Commencement 2000

Greetings:

For the sake of completeness I am posting the commencement speech to the graduating class of Newfound Regional HS in the year 2000. As mentioned in the previous posting it was a speech that I had, uncharacteristically, worked on for many weeks to ‘fine tune it’. Not helping the situation, at the time, was the promise of bad weather and the move of the ceremonies into the stuffy, very warm gymnasium.

I wore my custom made Italian suit (boy is that another story!). We sat on the stage waiting for the graduates to make their way into the hall. At each seat was a plastic bottle of water. I had never been a fan of bottled water so I was ill prepared to figure out, on the spot, how to open it and use the handy-dandy dispenser for sipping. I tore off the outer wrap; struggled with the nozzle and then proceeded to spill an appreciable amount on my light gray, linen suit. The water stain did not look like it came from a bottle but from me!!

Observing all this was my good friend, Bob Miller, the Guidance Director, who advised me to go into the locker room and use a drier. Quickly I agreed this was a great idea, rushed inside the phys ed teacher’s office, into the locker room and then realized the drier was the one on the wall - about five feet off the ground and not easily applied to my soaked thighs. So I boldly removed my pants and stood there waving them under the blasting hot air. It became readily apparent that this was a magical solution as the water vestige vanished in two minutes. Had anyone come in at the time they would have been hard put not to die of hysterics. It did, however, cause me to break into hearty, relieved laughter thus calming my nerves in preparation for my commencement speech.

Gini was another story. From her perspective from the audience I had been calmly sitting on the stage and now was nowhere to be seen as the music announced the entrance of the graduates. I was still unaccounted for, the class president came up on the stage to greet the audience and introduce the class. Eventually I was seen scrambling behind her to regain my seat in my freshly dried suit.

I do agree that this speech is somewhat involved and could make your head hurt, that is if you had not already decided to zone out. Many of the graduates did enjoy it as did several members of the audience. I am sure that there were many who did not.

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Graduation 2000

Thirty two years ago at my own high school graduation I gave the valedictory for our class. It was a time of high energy, unrest, creativity, dreams, ideals, horror, consciousness-raising and naivete. The theme of my speech was: ‘Create and be responsible for what you create…’. It was touted as a formula for life and success.

So now, no longer seventeen years old, another speech is to be given to graduates. The world seems to have maintained its atmosphere of high energy but for earning power instead of flower power; horror and unrest are something we do not want to have anything to do with while claiming concern for those in the midst; dreams and creativity are assessed for their applicability to the internet and NASDAQ; and naivete is a quaint notion that does not even survive the Teletubbies.

So how does ‘create and be responsible for what you create’ fare in this world and from a more experienced , perhaps, mature, perspective? Well in terms of prognostication it couldn’t be farther from state of the art. Amazingly in this culture at this time it is always someone else’s fault. ‘…How did I know the coffee was going to be so hot when I spilled it on my lap when I was driving?...’ to ‘…you cannot mark that wrong because you made the question so confusing!...’ So perversely I must take responsibility for missing the point and vow to be more responsible in considering other people’s conditions when I make demands on them.

Well, what about the ‘create’ part then? Are we in a new Renaissance of thought and production? If we are talking about the august microchip we are certainly creating new definitions of how many additions, subtractions and comparisons can be done in a billionth of a second. If we are talking about the world of finance, our creativity is unbounded when we sign checks for the Big Dig or make initial public offerings for businesses that would challenge Seinfeld’s sense of being about nothing.

Sorry about the jaded commentary but I wanted somehow to make a connection to what inspired me back then to what inspires me now. At the same time there must be a reason for why I feel consistent with that statement made so many years ago uttered in urgency and as a challenge.

It is here that Newfound comes into the picture. What an atmosphere in which to create. At first I thought this would be done through the big picture. Within two years of arriving here I was at the administrative level negotiating with the state of New Hampshire for grants and programs for our district. During that time I became familiar with how all our schools and communities operate. There is a lot of competence in our region, you have been fortunate.

