pt at large

Susan Huppe: Dancer With A New Orleans Cause

When Sue Huppe learned to speak French, it didn’t occur to her that it was the first step on a winding road that would lead her to help organize a fundraiser to rebuild New Orleans.

A Watertown resident for the past 9 years, she’s been dancing since not long after her first wobbly steps out of her playpen in Delaware. Her day job as a Certified Holistic Nutritionist and Herbalist pays the rent but dancing feeds her soul. One of her first thoughts after listening to a few bars of music is, “What kind of dance can I do to this?”

Twenty years ago, Ms. Huppe drove down to the Cajun and Bluegrass Festival (now called the Rhythm and Roots Festival) in Charlestown, RI. To her delight, much of the music was buoyant, infectiously happy, and sung in the Acadian brand of French spoken in southwestern Louisiana. She was hooked.

In time, she traveled to New Orleans and Lafayette, Louisiana, the heart of Cajun country, to absorb the culture, learn Cajun and Zydeco dance styles, and listen to music that just about everyone in southwest Louisiana knows how to dance to. When she returned, she was eager to keep on dancing. Believing that Cajun Two Step would find an audience in the snowy North, Huppe decided to make it happen by teaching it to others.

The world of dance began to unfold for her. While teaching her specialties of Cajun and Zydeco, she branched out to learn and teach ballroom, latin, and east and west coast swing at Adult Ed classes in Newton, Cambridge, and Boston and at Springstep in Medford. She taught several of these styles at Dancing Feats for 14 years.

“Each kind of dance has its own flavor and allows you to express yourself in different ways. The most important things are to have a feel for the music and feel the connection between you and your partner,” she said.

When Baton Rouge native and Needham resident Rebecca Wilson decided to create a fundraiser to help the post-Katrina rebuilding programs in New Orleans, she knew who to ask for support.

“I took my first zydeco lesson from Sue four years ago. We connected right away because of our shared appreciation of all things Louisiana,” Wilson said.

Wilson knew that Ms. Huppe was acquainted with the organizers of large events since Huppe had taught at the Williamstown Jazz Festival, Swingin’ New England, and Strawberry Park’s Blast From the Bayou. Ms. Huppe is now one of the core group planning an event to raise $10,000.

 “The great contacts she’s made as a dance teacher helped us put this event together,” Wilson said. “She knew which venues would suit our purposes. Some of the organizers she knew offered tickets to their events for our raffle and linked our web site to theirs.”

The “Help ReBuild New Orleans” fund raiser will be held at Springstep in Medford on Sunday, October 5, from 5 - 9 pm. Proceeds will be donated to Common Ground Relief, a small volunteer based non-profit organization whose office is in the heart of the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

The non-profit group partnered with a licensed general contractor and is rebuilding homes destroyed in Katrina’s wake, and offers legal assistance to homeowners who do their own work to cut through red tape involved in applying for building permits and inspections.

Common Ground Relief has also begun a job training program, placing locals with professional carpenters, electricians, and plumbers who are volunteering their time. One of the members of Wilson’s planning group volunteered his plumbing and carpentry skills to the organization several times in the past two years.

The fundraiser will feature the same vibrant music that first attracted Ms Huppe. Two local bands, Slippery Sneakers and The Chili Brothers, will perform a mix of New Orleans style funk, blues, Cajun, and zydeco. The bands and vendors offered discount rates since they realize every penny will go toward building houses in the Lower 9th Ward. Tickets are $25.00 in advance and may be purchased through the Help ReBuild New Orleans web site www.rebuildneworleans.net.

“What is fun about teaching dance? Everything!” Sue Huppe said. “Remembering what it is like to be a beginner and seeing the joy it brings to people, in fact, seeing how it can change people's lives!”

The "Help ReBuild New Orleans" fundraiser is a testament to that.

Westport Fishermen's Association: 25 years and counting

 It was probably fitting that there was so much water in evidence at Sunday’s 25th Annual Westport Fishermen’s Association Clambake. Showers fell from late morning till early afternoon while steam rose from the 5-foot high pyre of hot granite rocks, sizzling rockweed, and crates filled with bake food.

Rather than stand outside in the drizzle to watch Bake Master Raymond Davoll orchestrate his crew in the four-hour traditional clam bake process, scores of ticket holders exercised a temporary rain delay and waited for the weather to clear.

