Donate a Paver for Veterans’ Day
Memorialize a veteran
With Veterans’ Day approaching, Wakefield Selectman John Encarnacao wanted to remind people that they have available to them a unique and permanent way to memorialize the veterans in their family – by contributing for a memorial paver for the “Veterans’ Walk of Remembrance,” which will encircle the new World War II Memorial that will be erected next year on the Common in Wakefield Massaschusetts .
“Everyone in the community has at least one veteran in the family,” Encarnacao noted at the end of last week’s selectmen’s meeting.
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Tags: John Encarnacao, monument, paver, pavers, soldier, soldiers, veteran, veterans, Veterans' Day, Wakefield, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Mass, Wakefield Massachusetts, World War 2, World War II, World War II Memorial
At Lyric Stage in Boston
When The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby debuted in London and then on Broadway, it took on the character of a major theatrical event. The same is expected when David Edgar’s stage adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic makes its New England premier at Boston’s Lyric Stage October 21 – December 19, 2010.
The Lyric Stage production features 25 of the Boston area’s best actors, including Wakefield, Massachusetts native and 1983 Wakefield High School graduate Leigh Barrett.
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Tags: actor, actress, Boston, Charles Dickens, David Edgar, drama, Leigh Barrett, Lyric Stage, Lyric Stage Company of Boston, Nicholas Nickleby, play, singer, stage, The Life and Times of Nicholas Nickleby, theater, theatre, Wakefield, Wakefield High School, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Mass, Wakefield Massachusetts
Taxes, jobs, illegal immigration and cuts in local aid were among the issues that Massachusetts State Senate candidates Katherine Clark and Craig Spadafora disagreed over in a televised debate Wednesday night in Malden. Clark and Spadafora are vying to represent the 3rd Middlesex District in the State Senate, encompassing Wakefield, Lynnfield, Malden, Melrose Reading and Stoneham. The seat is being vacated by current Sen. Richard Tisei, who is running for Lt. Governor.
Clark is currently a State Rep. representing Melrose and part of Wakefield. Spadafora is a Malden City Councilor.
Spadafora blamed Clark and the state legislature for voting in 2009 to give Gov. Deval Patrick “9C” powers resulting in mid-year cuts in local aid to cities and towns, including a $10 million cut for Malden.
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Tags: campaign, candidate, candidates, Craig Spadafora, Daily Item, debate, debates, election, elections, Katherine Clark, Lynnfield, MA, Malden Access Television, Mass., Massachusetts, Massachusetts Senior Action Council, Massachusetts State Senate, MATV, Melrose, Politics, Reading, Stoneham, Wakefield, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield Item
Henry’s Heroics
“Girl Revived After Going to Bottom of Lake,” read the headline on the front page of the July 22, 1935 Wakefield Daily Item.
“Presence of mind exercised by her male companion,” the story reported, “and prompt work by the Wakefield Police with the inhalator saved the life of Miss Mildred Bickerton, 21, of 881 Huntington Ave., Boston, last evening in Lake Quannapowitt, after she had sunk to the bottom of the pond.”
Mildred’s “male companion” was Henry Bagwell. Henry and my mother, Rita (Blaney) Sardella were first cousins who grew up in the same two-family house at 9 King Terrace in the Irish American enclave of Roxbury (Boston), Massachusetts. Henry’s mother was Mary (Blaney) Bagwell, sister of my grandfather, John Blaney, my mother’s father. Continue reading ‘Henry’s Heroics’
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Tags: Arthur Philbrook, Blaney, Blaney Blog, Blaneys, Boston, Boston MA, Henry Bagwell, Irish, Irish-Americans, John G. Gates, Lake Quannapowitt, Mark Sardella, Massachusetts, Mildred Bickerton, Roxbury, Wakefield, Wakefield MA
“Let him be with his mother”
I recently paid a visit to the gravesite at Holy Cross Cemetery in Malden, Massachusetts where my gandfather John Blaney and my great-grandmother Alice Blaney are buried. I used to take my mother to this cemetery from time to time.
According to family lore and cemetery records, Alice (O’Neill) Blaney purchased this plot on May 16, 1902, when her son James Blaney died at age 38. She would bury two more of her sons before her own death in 1917. The only names on the monument are those of her sons, James Blaney, Neil Blaney, Thomas Blaney (all of whom pre-deceased thier mother, Alice) and John Blaney, who died in 1950.
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Tags: Alice Blaney, Blaney, Blaney Blog, Blaney family, Boston, Daniel Blaney, Holy Cross Cemetery, Ireland, Irish, James Blaney, John Blaney, Joseph Blaney, Malden MA, Malden Mass, Malden Massachusetts, Massachusetts, Neil Blaney, Thomas Blaney
A Brief Blaney Genealogy
I hope to post occasional stories here collecting Blaney family stories and lore in the Blaney Blog, but a brief summary of my immediate family’s genealogy may also be in order.
