06/21/2015
Lowell Sun
By Brian Mooney
As his eight-year chancellorship at UMass Lowell wound down, Marty Meehan revisited the Lowell neighborhood where he grew up. He talked about the people, places and events that shaped his early years and the role of the university. These are excerpts from a conversation as he drove his sport utility vehicle to his boyhood home at 22 London St. and then to other nearby haunts from that time in his life.
The recollections date back 35, 40, even 50 years.
Before turning right off Gorham Street onto London, he points out the building where, on his way to The Lowell Sun to pay his paper route bill, he used to see Efthemios Tsongas, father of the late senator Paul Tsongas, at his dry cleaning business; one of his childhood schools, the Butler; the market once owned by Edward A. LeLacheur, the former state representative for whom LeLacheur Park is named; and the home of one of his lifelong friends Dave Trahan, now a successful home builder and real estate developer.
He parks in front of 22 London, set a few arms-lengths from slightly smaller homes on either side. It's an eight-room, single-family house among facing rows of solid, well-kept homes in a blue-collar enclave. It was built in 1890.
He lived there with his parents, Martin T. (Buster) Sr., who died in 2000, and Alice (Sissy), who died in 2008. Marty is the third oldest of seven children, and oldest of the three boys.
He is asked if the statue of the Virgin Mary out front was there when he was a boy.
"Yeah, she was. I remember when that was put in. My father built that with Jim Donahue, the guy next door who was a firefighter ... I bet I was 4 or 5 when that was put in.
"(The street hasn't changed) much at all. Mrs. Leary lived across the street and we used to rock with her in her rocking chair on her porch ... and I remember her watching my mother run around the neighborhood with no shoes on, and she'd say: 'Look at Sissy, she's like one of the kids over there.'
"(My mother) had seven kids and she was very active.
"I lived here until I graduated from college (then the University of Lowell). I lived here while I commuted ... up to South Campus, you know; usually carpooled. I think it was about two miles.
"It's a wide street, so we used to play football games in the street. And we used to get our baseball gloves and throw a ball up against this (an 18-inch concrete retaining wall in front of his house). We had a way to judge whether it was a single, double, triple or home run.
"We were very close with all these neighbors."
A woman opens the front door.
"I grew up in this house," Meehan tells her.
"Marty Meehan!" she shouts. Her name is Tejanie Mercado. She is 25 and has lived here since Meehan's parents sold the house in 1998.
"Your sister (Kathy) actually taught me at the Butler (School). She taught us right: 'Show respect. Get home early.' She was an awesome lady ... You sold the house to my mother."
"Does it still have one bathroom?" Meehan asks, grinning. "Imagine nine people trying to get ready in the morning at once. A lot of stress."
Tejanie's mother, Juanita Santos, parks her car and approaches the house.
"I know you; I bought the house from your parents," she says, pointing out some of the work she has had done and is in the process of doing. They reminisce for a bit, and then, back in the car, Meehan drives slowly up London Street, recalling the families in most of the houses.
A flood of memories
"The Durkin family lived there. Brendan Durkin still lives there. We're all still best friends with the Durkins. We were closer than being related.
"John Lee lived in this house here. He sold me his paper route. It was always a little nicer up this end of the street ... John F. Carney of the School Committee lived there. The first time I gave out political things was for him. His yard abutted my back yard. I'll bet I was 7 or 8."
Later: "This is Swede Village. My mother's parents lived here (on Lundberg Street). I haven't been here in a while either.
"The area I grew up in was called Ayers City. All of it around where I grew up was 'Spaghettiville' because when Prince (the pasta company with a plant nearby) put all the signs up on the bridges, then it really became 'Spaghettiville' ...
"This is Sacred Heart Parish, really. Our life was really centered around this parish. This was a really strong parish; it kept its identity (after the church closed). It's very tight and 'the churchyard boys' of Sacred Heart established a scholarship for UMass Lowell, and the fundraising event they have is very powerful.
(Six alumni of the university, contemporaries of Meehan, provide a scholarship giving preference to first-generation college students from Lowell who have financial need to attend UMass Lowell.)
"They feel pride about what's happened at UMass Lowell and they feel they should give something back. It's amazing how many people in this neighborhood attended either Lowell Tech or Lowell State ...
"This is where I played baseball. This is the Olivera Little League. It was the Chambers Street Little League when I was here.
"Jimmy Olivera was in the same grade as me in the second grade and he hopped a train not far from here and fell under it and died. I remember his funeral.
"So my sons (Robert and Daniel) played here. There were all these kids jumping on Jimmy Olivera's stone over there and I always made the kids stop it and I told them the story.
His father's influence
"I want to tell a story about my father. He left coaching when I was 10 because he started working at the Billerica House of Correction. He was working two jobs.
"When I was nine, I was on the White Sox and we lost every single game. We were 0 and 18 and my father was the coach and what he used to do -- and this is before they mandated that everyone had to play -- everyone played.
"I remember there were kids who weren't very good and he'd say, 'OK, Jimmy, you're in right field,' and Jimmy would say 'Mr. Meehan, we're winning the game and I'm not sure I should go out to right field because we can win this game.' And my father would say: 'Jimmy, right field.'
"And we'd end up losing the game. He felt everyone should play and it wasn't so much if you won or lost but that everyone should be playing ...
"I like to think I learned some lessons. I was very proud when I got older in the fact that they changed the rules in Little League Baseball so you have put people in for two innings (each week). But he did it before it was a rule. And as embarrassed as I was as a kid that we were 0 and 18, as I got older, I was kind of proud. But, yeah, (if I were coach) I probably would want to win more than he did.
"My father had a real impact on me. He didn't graduate from college. He spent some time at Lowell Commercial College, learning the skills he needed to be a linotype operator at The Lowell Sun.
"He was really well read, though. In his bedroom, he had, oh there must have been 700 books, lined up all over the place. And he read all of them.
"He was really committed to us getting an education.
"He had a rule that we had to go to college. ... Most of us grew up wanting to be teachers. I have four sisters and all four sisters are teachers. I got my undergrad degree in education, did my student teaching at Lowell High.
"He liked politics but wasn't directly involved ... I think my political interest came from him. When I was a kid, after President Kennedy was elected and Kennedy started doing press conferences for the first time, everything stopped in the house because my father had to watch the president and we had to watch the president and we were upset because our programs were off.
"But he talked about the first Irish-Catholic president and what that meant and what it meant for Massachusetts. His grandparents immigrated ...
"We had two pictures in the house, one of John F. Kennedy and one of Thomas Ashe, my grandmother's first cousin and the first person to die in a hunger strike in Ireland in 1917 during the uprising (against the British).
"Lowell's a tight-knit community, with many big families, close families. Loyalty is really important and most families are striving to get a better life.
"For some families, that's about finding a job out of high school; for others, it's about getting into Greater Lowell Technical High School and getting good vocational skills.
"But for a lot of people, it was attending Lowell State or Lowell Tech. That was upward mobility."
About the author: Brian Mooney, a former reporter at The Boston Globe and The Sun, is special assistant for strategic communications at UMass Lowell. This story is an excerpt from the latest issue of the UMass Lowell Magazine for Alumni and Friends.