Brattle Street Elegy: The Bonds Endure

In 2002, when Richard and Valerie Anderson moved from Arlington to Utah after decades as members of the Cambridge Ward and several other wards in eastern Massachusetts, they bequeathed to us an original pew from the Longfellow Park Chapel. They had been the stewards of this surplus bench since the chapel was remodeled some years ago. Their nickname for it was Pepe Le Pew. We still have the bench and now cherish it in a new way. If you would like to see it and sit in it, let me know by email (JimJ@ johnstoncompany.com). 

My own history with the chapel goes back to when I was fifteen, in 1970-71. Our family (my parents Peter and Charlotte, and siblings Jeff, Mary, and David) lived in Watertown and attended church in Cambridge. Gordon Williams was bishop, Maryann MacMurray was seminary teacher, and Dean and Cheryll May taught the youth Sunday School class. Some of the other families we knew were Bushman, Manderino, Clay, Bledsoe, Romish, Van Uidert, May, Ulrich, Dushku, Miller, White, Walker, Lyon, Merrill, Peterson, Home, Gardner, Gilliland, Reiser, and many more. 

Now I’m fifty-four. My wife, Mary, and I moved to Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1985. In 1992 we moved to Lexington, Massachusetts, and became members of the Arlington Ward of the Cambridge Stake. We’ve been here ever since. In September 2007, we attended the Cambridge Stake Reunion at the Longfellow Park Chapel. (For more on that, including a history of places the Church has met in Cambridge over the decades up through the dedication of the Longfellow Park Chapel in 1956, and beyond, see http:// cambridgereunion.blogspot.com/.) I maintain a list of all who attended the reunion, but it is incomplete. If you attended, please let me know by email. 

I saw the smoking ruin of the chapel yesterday about 2:30 P.M. and have felt sweet sorrow ever since. Such wonderful bonds we have with each other . . . The bonds endure.