Category Archives for People

Real Role Models Fly Under the Radar Screen

Published Augusts 24, 2012, Pawtucket Times

            As we go through our life stages, we are attracted to ‘role models’ or people we look up to – “mentors” as they are commonly referred to.    Those individuals who possess the right attributes and specific traits we hope to emulate – a persona we admire and respect. 

             For children growing up or those having reached their middle years, they may look up to and view their parents as that “perfect” role model.  Others may see redeeming qualities they try to imitate turning to entertainment celebrities, pro-athletes, successful business entrepreneurs, or religious and ethical figures. I found myself stumped when I was recently asked who my role model was as I responded to a “PowerPlayer” questi+onnaire by Golocalprov.com.  I never looked up to any one individual in the celebrity culture, sports personality, or even a politician.  

 Influential People in My Life

           As I pondered this question, there were a few people that came to mind.

          Of course I thought of my father, Frank Weiss, who had a great impact on my life.  He taught me the importance of using a business network in my profession.  While the Dallas businessman raised money to fund cancer research projects and other worthy causes, as Economic and Cultural Affairs Officer, I try to do the same, such as working to support the City’s Annual Pawtucket Arts Festival. 

          Then there was Fred Levy, a former Army intelligence officer during World War II, who was also a fabric salesman and writer.  When I was a young man, Mr. Levy was my neighbor and a man for whom I had great respect.  He might be a likely candidate for being my role model.  Mr. Levy gave me advice on how to become a better writer during my early professional years.  He juggled his job, writing, and also being a full-time caregiver to his adult daughter, Faye, who was bedridden with multiple sclerosis.  He was an inspiration to me, who read my published articles and encouraged me to continue to writing.  

         More recently in my present work, I thought of my former boss, Planning Director Michael Cassidy.  He was a role model to me – teaching me the value of tenaciousness. He looked at all bureaucratic and political angles to accomplish his planning goals. While it took him 10 years to get the City’s skate board park up and running, it took me seven years to see my project, the SlaterParkDogPark come to fruition.  But it happened. 

            While my father, my neighbor and former boss taught me valuable lessons in life, I realized that the most influential person in my life, was an 82 year old, semi-retired man right here in my Pawtucket community.                

Being an Advocate for the Voiceless

          Like the “energizer bunny” sporting gray whiskers and a plump belly, Pawtucket businessman, Paul Audette has always been an advocate for the “voiceless” in the City of Pawtucket and the surrounding communities. 

         Watching out for the elderly, he became a volunteer ‘ombudsman’ for the Alliance for Better Long-Term Care.  Paul even served as Chairman of the Pawtucket’s  Affirmative Action Committee to ensure that everyone had equal opportunities in municipal government.   He has worked for decades assisting those down-and-out, even providing them financial assistance out of his pocket, to help them navigate the State’s regulatory process.

         Paul has long-ties to many of the City’s nonprofit groups, from the Pawtucket Arts Collaborative, the Pawtucket Armory Association, the Foundry Artists, the Pawtucket Fireworks Committee, Pawtucket Preservation Society, and the Pawtucket Arts Festival, just to name a few groups.  He even has been active bringing his expertise as a property manager and developer to assist the Pawtucket Planning Department streamline the City’s Building permit process.

        Paul co-founded a non-profit group called Helping Hands, and has provided financial assistance to local organizations that help youths at risk, the helpless and homeless.  Since 2006, Helping Hands has given donations to 37 organizations, including, Cross Roads, Pawtucket Boys and Girls Club, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Pawtucket Salvation Army, American Cancer Society.

        Paul did not learn the ropes about business by attending any of the ivy-league schools, but instead learned the tricks of the trade by working.  For over 50 years, his hard work landed him senior-level positions for major corporations including Dunkin Donuts, in addition to serving as ‘Special Assistant’ to the Presidents of Providence Metalizing, working in the Personnel Department, and by managing its properties and taking on special projects as assigned. 

        This local businessman even ran one of the largest catering companies in Rhode Island, catering over 300 weddings and 10,000 functions over the years.  His corporate and nonprofit clients include widely recognized organizations in the OceanState, including Hasbro, Hospital Trust, La SalleAcademy, BayViewAcademy, and Swank. 

           Exemplifying the Rotary International’s motto “Service Above Self,” Paul has been a member of the Pawtucket Rotary Club since 1999, and was recognized and awarded the prestigious Paul Harris Award, the highest civic recognition that the national civic group bestows upon an individual.

