CAPTION: Rev. Wolcott Cutler of St. John’s Episcopal Church.

After hearing that the Charlestown Preservation Society had applied for grant money for historic signage and other improvements to the Colonial Militia Training Field, Marie Hubbard decided the time is right to lobby for a dedication at the site in honor of Rev. Wolcott Cutler, the longtime pastor of St. John’s Episcopal Church who fought successfully to save it from being demolished to make way for an exit ramp in the 1940s.
“A few us of at St. John’s were hoping there could be a statue or something that would recall that it weren’t for the efforts of Rev. Cutler, there wouldn’t be a park,” said Hubbard, 78, a lifelong member of St. John’s congregation. “He personally wanted to save that beautiful park and the homes they wanted to destroy along with it.”
Cutler, who was known as “the pastor of Charlestown,” served the rector of St. John’s from 1924 to 1960. During his tenure at St. John’s, he found himself at the center of a controversy when he took a stance in 1942 against military registration for men between the ages of 45 and 65 that ultimately led to his resignation. His parishioners wouldn’t have it, however, and fought for him to be reinstated as rector. Cutler stayed on as St. John’s rector emeritus after ill health forced him to step down as rector at age 69. He died five years later as the church’s 125th anniversary celebration was getting underway.
In 1942, Cutler challenged the state’s Department of Public Works after plans were announced to build a ramp from the Mystic River Bridge (now known as the Tobin) that would have razed several Winthrop Street homes and transformed the Training Field into a traffic circle. Cutler also led an effort that saved the Phipps Burial Ground from being bulldozed.
A May 21, 1965, memorial to Cutler that appeared in the Charlestown Citizen noted: “We can thank the determined resistance of this humble defender of history and tradition that the Training Field (at Park and Winthrop streets) is not a Mystic River exit ramp, and that the Phipps Burial Ground is not part of Rutherford Avenue.”
Another example of Cutler’s commitment to preserving the beauty of Charlestown can still be seen in the forest garden located behind St. John’s parish house. Cutler began work on the garden in 1940 and continued to care for it until he retired as rector of the church 20 years later. On the first anniversary of Cutler’s death on May 15, 1966, it was dedicated the Wolcott Cutler Memorial Garden.
“He realized that Charlestown was a great historic section and should be preserved,” Hubbard said of Cutler. “He loved the town itself and everything about it.”
Also a renowned photographer, Cutler captured the natural beauty of Charlestown in many of the approximately 1,500 slides and images that he photographed and donated to the Boston Public Library.
Rev. Gareth Evans, who has served as the rector of St. John’s since 2004, agrees that a dedication to the Cutler at the Training Field would be a fitting tribute.
“He was a figure that united people across religious denominations at a time when the lines between Catholicism and Protestantism were firmly drawn,” Evans said. “He was a figure who was much loved and was supported in the civic causes that he championed.”
And while Hubbard was living away from Charlestown at the time that Cutler campaigned to save the Training Field, she fondly recalls looking down at the park from the window of her former home at 62 Winthrop St. during summer days in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
“The [Engine 50] firemen would turn their hoses on and the kids would splash in the water and play in the park,” she said. “He wanted that park for the children. That was the kind of man he was.”
Hubbard added, “He was just a great man. There’s no one I’ve ever admired as much as Rev. Cutler.”

IMAGE 1 CREDIT: D. Harney

IMAGE 1 CAPTION; elected officials and community leaders are pictured at the groundbreaking ceremony for the new police station last Saturday.

IMAGE 2 CAPTION: An artist's rendering of the new Hayes Square police station.

