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07/17/18 04:30 PM #126    

 

Patricia Rossi (Campion)

Thank you, Kevin. I love your stories, as do so many people. Patty


07/17/18 05:07 PM #127    

 

Jeanne Mahoney (Leffers)

Thank you Kevin for sharing this.  It brings me back to those  Needham summer days as a child.  Back then I could not imagine a better place and now looking back I know how blessed we were to have that life in our youth.  Though many of us have moved away I know that many or most of us carry memories such as yours in our hearts.  I had not realized your brother Dan had passed away.  Our deepest sympathy to you.  Jeanne and Jim


07/18/18 07:07 AM #128    

Linda Gudas (Sayler)

Kevin - Lee Allen would be proud....   Linda


07/18/18 06:49 PM #129    

 

Virginia Day (Barbera)

Kevin, I enjoyed your article very much. All of your postings bring back so many memories of the carefree days of our youth. Thank you.

 

 


07/19/18 04:33 PM #130    

 

Peter DeFazio

Kevin:  Thanks‼️  I haven’t thought of RedWing Bay in a very long time. Your message took me way back to times that were mostly carefree on yet another 😬🌕 in DC. Peter DeFazio


08/31/18 03:19 PM #131    

 

Virginia Day (Barbera)

Kevin, I just love all of your stories. I think they take us all back to our childhoods. You spark the memories for all of us of our youth. Clearly you have a much better memory than me or you had a lot more adventures. Lol        

Ted Williams, wow.

Keep the stories coming

Gin Day Barbera    

 

 

 


09/02/18 09:34 AM #132    

Judith Mullen (Nicoll)

Keep em coming Kev


06/18/19 12:13 PM #133    

 

Carolyn Campbell (Kay)

Kevin, You remind me how important childhood friendships and community are. Maryann Sedegran was my next door neighbor. When we were the age for childhood diseases, we got ‘em. Probably from each other. We rigged a string between our bedrooms and passed notes in a soup can. It entertained us for days. Fast forward 60 years to last week.  We spent more than an hour on the phone talking kids, grandkids and old age gripes and ... just everything. She’s still in the Duxbury Plymouth area and I’m in Sacramento California yet the lifelong bond is still there. Growing up, my home was less than ideal,  but my Needham friends and community were stellar. I’m grateful I got to grow up there


06/18/19 12:14 PM #134    

 

Patricia Rossi (Campion)

It’s a different world today. As you know, I was at Pebble Beach yesterday with my favorite golfer, my son Kevin. I have lots of Kevins in my life:  you, my son, and a brother in law that I thankfully very rarely talk to or talk about. It does get confusing. Anyway, we were there. Getting there was not remotely like being dropped off at the front gate. Pebble Beach is about 90 minutes from Kevin’s house and driving on Monterey peninsula is reminiscent of driving on rte 6 on the Cape; a highway bordered by sand and scrub pines. We arrived at 8:30 am, along with hoards of other early arrivals, at a local college campus 13 miles north of the course and boarded a line of busses for the trip to Pebble Beach. 

When we were discharged from the busses, we walked a long way down hill to the course and the first hole. It didn’t seem like a long way or down hill on the way to the course, but the return walk after all day and 18,000 steps seemed like climbing Everest. I was loathe to admit that I was struggling and said only once that I’d have to rest a moment before the next set of steps. Stubborn to the end! 

The course is gorgeous, manicured and lush. The setting, though, is the star of the show. It’s breathtaking. I’ll attach a shot of a golfer climbing down a cliff to consider whether to hit out of the hazard.  And it truly was a hazard. I wondered whether we’d hear a splash and he’d have to be rescued. 

So we walked the course and got up close to the golfers by staking out a spot right next to ropes on the 11th tee and waiting for the leaders to play through. They are truly amazing. Not only do they appear to be playing a different game, they appear to belong to a different species! And they’re bigger than they look on TV. In addition to the rumored 10 lbs that TV adds, I think it subtracts 3 or 4 inches. And no one was smoking. 