           Throughout one’s lifetime you might have many role models who inspire, teach and give you a road map to overcoming obstacles in your personal and professional career.  But sometimes the most important ones are those individuals who are not so visible or obvious, like those reported in surveys reported by the nation’s medai – the celebrities, professional athletes, or beloved religious figures, but rather that person in your community, whose mere existence quietly impacts you – as well as a community.

          The most important role model in your life may well be that person flying under the radar screen, seeking to help others – one person at a time – giving of themselves without seeking public notice.   For me, that person, my mentor is  Paul Audette.

           Herb Weiss is a freelance Pawtucket-based writer who covers, aging, health care and medical issues.

Rediscovering Pawtucket’s Red Pollard

Published June 22, 2012, Pawtucket Times

             In 2003 a dramatic movie about a Depression-era race horse and his oversized jockey became a top box office film hit.  This story of hope and perseverance was woven into a story about a down and out jockey, a heartbroken horse owner, a drifter horse trainer, and the eventual rise of a champion horse.  It is no coincidence that near the former Narragansett Race Track inPawtucket– now a Building 19 retail store – you will discover city streets named “War Admiral” and “Seabiscuit Place, for surprisingly manyPawtucketresidents do not know that the real-life jockey whose story was told in this film lived out his middle years in their community.  “Seabiscuit: An American Legend” was based loosely on the critically-acclaimed, non-fiction book penned by Washington, DC writer Laura Hillenbrand in 2001, whose key figure resided in Pawtucket. 

           America’s iconic jockey, John Pollard, whose moniker “Red” Pollard was known for his flaming red hair and was taller than most jockeys.  At 5’ 7”, Red and his wife Agnes called 249Vine Street located inPawtucket’sDarlingtonneighborhood, their ‘home’.  Their two children, Norah and John would grow up and receive their formal education in the City’s schools.  At the end of their lives, Red and Agnes would be buried a stone’s throw from their modest Vine St. home  in Norte Dame Cemetery on Daggett Avenue.  Pollard died in 1981, and two weeks later Agnes would follow.

            Pollard became a household name to tens of millions of aging baby boomer who either read Hillenbrand’s book, ranked No. 1 on the New York Times bestsellers list for a total of 42 weeks or watched the 140 minute “Seabiscut” film, which was nominated for an Academy Award

            According to Jockey’s Guild, Inc., the book-loving, jockey, blind in his right eye, whose luck would lead to ridingAmerica’s most beloved thoroughbred racehorse 30 times,  accumulated 18 wins.   Two films and a book would capture his great ride, winning $100,000 in 1940 at the Santa Anita Handicap.  Over his 30 year career, fame and fortune would evade Pollard, who would suffer a lifetime of severe injuries from serious spills to being hospitalized numerous times for a broken hip, ribs, arm, and a leg.  One spill kept him bedridden for months before he could ride again.

            For Pollard, “you just made your own luck and certain things that happen to you”.  Life to him was a crap shoot.

Coming to Pawtucket

            The accident-prone Pollard was severely injured by the weight of a fallen horse in February 1938 at the San Carlos Handicap.  Nine months later, back in the saddle, this unlucky jockey would shatter the bone in his leg during a workout from riding a runaway horse.  This would ultimately keep him from riding in that legendary race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral.  However, this severe leg injury would lead him to the love of his life, Agnes Conlon. 

             According to Norah Christianson, the jockey’s daughter who now lives inStratford,Connecticut, marriage would putPawtucketon Pollard’s radar screen.  Recovering from his compound facture in his leg atBoston’sWinthropHospital, by reciting poetry, the jockey would capture the attention of a certain nurse,  fall in love and ultimately marry Agnes Conlon, his registered nurse, in 1936.   The couple would have two children during their 40 year marriage.  

             Christianson, now age 72, noted that it was easy for her mother to drive an hour fromPawtucketto visit her parents and ten siblings who lived inBrookline,Massachusetts.   

            Pawtucketwas also an ideal place for Pollard to live because the City was centrally located toNew England’s racing circuit, adds Christianson.  Her father could easily get to the Narragansett Race Track and Lincoln Downs inRhode Island, and Suffolk Downs inMassachusetts, and Scarborough Downs Race Track inMaine. Moreover, in the winter season he could easily travel toFloridaand hit that state’s race track circuit.  Just five minutes from their home, Agnes took a job atPawtucket’sMemorialHospital, working as a registered nursing in the emergency room.