Saturday’s groundbreaking ceremony for the new police station in Hayes Square brought the construction of a permanent outpost for police in Charlestown one step closer to reality.
The two-story, 19,000 square foot facility comes at a cost of $10 million and will be the first full-service police station built in a Boston neighborhood that didn’t already have one since the Mattapan station opened in 1987, said Pat Brophy, the assistant director for operations for the city’s Capital Construction Division. Construction is expected to take 14 months to compete, and the station should be operational by the fall of 2008.
The state-of-the-art facility, which was designed by Somerville-based HKT Architects, Inc., will be built largely from red brick, cast stone and glass. It will contain a community room for meetings, as well as a detainment area, where suspects will be held until they can be transported to Area A-1 headquarters for booking. Two yet-to-be-determined units will also be housed at the facility, and a service will also be located on the premises for the refueling of all Area A-1 police cars..
Brophy said Halifax-based Wes Construction, a union general contractor, was recently, selected for the project, which will employ union electricians, masons, plumbers, roofers, carpenters, metal-window installers and HVAC workers.
The police station will share the same parcel as the Charlestown Recovery House, the drug treatment facility that received final approval from the Boston Redevelopment Authority last week, said Mayor Thomas M. Menino before a crowd of 100 at the ceremony.
“Our continuing commitment to the community is to give them best service we can,” Mayor Menino said. “Our police officers will have a quicker response than in the past. It’s a win for the community.”
State Rep. Eugene O’Flaherty, who played an instrumental role in helping to secure funding for the project, was also pleased to see progress being made on the new station.
“It’s coming together. “It’s nice to see the tent and shovels,” Rep. O’Flaherty said. “It’s going to be better when we see police cars and officers at a permanent station here. It’s a good location near the [Bunker Hill housing] development.”
Tom Cunha, chairman of the Charlestown Neighborhood Council, lauded the new police station as the product of a successful collaboration between the community, police and elected officials.
“I think of commitment, tenacity and cooperation,” Cunha said. “The mayor’s commitment to public safety and quality of life makes the statement that he’s still the mayor of the neighborhoods, Judy Evers and Peter Looney of the Charlestown Police Station Task Force have shown tenacity, and cooperation with the community will make this a true community police station.”
Captain Bernie O’Rourke of Boston Police Area A-1 believes the new station will be a valuable asset to Charlestown.
“This is a great addition to the community,” Captain O’Rourke said. “We’ll be able to increase police presence in the town, have a meeting place for residents and just increase the partnership between the police and the community.”
Peter Looney, chairman of the Police Station Task Force and emcee of the ceremony, views the groundbreaking as the culmination of many years of hard work on the parts of the various parties involved.
“We haven’t had a police station in 20 years, and now we’ll have a full station,” Looney said. “This is a great day for this community. This is the start of our Pride Week, which leads to our most important holiday, Bunker Hill Day.”

