Charlestown’s fledgling Super Duck Tours was scheduled to appear at a hearing in Moakley Federal Court in South Boston yesterday to face rival Boston Duck Tours’ claim that its name and cartoon logo were “confusingly similar” to its own, according to the civil action.
The civil action also accuses Super Duck Tours of “harassing potential Boston Duck Tours customers” by misrepresenting the well-established Boston Duck Tours’ ticket prices and availability.
Boston Duck Tours’ attorney Julia Houston of Boston law firm Bromberg & Sunstein LLP declined to comment on the pending case Monday but said her client’s claim was the result of a perceived copyright infringement and not an attempt to eliminate the competition.
Super Duck Tours responded with claims Monday that countered that duck tours is a generic term, rather than one that’s specific to its competition.
“Boston Duck Tours doesn’t have the right to prohibit the use of the description ‘duck tours,’” said Super Duck Tours consultant Lanny Johnson. “Both by the dictionary definition and around the country [such operations] are commonly known as duck tours.”
Despite the lawsuit, Johnson said the new venture, which had its maiden voyage in May, would continue to operate as usual.
“We’re just moving ahead according to the business plan we developed,” Johnson said. “Our business plan has little to do with Boston Duck Tours, but is a plan we’ve been developing over the last six or seven years.” (Dennis Kraez, general manger of Super Duck Tours, previously served as general manager of Super Duck Tours in Portland, Maine).
Johnson also said the Navy Yard-based Super Duck Tours focuses on a part of the city that was underserved by other existing tours. While Boston Duck Tours concentrates on the Charles River, Super Duck Tours focuses on Boston Harbor.
“Our approach was to determine what the need was in Boston and attempt to fill that need with a tour that was responsive to demand and was differentiated from existing trolley, harbor and duck tours,” he said. “To that end, we identified a geography that was not served by either trolley or other duck tours and was a similarly underserved customer base.”
Meanwhile, Johnson praised Boston Duck Tours, which was founded in 1994 and served 585,000 customers between April and November of last year.
“Boston Duck Tours is the premiere duck tour in the country,” Johnson said. “We hope that we are now providing what it took them 13 years to develop.”

CAPTION: Kim Cieslak is seen outside the Engine 50 firehouse on Winthrop Street, which boasts a historic marker courtesy of the Preservation Society.

Kim Cieslak first became aware of the Charlestown Preservation Society when she read about its historic marker program in the Patriot-Bridge last year. She was so intrigued by the program that uses plaques to designate noteworthy buildings in the neighborhood that she began researching the Bunker Hill Street building where she owns a condo. After learning the building was built in 1877, she recruited the building’s other tenants to jointly apply for a marker, which was installed soon afterwards.
Thus began Cieslak’s involvement with the organization that named her its president last month.
Born in 1973, Cieslak was raised in Gross Point, Mich., but her love for Boston came about as the result of trips that her family took to the city when she was a child. “I knew I wanted to live here since I was 12,” she said. After earning a degree in economics from the University of Michigan, she went a year in London working for a law firm. She relocated to Boston in 1996, without a job or any friends in the area.
Cieslak settled in Newton and worked at a couple of jobs before taking a position at LeMaitre Vascular, a Burlington-based manufacturer of medical equipment. Today, she serves as the company’s vice president of marketing.
Once Cieslak has saved up enough money to buy a condo three years ago, she was immediately drawn to Charlestown. “I knew I wanted to live somewhere historic like Charlestown,” she said.
After making contact with the Preservation Society via the marker program, Cieslak approached the organization and proposed using her marketing background to increase awareness of its work in the community. Last June, she joined on as a Preservation Society board member and helped launch a direct mail campaign designed to increase membership. (While the mailing material is now being distributed by local realtors, the campaign gets its official launch in September).
“Getting the word out that this society exists is going a long way,” Cieslak said.
Claire Lupton, the past president of the Preservation Society, believes that Cieslak’s friendly disposition and experience in marketing will serve her well in her new role.
“She’s extremely capable and has a marketing background and an extremely nice way with people, so she gets things done and gets them done collaboratively,” Lupton said.
As for her goals as new president, Cieslak said she would like to see historic markers in place grow from its present number of 100 to 200 or even 300. Besides increasing awareness of the town’s history, she also believes the marker program encourages residents to take better care of homes.
“When someone gets a marker, they might fix up their house a little more. Then they’re neighbor might do the same,” Cieslak said. “It’s contagious.”
She also hopes to see the Preservation Society’s membership double from its current enrollment of 250 households and to see its Mini-Grant and scholarship programs grow.
Perhaps most importantly, Cieslak hopes to see the Preservation Society’s goal of restoring the Civil War statue at the Training Field in Winthrop Square come to fruition. The Preservation Society now hopes to raise $50,000 through donations and city grants for the reparation, re-pointing and cleaning of the statue.
Cieslak now hopes get the entire community on board to help achieve the Preservation Society’s goals.
“It’s such a small neighborhood that it’s entirely possible,” she said.

