pt at large

Meet Kathryn Graham Lamontagne: PhD candidate, librarian

Kathryn Graham Lamontagne has packed a lot into her first 28 years on the planet and shows no signs of slowing down.  Between wanderlust and a hunger for knowledge, she’s traveled around three continents and worked at an intriguing assortment of jobs.

Sky miles aside, Ms. Lamontagne’s roots are planted firmly in North Westport. Her late grandfather George Graham developed the Holly Hill Campground and Christopher Circle with his late wife Mary, who drove the dump truck and dug the drainage ditches there. Ms. Lamontagne’s Boston-based younger brother Robert works at the Department of Workforce and Labor at the State House and is a speechwriter for Governor Patrick. She resides on Watuppa Road with her parents Norman and Mary Ann.

Ms. Lamontagne’s educational pedigree includes a bachelor’s degree from Providence College, master’s degrees from Providence College (Modern European History) and the University of London (Cultural Memory). During her college career, she studied in Quebec and Newfoundland and journeyed to Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Spain, and Portugal. Ms. Lamontagne is currently in a Ph.D. program in British History at Boston University.

NORTH WESTPORT ROOTS
“My mother’s family has been summering or living year round on Watuppa Pond since 1901. My father grew up on the reservation in Fall River at the end of Blossom Road. His father was from Westport Factory. My father’s side were all mill people so we’ve been North Westporters forever.”

MELTING POT HERITAGE
“I’m English, Irish, and French-Canadian. My father was French-Canadian, and my grandfather only spoke French. My mom’s maiden name is Graham, her mother’s maiden name was Pelletier but her mother was born in Ireland…it gets confusing!”

A BUSY SCHEDULE TO JUGGLE
“I’ve been a reference librarian at the Barrington Public Library for the past 5 years. I work at White’s and Rachel’s Lakeside. I answer phones, manage rooms, bus tables, hostess in the dining room and even made drinks. I’m also a grader of exams at
Boston University and will begin a teaching fellowship there next spring.”

FAMILY FUN
“We love doing beach stuff.  We go to Gooseberry and collect sea-glass, And I’ve always done quahogging with my father, that’s our daddy-daughter thing that we do together.”

FAVORITE WESTPORT ACTIVITY
“My absolute favorite thing to do is get a book and go to East Beach, that’s where everybody finds me all summer. It’s quiet, you don’t have to walk far, the rocks get all warm and you can lay on them, and the water is so much cleaner there.”

VISITS TO LONDON
“I go over about every two months which is why I work so much so I can afford the travel. I visit my boyfriend and do research at the British Library in London."

WHAT DRIVES YOU
“I used to be really competitive and wanted to make everyone proud of me.  Over the years it changed. Now what drives me is more about providing for the family that I’ll have and making sure that I’m best prepared for that.”

WHO INSPIRED YOU
“My grandmother and my mom. My grandmother was proponent of women’s rights, she dug all those ditches at Christopher Circle herself, and was a voracious reader. My mother’s a voracious reader, too. My mom took me to the library to borrow books about famous black women, Native Americans, and presidents. She made every effort to let me know about the world outside.”

PASTIMES
“My mom and I like to go antiquing in New Bedford. I love to cook. I’m a voracious reader. And I collect cook books, a perfect merge for me of food and books.”

AN AMERICAN DREAM STORY
“My great-grandmother was an immigrant from Ireland. She worked in the cafeteria at Boston University. There’s something that resonates with me so much that she worked in the cafeteria and now here I have the opportunity to get my doctorate there. It feels like an American Dream story.”

WESTPORT TEACHERS
“When I enrolled in Bishop Connolly in eighth grade I was the only student from public school who got placed in advanced classes. I attribute that to Mrs. Finnuci, my first grade teacher, Mrs. Croft, my 4th grade teacher, and Mr. Holt at the middle school.  Mrs. Croft had me dress up as a Pilgrim and walk around the school when it was Westport’s bicentennial. I think I was officially a history person from then on. I got a really good education in Westport.”

MEETING ROSA PARKS
“When I was in fourth grade my mom took me to see Rosa Parks at the Congregational Church in Fall River and that changed my life. Rosa Parks was such a little woman on that big, big altar and she’d done some big, big things. I’ve carried that with me my whole life.”

COMING FULL CIRCLE
“I’m studying labor leaders from Lancashire England who immigrated to Fall River in the 19th century which is when my mother’s family came over to work in the mills here.”

