Iwo Jima Memorial - Manchester, New Hampshire

From February 19th through 25th, 1945, a battle on Iwo Jima left an enormous number of casualties on both sides, and mass graves. It was late in the war, this would be the last winter, but the snows of New Hampshire were missing from this Pacific island, awash in human blood and gore, and close enough to Japan to make giving up unthinkable to both American and Japanese forces.

Most of us are familiar with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Joe Rosenthal photograph of the victorious American marines and a Navy corpsman raising the flag on Mt. Suribachi. That happened on the 23rd. One of those fellows was PFC Rene A. Gagnon of the 2nd Battalion, 28th Regiment, 5th Marine Division. He was 18 years old at the time.

A monument sits in a quiet place in a Manchester, New Hampshire park, and the green of last summer seems too-vivid, garish in the snows of today. The memorial is dedicated to Rene Gagnon, who was born and raised in Manchester, and to all Manchester service personnel who “answered their country’s call.”

Underneath the bas-relief depiction of PFC Gagnon, is a quote by him, “Don’t glorify war…there is no glory in it.” Anyone whom fate had placed on the small island of Iwo Jima during those hellish days would know.

His moment in history seemed to be something he tried to live up to, and also from which he tried to capitalize. He appeared as himself in “The Sands of Iwo Jima” (1949), and in a documentary short called “To the Shores of Iwo Jima” (1945), and a couple of TV appearances, but his notoriety as a common man captured in one of the most famous photos on one of the important events of World War II was a doubled -edged sword. He spent the rest of his life in menial jobs, alcoholic and embittered by failing to live up to, or beyond, that moment of destiny. He died in 1979. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

But here his likeness, and that uplifting moment when victory was announced with the scramble to hoist a flag on a hilltop -- are cast in metal and stone, standing in peace and serenity denied Rene Gagnon.

For more on PFC Rene Gagnon, have a look at this website. For more on the Battle of Iwo Jima, have a look here.

Edwin Booth in Waterbury, Connecticut

Edwin Booth, Library of Congress - in public domain

We’ll stay in Waterbury, Connecticut this week, but much farther in the past. The great 19th century actor, Edwin Booth, whose tribulations in Boston when his brother, John Wilkes Booth, murdered President Abraham Lincoln (discussed in this post on my Tragedy and Comedy in New England blog) -- came to Waterbury for what became a groundbreaking performance in “Hamlet”.

We have this episode in Edwin Booth’s career mentioned in Curtain Time - The Story of the American Theater by Lloyd Morris (Random House, NY, 1953), wherein his acting company was scheduled for a single performance of Hamlet. The author does not specify the year. Tickets had been sold out, and the eager audience filled the house. The cast arrived by train, but their scenery and costumes did not.

This incident is also mentioned in the memoirs of Booth’s daughter, Edwina Booth Grossman in Edwin Booth - Recollections by His Daughter, (The Century Company, NY 1894).

When told of the problem, Booth calmly took charge, decided not to cancel the performance and stood out upon the stage before the curtain. He told the audience about the mishap, and said they would play “Hamlet” anyway, on the bare stage and in street clothes.

This was not an era for much experimentation in theatre, certainly with few attempts to “modernize” the classics, but reportedly the audience not only accepted the bare-bones production, but were riveted, captivated by this most masterful Hamlet.

As an unexpected finale, the costumes, props, and set pieces arrived at the theater just in time for the last two acts of this five-act play.

According to the author, this was the first-known incident of performing a Shakespearean play in street clothes and on a bare stage.

“Annoying as this incident was, he enjoyed the novelty of the experience,” his daughter writes, “and frequently referred to it in later years.”

The Mattatuck Museum - Waterbury, Connecticut

The Mattatuck Museum Arts & History Center, on The Green in Waterbury, Connecticut, showcases art and history, with a particular emphasis on Connecticut’s cultural past. The rare melding of art and history, and community, tells the story of the region, and of Waterbury, in a profound and valuable way.

The history exhibit, with changing displays, carries us from the 1600s through the industrial dynamo years of the late 1800s through the middle part of the 20th century, when Waterbury found itself a manufacturing bastion. We are taken through the years, socially, economically, and politically, right up to today, and see connections and timelines that continue to morph the community.

Along with products of the mills, experience the frightening 1955 Flood. In one display case, among notable persons from Waterbury, you’ll find the graceful, confident expression of Rosalind Russell captured in a sculpture. For more on Roz, as well as her own exploits during the 1955 Flood, have a look here at my Another Old Movie Blog.

In the art gallery are examples by John Trumbull, Frederick Church, Charles Ethan Porter, and many other 19th and 20th century artists, and contemporary artists as well.

Stepping back to Waterbury’s industrial heritage again, the museum also houses the Button Museum, a unique attraction. The variety of buttons represent tiny works of art in many materials, including examples from Asia, military buttons, Bakelite buttons from the 1930s, and four engraved buttons from the coat of General George Washington.

The collection was originally part of the Waterbury Button Company, which had made buttons here since 1812, and given to the museum by the Waterbury Companies, which succeeded the Waterbury Button Company.

This museum is Waterbury in microcosm, and other communities looking to establish museums preserving their regional culture and history would do well to visit The Mattatuck Museum.

Al's Diner - Chicopee, Massachusetts

This shot of historic Al’s Diner in Chicopee, Massachusetts was taken in the summer. You can tell this by the absence of 8-foot tall snowdrifts which seem to be the main feature in most photographs taken in New England in the past month. Also, you can tell it’s summer by the “Sorry, we’re closed” sign on the window and a small note, on the glass part of the door at the right, which tells us they were on vacation.

