Editor's note: In previous installments of our historic membership roster, we've been able to provide a biographical paragraph on most members, largely thanks to the powers of Google to locate sometimes obscure data sources. It turns out, however, that our members joining before 1920 or so are far more Googleable than those joining in 1920 and later, so some of these bios are very brief indeed. As in prior installments, some of the basic information here comes from Harold Hutchins' research in city directories at the Berkshire Athenaeum. If any reader can supplement the information listed here, we would be much obliged — contact Martin Langeveld, the Club historian/webmaster, at the "Contact Us" link at the top of the right column.
1942
Philip C. Ahern — 1907-1987 — Born in Boston; grew up in Newton, Mass.; graduated from Bowdoin College in 1932; upon graduation, he became a consultant to the National Municipal League on a study of the city manager form of government. In 1935 he was the first employee hired by George Gallup for his polling service. After two years, with the Gallup organization, he worked for four years with at New York advertising firm of Young and Rubicam before moving to Pittsfield, where he became executive director of the Pittsfield Taxpayers Association. In 1950, he became Pittsfield's director of administrative services, and in 1957 he became the first executive director of the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission, a post he held until his retirement. He was also a founder of the Franklin County Resource Conservation and Development Council. He died in 1987 in Wiliamstown at the age of 80.
Rev. James Gregg — retired clergyman. This was Rev. Gregg's second period of membership in the Club. See his biography posted at his first date of joining in 1916.
1943
Frederic Parker —Served as an attorney at Berkshire Life Insurance Company, starting December 1, 1942. He was a native of Franconia, New Hampshire, and graduated from Dartmouth College, and Harvard University Law School in 1931. After his graduation he practiced law for three years in Manchester, N.H., as an attorney for Home Owners Loan Corporation. He then practiced law in St. Johnsbury, Vermont for six years, during which he did some work for Travelers Insurance Company, New York Casualty Company, American Surety Company, and several fire insurance companies, before coming to Berkshire Life. In November, 1942, he was elected state attorney for Caledonia County, Vermont, but resigned that position to come to Berkshire Life. He died suddenly, at age 38, in New York City on 13 May 1943 after collapsing in the steam room of a turkish bath.
Lawrence W. Peirson — 1889-1968 — Vice President and Treasurer of C.S. Ferry & Sons Lumber Co. Graduated from Williams College in 1912. Board chairman for 13 years of Pittsfield Social Service Index; treasurer for seven years. Charter member of the Salvation Army advisory board. Deacon of South Congregational Church, served on its Scouts Council, treasurer of the Pittsfield Council of Churches. Treasurer of a local Masonic lodge for 30 years. died in Pittsfield, 16 January 1968.
Jay C. Rosenfeld —1895-1975 — owner, with his brother Stanley, of Rosenfeld's Clothing Store. An amateur violinist, he served at music critic for The Berkshire Eagle for 55 years. He died of cancer at the age of 80 in 1975.
From his obituary in The Berkshire Eagle:
He was born in Pittsfield and graduated from Pittsfield High School in 1912. He started violin lessons at the age of 6 and by the tie he was 14 he was proficient enough in music to conduct an orchestra in Great Barrington. When he was 17, his family sent him to Brussels for two years of piano study. He came home for a vacation from Brussels, and his return to Belgium was prevented by the outbreak of World War I. He then took a job for a season in a hotel orchestra in Jamaica, West Indies, and played in a local string quartet to earn money to enter the Institute of Musical Art, later known as the Juilliard School of Music. He studied there until his father, Jacob R. Rosenfeld, had a stroke and he returned to help his older brother, Stanley, run the family clothing store — Rosenfeld's. He retired from the store about 1963.
In 1917, when the U. S. entered World War I, Rosenfeld enlisted in the Army and served in B Company, 359th Infantry, 90th Division, and saw action in France at St. Mihiel and the Argonne Forest. He was one of the national founders of the American Legion and served in 1923 as commander of the Pittsfield post.
Although he didn't follow a full-time career as a musician, he played in various amateur and professional groups all his life. His home on South Mountain Road was the frequent scene of chamber music sessions. His last professional appearance was on August 10, 1974, when he, two of his children (Peter, a cellist, and Jayn Seigel, a flutist), and his good friend, violinist Sheldon Rotenberg of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, presented a concert in the South Mountain concert series.
He served on the Pittsfield Park Commission, as deputy director of Civil Defense, as chairman of the USO campaign, as chairman of the Berkshire Advisory Council to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, as chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, and as president of Temple Anshe Amunim and the Zionist Council of America. He also served as conductor of the Pittsfield Symphony and the Berkshire Community Orchestra in Williamstown. In 1934 he helped found the Pittsfield Community Concerts Association and served as its first president and as one of its leaders for the more than 30 years that the association brought noted instrumentalists, vocalists and ensembles to the city.
He served as The Eagle's music critic for 55 years, from 1919 until 1975. The South Mountain concert series began in 1918, when he was still in the Army, but he covered every event there beginning in 1919, and every Tanglewood event since the first one in 1934 (which was at the Hanna Farm, later the Stockbridge School), until shortly before his death in 1975.
He wrote for publications other than The Eagle. In 1952 he represented The New York Times at the first Casals Festival at Prades, France. He also covered the Casals festivals in Puerto Rico in 1956 and in Israel in 1961. In 1952 he accompanied the BSO on its European tour. He was a member of the national Music Critics Association since its founding in 1958.
His writings include a short biography of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, the founder of the South Mountain series, done at the request of the music division of the Library of Congress.
Joseph C. Nugent —1898-1973 — Principal of North Junior High School (now Reid Middle School); served as Secretary of the Club. He was born in Pittsfield, and served in the U.S. Army during World War I before he graduated from St. Joseph's High School in 1920 and from Holy Cross College. He then went to work for Eaton Paper Company as a cost accountant, and at the same time studied accounting at LaSalle University. In 1922, with his brother Walter, he took over their father's business, Nugent's Variety Store. He sold that business in 1925 and went into teaching, handling the junior high school social studies program at Pomeroy School. After that, for almost a decade, he was in the commercial department at Pittsfield High, and in 1935 he became principal at Pontoosuc School for both elementary and junior high programs. He was promoted to principal of Central Junior High in 1938. Receiving his master's degree from North Adams Teachers College (now Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts) in 1938, he became the first principal of North Junior High School (now Reid Middle School), which opened in the fall of 1953. He served as secretary of the Family Service Association of Pittsfield. He died in Pittsfield on October 22, 1973.
Rev. Christian B. Jensen — Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Pittsfield. He was born in Brovst, Denmark. He received a B. A. degree from the University of California in 1924, a master's at the University of Chicago in 1928, and a bachelor of divinity degree from the same university's divinity school. He also did graduate work at the University of Iowa, Union Theological Seminary, and Hartford Theological Seminary. He then served as assistant pastor of the Central Baptist Church in Hartford for seven years. He served as pastor of the First Baptist Church in Poughkeepsie, N. Y. for seven years before becoming pastor of the First Baptist Church in Pittsfield, where he served from November, 1943 to July, 1957. While in Pittsfield, he was a member of the board of directors of the YMCA, and was president of the Pittsfield Area Council of Churches for two years. He was also president of the Massachusetts Baptist Convention and served three terms as president of the state Council of Churches. He was a member of the Pittsfield Rotary Club and served as its president, and was a member of the nursing council of Pittsfield General Hospital. During his pastorate in Pittsfield, the membership of the First Baptist Church grew from 1,000 to 1,400. In 1957, he became pastor of the First Baptist Church in Ithaca, N. Y. He retired in 1966 and then served a number of New York State churches as interim pastor. He died in Ithaca on March 18, 1972.
1944
Randolph H. Wilkinson — 1903-1986 — General Counsel, Berkshire Life Insurance Company. He was born in Lebanon, N.H. on November 29, 1903 and graduated from Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Mass. He received a bachelor's degree in 1925 from the University of New Hampshire, and graduated in 1933 from Boston University School of Law. He practiced law in Boston before joining Berkshire Life in 1943. He was appointed vice president and general counsel in 1960 and retired in 1968. He was a member of the board of trustees of the Berkshire Athenaeum, and served as president of the Town Players and the Pittsfield Parent-Teacher Association, and as a member of the Pittsfield School Building Committee. He chaired a committee to determine the best use for the old Post Office building (now Pittsfield City Hall). He also served on the boards of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Recording for the Blind, and the Pittsfield Co-operative Bank. After retirement he moved to Hancock, N. H. and died at a hospital in Peterborough, N. H. April 14, 1986.