Dr. Carol Johnson, who was formally appointed as the next superintendent of Boston Public Schools two weeks ago, has signed and purchase and sale agreement for a house in Charlestown, sources told the Patriot-Bridge.
Dr. Johnson, who currently serves as the superintendent of Memphis City Schools in Tennessee and previously served as superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools in Minnesota, will begin her new position in late August. During her tenure in Memphis, she successfully removed more than 100 Memphis schools from the state’s No City Left Behind “high priority” list and was named the Tennessee Superintendent of the Year by the Tennessee Parent Teacher Association earlier this year.
As a distinguished resident of Charlestown, Dr. Johnson joins Ian Bowles, whom Gov. Deval Patrick named as the state’s Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs in January.
Regarding Dr. Johnson’s relocation plans, representatives from Boston Public Schools and Memphis City Schools were unavailable for comment at press time. Two local realtors contacted by the Patriot-Bridge also said they had no knowledge of the transaction.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ken Stone

PHOTO CAPTION: Florence Johnson is shown placing roses on the World War II Monument in City Square in 2005.

On July 3, Florence Johnson of Charlestown was sworn in by Gov. Deval Patrick and Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray as a member of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Veterans’ Services during a ceremony at the Governor’s Council Chamber at the State House.
“Florence has demonstrated a lifetime of service and commitment to our military and veterans, starting with her support of troops during WWII through today, where she participates in several veteran groups in Charlestown,” said Lt. Gov. Murray, who chairs the council. “I am pleased to have her as a member of the council, and I look forward to hearing her insight on the needs of veterans of all wars.”
A World War II veteran, Johnson is the past department president of Gold Star Mothers Inc. of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. She is also a WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) national member, a past commander of Bunker Hill Post, 26 the American Legion and a member of Post 32, Amvets of Gloucester. In addition, Johnson presently serves as a veteran board member of the Green Street-based veterans’ organization Memorial Hall and volunteers at the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans in Boston.
The council, which was created by executive order in April, reviews and assesses services and programs for veterans and their families, including health care, education, housing, outreach, training and retraining. Council members represent organizations throughout the state that serve veterans. The United States Department of Veterans Affairs and the United States Department of Labor were also invited to participate.
As a member of the council, Johnson hopes to assist veterans returning from Iraq.
“The federal government should take care of the them and help them get back on their feet,” she said. “After all, they fought for their country.”
Johnson continued, “When I got back from World War II, they couldn’t give us enough. I’m looking out for the boys coming back now. What’s their future going to be?”

PHOTO CREDIT: Rosetta Cannizzaro

PHOTO CAPTION: Charlestown participants in the Memoir Project are seen at the Zelma Lacey House.

