A Look Back at Nana...

This post is written by guest blogger Ross Mercier...my Dad...aka Pop Pop:) He wrote this last summer and I am just now posting it. It's amazingly timely and is a remarkable tribute to Nana and Gramps. A very special thanks to Polly for organizing these extraordinary keepsakes for our family! enjoy~

Hi Kate, I’ve added a little history under each of the images below per your suggestion. These were all scanned by Polly Pare, Nana and Grandpa’s next door neighbor since I can remember. Polly is now (Aug 2011) 77 and Ray is 80. They have meticulously taken care of the Swanton house since Nana went into the nursing home eight years ago. ...just because they were neighbors and were good friends of Nana and Grandpa. ...only in a small town. Polly is a mainstay of the Swanton Historical Society thus had scanned in hundreds of Swanton pictures mostly archived by an eccentric town merchant named Orin Bacheldor. He did the typed captions included in the images and single handedly saved a major chunk of Swanton History. Lucky for you the images below are only ones having some significance to our family.

Ray mows the lawn and trims the hedges in the summer, and snow blows the driveway in the winter even though there’s generally no one home.

My job this trip was to put up new gutter and remove the vines to reveal the Mercier “M”. Back in the day people knew they were going to stay put awhile so adding a monogram was an option. Picture me sitting on the peak of the roof with a long pole with a hook on the end scraping the vines out of the flues on top. Ray’s 32 ft ladder was 4 feet too short to get to the very top of the chimney.



This is the list of people attending the house warming in 1950 for the Swanton house. 70% were still friends of my parents 40 years later. Kind of unusual these days. Pop Pontbriand listed above was Nana’s dad and owned a plumbing supply business in Swanton. Pop Mercier was my other grandfather so it’s only natural I became “Pop” to my grandkids. I can tell Betty Eldridge - Nana’s best friend since they were teenagers - made out the list. Her handwriting always looks like she was writing on a ruler. She just passed away at home at 93 last year.

This was a post card written to Nana at her early house in Swanton by some barn stormer (slight speculation) that was in town. She would only have been about 14 yrs old. Romance started early in those days.

This is just the front of the post card from the flyboy but gives Nana’s early home address

This is Nana when she was 18 years old.

...the back of the picture above in Nana’s handwriting. Her oldest sister Alfreda was married to the mayor of Lake Worth, Florida. Their son Robert O’Conner went to Berkley, even before there were hippies:) He then came back to Vermont and was my Freshman english teacher at BFA (Bellows Free Academy) in St. Albans. That would have been about 1964. He then came to his financial senses and became a Customs officer:) and retired from there and now lives in Walpole, NH.



Nana’s report card from the 2nd grade.



This is Nana’s mother’s obituary. Joe Lambert was a pallbearer, and I believe, her brother? Megan ended up being good friends at South Burlington HS with Susan Lambert, a descendent of Joe’s, just by coincidence.


  
Grandpa played on this St. Michaels baseball team that beat UVM. He hit second and played right field. Back then Saint Michaels was basically a seminary and Grandpa was on track to become a priest. Thank goodness for Nana’s good looks or we wouldn’t be here:)


  
This was a highlight of Gramps’ coaching career. Winning the VT state championship in 1955. ...you’ll see him coaching both Swanton High and St. Anne’s teams in the following photos. And, both baseball and basketball at various times. ...all volunteer.

This is looking down Canada Street to where the downtown sits. Spring Street, as the caption points out, is off to the right. The houses you can see are still there.  

This old Post Office store front ended up being Gramps’ grocery store from, I’m guessing, about 1949 to 1959. I was born in 1949 and I remember him delivering groceries around town in his red 1955 Ford station wagon. Ironically, the Postal Service was going to be his next career move.



That same store front is located at the top of the hill going down to the Missisquoi River , and is just off to the left of center in this old photo.

This is the Catholic church that I grew up attending. Nana played the organ and Grandpa was the “lay reader” for much of the time I can remember. This is where everyone in the family had their first communion and was “confirmed”. Your mom and I went to the rectory just to the right to explore getting married there. ...she can tell you the story of why that didn’t work:) Further to the right, which you can hardly see, is where I went to grade school. Just to the left of the church you just see St. Anne’s HS where John and Julie graduated, and Gramps coached.



Your great uncle Harold is shown above. I remember going to an auction on Lake Champlain when his household goods were being sold after his death. I ended up buying a pair of high boots that I wore for years during mud season. I never knew Uncle Harold very well but was often thankful for the boots.



Uncle Ken (Douglas) in the upper right hand corner married Nana’s sister - Veronica - and built the Swanton house.  



This is Gramps with one of his St. Anne’s teams. Note Uncle John on the far right.

There’s Uncle Ken again in the upper right. He was a contractor and had his workshop almost in Nana and Grandpa’s backyard. He and Veronica also had a camp on the lake in West Swanton where we had many good times. ...also dated Abe Grodzinsky’s daughter briefly when I was a Freshman at BFA in St. Albans:)

This is the earliest picture of Gramps coaching. On his team here is your great aunt Eileen, the second from the left. Eileen is now 91 and living on her own in Swanton. Gramps’ real name is Herman William, but everyone in town knew him as Zenie. Nicknames went along with playing sports for some unknown reason in those days. His brothers’ names were Clyde and Lloyd. Both deceased now. Their nicknames were Zub and Tooney.


  
Gramps coaching his brother Tooney shown in upper left.



Just to show Nana was no slouch, this is her basketball team from 1933. She’s on the lower right. Alene Pontbriand. ...her mother was a Lambert from Highgate Center.

Gramps and your great uncle Zub on the first St. Annes basketball team in 1928. St. Anne’s dissolved after Missisquoi Union HS came into existence in 1970.



One of Grandpa’s 1940’s teams. He would go into WWII shortly after this and serve in an Army unit called the Fighting Blue Devils in Italy. If you asked Nana she would say he had it easy compared to her raising 2 kids back here. He would send back pictures of places like the Leaning Tower of Pizza and really make her mad:) Lucky for us I got conceived at all.

Downtown Swanton as it was pretty much through the 60s. Their was a major fire accompanied by high winds in 1970 that wiped out this whole block. The character isn’t quite the same. My summer job in 1970 was to help rebuild the downtown.



Gramps leased the movie theatre on the right as one of his sidelines up through when I was about 12 years old. It was a pretty cool place. I remember huge velvet curtains that would part for each movie. It had a full stage in front of the screen, a balcony and great art deco lighting. The nuns would always show up for major religious productions like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments. ...then he ends up lending credibility to the NRA. ...go figure.



Uncle Harold again back in the day. Must have been just before the nickname era.



Gramps is third from the left with the hat back. State Champs 1930. Pretty cool. Sports were always a big deal in Swanton up through my era.



Uncle Zub is in this one.



Gramps team from 1936.



Swanton HS in the lower left. Nana’s alma mater and the school who’s teams Gramps coached for many years.



This is the Post Office where Gramps started in the late 50s when he got out of the grocery business.



This is the Post Office that is still there. It was built just after Gramps became Post Master. Nana always kept the plantings fresh out front.

Spring Street where our house is now the 3rd on the right. This is long before it was built.



This is just a good vintage picture of the early covered bridge over the Missisquoi River. I spent the summers when I was 13 and 14 years old fishing the Missisquoi river out to it’s mouth where it empties into Lake Champlain.

Thank you Dad for pulling this together it is overwhelmingly special for the entire Mercier family...oxox