         Those riding injuries would keep Pollard from serving in the military during World War II, says Christianson, noting that  he worked as a foreman and would oversee the building of Liberty Ships at the Walsh-Kaiser shipyard inProvidence.  With the War’s end, he continued to ride horses until the age of 46, when in 1955 he was just physically unable to do so.    For a time, her father “worked at Narragansett , mentored young jockeys, and then worked as a mail sorter at the track.  After that, he worked as a valet for other jockeys until he finally retired for good. The track was always my dad’s “community” until it closed in 1978.” \

Sipping Whisky, Reading Great Poetry

            Pollard, whose education ended at 4th grade, had a love for poetry and the classics, recalls Christianson.   Always on the move between race tracks, he could easily carry his favorite pocket volumes of Shakespeare, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Service’s   “Songs of the Sourdough” and Omar Khayyam’s “Rubaiyat”.  Being a poetry lover, frequent stays at the hospital would “allow my father to read a lot and memorize,” she noted.

            She also remembers her father sipping a little bit of whiskey as he would recite poetry for the family after dinner. “We just absorbed the experience, not realizing we were learning.” 

             Pollard traveled the race track circuit for months at a time, states Christianson.  When in town, her father would take her and her brother, John to Pinault’s Drug Store onNewport Avenue, enjoy a movie at the Darlton Theater, or visit Kip’s Restaurant.  “I remember Pinault’s had a soda fountain that ”made the best home-made honey dew melon ice cream.”  Many a day Pollard would stop at the Texaco Gas Station, located atArmistice Blvd.andYork Avenue, to sit and talk for hours with his friends.   

             “Dad was a loner, a desperado, an extreme free spirit, a man obsessed with racing,” recalls Christianson.  Before he retired,  Pollards’ typical day started at 4:30 a.m. by heading to the track to exercise horses, later returning home with a few of his jockey friends in their work clothes, ready to eat a hearty breakfast cooked by Agnes and to “tell jokes and talk shop.” His physically active and obsessive lifestyle in racing allowed him to enjoy “puttering around his basement workshop, mow the lawn or even put up the storm windows.”

           When Christianson was 17 years old she had an inkling of her father’s fame. Mr. Winters, her Tolman High math teacher, once asked her “is your father the jockey, Red Pollard ?”  Looking back she would realize that “her father did not make a fuss about his fame.  “He realized that when you stop being on the top,  you are going to be forgotten –  so winning that race was far more important than fame and recognition.”   

           Being involved in local organized groups such as church, the Boy Scouts and business clubs were alien to him, Christianson adds.  “As my brother once said to me when we were talking about our parents,” ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ they were not.”

 Protecting the Jockey Community

             But Pawtucket’s jockey was tapped to be on the first Board of Directors of the newly established national organization, Jockey’s Guild in 1940 -an enormously important guild for riders – this group being a nationwide organized union.  Jockeys who were hurt had no financial recourse, nor did the families of jockeys who were killed, for they did not get any benefits before the Jockeys’ Guild was created. 

           “In the early days of the Guild, [the Nicholasville, Kentucky-based] Guild was able to introduce safety measures such as better racing environments, monitor legislation concerning racing, and providing insurance for jockeys as well as decent wages.  “The great achievements of the Jockeys’ Guild would be what you might call ‘my father’s community service’, adds Christianson.  .

          Red Pollard rode into American history, overcoming a physical disability of partial blindness, accepting intense physical pain caused by severe riding injuries that fractured his bones, while humbly accepting his role in racing history, as the man who rode Seabiscuit.

             Herb Weiss is a Pawtucket-based freelance writer who covers aging, health care and medical issues.  This article was published in two Rhode Island daily’s The Pawtucket Times and Woonsocket Call.

No Rocking Chairs for These Country Farmers

Published May 11, 2012, Pawtucket Times

Some aging baby boomers can’t wait to relax in their later years, with visions of travel plans on the horizon, or lists of hobbies & projects tucked away. But a growing number of seniors, like Ruth and George Handy, continue to work long after the traditional retirement age of 65 simply because they enjoy it.

Just 20 minutes from the City ofPawtucket, you will find a small rural home situated on over 100 acres of land – a ‘secret garden’ of sorts – that has widely become known as a gem of a place to purchase fine produce and beautiful lush and unique plants.   Just drive down a small country road off U.S. Route 118 in Attleboro, and you will find Ruth and George Handy hard at work in their green houses, pruning, primping and selling thousands of flowering annuals, perennials and tons of vegetables from 8a.m to 7 p.m. – 7 days a week.

Mostly by word of mouth, customers make this yearly spring pilgrimage to Fine Farms, traveling as far away asVermontandBoston, and then travel back home with their vehicles filled to the brim with colorful flowers and varieties you won’t find in many of the big-box stores.

