Lee Historical Society
Newsletter
Vol. 5, No. 7
July 2008
www.leehistoricsociety.homestead.com
.
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.
Our June Program Meeting was held on June 12, 2008. The Lee Historical Society and the Lee Historical Commission member, Caroline Young, entertained members and guests with her “History of East Lee”, a slide show, accompanied by maps of East Lee throughout the years. Thanks for another great job, Caroline.
The July meeting will take place on July 10, 2008 at the old courtroom in Memorial Hall. It will be a business meeting for Board Members, Officers and interested members. It will start at 6:30 p.m. There will be discussions on possible fundraisers, raffles and Founder’s Day Weekend. There will also be a discussion on membership rules and dues. This is an important meeting so please try to attend.
The August Meeting will be held on Thursday, August 14, 2008 at the old courtroom in Memorial Hall. This will be a program meeting featuring Bernard Drew, area writer, who will speak on the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps that were located in the area. This Program is open to the public and people are encouraged to attend. Mr. Drew’s Program Meeting will start at 7:00 p.m. and a short business meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. for Board Members, officers and interested members.
CONGRATULATIONS GO OUT to honorary lifetime members Florence and “Coach” John Consolati on the celebration of their 70TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY on June 23rd. Florence spent many years writing for various area newspapers, but is probably best known for her book “See All the People”. “Coach” was the whole show as football, basketball and baseball coach, as well as athletic director, at Lee High School. He taught and coached in the Lee schools for nearly forty years.
CONDOLENCES GO OUT to the family of Society Member Thomas M. Kerr, who recently passed away. Mr. Kerr lived on Robert Street here in Lee before moving to New York City.
We have a request from a gentleman in Averill Park, NY, who is looking for pictures of the old freight barn that was torn down to make way for the new Dresser Hull warehouse. This warehouse would have been diagonally across the railroad tracks from Sullivan Station and used in past years by Old Colony Transportation Company. Mr. Phil Lord is an avid model railroader and wishes to model a freight house after this building for his railroad. If anyone has a picture or a copy that they would be willing to share with Mr. Lord, he can be reached by email at plord@nycap.rr.com.
If anyone has interest in Mr. Lord’s model railroading, please check out: http://home.att.net/~p_lord2/newwoodstock2.html.
The Prez sez:
There was another interesting meeting: Caroline Young spoke about East Lee, and yes, East Lee did have the first fire company and fire engine in town. The Water Witch may be more well known, but she was second.
I’m not sure how many people realize how much Caroline put technology to use. The photos that she put into her presentation are part of a larger set that she has scanned. They are on paper and filed away where most people can’t get to them. But now, thanks to Caroline, the scanned versions of the pictures can be put on a computer and will be somewhere lots of people can enjoy them. They’ll just need someone like Caroline to tell the story that goes together with the pictures.
So, thanks to Caroline for both the program and for the work to make history accessible.
And another work party: Steve Cozzaglio, Mary Morrissey, Marion Leach, and I spent a little more time in the CDC Warehouse. We now have a desk – but no chairs, a very clean 4-drawer cabinet, shelves and two cabinets. The next step is to inventory the items that we are holding and get started on our collections records.
The attention grabbing thing for me this month is a conversation with the gang at work about what was going on when Berkshire Life was started in 1851.
I mention that Lee was producing ¼ of the paper made in the world that year and that one year’s production was worth $2,000,000 (in 1851 dollars). The gang had no idea Lee was such a big player in the paper business. And they wondered if it was Mead or Schweitzer back then. We need to do more work like Caroline has done to make Lee’s history more accessible to more people.
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
Repeat Request
Mr. Charles Quigley, of Gurnee, IL is hoping someone can provide him with some information on the Noonan family that lived in Lee in the 1920’s. They moved to Danbury, CT either in the late 1920’s or early 1930’s. The family lived where Hyde Place now stands. Mr. Quigley’s grandmother became the first Gold Star Mother in Lee when her son, Charles T. Noonan, was killed in Germany in WWI. Mr. Quigley may be reached either by mail at 36647 N. Edgewood Drive, Gurnee, IL 60031 or by email at jcq1938@comcast.net. All help is appreciated.
Officers of the Lee Historical Society for 2008
Gary Allen – President - 413-243-2140 or garywallen@earthlink.net
Myron Hood – Vice President – 413-243-2470 or MYRONSCALL@verizon.net
Open – Secretary
Mal Eckert – Treasurer – 413-243-1797 or MalEckert@msn.com
Board of directors of the Lee Historical Society
Mary Holt/2008 Ethel Noon/2009 Marion Leach/2010
Henry Holt/2008 James Di Mario/009 Danna Snow/2010
Mary Morrissey/2008 Mary McGinnis/2009 William Clarke/2010
Immediate Past President & Board of Director – Stephen Cozzaglio
Society Historian – Charlotte Davis Newsletter Editor – Mal Eckert
Please support our “Business Members” who support us.