Your comment about the butts on the fairway reminded me that my husband, Jim, who was a good golfer, would throw his cigarette on the ground while he hit and then pick it up and continue smoking it. He also used his tongue in lieu of a ball washer when one wasn’t available.  I wonder whether his dementia may have been the result not only of alcohol, but also pesticides. Unknowable. 

Anyway, the day was wonderful, not only the golf but spending all day with my son, just the two of us. When we were ready to leave, though, there was no one waiting to give us a ride home. Eddie’s dad’s Cadillac, BTW, was used to give me a driving lesson back in the day when I was always the youngest and didn’t yet have my license. I was terrified that I’d damage it!  After we got off the bus back at the parking lot, the traffic backup was epic, but we eventually got home and I remembered again that it was Father’s Day. I wish you had known my Dad.  The two of you would have gotten along famously. 


01/15/20 11:33 AM #135    

 

Kevin Tracey

For all of you that moved away from winter

The Low Winter Sky
I'm a winter person, there's something about the going out and the coming in from the cold that has a hold on me, takes me back.
We were made of wool back then, well, except for the long underwear. Everything else was wool-socks, pants, sweaters, scarves, coats, hats, mittens. The snow and the cold still seeped in. Cheeks raw, lips chapped, nose running, fingers numb. We'd stay out until dark, that low winter sky signaling it was time to go in. Trapped just inside the door until hat, coat, mittens and galoshes were taken off. The heat of the house hurting our faces and hands. In from the cold, wiping our noses on our sleeves, lining up for hot spiced cider or hot chocolate.
I miss it.


 


01/16/20 01:21 PM #136    

 

Russell Provost

Not all of us moved south. I moved north, live in a log home heated with just wood

I  still go hiking and snow shoeing  2-3 hours every single day.  I guess I never grew up.   

 


01/17/20 09:36 AM #137    

Linda Gudas (Sayler)

Kevin,

Remember waking up on snowy school mornings, hoping Don Kent would announce "No school in Needham?"  And listening for the fire alarm to blare rhythmically- beginning sometime before dawn- to confirm we could stay in bed?  Later, the neighborhood kids and I would bundle up and make a snowman (now, politically correct, a snowperson.) The day after a storm, I recall walking home from Stephen Palmer with my girlfriends, petrified that "the boys" would suddenly appear from behind a tree or snow fort, with snowballs hurling. (In retrospect, that was a bit of prepubertal flirting.)  My parents warned me to never look up at a hanging icicle. Oh, and DO NOT eat yellow snow....

Yes, New England winters are compelling.  We have lived full time on the Cape for 6 years now.  There is something exquisitely beautiful and peaceful about the ocean this time of year - frost-tipped beaches, icy white capped waves, birds huddled together in same-species conventions on the bay.

However, we have succumbed to a few weeks in warm weather come mid-winter.  We will never be snowbirds, but a break is nice.  Sunny golf courses and heated swimming pools have a strong graitational pull when the wind chill factor here is 10 degrees.

I will think of you from the south in February, as I walk the beach barefoot, looking for seaglass.  Wishing you a bunch of no -school snow days....

Linda

 

 


01/18/20 08:15 AM #138    

 

Charles Charlton

Your postings really bring back memories. Snow days were the best. Building snow forts with seemingly daily snow ball fights. I have often thought that we had more snow in the mid to late 50's In NE than they have today. No proof - just a feeling. I remember on no school days getting up early to help my father shovel out the car so he could go to work. However walking to school on the road because the side walks were snow covered are not great memories. I will always fondly remember no school snow days because they were fun. Nancy and I have lived in FL for the past 21 years so snow and winter weather are and will remain distant memories for us.


01/20/20 04:01 PM #139    

 

Jeffrey Feeley

I don't believe any of Kevin's musings are contemporary. No one has that good a memory!

I beleive he kept a very unmanly diary and periodically riffs through it, selects a passage and sends it out to his legion of followers to make us all feel like we have early, or maybe mid, stage dementia! 

There, Kev. You've been exxposed! Fess up!