Paul K. Fodder — 1906-1992 — Trust officer at Agricultural National Bank. Born Dec. 4, 1906; died in Pittsfield May 16, 1992.
Rev. Harold L. Nevers —The third pastor of the Second Congregational Church. Nevers succeeded Rev. T. Nelson Baker, the church's second pastor, who had joined the Club in 1931 and died in 1941. Nevers was a graduate of Yale Divinity School and began his pastorate in Pittsfield in 1939, with Baker serving as pastor emeritus. Observing that his church was "sandwiched in between two barrooms," Nevers guided the church through the process of selling that building, and acquiring property at the corner of Onota Street and Columbus Avenue, where a new sanctuary was created in an existing homestead (and where the current building of Second Congregational Church was eventually constructed). At the time, the church was "sandwiched between two barrooms" on First Street. Born Feb. 4, 1916; died in Vader, Washington, July 22, 1999.
1945
Rabbi Maurice T. Galpert — 1917-1988 — Rabbi, Temple Anche Amunim. Born in Canton, Ohio March 5, 1917; died in Sierra Madre, Cal. March 6, 1988. Galpert earned a bachelor's degree in education from Kent State University and a master's degree in comparative literature from the University of Iowa. He was ordained in New York in 1945. After serving about five years at Temple Anshe Amunim, he served at Temple Beth Sholom, Santa Ana, Cal., and then at the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center for 36 years. According to his LA Times obituary: "A prolific author, Galpert translated major works of poetry from German, Yiddish and Hebrew into English. Associates said his diverse interests ranged from an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball to a love of classical music, particularly Mozart."
Dr. Reo J. Marcotte — 1910-1983 — Director of the House of Mercy. Previously he served as assistant director of New Haven Hospital. He graduated from Hope College, Holland, Michigan in 1932. After serving in Pittsfield for nine years, in 1953 he moved to Belmont, Mass. to become CEO of Mount Auburn Hospital, a post he held until his retirement in 1972.
Charles T. Masterson — 1905-1996 — Executive at General Electric Co. Practiced architecture in Cleveland, became designer for General Electric Plastics. Born Jan. 24, 1905; died Santa Clara, Cal. April 21, 1996.
Rabbi Solomon E. Cherniak — 1912-1960 — Rabbi at Temple Anshe Amunim. Born in Brooklyn in 1912; died in Mobile, Alabama in 1960, where he had served as rabbi of the Springhill Avenue Temple. Served as a Navy chaplain during World War II. Born April 8, 1911, died in Mobile, Ala. July 22, 1960.
1946
Robert G. Newman — 1912-2009 — Librarian, Berkshire Athenaeum from 1946 to 1981. Born in Pittsfield June 25, 1912; died at Kimball Farms in Lenox, Mass. April 26, 2009. He was a 1929 graduate of Pittsfield High School and earned a bachelor's degree cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1934, a master's degree in English literature from Harvard University in 1935 and a bachelor's degree in library science from Columbia University in 1946. He enlisted in the Army three days after Pearl Harbor, became an officer in March, 1943, primarily served as Chief of the Military Personnel Branch at Camp Edward, and was discharged in March, 1946, with the rank of Captain. He was President of the Reserve Officer's Association of Berkshire County. Mr. Newman was employed by the Berkshire Athenaeum in various positions from 1935-1941 and returned, following his military service, to the position of chief librarian. During his tenure he led the fight for the new Berkshire Athenaeum as the needs of the community outgrew the facilities of its old building. The new facility opened for business on Sept. 4, 1975, and the auditorium in the building was later named in Mr. Newman's honor. He was President of the Massachusetts Library Association, President of the Western Massachusetts Library Club and a member of the American Library Association and the New England Library Association. He was on the Advisory Council and Executive Committee of The Western Massachusetts Regional Public Library system. He was President of the Melville Society and an author of various articles in learned publications about Herman Melville. Active in supporting the Pittsfield Community, he was Trustee and Clerk of City Savings Bank, Trustee and Secretary of Hancock Shaker Village, Corporator and member of the Board of Governors Berkshire Medical Center and Trustee, St. Luke's Hospital. He was chairman of the Pittsfield School Buildings Survey Commission, a member of the Pittsfield Community Schools Commission, Chairman of the Pittsfield City History Commission, Clerk of the Pittsfield World War II Honor Roll Commission, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Berkshire County Historical Society. He was a former board member of the Rotary Club of Pittsfield with which he was associated for 53 years. He was a board member of the Coolidge Hill School, a Director of the Automobile Club of Berkshire County, and Mason, 32nd Degree. Newman was a Temple Board member and the official historian of Temple Anshe Amunim, a member of the Rabbi's Isabella Kelm Scholarship Advisory Committee and the Temple's "1972 Man of the Year." [Berkshire Eagle obituary]
1949
Dr. Harry Evenden Judson —1916-2006 — Born Dec. 20, 1916; died in Bonita Springs, Florida on Feb. 9, 2006. An ophthalmic surgeon, Judson grew up in Syracuse and attended Syracuse Central High School, where he became president of the student body, and entered Hamilton College following his graduation in 1935. In 1939, Judson went on to the Syracuse University College of Medicine. He obtained his M.D. degree in 1943, and on April 24 of that year, was married to Barbara B. Hopkins in Syracuse. After having interned at Syracuse Medical Center hospitals, Dr. Judson served a three-year ophthalmology residency at Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital in New York City. In 1946, Harry Judson established his private practice as an ophthalmic surgeon in Pittsfield, MA. During his more than 30 years of practice he served as chief of the ophthalmology and otolaryngology divisions of the Berkshire Medical Center, Hillcrest Hospital, and St. Luke’s Hospital, as well as a member of the executive board of each. A diplomate of the National Board of Medical Examiners and elected president of the Eastern New York Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Association, he also served on the teaching staff of the Albany and Berkshire medical centers. Credited with performing the first successful corneal transplant in western Massachusetts, he concluded his distinguished medical career with retirement following a serious boating accident in 1977. Outside of his practice, Harry Judson pursued a great variety of athletic interests, including hockey, skiing, sailing, golf, and tennis. He was an active member of the National Ski Patrol and medical director of its New England district. In addition, he was a past president of the Pittsfield Rotary Club and head deacon and executive committee member of the First Congregational Church in Pittsfield. After his retirement, Harry and Barbara Judson spent most of the year in Bonita Springs on the west coast of Florida. Judson died on February 9, 2006, in Bonita Springs, of complications from Parkinson’s disease and pancreatic cancer. [Hamilton College necrology]
1950
Paul E. Brassard — lawyer, partner in the firm Henderson Brassard. A native of Adams, he graduated from Assumption College and Boston University Law School. He was a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1940 to 1946. He then came to Pittsfield to practice law with William E. Henderson. In 1951 he moved to Northampton and practiced law there, returning to Pittsfield in 1966 and reopening his practice there. In 1967 he gave up law practice in order to become an investigator for the Berkshire County office of the Massachusetts Defenders Committee.
Roger B. Linscott — editorial writer at The Berkshire Eagle. He rose to the post of Associate Editor, principally in charge of the editorial pages. In 1973, Linscott was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials, including those taking a stand against the war in Vietnam. Born Jan. 22, 1920; died in Falls Village, Conn., Sept. 22, 2008 at the age of 88.
Linscott's obituary in The Berkshire Eagle, by Tony Dobrowolski, Berkshire Eagle Staff
An irreverent, witty man, Linscott worked at The Eagle for 38 years before retiring in 1986. He continued to work part-time at The Eagle for years afterward, while also working full-time at Laurin Publishing in Pittsfield, where he served as editorial director before retiring in 2003.
Linscott received the Pulitzer Prize after submitting 10 editorials that The Eagle said contained "the objective of illustrating the wide range of subjects an editorial writer on a small paper must deal with, ranging from purely local to national and international situations."
Asked to single out one submission as an example of his best work, Linscott chose an editorial published on Oct. 18, 1972, in which The Eagle endorsed George McGovern for president.
Mark Miller, a former executive editor of The Eagle, called Linscott "one of the key figures that made The Eagle what it was in the second half of the 20th century."
Miller, whose family owned the paper until the mid-1990s, said Linscott and his father, Lawrence Miller, made the editorial page "the heart of the paper."
Don MacGillis, a former Eagle editor and now an editorial page writer for The Boston Globe, said Linscott's editorials kept public officials honest.