According to Ruth, her locally grown flowers and vegetables are fresher than those shipped to and sold by the growing number of super center, superstore or mega stores.  “There really is a difference,” she asserts. “We give daily, tender loving care to our plants and they usually tend to be healthier and even grow bigger.”

Working Hard But Loving It

“Most people think that we go south for the frigid winters, but we are working hard for ten months out of the year,” says Ruth, a tanned, petite woman who is wearing a pair of blue jeans, a sleeveless blue cotton shirt and garden Crocs. Together Ruth and George, her husband of 43 years, are tilling 22 of their 120 acres by themselves.  This acreage has been in Ruth’s family since 1903, a legacy for which she is most proud.

“Retire?  Never!  We love what we do,” says the 77-year-old farmer’s wife.  At 75, George begins with his long work day at 4:30 a.m., usually finishing up and eating his supper around 9:00 p.m.    This is not a job for anyone to do, she says.

According to Ruth, because of the economic downturn that caused the closing of many of their wholesale accounts, compounded with the spiraling price of fuel, theAttleborocouple shuttered two out of their six greenhouses.  However, “this year we still planted about  20,000 packs of flowers and vegetables and 1,500 hanging plants,” prides Ruth, who explains “they start planting around January and in March they begin to transplant the seedlings”.

And that’s not all.  In between planting, harvesting and then selling produce at The Corn Crib farm stand later in the summer, Ruth is a part-time instructor of water aerobics and chair exercises at the Attleboro YMCA.  Ruth even penned The Fine Farms Cookbook, a compilation of 25 years of collected recipes and is currently writing a novel with her cousin. George also is active and regularly works out in his home gym.  Both are avid readers of mysteries and historic novels.

By mid-April the four remaining greenhouses are filled with huge hanging baskets, including a variety of colorful plants, from petunias, begonias, and impatiens, to a variety of herbs.  As Mother’s Day approaches there still remains a large variety of flowers and baskets for the rest of the month. At the same time, George begins planting a couple of acres of corn to be harvested in July.  When the greenhouses are depleted, usually in June, the couple shifts their focus on their vegetable fields.  .

By mid-July its harvest time and fresh vegetables are sold at The Corn Crib.  The Handys offer many varieties of bi-colored and white corn along with onions, potatoes, cucumbers, and tomatoes, at this quant farm stand, a mile down the road at the intersection of Tremont and Anawan Streets off Route 118 inNorth Rehoboth.

Over the past 25 years, avid gardener, Patricia Zacks, has bought her flowers and vegetables from Fine Farms.  Three generations of thisPawtucketresident’s family have traveled intoMassachusettsto visit the Handy’s greenhouses. “This has been my spring ritual every year, first with my mom and now with my son. It is always a treat for the eyes to be one of the first customers in the greenhouses – the colors are breathtaking!” In the summer I’ll travel for their corn – there is nothing more enjoyable than vegetables freshly picked just hours before being cooked”.

Take Time to Smell the Roses

Ruth explains that that George has been farming the land for over 60 years, since he was a teenager. .  Ultimately her husband bought The Corn Crib and the farm fields from her father, Hyman Fine, who continued to operate the flower business and greenhouses.  In 1972, her father died suddenly at a School Committee Meeting and George became responsible for all aspects of the farm business.

“The first year was very difficult for us, but as each year passed, the farm became more profitable and better run,” says Ruth.  Even in their mid-seventies the Hardys continue to farm while the younger generations are going their own way.  The couple have three children and 6 grandchildren, but no one is really interested in shouldering the long hours it takes running the family farm.

While Ruth and George work hard in their later years, they believe in setting time to enjoy the simple pleasures of life.

“Slow down and enjoy nature that surrounds you,” Ruth advises.  As a child she just could not wait to leave the farm to travel to the “big” city.  But now she appreciates the peaceful rural life of the farm and “would not trade her lifestyle for anything else.”

George urges aging baby boomers and seniors to look at their age as just a number.  “Don’t let [your age] limit you,” he counsels, noting that he works as hard now in his senior years as he did in his 20s.  “Work keeps me young,” he adds.

For more information about Fine Farms, call (508) 226-0616 or go to http://f-i-s.com/finefarms/. Or write 353 Smith Street, Attleboro, MA 02703.  Or email, Finefarms@aol.com.

Herb Weiss is a Pawtucket-based freelance writing covering aging, health care and medical issues. His Commentaries are published in two Rhode Island Daily’s The Pawtucket Times and Woonsocket Call.