A handful of enthusiasts came early, grabbed mesh “bake bags”, and circulated past WFA members Jack Reynolds, Tom Mello, and Cukie Macomber, who doled out food and wise cracks with equal efficiency. The hundreds of bags were packed in wooden crates, ready to be plunked down on the bake fire at about 1 pm.

Others who arrived at the Sportsmen’s Club in Little Compton before noon entertained themselves by playing cards, talking politics from local to Palin, and speculating about the Patriots. While their views might differ, they all agreed that the Westport Fishermen’s Association Bake is one of the best around.

“Good bakes are hard to come by,” Louise Costa said as she sat with her husband Fred. Born in Westport, the Somerset residents are fixtures at the bake. “I practically drool while I’m waiting for the chowder,” Mrs. Costa said. 

Time and tide waits for no one and neither do Bake Masters. At 2 pm on the dot retired Dartmouth fire captain Davoll, no stranger to heat, was itching to pull the canvas tarps off the bake fire and get the food to the serving tables.

“They all showed up,” twenty year WFA member Tom Mello shouted as he began lining up the big crowd that snaked all the way from the food pavilion to John Dyer Road.

For Jennifer Gelinas, recently named WFA Project Coordinator, this was a baptism by bake fire. “I’ve been running around here since 8 this morning and everything seems to be under control.” she said. “This has taken lots of planning but I’m surrounded by people who know what they’re doing.”

Ms. Gelinas, whose husband Stephan is on the board of directors, is fully versed on projects dear to the association. Along with educational programs and annual scholarships, she’s excited about the restoration of the Horseneck Point Life Saving Station.

“This event is the major money-maker for our non-profit organization,” she said. “We’re grateful to the local businesses who donate items to the raffle and the bake.”

Indeed, hardly a soul left the premises before the raffle was complete. About thirty people left with prizes under their arms but Philip Weinstein of River Road hit the jackpot. He won the hand crafted 18’ Hybrid Night Heron Kayak. 

The 25th anniversary has given long time members reason to appreciate past accomplishments and look forward to new challenges.

President Jack Reynolds recollected a program that benefited the river. He recalled that in the late 1980s, the upper reaches of the East Branch were closed to shell fishing.

"Arnold Tripp, with assistance from Dale Thomas, set up a laboratory, funded by the WFA, in Town Hall to run water quality tests before and after rainfalls. The data he collected was accepted by the state and used to develop system of conditional closings and openings of the river after rain events in Westport. It was used as a prototype for other towns located in river environments,” Reynolds said. Mr. Tripp, at 89 years of age, is still a member of the WFA.

Howie Gifford and Tom Perkins agree that funding legal action that ended pollution into the East Branch from a cattle feed lot was a big step toward the river’s health.

Mr. Gifford cited the 2006 decision upholding the Rivers Act, confirming the Westport River was a river, not an estuary, gave the river greater protection. "It was an example of cooperation between three like-minded organizations - the WFA, the WRWA, and The Coalition for Buzzards Bay,” he said.

Both men are excited about the restoration of the Horseneck Point Life Saving Station. “It will give the building back to the town in excellent shape and help maintain local maritime history,” Mr. Perkins said.

“I was one of the original members of the association in 1983,” Bruce Letourneau said. “I like the way it gives back to the community with scholarships, quahog seeding, and water testing programs.”

Mr. Letourneau has been bringing his 20-year-old daughter Jamie to the bake for years. She hadn’t been there more than five minutes before she asked him the date of next year’s Clam Bake. Two hundred other people probably want to know the same thing.

Boston Dance Raises Roofs in New Orleans

September 20, 2008

Music and politics are unlikely dance partners. Somerville attorney Phil Woodbury had been mesmerized by the music, food, and vibrant street life of New Orleans well before August 2005 when Katrina changed everything.

“Like many, I watched in horror as the TV captured images of desperate people, flooded homes and helicopter rescues, and was shocked to read of the slow and chaotic federal response,” Woodbury said.

He heard about Common Ground Relief, a small volunteer based group dedicated to immediate cleanup and long-term relief centered in the epicenter of the storm's wrath, the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. He packed his bags. The Lower 9th was still stinky with the smell of mud in his first two trips in February and April 2006.

Since the group had several legal projects, including eviction defense and police brutality issues, he thought his legal background would be tapped.

“But when the volunteer coordinator noticed that I had put ‘plumbing’ on my list of skills, I got an immediate call, and reported to  'The Blue House,' used by the health clinic staff for offices, overflow exam rooms, and sleeping,” he said. By the time he left, there were two functioning bathrooms and a score of grateful volunteers.