"Linscott used the Eagle editorial page to keep Berkshire County from being overrun by development, to keep state government on the straight and narrow, and to fight the worst excesses of the Nixon and Reagan administrations," MacGillis said.
"He delighted in speaking to power with conviction and plain-spoken eloquence," added MacGillis, who still lives in Pittsfield. "When a misguided official was the target of an Eagle editorial, Linscott did not mince words. He put his crustiness to good use. The county is better for it."
Said former Eagle City Editor Bill Bell, "He was a brilliant writer and an advocate of high journalistic standards whose influence was felt throughout The Eagle's news department."
Former Eagle reporter Charles T. Troy, currently the senior editor at Laurin Publishing, said Linscott was responsible for a lot of the quality magazine work the company produced, and also liked working with young people.
"A lot of times I asked him, 'Why don't you retire and go home?' " Troy said. "But he said, 'I love working with young folks. It keeps me young.' "
Linscott is one of two Berkshire County residents to have won the Pulitzer Prize. The other is James MacGregor Burns of Williamstown, the Woodrow Wilson Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Williams College, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for his book, "Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom 1940-45."
Linscott was also a noted fly fisherman, hiker, and billiards player, who once drove a souped-up Plymouth Duster, loved animals, and was known for his bouts of absentmindedness. According to Eagle files, as a member of a college jazz band, Linscott once went dashing off to a New York City recording date, but left his rented bass fiddle in a taxi cab.
"He was extremely erudite and particular about history," said Hartford Courant reporter Rinker Buck, who befriended Linscott after working at The Eagle in the early 1970s, "but the details of life often eluded him."
Attorney Wendy T. Linscott, of Great Barrington, one of Linscott's four daughters, said her father never owned a short-sleeved shirt, declined to wear shorts, and didn't purchase a pair of blue jeans — "dungarees, as he would call them" — until he was in his 50s.
"He was a renaissance man," Wendy Linscott said.
Born in Winchester, Linscott was the son of Robert N. Linscott, an editor at Random House, who was one of the most respected editors in American publishing in the first half of the 20th century, according to Bell. Wendy Linscott said her grandfather, who died in 1964, worked with William Faulkner, and discovered well-known American author Carson McCullers, who wrote novels, short stories and plays. Robert Linscott also edited the "Selected Poems and Letters of Emily Dickinson."
"His descendants still get royalties from that," Wendy Linscott said.
Linscott graduated from Harvard University in 1941, after spending summer vacations working for the Cape Cod Standard-Times. He was employed briefly by the Buchanan Advertising Agency in New York before enlisting in the Navy where he served on a destroyer during World War II as a lieutenant second grade.
Following his discharge from the service, Linscott worked as a copywriter for the Franklin Spier advertising agency before joining the New York Herald Tribune in November 1946. Linscott spent two years at the Herald Tribune writing the "On the Books" column for the newspaper's Weekly Book Review section, before coming to what was then known as The Berkshire Evening Eagle in 1948.
According to his daughter, Linscott came to Pittsfield because he wanted to move his family out of New York City. She said her father discovered The Eagle by going to a New York City newspaper stand and looking through the small-town papers until he found one that interested him.
When he arrived at The Eagle, Linscott was first assigned to cover City Hall, which he did for six years while writing a weekly column on politics. He became an editorial writer in 1954, and was named chief editorial writer in 1957. Linscott was later named editor of the editorial page, before being promoted to associate editor in 1972.
Linscott leaves four daughters, Wendy T. Linscott, of Egremont; Judith K.R. Zask, of Lakeville, Conn.; Victoria Harper Linscott, of Falls Village, Conn.; and Rebecca S. Spieler, of Sandisfield; four grandchildren; and several nieces and nephews. He also leaves his family friend and caregiver, Betty Sacco of Pittsfield.
He was predeceased by his wife, the former Lucy Ann Richardson Goodlatte, who died in March 1996; his brother, Seymour; and his sisters, Barbara Meyers and Sylvia Reynolds.
1951
Rabbi Perry Nussbaum — 1908-1987 — Born in Toronto, Feb. 16, 1908; graduated in 1933 from Hebrew Union College and was ordained as a rabbi there. He briefly served congregations in Melbourne and in Amarillo, Texas before becoming a prison chaplain in Pueblo, Colorado in 1937. In 1941 he became rabbi of Temple Emanu-El in Wichita, Kansas, and in 1943 joined the Chaplain Corps of the U.S. Army, serving in the Philippines and attaining the rank of colonel in the Army Reserve. After the war, he served congregations in Trenton, N.J. and Long Beach, N.Y. before coming for to Pittsfield as rabbi of Temple Anshe Amunim in 1951, serving for three years. From here he became rabbi of Temple Beth Israel in Jackson, Miss., where he served until his retirement in 1973. He was there during the civil rights era, and the temple's new building in 1967 was heavily damaged by a Ku Klux Klan dynamite bombing, and later that year Nussbaum's house was similarly bombed while he and his wife were sleeping in it. He moved to San Diego after retiring in 1973, and died in March, 1987.
Dr. Robert Jackson Tracy — 1914-2009 — Born in Telluride, Colo. to William Evarts Tracy and Edith Jackson Tracy on April 10, 1914. He grew up in Concord, Mass. He was educated at the former Lenox School for Boys graduating in 1932. He followed his older brother and father to Yale graduating in 1936. Two years later, he entered Harvard Medical School graduating in 1942 and proceeded to train in surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. World War II interrupted his training, and he was assigned to the 110th Evacuation Hospital in General George Patton's Army landing on Utah Beach in August 1944. The hospital was heavily involved in The Battle of the Bulge, and it was the only hospital on the southern flank which did not retreat. The hospital was awarded five campaign ribbons for excellence in action. Dr. Tracy was discharged as a captain. Following his service, he returned to Massachusetts General Hospital to complete his surgical training. He came to the Berkshires in 1949 and practiced at the three Pittsfield hospitals and also Fairview Hospital in Great Barrington. He became Chief of Surgery and Director of the surgical residency training program at Berkshire Medical Center. He introduced vascular surgery to Berkshire County and became a leading practitioner of this new discipline. For this, he was honored in December 1963 and became a "Hall of Fame" surgeon. He was enlisted as an Associate Professor of Surgery at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Dr. Tracy was known to his colleagues and his patients for his kindness, gentleness and skill.
Dr. Tracy was a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, a Diplomate of the American Board of Surgery, a member of the New England Surgical Society and a member of the New England Society of Vascular Surgery. He maintained his relationship with Lenox School and became both a longstanding trustee of the school and the school physician for many years. He was an outdoorsman, an enthusiastic boater, a passionate downhill skier and an avid golfer which he continued to play into his nineties. Died Dec. 11, 2009, at Kimball Farms, Lenox, Mass.
1953
Judge F. Anthony Hanlon —1899-1981 — Berkshire County Probate Judge. Born Jan. 17, 1899; died in Pittsfield, June 1981. He was born in Adams and graduated in 1917 from Adams High School, where he was a center on the football team. During World War I, he served two months in the army. He received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College in 1922 and his law degree from Boston University's Law School in 1928. Before graduation he worked briefly in the Adams office of the North Adams Transcript and at Berkshire Hills Paper Co. In 1938, he succeeded his father as treasurer of the Adams Co-operative Bank.
After graduation fro Boston University, he practiced law for a year with attorney Joseph G. Bryer of Boston. In 1929, he opened his own practice in Adams. In 1939 he became special justice of the Adams District Court, and then announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for country register of probate. He ran unsuccessfully.
In World War II, he was appointed chairman of the Adams Selective Service Board by Gov. Leverett Saltonstall, and he was chairman of the Republican Town Committee of Adams for four years.
On December 8, 1942, at the age of 43, he was nominated by Bov. Saltonstall as judge of probate in Berkshire County to succeed Judge Arthur M. Robinson. He continued in that position for 30 years, until 1972, when a Massachusetts referendum vote called for mandatory retirement of judges at age 70. Judge Hanlon was 72 at the time, and was one of 38 judges affected by the vote.
In December 1973, he returned to private practice after what he called "a fair sampling of retirement life" — an experience which, he said, he found "something less than attractive. As a matter of fact, I found it damn boring." He formed a partnership Stein & Hanlon with attorney Arthur Stein.
He was a communicant of Sacred Heart Church. During his career he served as president of the Berkshire Hills Conference and the Berkshire Boy Scout Council, a trustee of W. B. Plunkett Memorial Hospital, St. Luke's Hospital, Berkshire Medical Center and the Hospital Planning Association of Berkshire County, and as a director of the Pittsfield Co-operative Bank.