Ben’s ShopBartini Roofing Co.B& B Landscaping & Excavation
68 Main Street 290 Pleasant Street 475 Pleasant Street
Lee, MA 01238 Lee, MA 01238 Lee, MA 01238
Charles Flint AntiquesCountry Curtains Devonfield Inn
52 Housatonic Street Route 102 85 Stockbridge Road
Lenox, MA 01240 Lee, MA 01238 Lee, MA 01238
Dresser Hull CompanyGreylock Federal Credit Union Judy Turtz, Senior Loan Office
60 Railroad Street47 Main Street Group Poli Mortgage
Lee, MA 01238 Lee, MA 012138 Route 1, North Norwood, MA
Kelly Funeral Home Lee BankThe Jonathan Foote 1778 House
3 Main Street 5 Park Street 1 East Street
Lee, Ma 01238 Lee, MA 01238Lee, MA 01238
L. V. Toole Insurance AgencyPaperdilly, Inc Sullivan Station Restaurant
195 Main Street 74 Main Street Railroad Street
Lee, MA 01238 Lee, MA 01238Lee, MA 01238
WSCOM
Robert M. Kelly
South Prospect Street
Lee, MA 01238
The purposes of the Lee Historical Society are to promote and foster a greater knowledge and appreciation of the unique history of the Town of Lee to friends, students and citizens through research, lectures, exhibits, acquisitions and preservation of the historical material and
sites for future generations. We also offer assistance to those in pursuit of local historical information. The funding that the Lee Historical Society receives is strictly from membership dues, donations and other private sources. There is no financial support received by the Lee Historical Society from the Town of Lee or any governmental source or agency. The Lee Historical Society is listed as a non-profit corporation in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, classified as a 501 (c) (3) charitable organization under the United States Revenue Service Code.
Our Meetings Meetings of the Lee Historical Society will take place on the second 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 Program Meetings may take place on the site of the subject matter of the meeting. We will try to advertise all meetings in various places in
town. We will also try to advertise in the local media and on local TV stations. Our Program Meetings are free and open to the public and people are encouraged to attend. The schedule will be updated as more speakers and locations are confirmed
RECOLLECTIONS V
By U. S. Navy Retired Commander Vic Mottarella,
a Lee native
(Continued from the June issue)
Naval Air Station Bunker Hill, Indiana
Our train ride from Durham, North Carolina to the Naval Air Station at Bunker Hill, Indiana was uneventful – we arrived on the morning of November 16, 1944 and were greeted by cadets with the standard refrain “YOU’LL BE SORRY”. Those words no longer carried the same significance as they had when we first heard them upon our entry to Pre-flight at Chapel Hill. After all, at this point, including our three previous duty stations, we survived a series of intense physical and mental tests that caused over seventy percent of our classmates to be eliminated from the program. Many more washouts would follow. Besides, we were older and wiser – most of us were now nineteen. I turned nineteen three weeks before our arrival at Bunker Hill. The Naval Air Station was located six miles from the small town of Peru, Indiana and was approximately sixty miles north of Indianapolis. It was centrally located between the cities of Logansport, Kokomo and Marion, Indiana – each a distance of about twenty-five miles. Other than the Air Station nothing of importance existed at the tiny village of Bunker Hill nor was there anything special about the landscape because the area was basically flat and void of trees. The view that most impressed me was the airplanes – here for the first time we caught a glimpse of real Navy airplanes that we would actually get to fly. They were all over the sky appearing and sounding like a swarm of droning yellow jackets. The N2S Stearman (Affectionately nicknamed the Yellow Peril)
The Stearman was a bi-wing, yellow fabric covered, two place airplane. It was the Navy’s basic trainer and was also used for this purpose by the Army Air Corps. Except for the J-3 Piper Cub we had flown at Keene, New Hampshire it would be the simplest plane we would ever fly. During the early phases of instruction the instructor would sit in the front seat with the Student in the back. Both were open cockpits. There were no radios or intercoms in the Stearman and communications between the instructor and the student were very crude. The instructor could talk to the student but the student could not respond – he was expected to do whatever the instructor commanded. A tube connected the mouth of the instructor to the helmet and ears of the student in back. It was called a “gosport tube” (don’t know where the name came from). The instructor had a mirror in front of him located high in the cockpit so that he could observe the reactions of the student in back. It became particularly valuable when observing a student about to become sick. If a student got sick he was required to completely clean the airplane after landing. This happened quite frequently when doing acrobatics and we ended up doing just about everything in the book. I don’t remember ever throwing-up in an airplane but I came very close many times and this happened even when I was flying solo and had complete control of the airplane. The winter of 1944/1945 turned out to be one of the coldest on record and it caused some of the students to freeze fingers, ears and noses. During the coldest days we were required to wear face masks, heavy sheepskin gloves, jackets and boots to protect ourselves from the elements. The Boeing Wichita plant produced over ten thousand of the planes for the Army and Navy during the war years. The plane had a wingspan of thirty-two feet and weighed twenty-six hundred and fifty pounds empty. It was powered by a Lycoming or (Continental) seven cylinder radial engine with approximately two hundred twenty horsepower. It had a forty-six gallon fuel tank and a 4.4 gallon oil tank. When flying solo from the