Findings and most recent numbers presented at the Charlestown Substance Abuse Coalition’s quarterly meeting last month suggest that drug abuse remains a serious concern in the community, although usage appears to be at least leveling off.
The most optimistic news is that Charlestown hasn’t seen a fatal overdose in a year and a half. The Boston Police Department also reported that there had only been two non-fatal overdoses in 2007 as of May 23 (although EMS responses for 2006 are not yet calculated). This marked a sharp decline from the 28 non-fatal overdoses that the police reported in 2006.
Dr. Nancy Norman, interim executive interim director of the Boston Public Health Commission, presented the most recent statistics for Charlestown compared with Boston based on the BPHC’s “Substance Abuse in Boston” report released March 2007 at the May 23 meeting. Yet, in 2004 — the most recent year the Boston Public Health Commission Research Office could provide data for — the substance abuse morality rate for Charlestown ranked among the highest of the city’s neighborhoods, with an average of 48 fatal overdoses per 100,000 residents. This was more than twice the overall rate in Boston of 22 fatal overdoses per 100,000 residents.
In 2005, the BHPC’s most recent data year, Charlestown ranked among the highest of all Boston neighborhoods for substance abuse hospitalizations with a rate of hospitalizations per 1,000 residents, compared with the citywide rate of 3.3 hospitalizations per 1,000 residents.
Meanwhile, EMS calls for drug overdoses in Charlestown are on the wane, dropping from 42 per 10,000 residents in 2005 to 34 per 10,000 residents in 2006, according to the BPHC. Yet, Charlestown had more than twice as many overdoses as the citywide rate in Fiscal Year 2006, which was 3.3 overdoses per 1,000 residents.
As is the case throughout the city, heroin and other opiates remain the primary drugs used for Charlestown residents entering treatment, followed by alcohol.
In Fiscal Year 2006, which ran from July 1, 2005 through June 30, 2006, heroin accounted for 45.4 percent of admissions to state-funded substance abuse treatment programs citywide, marking a slight decrease from the 48.6 percent of admissions for the same substance the previous fiscal year. Less optimistically, heroin accounted for 65.8 percent of admissions to state-funded treatment programs in Fiscal Year 2006.
And while the rates for the use of heroin and other opiates remains high for Charlestown, evidence suggests that the problem is stabilizing.
“The levels [for use of heroin and other opiates] are still high, but we’re not seeing jumps anymore,” said Beth Rosenshein, CSAC coordinator.
Admissions for alcohol, meanwhile, saw a slight increase, jumping to 36.3 percent in Fiscal Year 2006 from 34.7 percent the previous fiscal year.
In terms of demographics for Charlestown, men have higher rates for treatment admissions for the abuse of heroin and other opiates, yet we know women seek treatment less often then men. The white population significantly outweighs others in treatment admissions for heroin and opiates, accounting for as much as 61 percent of admissions in FY 2006, Rosenshein said.
Clients entering treatment programs were generally younger in Charlestown than other city neighborhoods. According to the BPHC, 48 percent of Charlestown clients were under 30, compared with a citywide rate of 28 percent.
Rosenshein said valuable information can be gained by studying usage rates in adolescents and that CSAC was working with both Charlestown middle schools to administer a survey that would examine risk factors in youth. Data from the surveys should be available by the fall.
One promising finding is that the purity level for heroin is on the decline. According to the BPHC, the purity level of heroin in Boston dropped to 29 percent in 2005 (the last year data was available for) from a purity level of 50 percent in 2002.
The Boston Police Department also reported that arrests were declining in Charlestown. In 2006, 373 arrests were made in Charlestown, 90 of which were for drug charges. As of May 23, 2007, only 124 arrest had been made year to date, including 34 drug arrests.
Likewise, youth arrests in Charlestown are down. In 2006, 51 juvenile arrests were made in Charlestown, nine of which were for drug charges. But as of May 23, 2007, eight juvenile arrests had been made year to date and only one was for drug charges.
While drug abuse remains a serious concern in Charlestown, CSAC co-chair Mike Charbonnier said the most recent statistics are at least promising.
“I’m encouraged that, based on the numbers, since CSAC started (in 2004), we’re doing a little better,” Charbonnier said.

CAPTION: Lt. Jim O’Brien is pictured with Engine 50.

On May 26, the Boston Fire Department recognized Lt. Jim O’Brien of Engine 50 at the department’s 138th Annual Ball and Awards Ceremony for saving the life of a badly-maimed soldier last year while serving in Iraq.
O’Brien was one of three recipients to receive the Edward Hommell M.D. Medal of Honor at the ceremony that took place at Florian Hall in Dorchester. The award, which was established in 1999 by the Boston Fireman’s Relief Fund, is “to be awarded to those members of the Fire Fighting Force who have performed an act of outstanding heroism, at great personal risk, in connection with his duties as a member of the Fire fighting Force of the Boston Fire Department,” according to a program for the event.
On Sept. 4, 2006, O’Brien, who was serving as a Navy corpsman with the 1st Battalion, 25th Marines, was on routine patrol in Fallujah in the Anabar province of Iraq. He faced enemy fire to rescue two injured Marines from their armored vehicle after it struck a roadside bomb. O’Brien personally tended to one soldiers who lost a leg in the explosion — Sgt. Terrence “Shane” Burke of Dorchester — before turning him over to Navy doctors at a nearby medical facility.
In February, O’Brien was also awarded the Marine Corps League’s Semper Fidelis Public Service Award for the heroic act.
O’Brien was honored to receive the Hommell Award, but now, six months after returning home from Iraq, he is eager to get on with his life.
“I am very honored to be recognized by the fire department,” O’Brien said. “I was very proud that I was able to do my job when I needed to do my job, but now I’m just moving on.”

