SEPTEMBER 27
In 1961 September 27 was a Wednesday. The Wakefield Daily Item cost seven cents. Today’s Weather. SUNNY cool, less humid. Highest temperature upper 70’s. Thursday—fair and cool.
“Greenwood Yachtsman Rescued 7 Passengers from Crashed Jet” was the major headline splashed across the broadsheet, and it recognized Wakefieldian Carl DiPietro, Jr., of 219 Oak Street. The article recounted the story of an American Airlines jet that had crashed into Winthrop Bay; Di Pietro had manned the second rescue boat to reach the fallen aircraft and had sailed a boat-load of the jet’s passengers to safety at the Pleasant Park Yacht Club. “Di Pietro, district sales manager at Coast Marine in Winthrop, heard the ‘thud’ when the plane skidded off the runway and landed in 10 feet of water some 300 yards away from him. He leaped into his craft and sped to the plane along with other yachtsmen.” Also from Wakefield, yacht-club member Arthur L. Crosby of 14 Crosby Road heard about the crash and immediately went to the scene. By the time he arrived, all the plane’s passengers had disembarked, but other yacht-club members had used Crosby’s boat, a 44-foot cabin cruiser, for the rescue operations. “No serious injuries were reported in the latest Logan Airport incident that sent thousands of sightseers pouring into the Winthrop Bay area.”
Summer had come to an end and with it also ended a friendly rivalry between the local Rotary and Kiwanis Clubs. It was the fourth year for the clubs’ annual charity softball game, this year to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The game was hyped in the Item for two or three weeks before the event with tales of silly shenanigans between members of the two clubs. Their “public relations” stunts to woo a crowd to attend the game at Veterans’ Field included staging—complete with police report—a “theft” from the Rotarians’ commissary, where snacks and beverages had been stored for the post-game festivities; there was also a good deal of braggadocio on the part of the Rotarians who had won the event in each of the three previous years, and many photo ops had been provided to the Item staff photographers. The wager that had become a tradition was made: The president of the winning organization would be glorified by riding in a wheelbarrow down the center of Main Street, pushed by a member of the losing team. There was extra time to advertise the game and carry out some further good-natured threats and hijinks because inclement weather caused the game to be postponed a week. This year saw the Kiwanis Club win the game, 17–10, and the headline on the sports page declared it to be “Long Overdue!”
A new “Milk Depot” was going up in town: Whiting’s Milk Company had purchased three acres of land off New Salem Street, swamp area behind and to the east of Guillow’s model airplane factory, to build a $150,000 plant. “Whiting’s Milk Company of Boston will bring a modern, large-scale milk distribution facility to Wakefield in the latest forward move to the town’s industrialization. The well-known milk company will erect a 2000-square-foot building with the most modern milk-handling equipment in the country… . Sixty to 75 trucks for distribution of milk on retail routes over the entire north-of-Boston area will be based in the new facility.” The modern equipment included a refrigerated loading platform to which trucks would back up; it would be the first loading dock of its kind in the entire northeast and the East Coast.
Featured on the front page was a photo of Wakefield’s old horse-drawn fire engine. The steamer had been loaned to the Middleton Firefighters Carnival to participate in a fire-fighting scene that was reenacted every evening during the carnival. Warren Evans of Middleton drove his team of horses, Rocky and Raleigh, to pull the old steam engine.