Rev. William Coolidge Hart —Pastor at First Church of Christ. Born October 17, 1916; died Fairfield, Conn. June 18, 2000. Served as a chaplain in the U. S. Air Force before coming to First Church. He was a native of Bedford, Mass. and a graduate of Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine and of Andover-Newton Theological Seminary. For a short time he was the assistant minister at Old South Church in Boston. He assumed the First Church pastorate on January 1, 1953, and resigned "rather suddenly" in September, 1958 to become editor of The Christian Century, and thereafter Manager of Public Affairs for General Electric Co. in Bridgeport, Conn.
1954
Harold L. Hutchins, Jr. — 1916-1996 — Executive director of Pittsfield General Hospital, and of Berkshire Medical Center when it was formed through the merger of Pittsfield General Hospital and the House of Mercy. Born August 17, 1916; died in Pittsfield, October 1996.
He graduated from the University of Vermont and received a master's degree in hospital administration from Washington University in St. Louis, He served as a captain in the Army Medical Administration Corps during World War II. He served as administrative intern at Grasslands Hospital, Valhalla, N. Y. for one year, and as assistant director at Aultman Hospital in Canton, Ohio, for five years, before coming to Pittsfield General Hospital in 1953. He was executive director at Pittsfield General for 16 years, and then as executive director of Berkshire Medical Center which was created through the merger of Pittsfield General and St. Luke's Hospital in 1967.
He left the Berkshire Medical Center in 1969, and began acting as a consultant for hospitals and corporations. In 1971, he assumed a position in Springfield as director of planning and program development at the Springfield Hospital Medical Center.
He served as president of the New England Hospital Association, and was a member of the Massachusetts Hospital Association, the Hospital Superintendents' Club, the Western Massachusetts Hospital Council and the state Hospital Advisory Committee.
1955
Rabbi Harold I. Salzmann — 1922-2018 —Rabbi, Temple Anshe Amunim. The son and grandson of traditional rabbis trained in the religious schools of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (today’s Slovakia), as a youth he received a very thorough training in Biblical Hebrew and Talmud-Torah studies. Eager to explore newer avenues in Jewish thought, Rabbi Salzmann pursued his rabbinical studies in the Reform Movement at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, where he was ordained in 1950. Throughout his life, he continued his scholarship in theology and as a teacher who trained bar and bat mitzvah children as well as adults. An amateur historian, he collected antique postcards of the Berkshires, possessed a wealth of knowledge about the postal service of British Mandate Palestine, and had begun to write a history of the Jewish community of the Berkshires before his death.
Before joining the US army as a chaplain at the rank of Second Lieutenant (and later an Army Reserve Captain), he and his wife Audrey (ne Pastor) whom he married in 1950, held a pulpit in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His time as a chaplain for the Western Area Command took him to Germany and Belgium; in Luxembourg, he took part in a dedication ceremony to honor General George Patton. Turning down a full time commission in the US Army, he returned to civilian life in 1954. He frequently remarked that it was the natural beauty of the Berkshires and his ability to be active in both Jewish and secular life that made him turn down other job offers at larger congregations in New York and Rhode Island.
Over a period of 64 years, Rabbi Salzmann dedicated his life to building his Reform Jewish community in Pittsfield. He raised funds and along with the Temple board, engaged an architect to design and to build the new synagogue that is currently home to Congregation Anshe Amunim on Broad street in Pittsfield. The Temple’s membership grew and gained new financial stability through the generosity of congregants who shared his vision. Although he retired early, he remained active as the emeritus rabbi, often stepping in to replace his younger colleagues to conduct services, funerals and weddings. The Temple honored both the Rabbi and his wife, recently renaming the religious school in their honor. Nationally, he was recognized by his alma mater, the Hebrew University of Cincinnati, with an honorary doctorate in 1975.
At least in equal measure, Rabbi devoted himself to the civic life of the Berkshires, as a citizen and one of its most dedicated religious leaders. Shortly after coming to Pittsfield, he became a member of the Rotary Club. In 2012, fellow Rotarians recognized his many decades of service to Rotary and the community with the Paul Harris Award. One of the longest serving members of the clergy in the Berkshires, he delivered more invocations at parades and high school graduations than any other rabbi, priest or minister in the county. Active in many other capacities in the city and county, from the board of trustees of the Berkshire Medical Center to the committee that restored the World War I memorial in Veterans’ Park on South St. A longtime member of the Berkshire Clergy Association, he embodied the civic spirit of the Kennedy-era. In addition to his love of collecting books and stamps, he remained the secretary-treasurer of the Monday Evening Club, well into his 90s. He died Sept. 25, 2018.
Thomas F. Plunkett, Jr. —1925-2009 — Born in Pittsfield; attended Princeton University and then Ohio University; served in Army artillery during World War II in Belgium and Austria; returned to Princeton and graduated in 1946, majoring in French literature. Rowed in the 1948 Olympic trial finals; rowed in the 1949 Cup race at Henley, England. Ward 3 Councilman; Vice President of First Agricultural Bank; chairman of the board of the Berkshire Athenaeum. Born in Pittsfield Oct. 11, 1925; died in Pittsfield April 6, 2009.
1957
Rev. Ellis J. Holt —1910-2000 — Pastor of First Baptist Church. Born Feb. 6, 1910; died Cape Elizabeth, Maine, May 18, 2000. He was born in Phillips, Maine. His family then moved to Lamoine, where he spent his childhood, vacations and retirement. Ellis was educated at Higgins Classical Institute, Charleston, and at Boston University College of Liberal Arts, where he graduated in 1931. An honors graduate of Andover Newton Theological School in 1934, he was ordained on July 2, 1934, at the First Baptist Church of Littleton, Mass. Known as "Sam," he served as pastor of American Baptist congregations in Littleton (1934-1936) and Pittsfield (1957-1963), Massachusetts; and Portland (1936-1938), Calais (1938-1942), Auburn (1942-1957), and Waterville (1963-1969). Over the course of his 40-year career in the ministry, he held a variety of important positions in the American Baptist Convention. Ellis retired in 1975 to Lamoine to the home that his grandfather, Rev. William H. Rice, had constructed 100 years previously and where he and his family had vacationed throughout his career. During his retirement he was active in the Lamoine Baptist Church and the Lamoine Historical Society.
1958
Robert D. Bardwell, Jr. — 1920-1989 — President, Bardwell D'Angelo & Bowlby Insurance Agency. Born Nov. 28, 1920 Died in Pittsfield, June 27, 1989. He graduated from Deerfield Academy, Yale University in 1942, and Harvard Business School. He was a lieutenant in the naval reserve, serving as supply officer on a destroyer and a naval transport for two of his three years' service. He served as vice president of the Berkshire County Society for the Care of Crippled and Deformed Children (1974), vice president of the Berkshire County Historical Society (1986), on the board of the Pittsfield Community Music School (1978), the board of the Pittsfield Co-operative Bank (1970, 1973, 1982, 1985), treasurer of the Berkshire Rehabilitation Center (1976), vice chair of the United Fund drive (1972)
1960
Rev. E. Roy Burchell — 1934-2007 — Pastor, First Church of Christ in Pittsfield. Born in Pittsburgh in 1921 and educated at Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Penn. and at Hartford Theological Seminary, Burchell was "one of the more controversial ministers in First Church history" according to the 1976 church history by Weston Morrill. A writer of poetry, prose and drama, Burchell took strong political positions and advocated for the First Church endowment to be invested in low-income housing in Pittsfield. Burchell resigned the First Church pastorate in 1968 to go to the West Center Church, Bronxville, N. Y. as pastor, First Church of Christ — died in Bronxville, January 1990.
1961
Norman Rockwell — artist and illustrator, Stockbridge, Mass. Born Feb. 3, 1894, died November 1978. Rockwell was a 20th-century American painter and illustrator. His works continue to enjoy a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of American culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine for more than four decades. Born in New York City, Rockwell served in World War I as a military artist. He moved to Arlington, Vermont in 1939, and to Stockbridge, Mass. in 1953, so that his wife could be treated at the Austen Riggs Center, a psychiatric hospital. Eventually, when he began suffering poor health, he placed his studio and the contents with the Norman Rockwell Museum, which continues to hold the largest body of his work, more than 700 original paintings, drawings and studies, along with his archives. [Wikipedia] Club members recall that when Rockwell's turn came to present a paper, he would sometimes bring paintings or drawings to the meeting and talk about them off the cuff. However, several papers and sets of notes for talks have survived in the archives at the Museum, and have been published on this blog. At Rockwell's funeral, the pallbearers were five members of the Monday Evening Club along with Rockwell's son Jarvis.
