Of Olymics, Himalayas, and the Great American Diner, Vol. IV

By David "Chet" Willamson Sneade

Swimmer Albina Osipowich was born in Worcester in 1911. She is the only person from this city to ever take home Olympic gold. It happened in 1928 at the summer games in Amsterdam. Albina was then a 17-year-old North High School student who nearly missed her chance to medal. Fighting a nasty case of the flu, she barely qualified to finish third in the Olympic trials the year before.

Her given name was Albina Lucy Charlotte Osipowich and grew up on Columbia Street in Worcester. So strong was she that Albina trained at the Worcester Boys Club to compete against male athletes who presented more of a challenge.

Her Olympic showing was quite the historic performance for this Worcester teenager. She set a world record for the 100-meter freestyle, clocking in at one minute and eleven seconds. Together with her female cast, Osipowich also took home a gold medal in the 400-meter relay. This was on a star-studded U.S. team that featured two male swimmers who went on to become matinee idols. Johnny Weissmuller and Buster Crabbe moved to Hollywood to appear in Tarzan movies. Returning stateside, the Worcester Telegram reported that “more than 100,000 people turned out to see Osipowich.”  

Albina (third from left) with her Olympic teammates in white robes.

After the Olympics, Osipowich enrolled in Pembroke College, which is now Brown University, where she continued to swim and play field hockey. In her college career, she won two National AAU titles in the 100 and 220 freestyle. She also held long-distance records in the 200, 220, and 100 freestyle.

After graduating, for a short time was a buyer for a department store. She married Harrison Van Aken, a former basketball player at Brown and the couple raised two children. Albina’s granddaughter Kristin, was quoted saying, “Her story certainly is the quintessential American Dream. She was the daughter of immigrants who didn’t have the money for her to go to the Olympics or to college, and she was able to achieve both of those dreams and goals.”

Albina was posthumously inducted into the Brown Hall of Fame and is a member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

She died in 1964.

Diner man Thomas H. Buckley, or T.H., was better known as the “Lunch Wagon King.” He was born in Worcester in 1891. He was not the inventor of the Great American Diner, but most definitely the original manufacturer of these meals on wheels. His was the owner and operator of the Worcester Lunch Car Company, which built and established diners in more than 200 cities and towns from New England to the mid-west.  

According to Daniel Engber of the New York Times, “They came in different models: One was called the Owl; another was the White House Cafe. Many had colored windows and other noisy ornaments, as well as sinks, refrigerators and cooking stoves. In 1892, he introduced the Tile Wagon — with silver carriage lamps and brass spittoons, plate-glass mirrors and fine mosaics.”

Buckley started his career in the food industry as a counter boy at local restaurants, before opening his own lunch car. He soon realized that making diners instead of breakfast was a better way to go and much more profitable. The company went through a series of names such as the New England Night Lunch Wagon Company, the T.H Buckley Lunch Wagon Manufacturing and Catering Company, before evolving into the Worcester Lunch Car Company.

Who hasn’t eaten in a diner? As writer Joan Russell points out, the American diner is a “home away from home for many Americans. Often open 24 hours a day, the diner is a place to socialize, eat when working a late shift or enjoy a meal any time of day. It is an American icon that has appeared in all facets of popular culture.”

Many classic diners are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. “[It] is a setting in acclaimed films like Pulp Fiction and When Harry Met Sally, some of the greatest novels of the 20th century and even paintings by Edward Hopper and Norman Rockwell. In the TV series "Twin Peaks," the detective often stopped at the diner. Artist Edward Hopper has a painting of people alone in a 24-hour diner at night sitting at the counter called Room in Brooklyn. Tom Waits' first live album was called Nighthawks at the Diner and he had a song about diner food and nightlife on the album,” Russell said.

As successful as T.H. Buckley became, it might be argued that the food didn’t agree with him. He died in 1903 of peritonitis at the age of 35.

Explorer Fanny Bullock Workman was born in Worcester in 1859. A tireless champion of women’s rights, in her day of the 19th Century Victorian Age, she was known as a “New Woman.” Workman would be the first to tell you that she was “equal to any man,” then go out and prove it. The history books describe her as a “professional mountaineer” (who set female altitude records). She was also a travel writer, cartographer, geographer, wife and mother.