The brutal attack on firefighter outside the Ladder9/Engine 32 firehouse on Sunday night has outraged fellow members of the Boston Fire Department, while the suspects remain at large.
“I can’t remember the last time someone from the fire department was attacked,” BFD spokesman Steve McDonald said of the attack on Ladder 9’s Lt. Christopher Corwin. “This is not characteristic of the people of Boston.”
At 11:30 p.m., the driver of a tractor-trailer pulled into the fire station at 525 Main St. to ask for directions, as Corwin, 42, and fellow firefighter Daniel Donahoe were talking. The firefighters stopped traffic to allow the tractor-trailer to pull out of the lot when four black males traveling in a dark-colored sedan began arguing with Corwin about the stopped vehicle, according to the BFD. The situation escalated, and the four suspects exited the sedan and surrounded Corwin before punching and kicking him. When Donahoe attempted to assist Corwin, the suspects also hit him before driving way from the scene. A female witness at the scene was able to provide police with a partial license plate number for the suspects’ vehicle, but Boston Police said Tuesday that the matter was still under investigation.
Corwin was transported to Massachusetts General Hospital, where he received 14 stitches across his forehead and was treated for a broken eye socket. He was released from the hospital Monday after also undergoing treatment at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.
Meanwhile, McDonald said Corwin was home Tuesday recuperating from the assault on him, but that he is eager to return to work.
“He’s seen the doctor, and he’s scheduled to see the doctor again next week,” McDonald said. “He won’t be able to return to work until he makes a full recovery.”

By the turn of the last century, the Charlestown Irish had “appropriated” Bunker Hill Day, the celebration of the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill that took place in June each year. The whole idea was, in a way, a supreme irony, and Will Rogers, at a Bunker Hill eve banquet, reportedly quipped that Charlestown was “the only place on the planet where the Irish celebrate a British military victory.”
But Rogers wasn’t the only one who found the Irish takeover of the distinctly Yankee affair an oddity. Some years earlier, Brahmin politico James G. Blaine II noted: ”Charlestown has for many years been predominately Catholic, Irish and poor. These people had appropriated the Battle of Bunker Hill into their folk customs, but the older more tribal loyalty remains, their allegiance to the Catholic Church. They have walked from the bogs of Connemara to the top of Bunker Hill and, for one all hears of how much the Irish hate Yankees, a hatred rooted in Boston’s past fully returned and not yet wholly eradicated, on June 17 one understands that such feelings do not prevent the sons and daughters—and grandsons and granddaughters—of Erin from claiming a part in America’s colonial and revolutionary heritage.”
It was, however, the New York City labor activist Michael Musuraca who chronicled the gradual Irish take-over in a July 1990 article in Labor’s Heritage. His headline was “The Celebration Begins at Midnight -— Irish Immigrants and the Celebration of Bunker Hill Day.”
Musuraca tells us how the first Bunker Hill Day was celebrated in 1825 under the auspices of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, among whose founding members were New England bluebloods, like Daniel Webster, Edward Everett and descendants of Dr. Joseph Warren. The Association’s mission was to secure funding for a suitable monument to be erected on the battlefield.
It took 18 years to finish the Bunker Hill Monument. During the construction, there were annual celebrations – speechmaking, concerts, banquets, recitals, parades and an occasional yacht race.
And, in 1843, when the Monument was finally completed, the Association held a gala celebration with President John Tyler and other dignitaries in attendance. The 1843 event was memorable for another reason -— Daniel Webster dishonored the occasion by delivering an insulting dedication address that was highly offensive to the 2,000 or so Irish in the audience.
From ‘43 to the centennial celebration in 1875, Bunker Hill Day was a sedate affair geared to Charlestown’s elitist society — a morning concert of classical music, a military procession from the State House or City Hall to the Monument, followed by a civic parade and speeches from perhaps less-bigoted members of the Monument Association. The day generally concluded with neighborhood concerts.
Though interest in Bunker Hill Day was fading -— in 1873, there was no celebration at all — the 1875 Centennial, presided over by Association President George Washington Warren, spurred a renewal and revival; it was, however, a revival that would, transform Bunker Hill Day forever.
After 1875, the Irish, who continued to swell the Town’s population, began to “remake” Bunker Hill Day in their own image. By 1884, the Monument Association no longer organized the festivities. Classical music sessions gave way to a morning carnival, and there were ubiquitous neighborhood open houses, firework displays, and street fairs lasting well into the night. Bunker Hill Day now bore strong resemblance to Irish holiday celebrations at home in Ireland. The Irish working-class, at least in Charlestown, had, after all, won the Day. The Yankees were in retreat.
In the late-1880s, a group called the Druids emerged from the ghetto of the old Point neighborhood to become a mainstay of the morning carnival. In 1887, they donned caps and gowns and cavorted through the Town as college grads, proclaiming themselves graduates of “the school of hard knocks.” The following year, they wowed the crowd as red-haired floozies in drag.
Masses of Townies jammed lower Bunker Hill Street to witness the carnival, and, as the “Druids” reached Hayes Square, onlookers erupted in deafening applause. A local reporter captured the scene:

