WHAV (https://whav.net/category/haverhill-heritage-series/)
(Holiday encore. This story first appeared in 2020.)
The United States entered World War II starting with the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor—83 years ago this month. By the autumn of 1944, there was cause for optimism the war’s end might actually be in sight. D-Day forces had landed in Normandy, Paris had been liberated, and the Allies were making slow progress in the Pacific.
(A version of this article first appeared on these pages in 2018.)
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade tradition, celebrating its 97th annual event in New York City, actually has its roots in Haverhill. The iconic 1947 holiday film, “Miracle on 34th Street,” opens with the famous parade and Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle. The story takes place between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day in midtown New York City. The film focuses on Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn), a last-minute replacement hired to replace Santa. He becomes the department store’s Santa Claus.
In 1933, nine months after the success of a little film called “King Kong,” RKO Pictures released “Son of Kong.” In the sequel, filmmaker Carl Denham is broke. Blamed for the destruction caused by Kong in New York, he hides in his boarding house. His landlady can barely keep the process servers outside and away from him. He leaves New York by freighter and ends up back on Skull Island. The landlady was played by actress Kathrin Clare Ward, born in Bradford as Katie Clare O’Connor on Nov.
Editor’s Note: Today, Canadians are observing a Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval, recognizing British atrocities in 1755, resulting in the expulsion of Acadians who refused to sign an oath of allegiance to Britain. The Acadians, descendants of 17th and 18th century French settlers in the northeastern region of North America, were deported to the 13 American colonies, France and Britain. Thousands died during the expulsion. Acadian suffering was formally recognized by a 2003 Royal Proclamation. It declared July 28 as the Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval.
Editor’s Note: WHAV couldn’t let the year end without acknowledging the Haverhill Gazette’s milestone 200th birthday that took place this year. WHAV and The Gazette have a shared heritage in John Taylor “Jack” Russ. Russ, as publisher of the Haverhill Gazette, is the man most responsible for bringing Haverhill its first radio station, WHAV, in 1947. The Haverhill Gazette turned 200 years old in 2021 without any fanfare, but it deserves this birthday surprise, especially since it is one of the nation’s oldest, surviving newspapers. It is better off than the thousands of newspapers that have succumbed in recent years, but still a shadow of its former self—the victim, first of consolidation that reduced it from a robust daily to a weekly, and then of the loss of its advertising base to electronic media.
Editor’s Note: Haverhill native Dr. Raymond F. Comeau commemorates the 129th anniversary of the passing of one of Haverhill’s favorite sons, John Greenleaf Whittier, with an essay on the poet’s friendship with Helen Keller. Now of Belmont, Comeau is a retired dean and current lecturer at Harvard University Extension School. He is also a trustee, emeritus, of the John Greenleaf Whittier Birthplace in Haverhill. It was a sporadic relationship that manifested itself in only four letters and a single visit, and it lasted fewer than three years, but we can be sure that both Helen Keller (1880-1968) and John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) felt that knowing each other was a gift. As we will see, Keller was only nine when they met.
Hear Whittier’s Last Poem read aloud
There is something poignant about “last” things. The word last often possesses the sad, sometimes heroic, connotation of finality, including death. Think of a loved one’s last words, or the last time you saw a good friend, or a soldier’s last stand. Whittier’s last poem holds this poignancy. It is also, as I will show later, a key to understanding the poet’s deepest feelings and thoughts upon his approaching death, and a testament of his writing genius.
Editor’s Note: Thursday, Dec 17, was Haverhill-born poet John Greenleaf Whittier’s 213th birthday. Many Americans remember, especially at Christmas, on greeting cards or in other publications, the following lines attributed to John Greenleaf Whittier:
For somehow, not only for Christmas, but all the long year through,
The joy that you give to others is the joy that comes back to you;
And the more you spend in blessing the poor and lonely and sad,
The more of your heart’s possessing, returns to make you glad. But do they belong to Whittier? On Dec. 24, 2015, in “Quote Investigator,” an online source[1], an anonymous contributor traces the genesis of these lines.
(An earlier version of this story appeared in 2017.)
J.R. Poppele, chief engineer of WOR, New York, was hired by Haverhill Gazette owner John T. “Jack” Russ to conduct the original survey of transmitter sites for Russ’s proposed local FM radio station, later named WHAV. Poppele was an early FM expert, working with inventor Edwin Howard Armstrong to place WX2OR on the air in New York during early 1940 and its successor W71NY the following year. That station would eventually become WOR-FM. Poppele’s engineering studies indicated the best spot to build a radio tower in Haverhill would be atop 276-foot high Silver Hill, putting the tower close to the center of the city. Unfortunately, Silver Hill was already occupied by a beloved, but crumbling landmark – Tilton Tower.