So in creating what some referred to as a technology empire and others as ‘smoke and mirrors’, I wandered through your classrooms. You were probably in the first grade and you were the ‘students’ in the big picture. This pattern continued for about ten years before I realized that although I had come to know the staff, school board, budget committee and community support members, I had very little idea who ‘the students’ were. Faces were familiar but names and their personae were not. Luckily I was able to coach basketball and now track and some of you came into focus. Ultimately, though, the joy of what education could offer was missing. So I felt responsible to do something about it. As a full time teacher for the past three years we have shared the same world and I am very pleased to be a part of it.

The world you have made here is a good one. There are many districts who would love to have the atmosphere we have here. I will always be impressed with the way most of you treat each other. There is a sensitivity and action that at times we wish you would apply to your school work but beneficently provide for each other. This is a good thing (pause) These things you say and do matter very much.

But now we wave our magic wand and…ding…you now have to deal with a lot more than homework. You are expected to say and do things that carry a lot more responsibility with them.

What is it that you feel when you respond to these expectations? Are you anxious to let someone know what it is, or are you giving them what you think they want? Have you developed enough sense of self to know how to gauge that response? At times high school seems about performing to a set of standards fixed by the world of education. So your choices are conditionally limited to these expectations. As staff we spend many hours examining and developing these standards. We even feel enlightened occasionally. Our concern is rooted in an appreciation of skills and processes that we value highly. They represent mastery.

In achieving your diploma you have mastered certain skills and processes. This was very responsible but have you created anything in pursuit of these definite standards? I think that there is something unique in your possession of your creation and that is your self and sense of self. It is through your choices and actions that ultimately provide the definition of yourself.

Believe me… we, parents, staff, relatives and friends, have tried to help you with this. But it truly is your creation and no other’s. It is yours to determine how to feel satisfied, happy and accomplished. This realization is constantly challenged by everyone else’s version of what should be done and how to do it.

So here is the real challenge, perhaps even a contradiction. How do we be ourselves in the midst of everyone else being themselves? How can someone else know what it is that is driving me and what I need to feel fulfilled and successful? What is it that I need to be aware in order to allow that feeling for someone else? Well, if it comes down to a curriculum or a rubric I think we are all in serious trouble.

We will get back to that… So… what is truly great about this moment today? Let us just be this moment – (pause) –
There is no assignment due, no deadlines to be met, the future is for later and maybe we should start snapping our fingers to the beat of now and treasure it. (graduates snapping fingers) Dig it.

The idea of something being valuable for just feeling it is almost a cheat. Let us feel good about ourselves here and now because of this day, the ceremony… the ritual. There is no necessity to explain why, it just feels right to take it all in. But slowly, oh so slowly that gambit of responsibility interferes with our idyll and time emerges to measure our response.

So engage, create once again and make it yours. The perfection of the timeless moment now a prisoner of memory. What you do does matter. It matters in your development, it matters to the rest of us who are looking for support and opportunity to present our own creations. It matters to the well being of the planet and the universe. For as long as one moment yields to the next, you are the dynamic providing meaning and purpose.

Compared to our luxurious indulgence of no time and no responsibility this may seem contradictory. What is there in continuing our efforts in a responsible fashion? Hey, maybe it’s joy. Maybe it is seeing your child or those in your care frolicking. Or, dare I say, because you like yourself better when you see yourself meet your responsibilities. Or because you disengage that ongoing argument with yourself, that ceaseless criticizing of yourself and begin to feel currents and breezes that you had never noticed before. Forces not of your own making available somehow for … what?!

Let us review here. You have somehow survived school standards, your personal life, the interaction with other’s lives to be at this graduation ceremony. Some guy who you thought would be an interesting speaker is rambling about creating, being responsible and just enjoying the moment. He keeps saying that what I do really matters but I probably will not know why. This is school all over again.

Check this out…

When you do things that bring you joy, simple and otherwise; when you like yourself for what you are doing instead of disliking yourself for what you are not doing; when you have emerged as a person operating in the climate of the universe, something interesting happens. You have qualified for the ultimate experience. You can now be caught up in some of those breezes and currents that you may not have noticed before. You can now use them to maneuver as if they were cosmic tides. The extreme among you may use them as cosmic waves for surfing.

And in this manner of pursuit, sense of self has been supplemented by something greater. It might be that you have tapped into the daily rhythm of a life that suits you and those around you. It might be that time and fate have conspired to afford you opportunity and wonder. It might be the sensation of self surrendering into another person, another place or another existence.