A descendant of the Plymouth Rock Pilgrims, Fanny was born into wealth and privilege allowing her to travel the world and write about her journeys and exploits in books and magazine articles. Her father was Alexander H. Bullock, a one-time Republican governor of Massachusetts. Young Fanny attended Miss Graham's Finishing School in New York City, before setting sail for Europe – to be cultured in the ways of the Old World.

In his book, Game Faces: Five Early American Champions and the Sports They Changed, writer Thomas H. Pauly noted that Workman “chafed at the constraints of her privilege.” Her early writings bear that out, revealing her desire for a life of adventure. Fanny Bullock married Dr. William Hunter Workman, a man who shared her interests in adventure, who introduced her to mountain climbing in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where women were encouraged to scale the heights. Soon the couple set about seeking conquests around the world, including the Himalayas. Throughout their travels, Fanny encountered the suppression of women and wrote about it.

According to Jenny Ernie-Steighner, Fanny’s White Mountain experience helped in her commitment to women's rights. “No other well-known international mountaineers of the time, male or female, spoke as openly and fervently about women's rights,” Ernie-Steighner said.

Fanny Bullock and Dr. Workman

The Workmans were recognized for their travels and were in demand on the lecture circuit. Fanny has the singular distinction of being the first American woman to lecture at the Sorbonne. She lectured in French and German, as well as in English and at one talk in Lyon, France, more than 1,000 people attended. In her lifetime, she also received a host of medals and honors for her mountain climbing achievements and has been recognized as “an ardent feminist and a supporter of women's suffrage.”

Fanny died in Cannes, France in 1925. She is interred at Rural Cemetery in Worcester.

Writer Hugh Aaron was born in Worcester in 1924. He says he’s been writing ever since high school. “I was also an English major at college,” Aaron told The Writer’s Life Magazine. “My latest book, Stories from a Lifetime, consists of stories I had written over the past 40 years which I simply filed away until now.”

After high school, Aaron joined the military and was a Seabee during WWII, stationed in the South Pacific.  In his work, The Story of an American Entrepreneur, Aaron wrote: “The veterans who returned from WWII and who took advantage of the GI bill that paid their college tuition and a monthly stipend to live on, became the most successful, most creative generation of Americans who had ever lived. Neither their children nor their children's children have to date surpassed or even replicated their economic and cultural success.”

After the war, Aaron graduated from the University of Chicago. According to his biography, his professors “encouraged him to pursue a literary career. However, he made his living as CEO of his own plastics materials business while continuing to write. Only after he retired was his writing published, consisting of two novels, a travel journal, two short story collections, a book of business essays, a book of letters, a child's book in verse and a book of movie reviews. The Wall Street Journal also published eighteen of his articles on business management and one on World War II.”

“I suddenly began writing when I was in my 50s, Aaron said, “because that's what I always wanted to do but hesitated to because I didn't have enough confidence in myself. But in middle-age, I found it, for better or worse, and eventually produced 11 books - none of them best sellers. But why does it matter? I wrote for myself anyway.”

Aaron is presently writing and producing plays. He has ten full-length and ten one-act stageplays to his credit. He now lives with his artist wife, Ann Stein, in Belfast, Maine.

Painter Emily Burling Waite was born in Worcester in 1887. As the story goes, “she drew a chalk profile of her brothers on the kitchen wall when she was four.” A talented artist from that tender age, Waite continued to draw and paint all through grade school. While maintaining studies at Classical High School, she also took classes at the Worcester Art Museum School, where she studied under Philip L. Hale and Hermann Dudley Murphy.

Portrait of a Dutch Woman

There she won first prize in a drawing competition that allowed her to then study at the Art Students League, a legendary school founded by artists in 1875. Located in New York City, the school has such famous alum as Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson  Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Louise Nevelson. At the League, it has been said that Waite “changed her focus from illustrating to painting.”

Waite also studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School for another two years. There she was the recipient of Sears' Prize and the Paige Traveling Scholarship, which allowed her to study abroad. From 1908 to 1910, Waite was found in England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Spain and her work had been exhibited at the Salon des Beaux Arts in the spring of 1911.  

La Fiesta di Costume

Returning to America in 1912, Waite opened a studio on Boylston Street in Boston. The young artist grew restless recognizing that as a female artist she was not taken seriously. As a radical move, the young artist started to sign her paintings simply as "E.B. Waite," as to not reveal her gender. For a time, Waite also lived in Washington, DC.