Westport Point: An architectural treasure

Nearly surrounded by water and splashed in sunlight from dawn to dusk, Westport Point held as much allure for Native Americans centuries ago as it does to the residents of that village today. Westport architect James Collins, Jr. shared his fascination for the Point’s unique location and the rich architectural heritage of its residences with a capacity crowd at Lees Market Community Room at a recent meeting of the Westport Historical Society.

Mr. Collins is president of Payette, a firm that has become one of the nation's most award-winning architects for high technology health and research buildings. You could probably fit the entire village of Westport Point into one of his Boston firm’s current projects, a study of how to renovate a million square feet of national historic buildings in MIT’s main campus.

In order to appreciate how architectural styles varied within themselves and how some houses on the Point mutated from one style to another, Collins gave a spirited slide-show tutorial that showed classic examples of residential architectural styles from the 1600s to the mid twentieth century. He followed this with photos of dozens of Point homes that currently line the last mile of Main Road.

The Collins house in the heart of historic Westport Point, MA has evolved since its first owner built it in 1776.

 

Mr. Collins’s family has owned property in Westport for three generations and unhappily lost three beach houses to hurricanes in 1938, the mid forties, and 1954. His talk was buoyed by an infectious enthusiasm for the Point neighborhood he’s lived in for the past fifteen summers and an obvious grasp of the principles of architecture.

Mr. Collins made the case that Westport Point is one of the most unusual harbor villages in the country.  First, it’s protected by a barrier beach and surrounded by an estuary with a river that splits around it. Next, the area is not that wide and there’s a road running smack down the middle of it. “The result is that you’re equally aware of the urban aspect of a central street and a rural quality that allows you can look past the buildings and over the grass behind them and see water on both sides of the street,” Collins said.

The wild card for Collins is that the entire area faces south so both sunrise and sunset are visible from most of the houses.

“There will be people who say you need to travel thousands of miles to get these four different experiences but here have them within feet of each other,” Mr. Collins said.

How did the village get this way? “Enlightened self-interest zoning” Mr. Collins said with a bemused laugh.

From the beginning, it seemed that everyone built close to the street to take advantage of using the back yard for gardens, animals, or water access. The roofs of the cape and colonial style houses in the Point are all pitched the same way and that creates a natural grade down to the water.

Mr. Collins insights about “ventilation” and “rhythm” should register clearly with anyone who has walked past the houses near the end of Main Road and wondered how the views down to the water on both sides were orchestrated.

He noted that most of the village houses “huddled up” to the north side of their lots and didn’t build in the middle of them. Next, the lots are random widths, depending on how much money the property owner could afford to spend.

“No one ordered them to build on the north side of their lots but the fact that they did and the random lot widths create a rhythm of openings between them,” Mr. Collins said. “You look left and say ‘nice house,’ look right and say ‘nice gap to the water,’ and you can say this all the way down the street.”

When families got bigger and more space was needed, they “telescoped” their houses by adding on to the back so the village got denser “but those all-important gaps (views to the water) didn’t get filled in,” Mr. Collins said.

Heading north, away from the river from the Paquachuck Inn, most of the houses are capes or colonial styles. The capes are one story, never two, have simple detailing, and perhaps sport dormers or an attic. Classic colonials are usually two stories, have regularized sets of windows, a central chimney, and several types of roofs.

And oh, what a range of them there are. Full capes, 3/4 capes, half capes, and in one case a cape that morphed into a colonial. Owners continually tinkered with their Cape and Colonial style homes, adding, subtracting or replacing windows and adding porches and extending living space. Chimneys have been added to some houses and in one case built partially over a window on the side of a house. Hardly any of them are carbon copies of another.

Farther up the road, the architecture gets more kaleidoscopic.  Styles including Greek Revival, Arts and Crafts, Italianate, Gothic Revival, American Foursquare, and Bungalow Craftsman are all represented.

“When architecturally knowledgeable people come to the village they flip out. This is an important place because it houses as many great homes of architectural style as anyplace I’ve ever seen in my life,” Collins said.

On a stroll through Westport Point with his dad when he was five years old, Mr. Collins asked him why he loved the neighborhood so much.

“Oh, Jim, this is a special place, this is sacred ground,” his dad replied. Now that he’s lived there for fifteen years, Jim Collins feels the same way.

SIDEBAR
Of the architecture described by Mr. Collins, Westport Point contains examples of Cape, Colonial, Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Italianate, Second Empire, Victorian Shingle, Georgian Revival, American Foursquare, Arts and Crafts, and Bungalow styles. Some houses are a mix of two or more styles.