What ever it is for you, the meticulous building process of school whereby it was important that we name the tools, the components, the procedures will now be something else. The future, instead of threatening to be an elaborate burden of creations and actions is now a transcendent flow. What could be occurring is that you have tapped the essence of the universe.

So will you be so bold as to embrace this process under the scrutiny of today’s values and pressures? Perhaps it would be easier to adjust to earning power and follow a financial plan and hope that friends and family will happen along the way. Or will you try to avoid it all because none of it makes any sense?

I propose to you, no, I challenge you to take all the efforts so far, the self that you have developed, to answer the responsibilities of your life, to create in a stylized fashion all with one real purpose. The purpose of attaining a sense of being beyond yourself … It is here at Newfound that I have found a flow outside myself. Your actions in class, on the track, in the hallways, the competency of the staff are the currents and the breezes. From Tim Mahurin who, to some of you, may be a face on a plaque in the science wing to the daily ministrations of Mary Gallagher, with these parameters Newfound has shown me how to maintain my commitment to my challenge thirty two years ago. It is your development that inspires the transcendence of self. To me this is the ability to love and in case you haven’t noticed you are deep in its midst now. Thank you for your attention.

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And in the famous words of Rick Nye: “You are such a windbag!!!!”

Baccalaureate 2003

Here is a transcript of a videotape of the Baccalaureate speech that I gave to Newfound’s graduating Class of 2003. This was Chip’s class and I was one of the two class advisors.

The original speaker had backed out and one of the class officers asked me to take his place. I accepted but I had made a previous promise to myself a few years before.

I had given the commencement speech for the Class of 2000. I had poured my heart and soul into the speech and had spent weeks preparing it. This was very unlike me. It was delivered in a very hot gymnasium because of the threat of foul weather. It was fairly well received, a few even raved, but several felt that it required too much thinking and was very complex and deep.

So, much to the concern of the principal, I decided to make this one up on the spot. I had a general idea that I would relate a trip to New York City with Rich and Val to faith, hope and love, quote a song… and that was about it.

My parents were in the audience (because of Chip’s graduation). My mother was to pass away seven months later. This speech was one of the finest and proudest moments of my life:

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Greetings!

First I’d like to thank the class for the honor and the privilege you have given me this evening. Secondly, I’d like to let you know how uncomfortable and anxious this has made me. (low laughter). And you will probably see this as we go along. Up until just a few short years ago, at the end of the scholarships, I did not return. I don’t consider myself a religious person but I do consider myself spiritual. And after hearing Mr. Gilman’s speech, just a few short years ago, I realized that there is a lot to spirituality.

But I decided to look up ‘baccalaureate’ to try and ease my anxiety….so I got through some definitions..’graduation sermon’. …I didn’t like that. –So I’m lookin thru, lookin thru- ‘sermon: a long and tedious speech’ – I’ve done that plenty of times. (ripples of laughter).

The day after Nicole asked me to do the speech, we were heading for New York City with some very close friends. And I don’t know if you are familiar with the island of Manhattan – it is very long and thin. And in the middle of it is a big green rectangle, called Central Park. And it stretches for miles and miles… trees, flowers, bridal paths, reservoirs, pond, …plenty of people.

So when we left our hotel and we had decided what we were going to do..The girls went one way and the boys went another way. So Richie and I decided that we would walk up the west side of Central Park to the Museum of Natural History, We’d go see the Rose Science Center.





As you get to the Museum of Natural History, it looks like a traditional museum but on the side is – a glass cube. It’s about 70 feet tall. What’s also impressive about it is that there is no span across it, just a glass cube. But inside it is a huge sphere.


Now as you come into the science center you walk around this sphere. And they use this sphere to try and impress upon you the scale of things in the universe. At first you might be looking at Jupiter as compared to maybe one of the moons. Another time you might be looking at a hydrogen molecule as compared to an electron. It is very fascinating just to walk around.

Then you go into the bottom half of the sphere, where they present you, on the bottom half, with a film of the birth of the universe…How they got the cameras there, I don’t know (strong laughter) (pause, shoulder shrug)…CNN! (spoken a la James Earl Jones). So..Maya Angelou narrates the birth of the universe. And, after the big bang, they let you out, your head is reeling just a bit. And you follow a long spiral path…Every step you take is ten million years ..(pause)..it takes a long time to get down. As you wend your way down, which is quite a ways, you realize you covered thirteen billion years. At the end…the very end, there is a very small line …and that represents the presence of humanity…in the history of the universe.

