded on the landing site you picked as well as the ability to arrive at the possible landing site with the proper air speed and attitude for landing. Two difficult maneuvers were assigned near the end of the program. White circles, one hundred feet in diameter were painted on several of the outlying fields (usually farmer’s hay fields). The instructor would fly close to the circle at an altitude of about one thousand feet and then cut the engine to idle. You were required to glide and lose altitude by maneuvering the airplane in a big “S” turn without changing power to the engine. The idea was to judge the turns so that you lost the proper amount of altitude to end up in a three point full stall landing at the proper airspeed inside the circle. The second maneuver was called a slip to the circle. Here you started the maneuver from the same point as above but as you lined up to land you rolled the plane with the left aileron and pushed in the appropriate amount of right rudder to keep the plane aligned with the center of the center of the selected landing line (note: a right slip was also required in using a right roll with left rudder). The plane would end up in an attitude so that the wing position was inclined from 45 to 60 degrees with the horizon. The opposite rudder from the direction of roll was used to prevent the plane from turning. The angle of incline with the horizon and the rate of descent could either be increased or decreased by judicious use of stick and rudder. The idea was to use the side of fuselage of the airplane in order to increase drag to prevent the plane from gathering speed while at the same time maximizing rate of descent so that you could arrive at the circle with the proper airspeed reading to touch down in a precision three point attitude. They didn’t trust us to do the above maneuvers alone until the later stages of flight, after we had satisfactorily demonstrated a high degree of competence. We practiced these maneuvers for hours but only after the instructor decided that we could practice them by ourselves with undue hazard to life, limb, and military equipment. I don’t think any of us was concerned about risk. We knew from observations that unfortunate things happened in aviation but that was secondary because we worried more about not getting through the program than about being injured or killed.
Night Flying
(Note-I must give my good friend Doctor John Votolato of Milford, Massachusetts full credit for this section because with minor exceptions all the words are his – my recollections of night flying are a bit hazy – I don’t believe I had any particular problem with this phase).
One of the more demanding parts of the flying syllabus was that portion devoted to night flying. In order to keep from freezing to death we had to gear up in the following heavy sheepskin flying clothes: a. bomber boots. b. pants with suspenders. c. heavy sheepskin jacket. d. clumsy two fingered gauntlets, e. helmet with goggles and a face mask. My first dual instruction hop was on an overcast, moonless night with intermittent snow squalls. With a parachute strapped to me and banging me in the butt as I waddled out to the plane and accompanied by my unhappy instructor, thinking that I had to be nuts getting myself into a situation like this. I could barely walk and here I was going to try to fly an open cockpit plane in the middle of the middle of winter on the darkest night I had ever seen and besides it was snowing to boot. Two straight lines of lighted flare pots about fifty feet apart were the only thing that gave us any reference at all to anything. The instructor and I finally reached our plane and somehow managed to climb in. He notified me via the gosport tube that he would take off and that I was to follow him through lightly on the controls for his take offs and landings to get the hang of things. He wasn’t kidding as he was right there on the controls flying the plane along with me but probably mostly him. After a few landing between the two lines of flare pots he got out of the plane and said “she’s all yours – your on your own – make a few landings and take offs and I’ll grade you on the ground. I gave her the gun, got the tail up as fast as I could so I could see where the hell I was going and tried to stay between the flare pots as best as I could until I got airborne. There was absolutely no discernable horizon and the intermittent snow squalls blotted out the flare pots on the landing strip. I pretty well maintained the correct down wind altitude that I was suppose to but on my crosswind leg I got a little low and damn near got shot out of the sky by a flare gun shot by the Safety Officer on the ground. It woke me up in a real hurry as I noticed there wasn’t too much room between my left wing tip and the ground. The rest of the passes were OK and somehow I survived the remaining take offs and landings. It was a very scary and eventful night to say the least. I vividly remember when a cadet donned all that heavy fighter gear the only part of him you could see were his eyeballs.
(Continued to the December issue)
“No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session”
Mark Twain - 1866
A request:
Pat Davis is looking for someone in the area to give her some information on the Mohhekemuck Club; a hiking club that was organized in the early 1900’s and had a cabin on Upper Goose Pond. Our Historian, Charlotte Davis, remembers that this club held their meeting and dinners at the Morgan House. Can anyone help Pat out with this? She can be reached at pam100davis@verizon.net. She would appreciate any help or information.