Al’s Diner, built in the late 1950s, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. Built by Master Diners, it stands on Yelle Street, its “French Meat Pie to Take Home” sign on the roof a beacon to hungry travelers and neighborhood regulars. The other sign lets you know you can take a whole ham home, too.

New England State Symbols

There is an astonishing collection of state symbols in New England, most of which most of us probably have never heard of, until reading trivia lists like this:

The state shellfish of Connecticut is the Eastern oyster. Massachusetts has the New England Neptune as its state shell. Vermont seems to do all right without a state shell or shellfish.

Birds are popular state symbols. Rhode Island has its Rhode Island Red chicken, Connecticut took the robin, which departs in winter so one wonders how reliable a state bird that is. Both Maine and Massachusetts of course have the Chickadee, mainly or Mainely because Maine was once part of Massachusetts -- which also explains the coincidence of the mayflower being the state flower. That and Patriot’s Day.

Vermont has red clover for its flower, and milk for its state beverage. Three cheers and a milk mustache for the dairy industry in Vermont. Maine’s state beverage is Moxie, which you need to drink the stuff.

Berries are awfully important, too. The cranberry belongs to Massachusetts, and Maine’s is the wild blueberry.

The state rock in New Hampshire is granite, of course. It’s marble in Vermont, and cumberlandite in Rhode Island. Don’t suppose there are too many countertops or statues made of the slightly magnetic cumberlandite, but maybe some of our readers can educate us about that.

Unusual in the world of state symbols is the category of state folk art symbol -- Rhode Island has the Crescent Park carousel. Not to be outdone in fringe symbols, Massachusetts has a state donut -- the Boston Crème, and a state cookie, the Toll House, or chocolate chip cookie to you.

Both Massachusetts and Vermont have chosen the Morgan horse for its state horse. And for its state ship, Connecticut adopted the nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus. Vermont has a state flavor -- maple, of course. Massachusetts has a state children’s book author, Dr. Seuss, who lost out to state children’s book -- which is Robert McCloskey’s “Make Way for Ducklings”.

Many of these symbols are references to aspects of our history or culture, though one may be hard pressed to discover why Connecticut required the praying mantis for its state insect. There’s a lot of important voting going on in the state houses. They might do some of it if there’s any time left over after voting on state cat, state fossil, and state polka.

"To Dakota and Back" - Orphan Trains Memoir

Once upon a time, New England children were forced into indentured servitude in a wide and vastly unpopulated West that needed laborers. They had lost one or both parents, and the bulk shipment of these children were called “orphan trains.”

Judith Kappenman, director of the Irish Cultural Center at Elms College, Chicopee, Massachusetts, has recently published, “To Dakota and Back - The Story of an Orphan Train Rider”, a memoir about her grandfather, John Donahue, who along with his brother, were two such children taken without their consent, and without their knowledge of what was really happening to them, to Dakota Territory. They were separated, sent to different farms, and spent the rest of their childhood until the age of their legal emancipation, as indentured laborers.

It is a story rich in detail that brings us from the impoverished South Boston neighborhood where the boys began their lives with their parents and younger sister. A series of events utterly beyond their control brings them to the Great Plains. John endures bitter experiences, and discovers with astonishing insight, how to thrive in his helpless situation. He is elderly when he returns to New England in a circle of life that is as triumphant as it is sad.

The organizing of “orphan trains” began in the 1850s and continued until 1930. The book is a fascinating history lesson as a personal account from this little-remembered episode of America’s past.

“To Dakota and Back” is available in paperback here from Lulu.com.

Jean Arthur at the Westport Country Playhouse

The Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut has drawn, aside from appreciative audiences, luminaries from the world of stage and screen to perform, including one night in 1934.

“The Bride of Torozko”, in its English translation world premiere, featured Jean Arthur, who was still working out her metamorphosis from the dark-haired silent screen ingénue to, when she returned to Hollywood, the blonde comedienne with the unique voice that seems to defy accurate description. Sam Jaffe co-starred, and a young Van Heflin. According to the correspondent to the New York Times reporting July 9th on this out-of-town tryout headed for Broadway, among those “first-nighters” in the audience were producer Max Gordon, crime novelist Dashiell Hammett, and lyricist Ira Gershwin, among other society glitterati.

The play, written by Otto Indig, and adapted from Hungarian to English by Ruth Langner, was an old-world comedy of social commentary about relations between Jews, Catholics, and Protestants in a small Hungarian village.

The production hit Broadway a couple of months later in September, but also ended in September. It was Heflin’s Broadway debut, and Jean Arthur’s fifth crack at bat. We’ll discuss their work together in the movie “Shane” (1953) on my “Another Old Movie Blog” on Thursday.

Despite its short run, more typical that we might believe, the cast were mostly lauded. Sam Jaffe gave “a performance that may be too mannered but that it is warm, skillful and comic,” said Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times in his review on September 14th.

“As Klari, the beautiful Jean Arthur may still be a trifle too heavy for ideal comedy acting, but this is the best acting of her career, and it is modestly enchanting.”

We can see here a snapshot in time of the metamorphosis of the silent ingénue on her way to becoming the sassy actress with the perfect timing and delivery who, in a few more years, was said by directors and her colleagues to be the best at screwball comedy.

One wonders what Ira Gershwin and Dashiell Hammett thought.