So we got out of the Museum of Natural History and go to..oh excuse me, we didn’t leave..We went upstairs to go to the top half of the sphere…And they have redone, with technology, the entire floor of the top half of the sphere as a sub-woofer. It vibrates as you watch the universe unfold before you.

And as you did leave the Museum of Natural History, and got some sandwiches and headed for the park, we were just reflecting on our cosmic experience. One of the things we reflected upon is that there is so much that we cannot, and never will, understand. And to me, that is the basis of faith. You cannot know..everything.. or explain..everything. You just have to go on. And, to me, being there in Central Park with my friend, in awe of the cosmic sense… It’s the same awe one might feel watching the sun set over Newfound…or maybe in climbing the mountains in the Presidential Range. … or maybe being with a close friend.

And we sat and ate our sandwiches and we started to get up and walk so we could meet Gini and Val over the other side of the park…when, all of a sudden, a whole bunch of runners come running by us. … all full of energy. Two of the runners were way ahead because they were aliens. They were running way too fast. (chuckles) And then there were just hundreds and hundreds of people just going by us. And we made ourselves to the other side of the park over to the Guggenheim Museum, which, again, I recommend you go to, because in the midst of all the squareness and angles of Manhattan is this long, flowing, wavy building. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

So we got together and started walking…finding our mandatory cup of cappuccino …. and began thinking: What is it that causes us to build these huge buildings, and put this green rectangle together, and to run like crazy through it with all this energy.

I believe it is one of our contributions to the universe..and that is hope. Why should we, in the midst of not knowing, not being able to know, should we invest all this energy? To make great buildings. To make wonderful places to sit and have lunch. To expend our energy just for the feeling it gives us.

As we wended our way through, and I decided I wanted to see a movie..I had to make my way to Times Square. I was standing there waiting to cross the street in Times Square and I realized as I looked at all the corners..There are more people here than in all the Newfound School District! (good laughter) And as I watched these people…I saw families… I saw friends… lovers… people just going around, having a good time… And then it made me realize about the connections that we make. How we get outside ourselves and how we become connected to the universe. I believe that to be love. Every time you extend beyond your own limits, when you step out with faith… with hope…and you connect with somebody, you are connecting with the universe. And that, to me, is what I believe… to be love.

Faith, hope and love… These are our contributions and our connections to the universe.

(Reaching into the inside pocket of my jacket to take out a folded piece of paper and putting on glasses)
As I walked up the west side of Central Park… I walked by a person’s house that used to live there. And as I was trying to do that, that person had a bit of an effect on my personal life. Let me read you something…

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one (voice shaking)
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

(Folding up paper, putting it back inside the jacket,)

So, my hope for you…is peace.

Our gift to you is love.

(Flashing the peace sign)
Keep the faith, baby!
(taking off glasses)

(Uproarious applause, standing ovation)

Post Script to Shaw Hospital

Greetings:

As a Post Script, Terry sent along pictures of the drawing of the young girl that we had in our room at the fraternity house. this picture was used at the Shaw Hospital and supposedly had the tear appear while it was there:

Everything You Know Is Wrong (Part Three)

Greetings Ouijaphiles!

Those three weekends were amazing in their frenetic nature. We needed maps of Lowell in order to find cemeteries described by the board. We found gravestones with predicted inscriptions….It was basically nuts.

One of our brothers, “Ma” (so called because he was so neat and a role model for truth justice and the American way), who was in ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) at the time, and eventually a retired lieutenant colonel for the Air Force, became intrigued. He was from Whitman, Mass and went home during this time and did some research that, I am sure, affected us.

He discovered the ties of the Ouija board to its role of religious dictation; that there was a hierarchy of communication that could be ascertained by the position of the stylus on the board (or plastic disk in our case). At the top of this hierarchy pyramid was Jesus. This position was almost never achieved and you should dial 911 if perceived. The next level was quite interesting. It consisted of two entities, Rosenkreuz and St. Germain.