Please support our Officers of the Lee Historical Society for 2008
“Business Members”
Gary Allen – President - 413-243-2140 or garywallen@earthlink.net
Gary Allen – President - 413-243-2140 or garywallen@earthlink.netwho support us.Myron Hood – Vice President – 413-243-2470 or MYRONSCALL@verizon.net
Myron Hood – Vice President – 413-243-2470 or MYRONSCALL@verizon.netOpen – SecretaryB & B Landscaping Mal Eckert – Treasurer – 413-243-1797 or MalEckert@msn.com
Mal Eckert – Treasurer – 413-243-1797 or MalEckert@msn.comand Excavation
475 Pleasant Street Board of directors of the Lee Historical Society
Board of directors of the Lee Historical SocietyLee, MA 01238 Mary Holt/2008 Ethel Noon/2009 Marion Leach/2010
Mary Holt/2008 Ethel Noon/2009 Marion Leach/2010 Henry Holt/2008 James Di Mario/009 Danna Snow/2010
Bartini Roofing Co. Mary Morrissey/2008 Mary McGinnis/2009 William Clarke/2010
Mary Morrissey/2008 Mary McGinnis/2009 William Clarke/2010290 Pleasant Street
Lee, MA 01238 Immediate Past President & Board of Director – Stephen Cozzaglio
Immediate Past President & Board of Director – Stephen Cozzaglio Society Historian – Charlotte Davis
Ben’s ShopNewsletter Editor – Mal Eckert
Newsletter Editor – Mal Eckert68 Main Street
Lee, MA 01238
The purposes of the Lee Historical Society are to promote and fosterCharles Flint Antiques a greater knowledge and appreciation of the unique history of the Town
52 Housatonic Street of Lee to friends, students and citizens through research, lectures,
of Lee to friends, students and citizens through research, lectures, Lenox, MA 01240 exhibits, acquisitions and preservation of the historical material and
exhibits, acquisitions and preservation of the historical material and sites for future generations. We also offer assistance to those in pursuitCountry Curtains of local historical information.
of local historical information.Route 102
Lee, MA 01238 The funding that the Lee Historical Society receives is strictly from
The funding that the Lee Historical Society receives is strictly from membership dues, donations and other private sources. There is noDevonfield Innfinancial support received by the Lee Historical Society from the Town
financial support received by the Lee Historical Society from the Town85 Stockbridge Road of Lee or any governmental source or agency. The Lee Historical
of Lee or any governmental source or agency. The Lee HistoricalLee, MA 01238 Society is listed as a non-profit corporation in the Commonwealth of
Society is listed as a non-profit corporation in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, classified as a 501 (c) (3) charitable organizationDresser Hull Company under the United States Revenue Service Code.
under the United States Revenue Service Code.60 Railroad Street
Lee, MA 01238
Greylock Federal Credit UnionOur Meetings
Our Meetings47 Main StreetMeetings of the Lee Historical Society will take place on the second
Meetings of the Lee Historical Society will take place on the second Lee, MA 012138 Thursday of every month at 6:30 p.m. Business meetings will be held
Thursday of every month at 6:30 p.m. Business meetings will be held in the old courtroom at Memorial Hall on Main Street in Lee. Some of
Judy Turtz Program Meetings may take place on the site of the subject matter of
Program Meetings may take place on the site of the subject matter ofSenior Loan Office the meeting. We will try to advertise all meetings in various places in
the meeting. We will try to advertise all meetings in various places inGroup Poli Mortgage town. We will also try to advertise in the local media and on local TV
town. We will also try to advertise in the local media and on local TVRoute 1 stations. Our Program Meetings are free and open to the public
stations. Our Program Meetings are free and open to the publicNorth Norwood, MA 02062 and people are encouraged to attend. The schedule will be updated
as more speakers and locations are confirmed.Kelly Funeral Home
3 Main Street
Lee, Ma 01238Paperdilly, IncThe Jonathan Foote 1778 House
Paperdilly, IncThe Jonathan Foote 1778 House 74 Main Street 1 East Street
L. V. Toole Insurance Agency Lee, MA 01238 Lee, MA 01238
Lee, MA 01238 Lee, MA 01238195 Main Street
Lee, MA 01238 Lee BankSullivan Station Restaurant
Lee BankSullivan Station Restaurant75 Park StreetRailroad StreetWSCOM Lee, MA 01238Lee, MA 01238
Lee, MA 01238Lee, MA 01238Robert M. Kelly
South Prospect Street
Lee, MA 01238
Become a member or renew you membership for three years. This offer is good until January 01, 2009. This makes a great gift!
Membership form for the Lee Historical Society until January 01, 2009
Senior/Student: 1 year - $5.00 2 years - $9.00 3 years - $12.00
1 year - $5.00 2 years - $9.00 3 years - $12.00Individual: 1 year - $10.002 years - $19.003 years - $27.00
1 year - $10.002 years - $19.003 years - $27.00Family:1 year - $15.002 years - $29.003 years - $42.00
1 year - $15.002 years - $29.003 years - $42.00Business/Corporate 1 year - $25.00 2 years - $49.003 years - $72.00
2 years - $49.003 years - $72.00Please circle one:Student Senior Individual Family Business/Corporate
Student Senior Individual Family Business/CorporateName________________________________________________________________________
Address______________________________________________________________________
City____________________________State__________________Zip_____________________
Telephone____________________Email___________________________________________
Is this a renewal membership?__________
Would you be interested in serving on a committee?__________
Or helping out at one of our fundraisers?____________________
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HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL !