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1942
Philip C. Ahern — 1907-1987 — Born in Boston; grew up in Newton, Mass.; graduated from Bowdoin College in 1932; upon graduation, he became a consultant to the National Municipal League on a study of the city manager form of government. In 1935 he was the first employee hired by George Gallup for his polling service. After two years, with the Gallup organization, he worked for four years with at New York advertising firm of Young and Rubicam before moving to Pittsfield, where he became executive director of the Pittsfield Taxpayers Association. In 1950, he became Pittsfield's director of administrative services, and in 1957 he became the first executive director of the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission, a post he held until his retirement. He was also a founder of the Franklin County Resource Conservation and Development Council. He died in 1987 in Wiliamstown at the age of 80.
Rev. James Gregg — retired clergyman. This was Rev. Gregg's second period of membership in the Club. See his biography posted at his first date of joining in 1916.
1943
Frederic Parker —Served as an attorney at Berkshire Life Insurance Company, starting December 1, 1942. He was a native of Franconia, New Hampshire, and graduated from Dartmouth College, and Harvard University Law School in 1931. After his graduation he practiced law for three years in Manchester, N.H., as an attorney for Home Owners Loan Corporation. He then practiced law in St. Johnsbury, Vermont for six years, during which he did some work for Travelers Insurance Company, New York Casualty Company, American Surety Company, and several fire insurance companies, before coming to Berkshire Life. In November, 1942, he was elected state attorney for Caledonia County, Vermont, but resigned that position to come to Berkshire Life. He died suddenly, at age 38, in New York City on 13 May 1943 after collapsing in the steam room of a turkish bath.
Lawrence W. Peirson — 1889-1968 — Vice President and Treasurer of C.S. Ferry & Sons Lumber Co. Graduated from Williams College in 1912. Board chairman for 13 years of Pittsfield Social Service Index; treasurer for seven years. Charter member of the Salvation Army advisory board. Deacon of South Congregational Church, served on its Scouts Council, treasurer of the Pittsfield Council of Churches. Treasurer of a local Masonic lodge for 30 years. died in Pittsfield, 16 January 1968.
Jay C. Rosenfeld —1895-1975 — owner, with his brother Stanley, of Rosenfeld's Clothing Store. An amateur violinist, he served at music critic for The Berkshire Eagle for 55 years. He died of cancer at the age of 80 in 1975.
From his obituary in The Berkshire Eagle:
He was born in Pittsfield and graduated from Pittsfield High School in 1912. He started violin lessons at the age of 6 and by the tie he was 14 he was proficient enough in music to conduct an orchestra in Great Barrington. When he was 17, his family sent him to Brussels for two years of piano study. He came home for a vacation from Brussels, and his return to Belgium was prevented by the outbreak of World War I. He then took a job for a season in a hotel orchestra in Jamaica, West Indies, and played in a local string quartet to earn money to enter the Institute of Musical Art, later known as the Juilliard School of Music. He studied there until his father, Jacob R. Rosenfeld, had a stroke and he returned to help his older brother, Stanley, run the family clothing store — Rosenfeld's. He retired from the store about 1963.
In 1917, when the U. S. entered World War I, Rosenfeld enlisted in the Army and served in B Company, 359th Infantry, 90th Division, and saw action in France at St. Mihiel and the Argonne Forest. He was one of the national founders of the American Legion and served in 1923 as commander of the Pittsfield post.
Although he didn't follow a full-time career as a musician, he played in various amateur and professional groups all his life. His home on South Mountain Road was the frequent scene of chamber music sessions. His last professional appearance was on August 10, 1974, when he, two of his children (Peter, a cellist, and Jayn Seigel, a flutist), and his good friend, violinist Sheldon Rotenberg of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, presented a concert in the South Mountain concert series.
He served on the Pittsfield Park Commission, as deputy director of Civil Defense, as chairman of the USO campaign, as chairman of the Berkshire Advisory Council to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, as chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, and as president of Temple Anshe Amunim and the Zionist Council of America. He also served as conductor of the Pittsfield Symphony and the Berkshire Community Orchestra in Williamstown. In 1934 he helped found the Pittsfield Community Concerts Association and served as its first president and as one of its leaders for the more than 30 years that the association brought noted instrumentalists, vocalists and ensembles to the city.
He served as The Eagle's music critic for 55 years, from 1919 until 1975. The South Mountain concert series began in 1918, when he was still in the Army, but he covered every event there beginning in 1919, and every Tanglewood event since the first one in 1934 (which was at the Hanna Farm, later the Stockbridge School), until shortly before his death in 1975.
He wrote for publications other than The Eagle. In 1952 he represented The New York Times at the first Casals Festival at Prades, France. He also covered the Casals festivals in Puerto Rico in 1956 and in Israel in 1961. In 1952 he accompanied the BSO on its European tour. He was a member of the national Music Critics Association since its founding in 1958.
His writings include a short biography of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, the founder of the South Mountain series, done at the request of the music division of the Library of Congress.
Joseph C. Nugent —1898-1973 — Principal of North Junior High School (now Reid Middle School); served as Secretary of the Club. He was born in Pittsfield, and served in the U.S. Army during World War I before he graduated from St. Joseph's High School in 1920 and from Holy Cross College. He then went to work for Eaton Paper Company as a cost accountant, and at the same time studied accounting at LaSalle University. In 1922, with his brother Walter, he took over their father's business, Nugent's Variety Store. He sold that business in 1925 and went into teaching, handling the junior high school social studies program at Pomeroy School. After that, for almost a decade, he was in the commercial department at Pittsfield High, and in 1935 he became principal at Pontoosuc School for both elementary and junior high programs. He was promoted to principal of Central Junior High in 1938. Receiving his master's degree from North Adams Teachers College (now Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts) in 1938, he became the first principal of North Junior High School (now Reid Middle School), which opened in the fall of 1953. He served as secretary of the Family Service Association of Pittsfield. He died in Pittsfield on October 22, 1973.
Rev. Christian B. Jensen — Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Pittsfield. He was born in Brovst, Denmark. He received a B. A. degree from the University of California in 1924, a master's at the University of Chicago in 1928, and a bachelor of divinity degree from the same university's divinity school. He also did graduate work at the University of Iowa, Union Theological Seminary, and Hartford Theological Seminary. He then served as assistant pastor of the Central Baptist Church in Hartford for seven years. He served as pastor of the First Baptist Church in Poughkeepsie, N. Y. for seven years before becoming pastor of the First Baptist Church in Pittsfield, where he served from November, 1943 to July, 1957. While in Pittsfield, he was a member of the board of directors of the YMCA, and was president of the Pittsfield Area Council of Churches for two years. He was also president of the Massachusetts Baptist Convention and served three terms as president of the state Council of Churches. He was a member of the Pittsfield Rotary Club and served as its president, and was a member of the nursing council of Pittsfield General Hospital. During his pastorate in Pittsfield, the membership of the First Baptist Church grew from 1,000 to 1,400. In 1957, he became pastor of the First Baptist Church in Ithaca, N. Y. He retired in 1966 and then served a number of New York State churches as interim pastor. He died in Ithaca on March 18, 1972.
1944
Randolph H. Wilkinson — 1903-1986 — General Counsel, Berkshire Life Insurance Company. He was born in Lebanon, N.H. on November 29, 1903 and graduated from Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Mass. He received a bachelor's degree in 1925 from the University of New Hampshire, and graduated in 1933 from Boston University School of Law. He practiced law in Boston before joining Berkshire Life in 1943. He was appointed vice president and general counsel in 1960 and retired in 1968. He was a member of the board of trustees of the Berkshire Athenaeum, and served as president of the Town Players and the Pittsfield Parent-Teacher Association, and as a member of the Pittsfield School Building Committee. He chaired a committee to determine the best use for the old Post Office building (now Pittsfield City Hall). He also served on the boards of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Recording for the Blind, and the Pittsfield Co-operative Bank. After retirement he moved to Hancock, N. H. and died at a hospital in Peterborough, N. H. April 14, 1986.
Paul K. Fodder — 1906-1992 — Trust officer at Agricultural National Bank. Born Dec. 4, 1906; died in Pittsfield May 16, 1992.
Rev. Harold L. Nevers —The third pastor of the Second Congregational Church. Nevers succeeded Rev. T. Nelson Baker, the church's second pastor, who had joined the Club in 1931 and died in 1941. Nevers was a graduate of Yale Divinity School and began his pastorate in Pittsfield in 1939, with Baker serving as pastor emeritus. Observing that his church was "sandwiched in between two barrooms," Nevers guided the church through the process of selling that building, and acquiring property at the corner of Onota Street and Columbus Avenue, where a new sanctuary was created in an existing homestead (and where the current building of Second Congregational Church was eventually constructed). At the time, the church was "sandwiched between two barrooms" on First Street. Born Feb. 4, 1916; died in Vader, Washington, July 22, 1999.
1945
Rabbi Maurice T. Galpert — 1917-1988 — Rabbi, Temple Anche Amunim. Born in Canton, Ohio March 5, 1917; died in Sierra Madre, Cal. March 6, 1988. Galpert earned a bachelor's degree in education from Kent State University and a master's degree in comparative literature from the University of Iowa. He was ordained in New York in 1945. After serving about five years at Temple Anshe Amunim, he served at Temple Beth Sholom, Santa Ana, Cal., and then at the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center for 36 years. According to his LA Times obituary: "A prolific author, Galpert translated major works of poetry from German, Yiddish and Hebrew into English. Associates said his diverse interests ranged from an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball to a love of classical music, particularly Mozart."
Dr. Reo J. Marcotte — 1910-1983 — Director of the House of Mercy. Previously he served as assistant director of New Haven Hospital. He graduated from Hope College, Holland, Michigan in 1932. After serving in Pittsfield for nine years, in 1953 he moved to Belmont, Mass. to become CEO of Mount Auburn Hospital, a post he held until his retirement in 1972.
Charles T. Masterson — 1905-1996 — Executive at General Electric Co. Practiced architecture in Cleveland, became designer for General Electric Plastics. Born Jan. 24, 1905; died Santa Clara, Cal. April 21, 1996.
Rabbi Solomon E. Cherniak — 1912-1960 — Rabbi at Temple Anshe Amunim. Born in Brooklyn in 1912; died in Mobile, Alabama in 1960, where he had served as rabbi of the Springhill Avenue Temple. Served as a Navy chaplain during World War II. Born April 8, 1911, died in Mobile, Ala. July 22, 1960.
1946
Robert G. Newman — 1912-2009 — Librarian, Berkshire Athenaeum from 1946 to 1981. Born in Pittsfield June 25, 1912; died at Kimball Farms in Lenox, Mass. April 26, 2009. He was a 1929 graduate of Pittsfield High School and earned a bachelor's degree cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1934, a master's degree in English literature from Harvard University in 1935 and a bachelor's degree in library science from Columbia University in 1946. He enlisted in the Army three days after Pearl Harbor, became an officer in March, 1943, primarily served as Chief of the Military Personnel Branch at Camp Edward, and was discharged in March, 1946, with the rank of Captain. He was President of the Reserve Officer's Association of Berkshire County. Mr. Newman was employed by the Berkshire Athenaeum in various positions from 1935-1941 and returned, following his military service, to the position of chief librarian. During his tenure he led the fight for the new Berkshire Athenaeum as the needs of the community outgrew the facilities of its old building. The new facility opened for business on Sept. 4, 1975, and the auditorium in the building was later named in Mr. Newman's honor. He was President of the Massachusetts Library Association, President of the Western Massachusetts Library Club and a member of the American Library Association and the New England Library Association. He was on the Advisory Council and Executive Committee of The Western Massachusetts Regional Public Library system. He was President of the Melville Society and an author of various articles in learned publications about Herman Melville. Active in supporting the Pittsfield Community, he was Trustee and Clerk of City Savings Bank, Trustee and Secretary of Hancock Shaker Village, Corporator and member of the Board of Governors Berkshire Medical Center and Trustee, St. Luke's Hospital. He was chairman of the Pittsfield School Buildings Survey Commission, a member of the Pittsfield Community Schools Commission, Chairman of the Pittsfield City History Commission, Clerk of the Pittsfield World War II Honor Roll Commission, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Berkshire County Historical Society. He was a former board member of the Rotary Club of Pittsfield with which he was associated for 53 years. He was a board member of the Coolidge Hill School, a Director of the Automobile Club of Berkshire County, and Mason, 32nd Degree. Newman was a Temple Board member and the official historian of Temple Anshe Amunim, a member of the Rabbi's Isabella Kelm Scholarship Advisory Committee and the Temple's "1972 Man of the Year." [Berkshire Eagle obituary]
1949
Dr. Harry Evenden Judson —1916-2006 — Born Dec. 20, 1916; died in Bonita Springs, Florida on Feb. 9, 2006. An ophthalmic surgeon, Judson grew up in Syracuse and attended Syracuse Central High School, where he became president of the student body, and entered Hamilton College following his graduation in 1935. In 1939, Judson went on to the Syracuse University College of Medicine. He obtained his M.D. degree in 1943, and on April 24 of that year, was married to Barbara B. Hopkins in Syracuse. After having interned at Syracuse Medical Center hospitals, Dr. Judson served a three-year ophthalmology residency at Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital in New York City. In 1946, Harry Judson established his private practice as an ophthalmic surgeon in Pittsfield, MA. During his more than 30 years of practice he served as chief of the ophthalmology and otolaryngology divisions of the Berkshire Medical Center, Hillcrest Hospital, and St. Luke’s Hospital, as well as a member of the executive board of each. A diplomate of the National Board of Medical Examiners and elected president of the Eastern New York Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Association, he also served on the teaching staff of the Albany and Berkshire medical centers. Credited with performing the first successful corneal transplant in western Massachusetts, he concluded his distinguished medical career with retirement following a serious boating accident in 1977. Outside of his practice, Harry Judson pursued a great variety of athletic interests, including hockey, skiing, sailing, golf, and tennis. He was an active member of the National Ski Patrol and medical director of its New England district. In addition, he was a past president of the Pittsfield Rotary Club and head deacon and executive committee member of the First Congregational Church in Pittsfield. After his retirement, Harry and Barbara Judson spent most of the year in Bonita Springs on the west coast of Florida. Judson died on February 9, 2006, in Bonita Springs, of complications from Parkinson’s disease and pancreatic cancer. [Hamilton College necrology]
1950
Paul E. Brassard — lawyer, partner in the firm Henderson Brassard. A native of Adams, he graduated from Assumption College and Boston University Law School. He was a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1940 to 1946. He then came to Pittsfield to practice law with William E. Henderson. In 1951 he moved to Northampton and practiced law there, returning to Pittsfield in 1966 and reopening his practice there. In 1967 he gave up law practice in order to become an investigator for the Berkshire County office of the Massachusetts Defenders Committee.
Roger B. Linscott — editorial writer at The Berkshire Eagle. He rose to the post of Associate Editor, principally in charge of the editorial pages. In 1973, Linscott was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials, including those taking a stand against the war in Vietnam. Born Jan. 22, 1920; died in Falls Village, Conn., Sept. 22, 2008 at the age of 88.
Linscott's obituary in The Berkshire Eagle, by Tony Dobrowolski, Berkshire Eagle Staff
An irreverent, witty man, Linscott worked at The Eagle for 38 years before retiring in 1986. He continued to work part-time at The Eagle for years afterward, while also working full-time at Laurin Publishing in Pittsfield, where he served as editorial director before retiring in 2003.
Linscott received the Pulitzer Prize after submitting 10 editorials that The Eagle said contained "the objective of illustrating the wide range of subjects an editorial writer on a small paper must deal with, ranging from purely local to national and international situations."
Asked to single out one submission as an example of his best work, Linscott chose an editorial published on Oct. 18, 1972, in which The Eagle endorsed George McGovern for president.
Mark Miller, a former executive editor of The Eagle, called Linscott "one of the key figures that made The Eagle what it was in the second half of the 20th century."
Miller, whose family owned the paper until the mid-1990s, said Linscott and his father, Lawrence Miller, made the editorial page "the heart of the paper."
Don MacGillis, a former Eagle editor and now an editorial page writer for The Boston Globe, said Linscott's editorials kept public officials honest.
"Linscott used the Eagle editorial page to keep Berkshire County from being overrun by development, to keep state government on the straight and narrow, and to fight the worst excesses of the Nixon and Reagan administrations," MacGillis said.
