CAPTION 1: Eleanor Pansar, director of community services for the Kennedy Canter (at left), and Erica Schwartz, Kennedy Center case manager and parenting coordinator.

CAPTION 2: Pictured, left to right, are Jim Conway, past secretary of the Kennedy Center’s board of directors; Tom Cunha, vice president of the Kennedy Center’s board; Kate McDonough, executive director of the Kennedy Center; Melissa McGaughey, president of the Kennedy Center board; and Bill McCabe, past president of the Kennedy Center’s board.

On Tuesday night, the John F. Kennedy Family Service Center held an open house to introduce the public to its new administrative offices located above Olive’s restaurant on the fourth floor of 10 City Square.
The 1,150 square-foot space has been home to the Kennedy Center’s administrative offices and one case manager since June 1.Other Kennedy Center sites include Children’s Services at 23A Moulton St., Senior Services at 100 Ferrin St. and the Community Resource Center at 53 Bunker Hill St.
The new site replaces the former offices at 27 Winthrop St., which the human service agency had occupied since it was founded in 1964. The move came because the old office, owned by St. Mary-St. Catherine of Sienna, was in need of repair, according to Kate McDonough, the Kennedy Center’s executive director.
“We were in the other building for more than 42 years,” McDonough said. “It was great, but it was time to move.”
McDonough added that the new site, which is located a short distance away from the old Winthrop Street location, is less costly to operate and is wheelchair-accessible, thereby completing the Kennedy Center’s plan to make all its facilities wheelchair-accessible.
Tom Cunha, vice president of the Kennedy Center’s board of directors, said the move to an updated facility complements the agency’s new “dynamic” board.
“It’s a new, modern building with a prestigious address,” Cunha said. “We’re saving some money, so we can put it back into the programs.”
Eleanor Pansar, the Kennedy Center’s director of community services, hopes that clients will fell at home in the new location. “Hopefully, it reflects the dignity our clients deserve,” she said.
Melissa McGaughey, president of the Kennedy Center board of directors, believes that the move to an up-to-date facility signifies a new era for the agency.
“It’s a fresh start. It’s smaller than the old building, but we didn’t need that much space,” she said. “The employees are much happier here, and we’re very pleased with it.”
Meanwhile, the Kennedy Center launched its new Web site over the weekend at www.kennedycenter.org.

When Fran Doherty recently unearthed her family tree, she opened up a chapter in history that linked her to some of the most important figures in the history of Charlestown and the state.
Doherty’s sister, Dorothea Nardone, works in the film industry in Los Angeles, and in February, she enlisted the help of one of her employees to compile her family history on her mother’s side. Three months later, Nardone informed Doherty of their family’s distinguished past.
Doherty’s matriarchal ancestors, the Stevens, came to Boston Harbor from Cottenham, England, on the ship the Elizabeth in 1636 and went on to become some of the first settlers in Charlestown, she said. One of the family’s descendents, John Stevens, fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill with Capt. Benjamin Ames’ regiment.
“I can’t believe we are a part of Colonial era history,” Doherty said.
Doherty also learned that Hannah Frothingham was her sixth great-grandmother. Hannah’s nephew, Richard Frothingham (1812-1880), was the author of the “Richard Frothingham Papers,” his diary and notes for an unfinished history of Charlestown that represent the most comprehensive account of early times in the region.
“If it wasn’t for my family, there wouldn’t be a history of Charlestown,” Doherty said.
Another relative, Nathaniel Frothingham, took part in the Boston Tea Party on Dec. 16, 1773, the protest launched by American colonists against Great Britain that sparked off the American Revolution. He was buried in Copps Hill Burial Ground in the North End, the second oldest cemetery in Boston.
On a more sinister note, Mary Towne and Isaac Estey were Doherty’s eighth great-grandparents. Towne, along with her sister, Rebecca Nurse, were imprisoned in Charlestown for practicing witchcraft before being hanged in Salem in September 1692.
Other descendents of Doherty fought in the War of 1812 and King Philip’s War, as well as helping to settle many of the surrounding towns, including Ipswich and Andover, she said.
“I feel more in touch with myself,” Doherty said of her recent discovery. “I thought I was just a Townie. I was born here, and my family was from here. I though that was it.”
In September, Doherty will attend a Towne family meeting at the Peabody Marriot, a tradition that dates back 25 years. “I look forward to getting to know them, and they can see how I am,” she said.
With all that she has learned about her past, Doherty said she now spends much of her free time researching her lineage online and is constantly making new discoveries about her ancestors.
“I’ve barely scratched the surface here,” she said. “I’m going all the way with it to see where it brings me.”
Meanwhile, Doherty said she sees Charlestown in entirely new light after learning of her family’s past.
“Today, I walk through the town and look at it differently,” she said. “I imagine dirt roads and hills and think of what it would have been like when my family first arrived here.”