 

Jeff

I've been blessed/cursed to receive Kevin's "musings' for 10 or more years. He really does have a superior writing talent.


01/21/20 01:00 PM #140    

Richard d'Entremont

Kevin is our Charles Kuralt. On the memory road with Kevin


01/22/20 11:40 AM #141    

Gunnard Johnston

Winter.   Snow days. A great money-making opportunity!    Back when I was around nine and ten years old,  I loved the chance to go and shovel snow to make a few bucks in the neighborhood.    
Then, there was the ice!   Always looked forward to winter for the freezing of Rosemary Lake, the Reservoir and any places where skating could be done.   Having learned to skate on the Charles River down by the border with Newton Upper Falls, I was hooked on hockey and eagerly awaited for the frozen waterways around town.
Now, as to Tracey's memory trove, I think Feeley may have nailed it:   Kevin has been keeping secret journal so he can pull out pages when the mood strikes.

wink


09/26/21 02:20 PM #142    

Class Administrator

I am sad to report the death of Walter Kochanek.  RIP.

Thank you to Les McKechnie for letting us know.

https://www.eatonfuneralhomes.com/obituary/Walter-KochanekJr


09/27/21 09:26 PM #143    

Sandra Hartshorn (Hicks '68)

So very sad to hear that Mr. KOchanek has passed. He was a favorite for sure, I was able to get to know him better quite a few years ago at McDonald's for coffee and conversation. He will be missed.

11/13/21 04:49 PM #144    

 

Kevin Tracey

November
When I was a boy I loved November. 
My birthday fell in November, presents, chocolate cake with butter cream frosting
November, ice forming on the ponds, hockey on the horizon. 
November, Thanksgiving with the Needham-Wellesley game followed by the best dinner of the year. 
November, the Bruins and Celtics games on the radio
November, the Sears Christmas Catalogue to pour over. 
November, when I got my drivers license
November, listening to Lenny Welch on the radio before my first real date
November, raking and burning the last of the fallen leaves. 
November, I loved as a boy
 


11/14/21 12:32 PM #145    

Gary Campagna

Kevin, Well said!

 

 

 

 


11/14/21 01:03 PM #146    

 

Carolyn Campbell (Kay)

Kevin

Thanks for the Needham memories. I got to visit Needham and see the house I grew up in the September. We were all lucky to grow up in Needham weren't we.

 

 


11/14/21 01:21 PM #147    

 

David Drake

Hi Kevin,

I always enjoy reading your well written messages!

I hope you have a Happy Birthday and a Happy Thanksgiving later during this month of November!

Dave


11/14/21 03:44 PM #148    

Deborah Davis (Sturgis)

 Kevin,

Thank you for the memories.. For many years, my extended  family gathered  for Thanksgiving after freezing at the Needham vs Wellesley football game.  I  recall the excitement over my siblings and friends returning from college for the holiday.  Of course this was leaf raking season.   No lawn companies came and hauled out leaves away.  My father commanded our childish labor and we raked the leaves into huge piles by the side of  the road.   At dusk we lighted them and watchied them burn.  I still recall the the pungent smell of those leaves burning. and the excitement of being out after dark with my father.   I think we were fortunate to have these simple pleasures in our lives and to live in a community that offered such a sense of belonging.  

 

   

 

 

 

 

 


11/15/21 10:30 AM #149    

Gunnard Johnston

Ah, yes, November!   The great transition time, when leaves rapidly meld from brilliant gold and radiant red to burnished leather!   I would only add one memory:  on the football team getting ready for the Needham-Wellesley game wearing the same uniform and undergarments as when we started in the sweltering early September.   Needless to say, the warmth provided was not adequate in those relatively minimalist underclothes, as I witnessed the upper classmen adorned in waffle-textured long johns and gloves, launching me into a fit of envy!    laugh   Ah, the ignorance of youth.


11/23/21 08:46 AM #150    

Linda Gudas (Sayler)

Thyanks, Kevin.  Your posts down memory lane are always fun to read.!

 

 


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