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Every picture tells a story, A new mural in Amherst shows the faces of town history
BY NICK GRABBE STAFF WRITER
[ Originally published on: Wednesday, June 15, 2005, Daily Hampshire Gazette ]
AMHERST- FARMERS, poets, soldiers, musicians and mill workers from Amherst's past are coming back to life in a 150-foot-long mural at the town's oldest cemetery.
As artist David Fichter of Cambridge nears completion of the painting, a musical celebration is planned for tomorrow at 4:45 p.m. at West Cemetery to mark the end of four years of effort by the town's Historical Commission.
The mural, painted on the back wall of the Carriage Shops on North Pleasant Street, is a reminder of the breadth of Amherst's history and enhances a public downtown space, said Edith MacMullen, who chairs the commission.
''It makes Amherst history become more immediate, more personal,'' she said. ''These are individual human beings, ranging from an internationally known poet to a fruit vendor. It's an individualizing of history.''
'Unique characters'
The commission has tried to include not only well-known historical figures in the mural but also everyday people. It asked the public to nominate ''unique characters,'' and many were selected.
Fichter, who has painted murals for 20 years, used photographs to depict about 50 people. Poet Emily Dickinson looks angelic with a large flower behind her. Lumber patriarch W.D. Cowls and street superintendent Stephen Puffer Sr. are pictured on a trolley car. Farmer Howard Atkins stands on a ladder, holding an apple.
At least eight descendants of those pictured in the mural are expected to cut the ribbon tomorrow, and Rep. Ellen Story and Sen. Stan Rosenberg are due to speak. The New Black Eagles, a Boston area jazz band, will perform in honor of the late Gil Roberts, who is depicted on the wall.
Roberts, a banjo player who performed with the band, died in 2002 after living in Amherst in parts of three centuries. His daughter, Edythe Roberts Harris of Greenfield, said she is happy with Fichter's image of Roberts.
''It's a very good indication of what he looked like, with the smile and the glint in his eye,'' she said. ''It brought out his personality. I was really proud and very pleased.''
Yankee ingenuity
The mural has provided an opportunity for many people to reflect on the parts their ancestors played in Amherst's history.
Cinda Jones, the great-granddaughter of W.D. Cowls, now runs the lumber company that bears his name. He bought most of the timberland the company still owns and manages, she said.
''He symbolizes well the Yankee ingenuity, spirit of free enterprise and hard work that characterize our family's presence in Amherst from 1741 to today,'' Jones said.
Cowls, who lived from 1852 to 1928, helped create the Amherst-Sunderland branch of the Holyoke Street Railway, with his woodlots supplying the railroad ties and poles as well as the timbers for bridges the railway crossed, she said. His only child, Sarah, married into the Jones family, best known now for the real estate agency run by Cinda Jones' cousin.
''The Jones family is really thrilled about W.D.'s inclusion in the mural,'' she said.
Small-town folk
Dr. Peter Merzbach (1907-1997) was born and educated in Germany and, after coming to New York in the mid-1930s, learned English by watching movies, said his daughter, Susan Merzbach of Toluca Lake, Calif. He drove through New England, stopping in every small town to ask if a doctor was needed. When he arrived in Amherst in 1940, the town's only doctor had just been drafted, she said.
Known to all as ''Dr. Peter,'' he delivered more than 10,000 babies, using a new anesthetic that allowed the mothers to be awake but pain free, she said.
''I was thrilled to hear he would be memorialized via the town mural,'' she said. ''And I can tell you with absolute certainty that my father would have been proud beyond words to be so honored.''
Arthur Seaver of South Deerfield remembers working at the North Pleasant Street gas station (now Ren's Mobil) owned by his grandfather, Richard Hamilton (1896-1985), who is depicted in the mural.
''It was a gathering place, and he was the type of character you'd see in a situation comedy nowadays,'' he said.
Seaver's grandmother, Luella Hamilton (1898-1978), a secretary in the assessors office at Town Hall, is also in the mural.
''They weren't Emily Dickinson, but everyone knew them,'' Seaver said. ''They were what Amherst was all about at that time, a small college town where everyone knew everyone else.''
Working around windows
The owners of the Carriage Shops gave the Historical Commission permission to use the back wall for the 16-foot-high mural.
Fichter's design manages to avoid the 20 windows and air conditioners on the wall and paint along pipes at the bottom. One window serves as a stand for the apples and bananas of street vendor ''Peanut John'' Musante (1848-1904), an Italian immigrant who operated a sidewalk business on South Pleasant Street.
The artist was selected from among four applicants. After the commission gathered information on who should be depicted, he did a sketch on paper. After several revisions, he developed a 16-by-150-inch blueprint. James Wald of the commission helped him set up a grid on the wall to keep track of what was to go where.
Fichter transferred his design to the wall by outlining it with a thick felt pen. Then, using a 12-foot scaffold, he painstakingly painted the faces and the backgrounds. To protect against vandalism, he covered it with a removable varnish, he said.
He has been working on the mural most days this month, though he's been often delayed by rain. He's been assisted by four volunteers and on weekends by his two teenage daughters.
A public process
The mural area is in a part of the cemetery where people often walk, especially high school students taking a short cut to downtown. In the spirit of public art, Fichter stops his work to talk with anyone who asks about the mural.
He's challenged younger children to see if they can find a certain person's gravestone, he said. About 10 of the people in the mural are buried in West Cemetery, and their graves will be marked by balloons during the dedication tomorrow.
One woman who stopped by told him she speaks regularly with Emily Dickinson and some of the other people in the mural, said Fichter. Unfazed, he suggested she ask them what they think of his portraits, he said.
''People feel like they're communing with the spirits of these people,'' he said.
Another woman who walked by, Denise Plouffe of Amherst, said she remembers working with some elderly ladies in the 1970s who could have been among the hat-factory workers depicted in the mural.
''This is totally amazing. Thank you for making this a nice walk,'' she told Fichter.
Several local artists have volunteered their help on the mural. Sculptor Nancy Andrews of Amherst just moved to the area and was eager to learn its history, she said.
''People come by and want to know stuff, from little kids to teens,'' she said. ''It's fun, and a whole different process than working in a studio.''
Volunteer Donna Shotwell of Northampton teaches art in Belchertown. ''This is a chance to do my own art as opposed to teaching others,'' she said while painting Helen Hunt Jackson's dress.
Preserving a town treasure
The mural shows five aspects of Amherst history: farming; literature; domestic life; education and the military; and industry and economic life. Amherst Town Meeting rejected a request for public money for the project, so the Historical Commission has raised $42,000 privately to pay Fichter and cover other expenses, such as brochures and lighting.
Tomorrow, the commission will hand out programs identifying everyone on the mural and providing information on West Cemetery. Eventually, the commission hopes to produce a small glossy brochure designed to attract to the cemetery visitors to the Dickinson Museum and other tourist sites, said MacMullen. And she hopes that West Cemetery can be restored to become a welcoming public place, she said.
There's been a problem for many years with vandals damaging gravestones at West Cemetery. The commission hopes that the more attractive the cemetery is, the less vandals will want to desecrate it, MacMullen said. In the same way, the more the commission can bring historical figures to life, the more citizens may become interested in the town's past.
''If you have something that's really lovely, people respect it, and if something is forgotten, people don't respect it that much,'' she said.
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