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In This Issue
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Stained Glass Artist Ruocco Gets Even
Help the Community; Enter to Win $25 Gift Card
Haverhill Heritage Series: This program is supported in part by a grant from the Haverhill Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.
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Program
Highlights
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Open Mike Show
 Tim Coco is host of the
more than 50-year staple of democracy, Open Mike Show. The
two-hour program is also seen on WHAV.TV.
The program is brought
to you by Northern Essex Community
College, Merrimack Valley
Economic Development Council and generous listeners.
Mondays, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Local News
 Local news and weather from local reporters, plus world and national news from FSN and the Pacifica Network. In addition, Breaking news airs when it happens on WHAV. Use the form on the News
page to submit your information. Remember only local radio can bring you local news, but only WHAV does!.
Mon.-Fri., hourly from 7 a.m.- 6 p.m. (Also 3:30, 4:30 & 5:30 p.m. during the Thom Hartmann Program and 7 and 8 p.m., Mondays, during the Open Mike Show).
Wave Weather
 The Boston media
doesn’t always understand unique Valley weather conditions. Acclaimed
WHAV Meteorologists Rob Carolan and Gary Best and the rest of the team
provide Merrimack Valley’s most accurate weather forecasts every half
hour, 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week.
Every 30 minutes.
 Democracy
Now is an award-winning investigative news magazine highlighting a
grassroots perspective and efforts to ignite democracy. Hosted by Amy
Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, the program pioneers the largest community
media collaboration in the United States. Interviews take place with
politicians, celebrities, muckrakers, academics, artists and “just
folks.”
 Thom
Hartmann is the nation’s top progressive radio talk show host,
according to Talkers Magazine, and is listed among the trade
publication’s “Heaviest Hundred: the 100 most important radio talk show
hosts of all time.” He is a four-time Project Censored-award-winning,
New York Times best-selling author of 22 books in 17 languages on five
continents.
 Produced by Dr. Michio
Kaku, Explorations in Science features news and interviews with leading
scientists on science, technology, politics and the environment.
 The David Pakman Show
is a news and political talk program, known for controversial
interviews with political and religious extremists, liberal and
conservative politicians and other guests. The show, which has been
involved in a number of controversies involving challenges to
homophobic and racist
guests, focuses on the politics and news of the day, technology and
energy development, business, religion and other topics.
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Listen Anywhere
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Web
WHAV.net
WHAV.TV (Open
Mike Show only)
WHAV.org
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Andover: Channel 8
• Haverhill: Channel 22
• Methuen, Channels 8 + 22 (Comcast) &
32* (Verizon Fios)
• Plaistow,
Channel 17
• Sandown, Channel 17
* Methuen
Channel 32 is heard statewide in communities with Verizon Fios cable
television service.
A special thanks to the
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stations above for bringing not-for-profit WHAV to those without
Internet access! If you would like to hear WHAV on your cable
television system, call your cable company or public access station.
For more information, call (978) 374-2111.
Radio
1640 AM
98.1 FM (coming soon)
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About WHAV
The WHAV call letters
have been associated with local broadcasting since 1947. WHAV is today
operated by Public Media of New England Inc., a not-for-profit
corporation. Since 2004, the call has served the Merrimack Valley’s
pioneer Internet radio station at WHAV.net and a number of public
access cable television stations in Andover, Haverhill and Methuen, and
Plaistow and Sandown, N.H. The station is also heard over AM 1640 in
northern Haverhill and Plaistow, N.H. WHAV has submitted an application for a new FM station at 98.1 MHz with the Federal Communications Commisison.
Public Media of New
England, Inc.
WHAV
189 Ward Hill Ave.
Haverhill, MA 01835
Business Office: (978) 374-2111
On-Air Line: (978) 374-1900
Fax: (978) 379-8480
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Francesco “Frank” Ruocco works in his downtown Haverhill studio.
Haverhill Heritage Series:
Stained Glass Artist Ruocco Gets Even
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| Charles J. Connick |
By Tim Coco
President & General Manager
Francesco “Frank” Ruocco lost his famed stained glass studio to the construction of Ginty Boulevard during the 1960s Pentucket Urban Renewal Project. While the Haverhill Heritage Series often focuses on businesses and homes lost to the city’s ill-fated urban renewal projects of the 1960s and 1970s, Ruocco’s battles with his former mentor, and later competitor, is far more interesting.
Francesco Ruocco Studio operated for 30 years at 123 Kent Street, about where a newer Green Street extension rubs up against Ginty Boulevard today, and 23 Water St., now the site of an apartment complex.
In the studio, Ruocco designed ornate stained glass windows, which still adorn churches across the nation. Works were glazed by his son Richard Ruocco and largely painted by his son-in-law William Bryant.
Ruocco, born Aug. 31, 1901, studied at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the University of Rome. He was reported to have been a student and protégé of Charles J. Connick, “considered the world’s greatest contemporary craftsman in stained glass.”
Connick also Worked in Haverhill
Connick began operating a stained glass studio at 9 Harcourt Street, Boston during April, 1913, and continued there until he died in 1945. During this period he worked on at least three stained glass window projects—two for the First Universalist Church (now the Universalist-Unitarian Church) and one for First Baptist Church.
According to Connick’s original records, the first window for the Universalist Church was completed September 27, 1923. It was commissioned by Sarah Dodge Stover, 120 Broadway, and her sister Carrie Lincoln Stover Lewis, 180 Grove St., to honor their parents. The 135-square-feet of glass show Christ, the figure of the Good Samaritan and an angel holding a scroll with the words, “He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is Love.” Important for reasons noted below, another inscription read, “Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.”
About one and one-half years after his death, Connick’s studio reported completion of two windows, 17 feet each, on June 1, 1947. Sarah D. Stover again ordered the windows, but this time to commemorate her own death, which took place in 1947, and her sister’s prior death in 1940. An initial pencil sketch of the windows by Connick himself before he died served as a guide, according to studio records.
Despite Connick’s death, his studio continued to operate—and compete with Ruocco’s local studio. On Easter, 1955, Connick’s firm completed windows for each side of the altar in the new education building at First Baptist Church, 217 Main St. Local architect Clinton F. Goodwin designed the new building and construction was supervised by a building committee led by Malcolm Heath. The windows were constructed in memory of Annie Parker Chick, 1863-1950.
Ruocco Takes Opportunity to Get Revenge
Around 1960, Ruocco was commissioned to assemble The Eucharist windows to the left and right of the 1947 Stover windows. Ruocco’s design featured amber chalices with either grapes or yellow stalks of wheat on translucent glass.
While working on the new windows, Ruocco was asked to repair a crack across the head of one of the figures in Connick’s 1923 windows. The local craftsman made the repair, but apparently worked in a wisecrack. Ruocco also altered the inscription.
“Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your head, all ye that hope in the Lord.”
It is not clear when the word change was first recognized, but it was never changed back. “Head” replaces “heart” even today at the Universalist-Unitarian Church on Kenoza Avenue.
Maybe Ruocco agreed, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”
Ruocco died in Merrimac during December, 1970, at the age of 69, exactly 25 years after Connick’s death.
More Haverhill Heritage Series articles at WHAV’s comprehensive, local news website.
WHAV Undertakes Community Assessment Survey
Help the Community;
Enter to Win $25 Gift Card
 Take WHAV’s Community Assessment Survey and become eligible to win a $25 gift card.
As a nonprofit community radio station, WHAV’s goals are to ensure all members of society are represented on the airwaves and adequate focus is placed on unmet community needs.
Eligibility Rules
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