The Autoport on Medford Street will be the future home to a facility for the testing of wind-turbine blades, Jim Hunt, the City of Boston’s chief of environment and energy, said this week.
According to Hunt, U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman informed Gov. Deval Patrick that the state would receive $2 million in federal funding, which would be combined with approximately $13 million from state agencies, to build an enclosed facility to test wind-turbine blades horizontally for strength and rigidity The facility will be approximately 60 feet tall and long enough to test blades up to 230 feet in length. It is expected to be operational by 2009, Hunt said.
“This is a great win for Boston and the Commonwealth to land this nationally sought-after facility and to be at the forefront of renewable energy research and development,” Hunt said. “It’s critically important that as the next generation of wind turbines are developed that go deeper into the water, the technology advances rapidly.”
Hunt credited the decision to bring the facility to Boston to Gov. Patrick and Mayor Thomas M. Menino working together to personally lobby for it being built within city limits.
Autport spokesman Lanny Johnson said the wind-turbine testing facility is a perfect example of the efforts of Massport, which owns the Autoport, to promote alternative-energy sources at the Charlestown site and throughout the region.
“The wind-turbine facility is a particularly important project because it takes advantage of the maritime industrial nature of our site, while having only a minor impact on the community,” Johnson said. “New England is perhaps the prime location for the development of offshore wind energy, which means that there is significant potential that this project will lead to a major increase in manufacturing jobs for workers in the Boston area.”
A similar facility is also being developed in Texas.

The Archdiocese of Boston has put the former home of the administrative offices for the John F. Kennedy Family Service Center at 27 Winthrop St. up for sale with an asking price of $825,000.
The property, which was listed with Charlestown-based Grancey & Co. Real Estate on June 12, has an estimated 3,500 square-feet of frontage on three levels in the main building and an additional 1,333 square feet in its basement. The Kennedy Center, which has occupied the building since its foundation in 1964, relocated to 10 City Square on June 1.
According to Archdiocese of Boston spokesman Terrence Donilon, St, Mary-St. Catherine of Sienna Parish announced the property sale in its parish bulletin several months ago. The issue then went before the Parish Finance Council, which determined that it would be too costly to repair the building and bring it into the condition that it could be rented to another tenant.
Donnilon added that proceeds from the sale of the building would be used for “the betterment of the parish and the church in Charlestown.”
Fr. James Ronan, pastor of St. Mary-St. Catherine of Sienna Parish, said, “It’s a building that the parish doesn’t have a plan to use, so we’re going to sell it and go forward with everything else we have planned for the parish.”
Meanwhile, Peter Borré, a Charlestown resident and co-chair of the Council of Parishes Advocacy Group, said the last property in Charlestown that the Archdiocese of Boston sold was the rectory at 1 Monument Square in 2003 and 2004. The property was bought by local developer Byron Gilchrist and converted into condominiums, Borré said.
Approximately 10 years prior to this transaction, Borré said the Archdiocese of Boston sold a convent at 2 Monument Square, which was also converted into condominiums.
Borré added that last November, the Archdiocese of Boston sold St. Mary’s Church in East Boston to South Boston photographer Mike Indresano for $850,000. Less than three weeks later, Indresano resold the church, hall and rectory for $2.65 million to the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, a Brazilian church which Borré described as “vehemently anti-Catholic.”

The first annual Charlestown Open Market took place at Main Street between West School and Austin streets on Saturday, June 16. The event, sponsored by the Charlestown Business Climate Committee, showcased the neighborhood’s retail, service and home-based businesses, as well as many local artists and artisans.
Pictured above is the market in full swing.