The Rosicrucians were related to the Knights Templar era and St. Germain was an alchemist. I believe if the stylus stayed between ‘R’ and ‘S’ it indicated Rosenkreuz and if it slid back and forth between ‘G’ and ‘T’ it was information from St Germain. (If out of town then call collect!).

There was also a satanic position and I am not going to seed your little subconsciouses with that location.

Ma swore that at one of the sessions back home a blinding flash of light appeared in the room while in contact with some upper hierarchy. This did not help us focus on our studies.

The dean of the college had to ask his father, who had lived in Lowell all his life, about the information we gave him concerning the Shaw Hospital. When it was verified, he was somewhat curious as to how we found all this out. “Ouija board, Dean!”. I think the dean preferred the regular Monday morning meetings with fraternity officers to consist of explaining police reports rather than the occult.

Someone discovered that the witch had been in contact and was curious as to any succeeding events after the séance broadcast. It was quickly agreed she would come back and visit the fraternity house. It is to my regret that Gini and I decided to spend that weekend at her apartment in Boston rather than in Lowell. I did not find out what really happened that weekend for over a year.

Here is what I eventually was told:

The witch arrived with her own board. It was multicolored and ‘dipped in morphine’. She was a member of a coven (you know, instead of getting together to play bridge you cast spells) and the coven members were focusing on and supporting her from afar for the evening.

A tape recorder, which actually had been used in recent sessions, was set up and a recorder designated. The session kicked into gear quickly and the Shaw Hospital became the ongoing topic. I do not know how long this transpired but at some point the stylus switched to the Jesus position on the board, the tape ran out, the recorder stopped recording and of the more than a dozen people there, only 12 were awake (oh, you apostles, you).

The board then began to personally address each person in the room through dictation to the point where each person broke down crying before dawn because of the intimate nature that the board was describing about their personal lives. They were supposedly assigned a mission and were to meet one year later and no one outside the group was to know about this. Subsequently they were encouraged to go to church in the morning. I was told that when they emerged from the fraternity house, dawn was most refulgent (who needs LSD?). However their collective experience at the church was a bit of a disappointment and all returned to get some sleep.

Now I return from Boston and begin hopping around, “What happened with the witch? Did you find out anything else about the doll or the hospital? What happened? Huh?! Huh?!”.

This was met by very guarded responses. they talked about the strange board the witch had brought, the coven and some information about the hospital, not much of it new.

What I was not told was that one of the brothers (was it Rick?) who lived in an apartment and would use my bed on the weekend when I visited Gini, was told that he would wake up screaming that night. So he did not get much sleep. I, on the other hand, then became the next person to sleep there. It was the top of a bunkbed. Terry was in the lower bunk. Bill and Dave were next door in their bunk beds. I started to drift off to sleep. In my mind’s eye a face appeared and started to come closer to me and as it did it became older and older and closer and closer….

I screamed.

There was a slight pause. Then Terry quietly asked, somewhat petrified, “Captain, are you alright?”. Dave and Bill (also participants the night before with the witch) had their fingernails clawed into the adjoining wall and door.

“I think I’m okay but I had this image of a face getting closer and older .. it really freaked me out!”

Terry followed with, “Well, the witch said that if Rick went to sleep in your bed he would wake up screaming. We weren’t supposed to tell anybody.”

My quick response was, “Thanks a shitload!!”

I did not learn any of the rest until the future appointment a year later had come and gone without the group reassembling.

What did all this mean? Who the heck knows?! It did happen and many of us still have sharp recall of the creepy feelings from specific parts of the tale. In fact, Terry just wrote me yesterday to reminisce about how outrageous all this was. He pointed out that the radio station had the year wrong. It was 1970 and not 1971. This makes more sense.

My grandmother Rienzo, the mystic (and that’s another story) would have had quite a chuckle about these naïve children of the sixties floundering in wacko-dimension land. But, as stated, it just reinforces the idea that everything we know is wrong.

Everything You Know Is Wrong (Part Two)

Your basic Toys R Us Ouija Board.









When the board was moved to the main floor many people tried to use it. Each time one of the two with their hands on the stylus would accuse the other of moving it. Everyone denied it.