A well-timed letter from Woodbury, who happens to love dancing, sent sparks flying in the local zydeco community. His appeal for donations prior to his return to New Orleans in 2008, saying, “Common Ground’s goal continues to be to help restore the Lower 9th Ward by rebuilding homes and by helping bring back the schools, churches, and cultural events that make community possible,” arrived around the same time as February’s local Mardi Gras dance. (Yes, Boston has a bunch of dancers who will fill a VFW or Knights of Columbus hall when a Cajun or Zydeco band comes to town.)

Woodbury's friend Rebecca Wilson was determined to do more than write a check. The Baton Rouge native has been dancing to the music of Louisiana for as long as she can remember. 

“As a native of Louisiana, I go back fairly often, so I’m acutely aware of how New Orleans is struggling to fully recover. Many people haven’t come back yet because they have no homes to come back to. I want to harness the New Orleans spirit that I felt that night at the Mardi Gras dance at Ryles and use it to make people aware that the recovery is ongoing,” she said.

It’s hard to tell what synapses need to be triggered to transform a person from a spectator to an activist. Woodbury certainly got the train rolling with his skill set of handyman/attorney. Wilson knew that Fats Domino, Irma Thomas, and other musicians lost their homes in the Lower 9th. Like Woodbury, she felt that government agencies had been slow to aggressively support rebuilding there. She had witnessed New Orleans musicians play their hearts out in spite of the pain of being displaced. She vowed to make some music of her own.

Wilson, Woodbury, and a core of music lovers created "Help ReBuild New Orleans," an event to raise awareness and money for the rebuilding effort in the Crescent City. They’re soliciting donations and selling tickets to a music event slated for October 5. Two bands playing a variety of Louisiana based music - blues, New Orleans funk and zydeco - and a great dance floor are all in place. Now they need to fill the hall and raise the money.

The whole committee has been bitten by the grass roots bug. They hand out flyers and talk it up with every dancer, band member, club owner and just about anyone else they encounter. Good promotion is the only way they'll reach their goal of raising $10,000.

Proceeds will  go directly to Common Ground Relief, sort of the Little Engine That Could of New Orleans. Seven days after Katrina devastated New Orleans, four activists launched the Common Ground Relief Collective. It was a grass roots effort and has stayed true to its mission. Short term, the goal is to rebuild. Long term, the goal is to address social and political inequities that the organizers believe have plagued the area long before Katrina put it on the national map.

Thom Pepper meets organizers and volunteers in front of The Blue House.

The ambitious outfit is entirely staffed by volunteers. Rebuilding homes and repopulating the neighborhood with its former occupants is just one part of its mission. Its initiatives are a gumbo of socially progressive programs, including toxin removal, legal assistance, and restoration of the wetlands that have historically protected Louisiana. It’s also one of the 10 organizations in Lower Ninth Ward Community Coalition with the “Make It Right” Foundation initiated by Brad Pitt.

Wilson visited Common Ground Relief’s headquarters in August get a sense of the recovery process. She was struck by the still evident destruction. All that was left of some houses were the concrete steps and an iron railing. She met with Operations Director Thom Pepper, who arrived from Miami to help with the relief operation in 2006. He’s watched the focus change from relief work to rebuilding. He's had plenty of experience, having marshalled relief efforts in Miami after Hurricane Andrew. 

The early makeshift assortment of muddy rooms filled with cardboard filing boxes, folding chairs and scrounged desks, has been supplanted by a modest two story building in the heart of the 9th ward near the Industrial Canal. The compact structure called The Blue House contains rooms for meeting and planning, computers wired to the internet, space for a few office staff volunteers, a shower, and cots for the weary.

“At the end of 2007 spring break, we were having 500 volunteers a week coming here gutting houses and we were cooking 11,000 meals every week on propane stoves in a tent,” Pepper said. Volunteers distributed food and water, set up a legal clinic, a power tool lending library, a clothing center, tested soil and did massive amounts of house gutting.

Thom Pepper,Rebecca Wilson in the Blue House planning room.

By October 2007, the house-gutting program was mostly completed and the process of pulling house permits began. Common Ground Relief turned its attention to the rebuilding process.

“We partnered with a licensed general contractor here in Louisiana to build houses. We’ve begun a job-training program, hiring local people and training them in construction skills, and they will be hired to build and do interior finish work here,” Pepper said. Volunteer professional plumbers, electricians, and carpenters help in the training program.