In the 1990’s, Richard W. Blaney compiled an excellent Blaney genealogy. He was able to trace our branch of the Blaney family back to James Blaney, born about 1807 in Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland. James died November 15, 1879 in Lisnagarran, Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland. James Blaney married Jane Marks, who was born around 1804 in Co. Antrim and died January 1, 1904 in Lisnagarran, Co Antrim, Northern Ireland.
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Tags: Blaney, Blaney Blog, Blaney family, Boston, Co. Antrim, family history, genealogy, Ireland, Irish, John Blaney, Mark Sardella, Richard Blaney, Rosetta Blaney
The Blaney Blog
The recent death of my aunt, Rosaline (Blaney) McKenzie, at age 92, made me acutely aware of the need to record some of the family stories that I recall hearing over the years. Rosaline was my mother’s older sister and the last surviving sibling (of five) in her family. I remember some of the stories that my mother and my aunt told over the years. But now that their generation is gone, who knows how many stories and memories have been lost forever?
The Blaney Blog will be my effort to record some of these stories that survive in my own memory and in the memories of my siblings, cousins and other relatives.
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TRAD is an Irish Feast of Words
At Gloucester Stage Company through September 12
In the opening scene of TRAD, 100 year-old Thomas shuffles over to wake his improbably ancient father who is sleeping on a wooden cot. That absurd premise sets the tone for Mark Doherty’s hilarious fable set in the Irish countryside.
TRAD is also a grand way for Gloucester Stage Company to end its 2010 season.
There’s a bit of Samuel Beckett in TRAD, but the play pays homage to a number of great Irish writers, if you know what to look for. TRAD is short for “tradition,” and the importance of tradition and legacy are major themes of the play, just as they are key elements of Irish culture.
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Tags: acting, actor, actors, Billy Meleady, Carmel O’Reilly, cast, Colin Hamell, drama, Gloucester MA, Gloucester Mass, Gloucester Massachusetts, Gloucester Stage Company, Ireland, Irish, J Michael Griggs, Jayscott Crosley, John Malinowski, Mark Doherty, Nancy E. Carroll, play, playwright, playwrights, priest, Rachel Padula-Shufelt, stage, theater, theatre, theatres, TRAD, tradition
Don’t Eat the Messenger
When I tuned in to Fox 25’s morning news on Friday, August 27, I wondered why it had been pre-empted by an episode of the Phantom Gourmet.
Seriously, I understand that Wakefield wanted to grab the opportunity to showcase itself as a “dining destination,” but Friday’s “Zip Trip” show from Wakefield Common featured enough food to feed a small country.
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Tags: Angel Fund, Bellino's, Bellino's Trattoria, Billy's, Billy's Famous Roast Beef, Billy's Roast Beef, Billy's Roast Beef Wakefield, bistro, bistros, Café Jag’s, Channel 25, Channel 25 Boston, Channel 25 Boston MA, Chuck Wagon Diner, Cindy Fitzgibbon, CnD’s Barbecue, Cravings, Daily Item, Dunkin’ Donuts, eateries, eatery, food, Fox, Fox 25, Fox Boston, Fox News, Fox25, FoxBoston, Gene Lacanchy, Guillow's, Item, John Encarnacao, Lake Quannapowitt, Mark Sardella, Massachusetts Down Syndrome Congress, Meletharb, Phantom Gourmet, Phyllis Hull, Pleasure Island, Pleasure Island Jazz Festival, Rada Boutique, restaurant, restaurants, Ristorante Molise, Sew Trendy Studio, Television, The Farmland, The Gingerbread Construction Company, TV, VB, Wakefield, Wakefield Common, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield Farmers’ Market, Wakefield Item, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Mass, Wakefield Massachusetts, Wakefield World War II Memorial, World War 2 Memorial, World War II Memorial, Zip Trip
Ghosts of Pleasure Island
The dry summer of 2010 lowered the water levels of the ponds at Edgewater Office Park in Wakefield, Massachusetts, revealing 50 year old artifacts from the Pleasure Island amusement park (1959-1969) which once sat on the site.
Pleasure Island opened on June 22, 1959. It was built on 80 acres of swampland just off Route 128 in Wakefield. The amusement/theme park featured dark rides, as well as a Pirate Boat Ride and the park’s signature “Moby Dick Hunt” whaleboat ride, where a giant fiberglass white whale would surface, spout water, and then sink back into the depths.
A Great Blue Heron flies over the remains of the hull that was once a schooner that sat in the pond that was home to the Pirate Boat ride and the Moby Dick Hunt ride at Pleasure Island (1959-1969) in Wakefield, Massachusetts.
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Mark Sardella 