Architectural styles described by Mr. Collins
1626 - 1725 First Period Architecture
1600s - 1960 Cape
1725 - 1775 Georgian Colonial
1780 - 1830 Federal
1830 - 1875 Gothic Revival
1825 - 1850 Greek Revival
1845 - 1860 Italianate
1860 - 1880 Second Empire
1870 - 1900 Richardsonian Romanesque
1875 - 1925 Victorian Eclectic
1880 - 1910 Queen Ann
1880 - 1900 Victorian Shingle
1895 - 1930 Georgian Revival
1895 - 1930 American Foursquare
1905 - 1930 Arts and Crafts (Craftsman)
1905 - 1930 Bungalow

Brendan: Irish-born playwright Ronan Noone comes to terms with America

“Brendan”
A play written by Ronan Noone
Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont St, Boston
October 12–November 17 | $15-$50 | 617.266.0800

This little play feints and jabs for the first few rounds but about halfway through an uninterrupted ninety minutes it begins to land tender blows to the viewer’s heart. Any play that features the doppelganger of the main character’s recently deceased mother on stage with him for the full length of the play had better have some powerful hooks to go the distance.

“Brendan”, Ronan Noone’s new play that began a run at the Calderwood Pavilion’s Wimberly Theater Friday night, is a sweet, imaginatively drawn coming-of-age story.

Dashiell Eaves plays Brendan, a self-doubting, terminally shy 25 year-old Irish immigrant who fled Ireland and his mother five years ago. He learns the date of his citizenship hearing the same day a letter informs him that his mother has died. After a shaky start, the pas de deux in which Brendan works out his karma with his salt o’ the earth, compulsively intrusive mother is a quiet wonder to behold.

Parallel to this narrative is Brendan’s tentative entry into Boston-ish American mainstream culture, conveniently populated by fellow Irish immigrants and a female neighbor as much in need of emotional salvation as our Brendan.

Watching scenes in which Brendan and his unmarried downstairs neighbor can’t connect verbally even though they feel strong emotional tugs might resonate with playgoers who’ve experienced similar timid moments. We want to shout “Yes!” when his mother, sitting in a chair in the corner, says, “Ask her if she’d like stay and have a cup of tea!”

The supporting cast, all of whom have dual roles, play their broadly drawn characters with gusto. Ciaran Crawford as Steve O,  Natalie Gold as Rose, Tommy Schrider as the brother of the female neighbor in the apartment downstairs, and Kelly McAndrew as the classic heart o’ gold hooker all make the most of their turns on the stage.

The play’s anchor is Nancy E. Carroll in the role of Brendan’s long-suffering mother. Invisible to all but Brendan, she’s as powerful a force beyond the pale as she was in her lifetime. She plays her role with wallops of dry humor and an Irish accent as thick and natural as the peat beneath the sod of the Emerald Isle.

Her wish to see her son succeed was coupled with enough smothering motherly advice to send him packing to America. Even from the first row of the mezzanine, you can see her eyebrows rise in disdain for some of her son’s new world choices in buddies, girl friends, and clothing. 

Alexander Dodge’s sets, pulled onto and off stage on tracks or rollers by the cast, are imaginatively designed. The Irish bar opened and closed from one side of the stage, Brendan’s one room apartment on the other, and the car Brendan learns to drive, make exquisite use of the technology of the Wimberly Theater stage.

Suffice it to say, we’ve all had ‘issues’ with our parents. Ditto for trying to find our niche in society and figuring out how to initiate a relationship, Somewhere between the lines of this play may lurk Noone’s own transition from Irish immigrant to American. Is it coincidence that Ronan Noone cast Brendan as a house painter, a job he held before finding his métier as a writer? Or that one of the pivotal moments is a scene Noone actually witnessed outside his Boston apartment?

In one entertaining riff directed straight at the audience, Brendan lists all the Irish-isms he’s dropped for American slang (“Brilliant!” not “Cool!”). The play is billed as a comedy but anyone familiar with Irish humor understands that a good laugh is often wrapped around disappointment and loss.

With its affecting light touch, “Brendan” helps us reflect on the need to find our voices so we can connect with the people who are important to us and grow into the human beings we (with or without the encouragement of our mothers) yearn to become.

Big helpings at the WFA Clam Bake

Lynda Perkins (right) and Barbara Bates serve up helpings of clams, codfish, chourico, franks, corn, potato, sausage, brown bread (and, for a few bucks more, a lobster) to a long line of hungry ticket holders at the 24th annual Westport Fishermen's Association Clam Bake on Sept. 16.

A record setting crowd of 262 people gathered for the event at the Little Compton Sportsmen's Club. Proceeds will help underwrite restoration of the Horseneck Point Life Savng Station, The winner of the dinghy which was raffled off at the Bake  was Chris Vemfi of Lexington, MA.