WAKEFIELD — The Sweetser Lecture Series Advisory Committee recently announced its fall 2022 series: “The Rise of the Human Spirit.” The Wakefield’s Sweetser Lecture Series will hold its first program near the end of September. Tickets are now being sold at the Sweetbay shop, 478 Main St., Wakefield. You may also mail your request for tickets to Box 1734, Wakefield, MA 01880. A ticket for a single lecture is $10. For a discounted price of $25, you will receive admission for all three lectures. Please enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope and a check with your request. You may also buy your ticket the nights of the lectures at the venue.

Leading off is best-selling author, historian, and lecturer Stephen Puleo. A veteran of several Sweetser Series, Puleo’s subject this year will be “Voyage of Mercy: America’s Effort to Save the Irish During the Great Famine.”  He will speak on Wednesday, September 28.

Following two weeks later, on Wednesday, October 12, Sanjiv Chopra,MD, best-selling author, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and International lecturer, will offer advice in “Live Healthier! Live Happier! Live with Purpose!”

Then on Wednesday, October 26, author and Brandeis University WSRC Scholar Kate Clifford Larson, PhD, will speak on “Soaring Spirits for Freedom: Harriet Tubman and Fanny Lou Hamer.”

All three lectures will be held at the Savings Bank Theatre at Wakefield Memorial High School, 60 Farm St. in Wakefield, at 7:30 p.m. on their respective evenings The Savings Bank has donated a substantial monetary contribution to support the Series.

The Sweetser Lecture was started through as bequest in the will of Cornelius Sweetser, a wealthy local shoe manufacturer who died in 1881. Sweetser designated money for Wakefield and Saco, Maine, to initiate a series of educational programs in each town for the citizens. By the terms of the will any excess proceeds are donated local charities. In the past few years, beneficiaries of the Lecture Series have been the Wakefield Food Pantry, the Salvation Army Holiday Unit (Wakefield residents), and the Wakefield efforts of the Mystic Valley Elder Services.