The board seemed to know its audience and how to get them on edge. It spelled everything quickly, correctly and in complete sentences. It became very specific about the history of the Shaw Hospital. It claimed the reasons for all the brouhaha was that illegal and sloppily performed abortions and operations were the reason for the eventual closing of the hospital. Spirits from these people were not at rest. Much to several people’s chagrin, seven sets of initials were presented as being associated with seven of the patients/victims at the hospital. Gini was one of them. This was not really my idea of ‘showing her a good time’.

The seven were then charged with liberating the spirits of these unfortunates. This could be done by finding records of these incidents and publishing them. These records could be found inside a doll which was somewhere in the hospital.

Obviously we all took this very calmly – yeah right! Thankfully no one changed appearance or their voices. However we did have to pop the plastic disc out of the center of the stylus because it had taken to traversing the board quite rapidly. Only one finger of each of the two ‘conduits’ was now on the disk. It was easier to control this way. Again, thankfully, when the fingers were removed the disk stopped moving. It did want to spin and twist as a tripod and slide quickly off the edge, ergo just use the plastic disk.

Now since Dr. Shaw was not too pleased with ‘those college students’ from the radio broadcast the night before and had boarded up all the windows and doors to the hospital, we were concerned about our mission. As we were discussing how to get in to the hospital the board stopped hovering over letters and switched to highlighting numbers; none of which were higher than 7. Some brilliant person cried, “They must be musical notes!” and ran off to get a guitar. So we then played “Name That Tune”.

Either myself or some other crazed Irishman announced that the tune was “Tu Ra Lu Ra Lu Ra”, an Irish lullaby. This tune was to be sung on our way to the hospital.

Can you imagine us now treating this board like another person as we asked, “Who should go?”. The board immediately slid and threaded out, “All 20 of you”. Now who had been keeping count of how many were coming and going in a fraternity house on a Saturday night? So we stopped and counted…16..17..18..19…oh shit…20.

Each count resolved itself the same way…whoops! We then found our focus and asked the board, “How do we get in there”. Zippin’ and zappin’ it spelled out that we should use the northeast stairway and go 22 steps. We should do this at 9:07 (or sometime close to that).

Well, we decided that we would accept the challenge and we should all go. That is, 19 of us did. Prow, a fraternity brother of long standing and our cook, was in the kitchen banging around pots and pans. He was not going.

Prow (for some reason our nicknames bespoke of a nautical paradigm, mine was Captain) was a rather large person but was a mild mannered student who worked in the Plastics Department. He actually became rude as he emphasized he was not going.

“Prow, come on! We have to sing this song…go at 9:07….find the papers..free the spirits..come on!”

He would not budge until finally, at 9:10, he told us why he would not go.

We were fairly new to this fraternity house on East Merrimack Street. In fact the first house for the newly formed chapter of Kappa Sigma at Lowell Tech was on Methuen Street the year before. Prow was one of the charter brothers who helped start the chapter. He was also a member of the ‘House Search Committee’. This group had looked at several large, old houses in Lowell (of which there were many to choose)…including the Shaw Hospital. They had eventually decided that there would be too much work to be done to get the place up to code and had moved on to other properties. However during the tour of the hospital Prow distinctly remembered seeing something that was somewhat inconsistent with the hospital surroundings…. the doll!

Now we were sure there was a series of explanations that would rationally align all this but somehow it escaped us. So now, 19 of us, struck out for the hospital singing Tu Ra Lu Ra Lu Ra walking down the middle of the street.

Our poor neighbors..they had been subjected to parties, rock bands, the sixties and now this sight – arrgh!

One of the crew reached in his pocket to pull out a rosary and jokingly yell, “Look we’re protected!” but what he showed no longer had the crucifix attached. He was replaced by a puff of smoke making its way back inside the fraternity house. He was later found hugging a Jack Daniels bottle and mumbling, “Glory be to…”.

So 18 is a good number isn’t it? ….Tu Ra Lu Ra Lu Ra…Tu Ra Lu Ra Lai…Tu Ra Lu Ra Lu Ra…Hush, now don’t you cry…

We stood before this brick monstrosity of a hospital, complete with spire and tower and, using the nearby Merrimack River to orient, determined the northeast stairway. Counting 22 steps we turned to a solid brick wall. That was it…gotcha!

We began our sheepish retreat to the fraternity house but the conversation settled into- “What if we should have paced 22 steps instead of counting 22 stairs? There were landings along the way up.”