front seat it was necessary to secure 125 pounds of ballast in the rear seat but most of our flying was from the back seat. The fundamental instruments for flight were all located on the instrument panel. These included a compass, an air speed indicator, an oil temperature gage, a fuel pressure gage, altimeter, clock, oil pressure gage and tachometer. The fuel gage was a crude devise being comprised of a float tied to a sight gauge below the center section of the upper wing. Starting the engine was a two-man job – the pilot would call “switch off”. He would then ask his assisting cadet to pull the prop through about three revolutions. The throttle was set to approximate 800 rpm – mixture control was pushed forward to full rich. The assisting cadet standing on the left wing, would then prime the engine a maximum of five strokes and commence cranking the inertia starter with a hand crank (the inertia starter was really a heavy flywheel). Both of these items were located on the forward left side of the fuselage. The pilot would judge the proper rpm of the inertia starter by listening to the pitch of the whining flywheel – he would then turn the ignition switch to both and yell “Contact” – the assisting cadet then pulled the engagement loop on the forward left side of the cockpit – the kinetic energy stored up in the turning flywheel would cause the engine to turn. Starting was normally accomplished on the first try but if necessary the procedure was repeated. Occasionally, a fire would start due to over priming. Should a fire start, a third cadet would always be standing by with a fire extinguisher to put it out before it got out of hand. The magnetos were checked at 1400 rpm with a maximum drop of 50 rpm for each magneto. Take off was made at full throttle with the tail wheel locked. The Norman operating speed of the Stearman was about 91 knots with a range of 347 miles. Although fabric covered, the Stearman was a sturdy little bird. Underneath the yellow fabric was a skeleton of steel tubing that allowed the plane to resist damage while sustaining high “G” forces during acrobatic exercises. It was a perfect airplane for novice pilots who occasionally made unusually hard landings. The total complement of Stearman at the base was about seventy-five.
(Continued to the August issue)
SOLDIERS OF LEE IN THE CIVIL WAR:
Roll of Honor Soldier:
Private Henry Burghardt, Company A, 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment
The 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment was one of the most celebrated regiments of black soldiers that fought in the Civil War. Known simply as “the 54th”, this regiment became famous after the heroic, but ill-fated, assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina. Leading the direct assault under heavy fire, the 54th suffered enormous casualties before being forced to withdraw. The courage and sacrifice of the 54th helped to dispel doubt within the Union Army about the fighting ability of black soldiers and earned this regiment undying battlefield glory. The 1989 film Glory tells the story of the 54th. Of the 600 men that charged Fort Wagner on July 16 – 18, 1863, 272 of the 54th were either killed, wounded or captured. In this battle, Sergeant William H. Carney, became the first Afro-American to be honored with the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Found in the U. S. Colored Troops Service Records. 1861 – 1865:
Name: Henry F. Burghardt
Birth Location: Lee, Massachusetts
Enlistment Date: 1863
Branch of Service: 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment (Colored)
Private Henry F. Burghardt is listed as one of the enlisted men killed in the assault against Fort Wagner and that is the only piece of information I can find. He is not mentioned in any United States Census.
BECOME A MEMBER OR ENROLL AN OUT OF TOWN FRIEND OR RELATIVE. HOW ABOUT A PRESENT OF A MEMBERSHIP, COOKBOOK, SET OF REFRIGERATOR MAGNETS, PICTURE PACKET OF “OLD LEE” OR A COPY OF “HISTORICAL LEE”, A TRIBUTE TO BETTY DENNIS.
MEMBERSHIP FORM
Membership fees:
Student Membership --- $5.00 Senior Membership (1 person over age 65) --- $5.00
Business Membership --- $25.00 Individual Membership (1 person under age 65) --- $10.00
Family Membership (all members of a family living at home) --- $15.00
Please circle one: Student Senior Individual Family Business
Name_______________________________________________________
Address_____________________________________________________
City__________________________State____________Zip____________
Telephone__________________Email_____________________________
Is this a renewal?_______or a new membership?________
Would you be interested in serving on a committee?________
Or helping out at one of our fundraisers?___________
The Lee Historical Society has available for sale the following items:
Picture Packets – Six, 8” x 10” colored pictures of “Old Lee” for $10.00 each or 3 for $25.00 plus $2.50 if shipped.
Refrigerator Magnets – (approx. 2” x 3”) street scenes of early Lee for $3.00 each or $7.50 for a set of three different scenes. No shipping charges.
Cookbook, “Boiling Water” – A 400 recipe cookbook put together by the ladies of the Society for the price of $10.00 plus $3.50 if shipped.
“Historical Lee”, a tribute to Betty Dennis. A 73 page book containing the articles wrote between April of 1971 and August of 1977 that appeared in the Penny Saver. Soft covered versions are available at this time for $10.00 plus $2.50 if shipped.
Please send me______________Picture Packets
Please send me______________Refrigerator Magnets
Please send me______________”Boiling Water”
Please send me______________”Historical Lee”
Enclosed is my check or money order (NO CASH) for $_________________ _
NAME___________________________________________________________
ADDRESS________________________________________________________
CITY_________________________STATE_______________ZIP____________
Lee Historical Society
P. O. Box 170
Lee, MA 01238
