[SBC] Fwd: An idea for a Future Tour de Somerville...

[Ron Newman]

From: "John Alan Roderick" <rodericks at rcn.com>
Date: August 25, 2007 2:29:40 PM EDT
To: "Denise Provost" <provost_citywide at hotmail.com>, "Alan Moore"  
<alanjane at highstream.net>, "Brandon Wilson"  
<BWILSON at ci.somerville.ma.us>, "Dick Bauer"  
<dick.bauer at alum.mit.edu>, "Kristi Chase"  
<KChase at ci.somerville.ma.us>, "Ron Newman" <rnewman at thecia.net>, "Tom  
Battinelli" <tbattinelli at fsc.edu>
Subject: An idea for a Future Tour de Somerville...

Fellow Romans:

Hopefully everyone's having a pleasant summer.

I was just thinking (never a good thing)...

I've been posting recently on the Somerville News web log regarding
recollections of Somerville elementary schools of years gone by. As I  
posted
these, my wife and I were talking about the many elementary schools  
which
once populated the city and educated generations of Somerville youth,
ourselves included. She remembered how magnificent and well-preserved  
the
woodwork and classrooms at the Forster were, even into the late 60s and
early 70s. She even broke out a newspaper clipping showing her and her
classmates eating lunch at their desks in 1970-the first time that  
had ever
happened in Somerville at the older non-cafeteria equipped schools.

Might something like this be useable as a theme for a future Tour de
Somerville?

I would envision a route--perhaps over two days--visiting the sites  
of all
the schools (and there were over a dozen of them), many of which are no
longer extant. With a reasonable amount of effort, we could probably  
find
people who attended many if not all of them and maybe even have them  
meet us
at the sites to give personal oral histories of their own experiences  
and
recollections. I have a number of postcards showing many of these  
schools as
well as some other paper, ephemera, etc. and I'm sure the Somerville  
Museum
and other local resources could assist in providing additional  
materials.

I would be interested in hearing anyone's thoughts, ideas or caveats on
this.

73
JAR