So we ran for our handy-dandy Ouija Board and demanded, “Steps or paces?”. … “Paces” was the response. Further conversation with the board resulted in Gini, two others and myself as the candidates who would return to the hospital.

Upon re-encountering the staircase we used up several of our ‘paces’ on the landings and wound up much further down the stairway. We turned…there was a window…there were no boards or plywood over the window…we pushed…it opened.

Gini and I then duly appointed ourselves the guardians of the open window and would defend against impossible odds anyone who would attempt to gain entrance to the house while the other two explored. Our offer was accepted and they entered. After about ten minutes they returned…doll-less.

Our return to the house led to some more rapid ‘dictation’ from the board and it was all duly recorded. Love those engineer-types. The only remaining dramatic instance from that particular night was a call for a bible. As someone went to fetch one (see – we may have been crazed hippy freaks, engineers and jocks but there was a bible in the house) the board dictated a book, chapter and verse. This was done before the person returned, so we waited.

When they returned they placed the book down already open. Of course! It was already open to the chapter and verse cited by the board’s gallivanting. The passage pertained to murdered children…need I say more?

The next day, Sunday, we went down to the hospital to check for possible entries that were not obstructed. There was only one. We also managed to procure the original tape of the broadcast from the radio station. As stated earlier, some of the brothers worked at the station and could get it for us. Also, remember that the on-air broadcast had been edited through a several second delay, specifics of the location and the background of the hospital would not be heard over the radio.

We compared the notes from the night before to what we heard from the tape. The accuracy of what we had written when compared with the portions of the tape that were not broadcast was a bit disconcerting.

Returning to the transcript of the WBZ broadcast:

“…And everything that we got was not one hundred percent of what was on the tape but everything that we got was a hundred percent accurate …And that pretty much , uh-ah, brought it to our attention that maybe we were playin’ with somethin’ here and we managed to further investigate the hospital…”


“…We were asked to do all sorts of bizarre rituals such as singing of songs, finding of graves and, uh, all the information that the Ouija Board would volunteer …we would have no idea what it was talkin’ about but then it would give us enough direction so that, sure enough, its information would be correct…To the point where we were asking the dean of the college as to the background to the Shaw Hospital. And our basic mission for this whole thing was to, supposedly, vindicate certain spirits and certain people operating the board were associated with these spirits….Though they were never, ah, physically affected by it. The board just associated them with it. And this went on for, oh, about three weekends. Until they finally brought the witch back and, uh, I wasn’t there that night. And the night they brought the witch back…”

Oh what a night! To be continued…..

Everything You Know Is Wrong

Ah – All Hallow’s Eve. This day rated as my favorite holiday. (Bastille Day was second – serving our Heads of State to the masses). Granted there were times during the punk era when it seemed like we celebrated it daily!







It does bring out creative talents. Gini gave it her School-Of-Fashion-Design-all to enable Chip to ‘come up to bat’:



In fact, each year we felt it was a challenge to gather the Von D’Luccis and let ‘er rip. When we lived at Branch Street in Lowell we were famous throughout the city for our Halloweeen festivities. Literally hundreds would show up in this 8 apartment, century old Victorian house. Each apartment was devoted to some theme such as food, dancing or ‘other’. We even had visitors from Remulac…er…France:



Metamorphosis was not uncommon. Take one bank executive and one software consultant and poof! It’s Magenta and Medusa casually discussing what to do with the guests.



Though my all-time couples appearance for Gini and myself was as Patty Hearst and Gary Gilmour (look him up in your Funk n’ Wagnalls), sad to say there is no photographic evidence to reminisce. However we can ogle the Pink Panther and her alluring tail:



Some of us, however, aspire to artistic heights year after year:













But topping all of these soirees is the all time Zuma/Rodriguez/Von D’Lucci Halloween experience – the Shaw Hospital and its aftermath. To this day it remains the wonderful enabler to the adage, “Everything You Know Is Wrong!”. It occupied the lives of those of us attempting to go to Lowell Technological Institute (now UMass Lowell) and redesign the fraternity experience during the cerebrally challenging 60’s and early 70’s.