"He delighted in speaking to power with conviction and plain-spoken eloquence," added MacGillis, who still lives in Pittsfield. "When a misguided official was the target of an Eagle editorial, Linscott did not mince words. He put his crustiness to good use. The county is better for it."
Said former Eagle City Editor Bill Bell, "He was a brilliant writer and an advocate of high journalistic standards whose influence was felt throughout The Eagle's news department."
Former Eagle reporter Charles T. Troy, currently the senior editor at Laurin Publishing, said Linscott was responsible for a lot of the quality magazine work the company produced, and also liked working with young people.
"A lot of times I asked him, 'Why don't you retire and go home?' " Troy said. "But he said, 'I love working with young folks. It keeps me young.' "
Linscott is one of two Berkshire County residents to have won the Pulitzer Prize. The other is James MacGregor Burns of Williamstown, the Woodrow Wilson Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Williams College, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for his book, "Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom 1940-45."
Linscott was also a noted fly fisherman, hiker, and billiards player, who once drove a souped-up Plymouth Duster, loved animals, and was known for his bouts of absentmindedness. According to Eagle files, as a member of a college jazz band, Linscott once went dashing off to a New York City recording date, but left his rented bass fiddle in a taxi cab.
"He was extremely erudite and particular about history," said Hartford Courant reporter Rinker Buck, who befriended Linscott after working at The Eagle in the early 1970s, "but the details of life often eluded him."
Attorney Wendy T. Linscott, of Great Barrington, one of Linscott's four daughters, said her father never owned a short-sleeved shirt, declined to wear shorts, and didn't purchase a pair of blue jeans — "dungarees, as he would call them" — until he was in his 50s.
"He was a renaissance man," Wendy Linscott said.
Born in Winchester, Linscott was the son of Robert N. Linscott, an editor at Random House, who was one of the most respected editors in American publishing in the first half of the 20th century, according to Bell. Wendy Linscott said her grandfather, who died in 1964, worked with William Faulkner, and discovered well-known American author Carson McCullers, who wrote novels, short stories and plays. Robert Linscott also edited the "Selected Poems and Letters of Emily Dickinson."
"His descendants still get royalties from that," Wendy Linscott said.
Linscott graduated from Harvard University in 1941, after spending summer vacations working for the Cape Cod Standard-Times. He was employed briefly by the Buchanan Advertising Agency in New York before enlisting in the Navy where he served on a destroyer during World War II as a lieutenant second grade.
Following his discharge from the service, Linscott worked as a copywriter for the Franklin Spier advertising agency before joining the New York Herald Tribune in November 1946. Linscott spent two years at the Herald Tribune writing the "On the Books" column for the newspaper's Weekly Book Review section, before coming to what was then known as The Berkshire Evening Eagle in 1948.
According to his daughter, Linscott came to Pittsfield because he wanted to move his family out of New York City. She said her father discovered The Eagle by going to a New York City newspaper stand and looking through the small-town papers until he found one that interested him.
When he arrived at The Eagle, Linscott was first assigned to cover City Hall, which he did for six years while writing a weekly column on politics. He became an editorial writer in 1954, and was named chief editorial writer in 1957. Linscott was later named editor of the editorial page, before being promoted to associate editor in 1972.
Linscott leaves four daughters, Wendy T. Linscott, of Egremont; Judith K.R. Zask, of Lakeville, Conn.; Victoria Harper Linscott, of Falls Village, Conn.; and Rebecca S. Spieler, of Sandisfield; four grandchildren; and several nieces and nephews. He also leaves his family friend and caregiver, Betty Sacco of Pittsfield.
He was predeceased by his wife, the former Lucy Ann Richardson Goodlatte, who died in March 1996; his brother, Seymour; and his sisters, Barbara Meyers and Sylvia Reynolds.
1951
Rabbi Perry Nussbaum — 1908-1987 — Born in Toronto, Feb. 16, 1908; graduated in 1933 from Hebrew Union College and was ordained as a rabbi there. He briefly served congregations in Melbourne and in Amarillo, Texas before becoming a prison chaplain in Pueblo, Colorado in 1937. In 1941 he became rabbi of Temple Emanu-El in Wichita, Kansas, and in 1943 joined the Chaplain Corps of the U.S. Army, serving in the Philippines and attaining the rank of colonel in the Army Reserve. After the war, he served congregations in Trenton, N.J. and Long Beach, N.Y. before coming for to Pittsfield as rabbi of Temple Anshe Amunim in 1951, serving for three years. From here he became rabbi of Temple Beth Israel in Jackson, Miss., where he served until his retirement in 1973. He was there during the civil rights era, and the temple's new building in 1967 was heavily damaged by a Ku Klux Klan dynamite bombing, and later that year Nussbaum's house was similarly bombed while he and his wife were sleeping in it. He moved to San Diego after retiring in 1973, and died in March, 1987.
Dr. Robert Jackson Tracy — 1914-2009 — Born in Telluride, Colo. to William Evarts Tracy and Edith Jackson Tracy on April 10, 1914. He grew up in Concord, Mass. He was educated at the former Lenox School for Boys graduating in 1932. He followed his older brother and father to Yale graduating in 1936. Two years later, he entered Harvard Medical School graduating in 1942 and proceeded to train in surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. World War II interrupted his training, and he was assigned to the 110th Evacuation Hospital in General George Patton's Army landing on Utah Beach in August 1944. The hospital was heavily involved in The Battle of the Bulge, and it was the only hospital on the southern flank which did not retreat. The hospital was awarded five campaign ribbons for excellence in action. Dr. Tracy was discharged as a captain. Following his service, he returned to Massachusetts General Hospital to complete his surgical training. He came to the Berkshires in 1949 and practiced at the three Pittsfield hospitals and also Fairview Hospital in Great Barrington. He became Chief of Surgery and Director of the surgical residency training program at Berkshire Medical Center. He introduced vascular surgery to Berkshire County and became a leading practitioner of this new discipline. For this, he was honored in December 1963 and became a "Hall of Fame" surgeon. He was enlisted as an Associate Professor of Surgery at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Dr. Tracy was known to his colleagues and his patients for his kindness, gentleness and skill.
Dr. Tracy was a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, a Diplomate of the American Board of Surgery, a member of the New England Surgical Society and a member of the New England Society of Vascular Surgery. He maintained his relationship with Lenox School and became both a longstanding trustee of the school and the school physician for many years. He was an outdoorsman, an enthusiastic boater, a passionate downhill skier and an avid golfer which he continued to play into his nineties. Died Dec. 11, 2009, at Kimball Farms, Lenox, Mass.
1953
Judge F. Anthony Hanlon —1899-1981 — Berkshire County Probate Judge. Born Jan. 17, 1899; died in Pittsfield, June 1981. He was born in Adams and graduated in 1917 from Adams High School, where he was a center on the football team. During World War I, he served two months in the army. He received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College in 1922 and his law degree from Boston University's Law School in 1928. Before graduation he worked briefly in the Adams office of the North Adams Transcript and at Berkshire Hills Paper Co. In 1938, he succeeded his father as treasurer of the Adams Co-operative Bank.
After graduation fro Boston University, he practiced law for a year with attorney Joseph G. Bryer of Boston. In 1929, he opened his own practice in Adams. In 1939 he became special justice of the Adams District Court, and then announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for country register of probate. He ran unsuccessfully.
In World War II, he was appointed chairman of the Adams Selective Service Board by Gov. Leverett Saltonstall, and he was chairman of the Republican Town Committee of Adams for four years.
On December 8, 1942, at the age of 43, he was nominated by Bov. Saltonstall as judge of probate in Berkshire County to succeed Judge Arthur M. Robinson. He continued in that position for 30 years, until 1972, when a Massachusetts referendum vote called for mandatory retirement of judges at age 70. Judge Hanlon was 72 at the time, and was one of 38 judges affected by the vote.
In December 1973, he returned to private practice after what he called "a fair sampling of retirement life" — an experience which, he said, he found "something less than attractive. As a matter of fact, I found it damn boring." He formed a partnership Stein & Hanlon with attorney Arthur Stein.
He was a communicant of Sacred Heart Church. During his career he served as president of the Berkshire Hills Conference and the Berkshire Boy Scout Council, a trustee of W. B. Plunkett Memorial Hospital, St. Luke's Hospital, Berkshire Medical Center and the Hospital Planning Association of Berkshire County, and as a director of the Pittsfield Co-operative Bank.