The Memoir Project, a program that takes place at the Zelma Lacey House on Tuesday mornings, encourages 10 Charlestown seniors to use the written word to capture their memories of growing up in the community.
The 10-week program began in June and is the result of a partnership between the city’s Commission on Affairs of the Elderly and Grub Street, a Boston based independent, non-profit creative writing center. It was launched last summer in the North End, South Boston and Roxbury, and a professionally-bound book will be published in the coming months containing memoirs from each of these neighborhoods. Besides Charlestown, this installment of the Memoir Project also includes East Boston, Mattapan and Chinatown. A book containing excerpts from this session is scheduled for publication sometime next year.
Kaysea Cole, deputy commissioner for the elderly commission, said listening to participants share their memories has given her a glimpse into Boston’s history and the experiences of her elders.
“I’m 32, so I’ve learned so much from this generation about pride and patriotism,” Cole said. “There’s something that my generation is missing. That’s very evident in the room.”
Cole added that sharing stories often triggers memories in other participants and that she hopes that the project will serve as a springboard for writing memoirs for their families. She is well aware that writing about personal experiences is a challenging task, however.
“It’s much easier to write a novel than an excerpt from your life,” she said.
Grub Street’s Michelle Seaton, who serves as the instructor, said one thing that sets Charlestown apart from other neighborhoods is the participants’ willingness to open up and share their experience.
“It seems like a family, rather than a disparate group of adults in a classroom,” she said. The neighborhood is more tightly-knit than we ever thought.”
Seaton also attributes this candor in part to Charlestown’s ethnic makeup.
“In the Irish-American community, there is a tradition of storytelling and love of storytelling that takes precedence over privacy,” she said.
One participant, 62-year-old Charlestown native Billy Boyle, recalled how he and six friends volunteered for the draft in 1962. His memory was triggered by two photographs he shared with the class: one a photograph of the group at a going-away party at a neighborhood coffee shop just before joining the army, the other of them at boot camp at Fort Jackson in North Carolina. The group went on to serve two extended tours of duty in Vietnam, getting out just before the military extension circa 1964. “We got out just in time,” he said.
Like many other participants, Boyle said unearthing these memories can often be an overwhelming experience.
“It’s a very emotional thing, but it’s enjoyable,” he said.
One exercise that was particularly meaningful for Peter Looney, a 64-year-old lifelong resident of Charlestown, was describing an object from his childhood home — in his case, an ashtray stand.
For Looney, the ashtray stand brought back of growing up on High Street with his guardians Ma and pa Murphy, his first communion, his confirmation, his marriage and countless other episodes from his life.
“It’s always been in the house I’ve lived in,” Looney said. “I took it for granted.”
Marie Hubbard, 78, said reduced to tears when she began describing Lorraine (McDonald) Forbes, a close friend of hers since the third grade. Among the many memories that the exercise uncovered were when Forbes comforted Hubbard at Thanksgiving after the death of her second family and how Forbes once helped decorate her Christmas tree when Hubbard was feeling down.
“She’s always been there when just about anything has happened in my life — good or bad,” Hubbard said. “We were the very best of friends and still are. It’s only once in a lifetime that you find a friend like that.”
But perhaps what makes the Memoir Project most poignant is that it allows participants to relive their younger years — if only for an instant.
“It’s wonderful going back in time,” Eileen Locke, 64, said. “You learn so much about yourself and others. I encourage everyone to so it.”

Four finalists are now vying for the position of the Charlestown Community Centers’ cluster administrator, with final interviews scheduled to take place this week.
The cluster administrator is responsible for overseeing operations at all city-operated Charlestown Community Centers sites, including 255 Medford St., the Clougherty Pool and the Golden Age Center. More than 10 candidates took part in the interviewing process, which was conducted by the Boston Centers for Youth & Families Program Director Diane Joyce, BCYF Director of Operations Bob McGann and two members of the Charlestown Community Centers Council, Tom Cunha and Erin Coppinger. BCYF Executive Director Robert Lewis Jr. will select the top candidate after the interviewing committee makes its recommendation to him within the next two weeks, according to Joyce.
“We’re as anxious as anyone to fill the position and get some new leadership in Charlestown,” Joyce said.
McGann, who has performed the cluster administrator’s duties since Mike Farma was transferred from the position on Dec. 1, believes that the process is fair and will successfully place the best candidate in the job.
“We have four very qualified candidates,” McGann said. “Any one of them would be terrific for the agency.”
Meanwhile, Tom Desmond, president of the Charlestown Centers Council, said in the end, the city would determine who is the next cluster administrator.
“The board has its input, but ultimately the decision is up to the city, which is as it should be,” Desmond said.