If Pepper can hire and train 60 to 80 local people this year, he estimates that Common Ground Relief could build a house every three months. In spite of a sense of urgency, obstacles exist. City Hall is open weekdays 9am to 4pm, not convenient for working people.  Pepper has lobbied for satellite offices with longer hours to make it easier for people to pull building permits. It hasn’t happened.

Pepper emphasized that this is a long-term project. “Eighty percent of New Orleans was in six feet or more of water. This house we use as our office was under 18 feet of water for three weeks, as was most of the Lower 9th,” Pepper said. “To put this in perspective, it took Miami 10 to 15 years to recover from Hurricane Andrew.”

Common Ground has benefited from the help of 20,000 volunteers since 2005. At the time Wilson visited this summer, Pepper said there were 30 volunteers, a half dozen of them long term, who get room and board for their efforts. That's where Woodbury bunks when he volunteers there.

 “We don’t accept federal, state, or United Way money. All our funding is from foundations and individuals,” Pepper said. "The money allows us to go out to the wetlands and plant trees and grass, do soil testing and bio remediation, and allows us to keep people from having their homes foreclosed. It allowed us to put an 80 year old woman back in her house a hundred yards from here."

Common Ground Relief has agreed to use money raised by Help ReBuild New Orleans exclusively for rebuilding homes. Every penny from the Help ReBuild New Orleans fundraiser will be spent on lumber, sheetrock, roofing and the like.

The fund raising "Help ReBuild New Orleans" planning group loves the potent culture of music and dance that makes New Orleans vital and irreplaceable. By the time their fundraiser is held at Spring Step in Medford on October 5, they intend that a crowd of New Englanders will become honorary Louisianians for a day.

“I want to capture the joy New Orleans generates and to remind people that this unique city is still suffering.  New Orleans needs a rebirth. Pull out your wallets and put on your dancing shoes. This is an opportunity for all of us to help with the baptism,” Wilson says with a smile.

A grim reminder...Katrina cost lives, livelihoods, and the fabric of a deeply knit community at the edge of the levee.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Photo of an unmoored barge that pierced the levee 100 yards from Lower 9th ward hangs in Thom Pepper's office in The Blue House. https://www.nola.com/news/crime_police/article_77c03069-5291-5a1f-ad7e-e7b44075817c.html

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Perry Davis: Westport's own 'pain killer'

 

Perry Davis, who lived in Westport from 1795 until 1837, could have been a hero of one of Horatio Alger’s wildly successful novels of the late 19th century. The typical Alger hero is born in poverty, lives by a strong moral code, and with hard work and perseverance leapfrogs from adversity to fame and fortune. He falters often but never gives up his dream.

At one point in 1843, Perry Davis had one thin dollar to his name.  By the time he died in 1862, he had amassed a fortune from the sales of Perry Davis’ Pain Killer. Alger couldn’t have made up a story more compelling than Perry Davis’s.

Speaking to an overflow crowd in Lees Market Community Room, Westport Historical Society President Tony Connors, who holds a Ph.D. in American History, painted a picture of a man who never gave up his dream of making something of himself. Connors’ insightful style and informative slide presentation were as potent as the medicine that propelled Perry Davis to become a household name in the mid to late 1800s.

Perry Davis was born in Dartmouth in 1791 to parents so poor they don’t show up on tax records because they owned no personal property.

Perry’s father, Edmund Davis, moved his family to Westport in 1795. When he was 14 years old, Perry Davis fell from scaffolding and broke his hip, causing him to be lame for the rest of his life. He had respiratory problems that persisted despite visits to doctors who were so ineffectual that people often suffered rather than visit one.

In 1810, his father sent his 17 year-old son to apprentice to a cordwainer, a craftsman who makes shoes from scratch. “ This is the first indication we have that Perry had a sense of ambition,” Mr. Connors said.

In search of spiritual sustenance, Davis embraced the First Baptist Church in Tiverton where he met Sarah Davol and married her in 1813. His faith in God and the constancy of his wife’s presence would be pillars of strength for the rest of his life. He would need them. Misfortune tested his faith mightily and often. Of their nine children, only two survived, Sarah born in 1817 and Edmund born in 1824. As Mr. Connors observed, a pattern was forming in which, “Fortune doesn’t smile on the Davis family.”

With an idea to manufacture an improved grinding mill, Davis relocated his family to Pawtucket - just in time for the Great Panic of 1837 in which businesses and banks folded like decks of cards. He moved his family to Taunton, another industrial town. Again, his idea for a grinding mill met with failure. He was now $4500 in debt.