Rev. William Coolidge Hart —Pastor at First Church of Christ. Born October 17, 1916; died Fairfield, Conn. June 18, 2000. Served as a chaplain in the U. S. Air Force before coming to First Church. He was a native of Bedford, Mass. and a graduate of Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine and of Andover-Newton Theological Seminary. For a short time he was the assistant minister at Old South Church in Boston. He assumed the First Church pastorate on January 1, 1953, and resigned "rather suddenly" in September, 1958 to become editor of The Christian Century, and thereafter Manager of Public Affairs for General Electric Co. in Bridgeport, Conn.
1954
Harold L. Hutchins, Jr. — 1916-1996 — Executive director of Pittsfield General Hospital, and of Berkshire Medical Center when it was formed through the merger of Pittsfield General Hospital and the House of Mercy. Born August 17, 1916; died in Pittsfield, October 1996.
He graduated from the University of Vermont and received a master's degree in hospital administration from Washington University in St. Louis, He served as a captain in the Army Medical Administration Corps during World War II. He served as administrative intern at Grasslands Hospital, Valhalla, N. Y. for one year, and as assistant director at Aultman Hospital in Canton, Ohio, for five years, before coming to Pittsfield General Hospital in 1953. He was executive director at Pittsfield General for 16 years, and then as executive director of Berkshire Medical Center which was created through the merger of Pittsfield General and St. Luke's Hospital in 1967.
He left the Berkshire Medical Center in 1969, and began acting as a consultant for hospitals and corporations. In 1971, he assumed a position in Springfield as director of planning and program development at the Springfield Hospital Medical Center.
He served as president of the New England Hospital Association, and was a member of the Massachusetts Hospital Association, the Hospital Superintendents' Club, the Western Massachusetts Hospital Council and the state Hospital Advisory Committee.
1955
Rabbi Harold I. Salzmann — 1922-2018 —Rabbi, Temple Anshe Amunim. The son and grandson of traditional rabbis trained in the religious schools of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (today’s Slovakia), as a youth he received a very thorough training in Biblical Hebrew and Talmud-Torah studies. Eager to explore newer avenues in Jewish thought, Rabbi Salzmann pursued his rabbinical studies in the Reform Movement at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, where he was ordained in 1950. Throughout his life, he continued his scholarship in theology and as a teacher who trained bar and bat mitzvah children as well as adults. An amateur historian, he collected antique postcards of the Berkshires, possessed a wealth of knowledge about the postal service of British Mandate Palestine, and had begun to write a history of the Jewish community of the Berkshires before his death.
Before joining the US army as a chaplain at the rank of Second Lieutenant (and later an Army Reserve Captain), he and his wife Audrey (ne Pastor) whom he married in 1950, held a pulpit in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His time as a chaplain for the Western Area Command took him to Germany and Belgium; in Luxembourg, he took part in a dedication ceremony to honor General George Patton. Turning down a full time commission in the US Army, he returned to civilian life in 1954. He frequently remarked that it was the natural beauty of the Berkshires and his ability to be active in both Jewish and secular life that made him turn down other job offers at larger congregations in New York and Rhode Island.
Over a period of 64 years, Rabbi Salzmann dedicated his life to building his Reform Jewish community in Pittsfield. He raised funds and along with the Temple board, engaged an architect to design and to build the new synagogue that is currently home to Congregation Anshe Amunim on Broad street in Pittsfield. The Temple’s membership grew and gained new financial stability through the generosity of congregants who shared his vision. Although he retired early, he remained active as the emeritus rabbi, often stepping in to replace his younger colleagues to conduct services, funerals and weddings. The Temple honored both the Rabbi and his wife, recently renaming the religious school in their honor. Nationally, he was recognized by his alma mater, the Hebrew University of Cincinnati, with an honorary doctorate in 1975.
At least in equal measure, Rabbi devoted himself to the civic life of the Berkshires, as a citizen and one of its most dedicated religious leaders. Shortly after coming to Pittsfield, he became a member of the Rotary Club. In 2012, fellow Rotarians recognized his many decades of service to Rotary and the community with the Paul Harris Award. One of the longest serving members of the clergy in the Berkshires, he delivered more invocations at parades and high school graduations than any other rabbi, priest or minister in the county. Active in many other capacities in the city and county, from the board of trustees of the Berkshire Medical Center to the committee that restored the World War I memorial in Veterans’ Park on South St. A longtime member of the Berkshire Clergy Association, he embodied the civic spirit of the Kennedy-era. In addition to his love of collecting books and stamps, he remained the secretary-treasurer of the Monday Evening Club, well into his 90s. He died Sept. 25, 2018.
Thomas F. Plunkett, Jr. —1925-2009 — Born in Pittsfield; attended Princeton University and then Ohio University; served in Army artillery during World War II in Belgium and Austria; returned to Princeton and graduated in 1946, majoring in French literature. Rowed in the 1948 Olympic trial finals; rowed in the 1949 Cup race at Henley, England. Ward 3 Councilman; Vice President of First Agricultural Bank; chairman of the board of the Berkshire Athenaeum. Born in Pittsfield Oct. 11, 1925; died in Pittsfield April 6, 2009.
1957
Rev. Ellis J. Holt —1910-2000 — Pastor of First Baptist Church. Born Feb. 6, 1910; died Cape Elizabeth, Maine, May 18, 2000. He was born in Phillips, Maine. His family then moved to Lamoine, where he spent his childhood, vacations and retirement. Ellis was educated at Higgins Classical Institute, Charleston, and at Boston University College of Liberal Arts, where he graduated in 1931. An honors graduate of Andover Newton Theological School in 1934, he was ordained on July 2, 1934, at the First Baptist Church of Littleton, Mass. Known as "Sam," he served as pastor of American Baptist congregations in Littleton (1934-1936) and Pittsfield (1957-1963), Massachusetts; and Portland (1936-1938), Calais (1938-1942), Auburn (1942-1957), and Waterville (1963-1969). Over the course of his 40-year career in the ministry, he held a variety of important positions in the American Baptist Convention. Ellis retired in 1975 to Lamoine to the home that his grandfather, Rev. William H. Rice, had constructed 100 years previously and where he and his family had vacationed throughout his career. During his retirement he was active in the Lamoine Baptist Church and the Lamoine Historical Society.
1958
Robert D. Bardwell, Jr. — 1920-1989 — President, Bardwell D'Angelo & Bowlby Insurance Agency. Born Nov. 28, 1920 Died in Pittsfield, June 27, 1989. He graduated from Deerfield Academy, Yale University in 1942, and Harvard Business School. He was a lieutenant in the naval reserve, serving as supply officer on a destroyer and a naval transport for two of his three years' service. He served as vice president of the Berkshire County Society for the Care of Crippled and Deformed Children (1974), vice president of the Berkshire County Historical Society (1986), on the board of the Pittsfield Community Music School (1978), the board of the Pittsfield Co-operative Bank (1970, 1973, 1982, 1985), treasurer of the Berkshire Rehabilitation Center (1976), vice chair of the United Fund drive (1972)
1960
Rev. E. Roy Burchell — 1934-2007 — Pastor, First Church of Christ in Pittsfield. Born in Pittsburgh in 1921 and educated at Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Penn. and at Hartford Theological Seminary, Burchell was "one of the more controversial ministers in First Church history" according to the 1976 church history by Weston Morrill. A writer of poetry, prose and drama, Burchell took strong political positions and advocated for the First Church endowment to be invested in low-income housing in Pittsfield. Burchell resigned the First Church pastorate in 1968 to go to the West Center Church, Bronxville, N. Y. as pastor, First Church of Christ — died in Bronxville, January 1990.
1961
Norman Rockwell — artist and illustrator, Stockbridge, Mass. Born Feb. 3, 1894, died November 1978. Rockwell was a 20th-century American painter and illustrator. His works continue to enjoy a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of American culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine for more than four decades. Born in New York City, Rockwell served in World War I as a military artist. He moved to Arlington, Vermont in 1939, and to Stockbridge, Mass. in 1953, so that his wife could be treated at the Austen Riggs Center, a psychiatric hospital. Eventually, when he began suffering poor health, he placed his studio and the contents with the Norman Rockwell Museum, which continues to hold the largest body of his work, more than 700 original paintings, drawings and studies, along with his archives. [Wikipedia] Club members recall that when Rockwell's turn came to present a paper, he would sometimes bring paintings or drawings to the meeting and talk about them off the cuff. However, several papers and sets of notes for talks have survived in the archives at the Museum, and have been published on this blog. At Rockwell's funeral, the pallbearers were five members of the Monday Evening Club along with Rockwell's son Jarvis.