“. . . hundreds of men, women and children occupied the windows and roofs of surrounding buildings as well as every vantage point on the streets and sidewalks. Torpedoes, confetti, firecrackers, and every other conceivable appliance for making noise was directed at the boys, who were unafraid — for here was their neighborhood.”

But the Druids were not the only “outrageous” marching group in the morning carnivals. There were many others -- the Harts, “the 40-80s,” the Mystic Order of Owls, the Dragons, the Putnams, Som Perei Bombeos, the Urbanes, the Post 11 Social Club, the Bunker Hills, Eutaws and Mishawums. Club members paid dues and sponsored dances and concerts during the winter months to raise parade funding. The Harts often spent upwards of a thousand dollars — big money in those days — on the trappings alone.
In successive years, the Charlestown Antique Association, the Mystic Order of Owls, the Bunker Hill Association, and “the 17th –of-June Carnival Association” managed morning events. They handled finances and organized music, floats, banners and decorations, while participating clubs produced their own “spectacular” programs and entertainments.
Yankee Charlestown was not at all amused by these “wild Irish
antics.” One Thomas Nast-type caricature of “Paddy O’Bunker of Cork” from the 1890s, resurrected from the Archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society, shows the degree of Yankee displeasure.
The Monument face bears the inscription, Erected by the Irish in Memory of Patrick O’Bunker of Cork,” and a Bishop’s miter sits atop the Monument. Three ape-faced Irishmen hang out of windows — one smoking a clay pipe, a second waving a miniature Irish flag. And, marching in front are six others — a politician with a bottle of booze and five disheveled, moronic-looking Irish militiamen.
But, the Irish took it in stride and, by 1919, Bunker Hill Day in Charlestown had become the grand Irish-American holiday. That year Alderman Daniel J. McDonald introduced athletic contests as part of the day’s events. In addition to American baseball, there would, promised the Alderman, be great Gaelic games.
Charlestown’s Knights of St. Finbar Corkmen’s Football Club, New England champs several years running, was one of the Nation’s premier Gaelic football teams, and on Bunker Hill Day, 1919, they defeated the rival Garryowens to retain their title. At the other main Irish sporting venue, the Emmets Hurlers beat the New England Kickhams, and, to top it off, Bunker Hill Council # 62 routed the North End K. of C. in an afternoon baseball contest. Charlestown was, even then, sports-mad, and huge crowds attended Bunker Hill Day athletic events. 1919 is remembered as “a very good year.”
The Murphys of Tufts Street celebrated Bunker Hill Day like their neighbors. Within a generation, Ned and Mary Murphy’s daughter Helen and husband Frank Dacey made the quantum leap from the depressed Point neighborhood to homeownership on Monument Square. The Murphys and their friends and relations began celebrating Bunker Hill Day at Helen’s home across from the Battlefield. And, in a family memoir titled Watering Roots, Patsy McMorrow-Strom describes Bunker Hill Day at the Daceys’ Monument Square home in the late-1940s:
Every June 17, Aunt Helen and Uncle Frank held an Open House after the Bunker Hill Day Parade, the biggest holiday of the year in Charlestown.
There was a new breed of politician now, second-generation Irish Americans who had served in World War II. Tip O’Neil, Torbie McDonald and a skinny young congressman named John F. Kennedy, who was the grandson of Honey Fitz, all stopped by Aunt Helen’s to secure the Charlestown Irish vote.
Huge tubs of beer were iced down in the backyard. A longshoremen buddy of my cousin Christy argued obscure points of Irish history with a priest friend of my dad’s. George Cohen, a schoolboy chum of uncle Frank’s from Chelsea, sat on a kitchen chair in the yard, shirt sleeves rolled up, playing “Roll Out the Barrel” on his trombone. Multitudes of children did the “Hokey Pokey” and slid around tables, trying to wheedle nickels and dimes from relaxed grown-ups to go to the carnival that night down Sullivan Square in the Schrafft’s Chocolate Company parking lot.
Life couldn’t get better than that. After all, the Charlestown Irish had found their niche and made the most of it. Even if the Brits had won the Battle of Bunker Hill, they’d lost the war. That was worth celebrating. In “Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families,” his sociological study of the Charlestown community, J. Anthony Lukas describes Bunker Hill Day in the 1940s. It was, he wrote, “. . . a great Irish-American jamboree, a ritualized expression of the Town’s solidarity, an exuberant statement of Charlestown’s independence from the rest of the world.”
And, so it was. And, so it is.