Each year, as a teacher, I would reserve a class day for the telling. At one point, while teaching at the University of Lowell (yet another manifestation of LTI), my lecture hall, usually about a third to a half full, would teem to capacity with eager listeners to what became known as the ‘Ouija Board Story’. Fame spread to WBZ radio whose nighttime host, Larry Glick, decided to broadcast the story nationally (11/4/1991), thus including myself in Warhol’s prediction of fifteen minute fame (actually a half hour).

It all began with a the college radio station wanting to have a live broadcast in a haunted house in Lowell. These facts can be objectively viewed at:

http://www.wuml.org/history2.php
(in the last quarter of the page)

The station at the time was WLTI (now WUML) and they had convinced a real witch, from New Jersey no less, to be in on the shenanigans. It was Friday, October 29, 1971. The fraternity heard the first rumblings, however, the next day. Several of our brothers worked for the station and one was involved with managing it. Other reports had emerged about students freaking out at a house near our fraternity house on East Merrimack Street. In fact the house was the Old Shaw Hospital only five houses away. It was a favorite ‘haunt’ of ours because of its imposing architecture and the ‘ark’ in back which was actually a creation of Dr. Shaw.

The radio website agrees that someone who believed she was a witch cooperated with them to do the broadcast as a ‘fun’ endeavor. The hospital was prepared with gimmicks and sound effects. Participants were collected at the school, blindfolded and then brought to the hospital. A séance was initiated. Before the evening was over many of the volunteers would initiate information about where they were and incidences in the history of the hospital. The tape of the show was eventually procured and the events were even shaking up the announcer as his voice quavered and cracked. At one point a charcoal drawing of a girl on the wall was thought to turn blue and have a tear appear on a cheek. The witch finally declared that this was all too much to handle and everyone ran from the house (a la Monty Python – “Run away! Run away!!”). None of the planned gimmicks or sounds had been activated.

Our weekend at the fraternity, so far, had been part of a series of events planned to enjoy with our dates. Saturday’s scheduled activity was a hayride. Gini and I had just started dating and were looking forward to the fun.

My roommate, Terry, was affianced to someone back in New York and decided to forego the hayride. He convinced a few other brothers to indulge in a trip to Toys R Us to purchase a necessary item for one of his ‘hobbies’.

We had been roommates for three years (Mike F had joined us for one) and I had traveled home with him on vacations so I could ‘practice’ on his parents before I took on mine. During those visits it became quite clear that he was a key member of a cabal that partied with Ouija boards (you know, the original internet). Well, maybe not a cabal, just very close high school friends. Many times they severally attested to the strange and bizarre whenever their group ‘seanced’ and the board did its thing.

So as we returned to the house after our golly-gee-willikers hayride, we were met by a darkened house. On a Saturday night?! Cautiously we realized that there was a small cluster on the second floor. The scene was discovered to be candle-lit and the board was very ‘active’.

At this point I will attempt to transcribe from the narrative I did on Larry Glick’s radio broadcast:

“..But when we came back from that hayride, they had the stylus on that Ouija board moving very, very quickly and managed to be describing relevant events to the Shaw Hospital. They managed to describe events that we had not heard through rumors; that we had not heard through the radio station. In fact, the radio station was careful to eliminate certain information from being broad cast over the air. I am sure you are familiar with tape delay… We had managed to pick up this information independently through a Quija Board. And later, after we got this information, we took it down in written form after it was dictated from the board and compared it to the tape from the radio station, which was unedited. And everything we got wasn’t a hundred percent of what was on the tape, but everything we got was a hundred percent accurate. and that pretty much uh brought it to our attention that maybe we were playing with something here and we managed to further investigate the hospital…And I don’t know what Jim (friend of Larry Glick and my student at the time) has told you, but some of the more dramatic events were that the people who owned the hospital, boarded up the hospital after the séance…Not wanting any more college kids to run around ‘spookin’ the neighborhood… And we managed to find out a way to get into the hospital mainly through the Ouija Board after he (Dr. Shaw) had gone through a lot of trouble boarding up windows and doors…we were brought specifically to a spot in the hospital so as to gain access, two of us did, and we were asked to do all sorts of bizarre rituals such as singing of songs, finding of graves and all the information that the… “ (pause transcript)

There’s a lot to fill in here that the radio broadcast did not cover in detail. This posting has gone on for quite a bit. What do you think? Do you want some more of the story?