In 1840, Davis became very sick and was in great pain. Not one to give in without a fight, he dug in. “I searched the globe in my imagination, selected the best ingredients and directed as I believe by the hand of Providence compounded these medicines so that the narcotic influence of one might be balanced by the other. I commenced using my new discovered medicine with no other hope than handing me gently to the grave,” Davis wrote later. He not only survived, he got better.

After moving the family to Fall River, Davis actually patented four or five inventions but found no backers. An enormous fire consumed 20 acres of Fall River in 1843. Davis’s home, of course, was obliterated. Men of lesser determination, faith in God, and pluck would certainly have given up.

On the wings of charitable contributions, the Davis’s relocated to Providence, RI, with the clothes on their backs, a wagon, and a charred harness. Mr. Davis fell back on his only creation that ever worked for him. He would make and sell the pain killer that once saved him from death.

While experimenting with the pain killer’s formula with his wife and daughter, Davis’s face was terribly burned when a can of alcohol exploded. Like many of his time, he had no faith in doctors. He fell back again on his homemade medicine. He was back at work two weeks later.

People were not inclined to spend money on quack doctors, and there was no regulation of medicines, but a salesman with a good pitch could convince them to reach into their pockets to buy a product that could alleviate pain.

Davis, who parked himself near the gates of the 1843 State Fairs in Pawtucket and Taunton, was just such a salesman. He knew his product worked for him and shouted it out for all to hear. His bottles of Perry Davis’ Pain Killer began to sell. With the eternal zeal of a born entrepreneur, he opened a factory on Pond Street in Providence. Success was on the horizon.

Mr. Connors cited a host of social, political, economic, and religious trends that helped make Perry Davis’ Pain Killer a brand known around the world. (See sidebar)  The Pain Killer's ingredients were potent. It is no wonder that a formula of vegetable extracts, camphor, ethyl alcohol, and opiates would make a sick person feel better. Davis trademarked the name “Pain Killer” and never divulged the formula for his product.

“ During the Civil War, it was given not only to soldiers but horses, too. Opium and alcohol even made the horses work longer and harder,” Connors said to laughter from the crowd. Among testimonial to the product, Mr. Connors quoted Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) who said,  “Those who could run away did. Those who could not drenched themselves in cholera preventatives and my mother chose Perry Davis’s Pain Killer for me.”

Davis was a portrait of humility and business acumen. “He was a devout Baptist all his life and he gave free samples to Baptist missionaries to go overseas. For every bottle he gave away, many cases got sold “, Connors said.

Mr. Davis was generous to causes small and large when he became prosperous. He donated $36,000 to the new Baptist church in 1850. When he died in Providence in 1862, he was mourned by throngs of poor people he’d helped during his lifetime.

“He made tremendous amount of money. Poor till he was about fifty, he gave a lot away, and didn’t forget his own struggles. The third generation had great wealth but none of the drive, modesty or moral fiber of Perry Davis himself,” Mr. Connors said. The Davis and Son label disappeared forever in 1940.

Photo: Audience member reads label of Perry Davis Painkiller bottle Mr. Connors' wife found on eBay.

“Did he know what he was doing with this opium and alcohol?  Yes. But he believed God had directed him to come up with this kind of medicine and in some way he believed he was doing the right thing. People believed and Perry Davis provided,” Mr. Connors concluded.

It took 50 years of struggle, but Fortune finally smiled on the Davis family.

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Davis sidebar: Social, political, economic, and religious trends that helped make Perry Davis’ Pain Killer a brand known around the world

• Spirit of Jacksonian Democracy inspires more respect for the intelligence of the common people, less need for them to depend on upper class, including doctors.
• Religious Revivals proclaim that salvation can be achieved by reading the Bible, less need for trained ministers to lead the way.
• Cholera Epidemic of 1849 in Providence, Davis claims his Pain Killer can cure it (“Outrageous,” says Connors), historians of the time give him credit for doing so.
• Civil War stimulates sales of all patent and proprietary medicines. Government takes over production and distribution of Pain Killer, returns profits to the Davis company.
• Newspapers proliferate, an age of national advertising ensues as population becomes more literate. Newspapers prosper from ads for medicine. Davis is clever advertiser.
• Legal protection: Davis trademarks the name “Pain Killer.” Supreme Court upholds case when another company calls their product ‘Pain Killer’.