CAPTION: Al Gallarelli is seen in Eden Street Park, the site of his childhood home.

One of the fondest memories this year’s Al Gallarelli has of the Battle of Bunker Day Parade was playing the trumpet as a member of the St. Francis de Sales band at age 14.
Now, at 66, he looks forward to serving as Chief Marshall in Sunday’s parade.
“I’m quite honored by it,” he said. “I hope it’s a great parade, like so many others we’ve had.”
Born on July 7, 1930, Gallarelli was raised on a house on Main Street, where Eden Street Park now stands. He attended the Bunker Hill School, the Clarence R. Edwards Middle School and Charlestown High School, and like many others in town, he was an active member of the Boys Club from age 7 through his teens.
Upon graduating from high school in 1948, Gallarelli enlisted in the U. S. Air Force’s 102nd Tactical Fighter Wing and was sent to food service school at Fort Devens, a U.S. Army post in Middlesex County that officially closed in 1996. It was here that Gallarelli perfected his culinary skills that have graced many American Legion, Bunker Hill Post 26 functions, as well as Christmas parties at the Life Focus Center.
“I just kept going with it and excelled at it,” Gallarelli said of the cooking skills that he honed in the Air Force, adding that Italian dishes are his specialty.
While Gallarelli was a reservist stationed at the Otis Air Force base in Falmouth Mass. for most of his Air Force career, his outfit was deployed to France from 1960 to 1962 during the Berlin Crisis. In 1972, he retired from Air Force at the rank of Master Sgt.
In 1955, Gallarelli married Cynthia Enos, a Charlestown native who grew up on Pearl Street. The couple settled in a house on Mystic Street before moving to Bunker Hill Street in 1967 and raised two children: Marryjo, now 42, and Joe, now 40. (Gallarelli has six grandchildren, ranging in age from 4 to 21). Sadly, Gallarelli’s wife died in 2001 after a lengthy illness.
The same year he married, Gallarelli joined drum and bugle corps Royal Lances of Boston as a bugle soloist. The outfit competed nationally and won the American Legion State Championship, which Gallarelli described as “one of [his] biggest thrills.” After the Royal Lances disbanded in 1960, however, Gallarelli never played music again. “I got too involved with everything else,” he said.
Gallarelli’s other commitments included his service with the American Legion, Bunker Hill Post 26, which he joined in 1992. He has volunteered for many of the organization’s councils and served as Post Commander from 1995 to 1996. Although Gallarelli relocated to Wilmington in 1995, he remains involved with Post 26’s executive committee.
“I’ve always been at their call,” he said.
Gallarelli joined the Knights of Columbus Council 4982 upon moving to Wilmington and was named the Post’s Grand Knight last July. He will hold this position through September.
As for the parade, Arthur Hurley, chairman of the Battle of Bunker Hill Parade Committee, said when it came time to pick a Chief Marshall for this year, Gallarelli was an obvious choice.
“We chose Al for his service to the American Legion and community and for being an all-around heck of a guy,” Hurley said.
Two months after learning that he was selected was this year’s Chief Marshall, Gallarelli hasn’t narrowed down who will march with him in the parade, but he knows of two people who will surely join him. Besides his son, Joe, Gallarelli has also invited Joe Steen, a past State Commander of the American Legion and a classmate of Gallarelli’s wife,
And while Gallarelli hasn’t lived in the neighborhood for 12 years, he said he still considers Charlestown home.
“You come out of Charlestown, but you never leave it,” Gallarelli said. “It’s always in your heart.”