According to a biographical sketch written by the creators of the Worcester Women’s History Project, Waite moved back to Worcester in 1931 and opened “a studio at the family home on Franklin Street. From 1934 to 1938 she taught drawing and painting and design at the Bancroft School. In the 1950s she started to use the technique of soft-ground etching, which was to become her most popular print medium. Her subjects included many Worcester residents, buildings, and local scenes.”

Untitled

Today, Waite's paintings, etchings, and drawings are seen in the collections of the Worcester Historical Museum, Worcester Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian.

Miss Anne Wood

According to the Worcester Historical Museum, when Waite died in 1980, "her son locked up her art studio and rented out the house. When he died in 2013, the studio's contents became available to the Museum -- work that spans nearly 80 years, from art schools she attended in her youth to the last year of her life." An online auction happened a few years ago, and the proceeds benefited the museum.

Commerce High School, 1936

Basketball star Zygmund “Ziggy” Strzelecki was born in Worcester (1919 or '20), the son of John Strzelecki and Joan (Gajzder). He is considered by the Clark University Athletic Hall of Fame to be the “outstanding player in his era.”

Before becoming a legendary basketball player as a Clark University Cougar, Ziggy was an All-City football player, all-star basketball player, and standout baseball player at Commerce High School. According to the authors of The Polish Community of Worcester, Ziggy was considered a “phenomenon,” who set “school records during his two years at Becker College and was the country’s second-leading scorer in his last three seasons at Clark University.” His performances earned him the Hebert Trophy as the top male senior athlete of his class. He was known for his ambidextrous hooks, dead-eyed set shots, passing skills, and dribbling ability.

According to the Clark Hall, after his college playing days, “Strzelecki traveled around New England with several semi-professional teams. From the period of 1937 to 1952, he played in approximately 1,200 games, scoring more than 24,000 points.”

Playing for a team sponsored by Table Talk, Ziggy holds the winning trophy

As a married man with a growing family, Ziggy actually turned down an offer to join the newly formed NBA Boston Celtics “in order to take on the position of director of physical education in the Webster-Dudley school system.”

His years as a coach allowed him to scale even greater heights than his playing career. After 37 years of coaching his record was 292-78. Strzelecki is a member of the Clark University Hall of Fame, the Bartlett High School Hall of Fame, the State Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, the New England Basketball Hall of Fame, and in 1999, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette named him the Central Massachusetts Athlete of the 20th Century.

The Bartlett Hall noted that former Red Sox baseball announcer Ken Coleman wrote a poem about Ziggy. “A line near the poem’s end reads: “And also one of the best men that God has ever made.”

Strzelecki died in 1988.

Social reformer Mary Coffin Ware Dennett was born in Worcester in 1872. Her father, George Whitefield Ware, a wool merchant died of cancer at a young age. Unable to find decent work because of her gender, Mary’s mother, Livonia Coffin moved to Boston to chaperon Victorian women in their travels to Europe.

As her mother traveled abroad, Mary stayed with an aunt (Lucia Ames Mead), a peace advocate and supporter of the women’s suffrage movement. She certainly influenced her niece towards such concentrations, but before becoming a social reformer herself, Mary was interested in art. She enrolled in a high school in Northampton called Miss Capen's School for Girls, where she excelled in the arts. Upon graduation, she attended the School of Art and Design at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

After graduation, Mary moved to Philadelphia and began her life in the arts. Through a series of devastating twists of fate -- including the loss of children at birth and an unfaithful husband -- Mary fought for the custody of her two healthy children. The experience led her deep into feminist politics.

According to writer Lakshmeeramya Malladi, Mary became a pioneer in advocacy for social reform “particularly regarding sex education and women's rights to access contraception. Dennett authored several publications on sex education and birth control laws. She also worked to repeal the Comstock Act, a federal law that made it illegal to distribute obscene materials through the US Postal Services.

During the early 1900s, Dennett distributed a pamphlet she wrote on sex education called, "The Sex Side of Life," through the post, which triggered a series of legal challenges that contributed to the dismantling of the Comstock Act. Dennett was an advocate for sex education and contraceptives, and her actions helped increase women's access to information about reproductive health.” Malladi said.

For the rest of her life, Dennett worked tirelessly for a woman’s right to choose. She is the author of Who's Obscene? (about the Comstock trial), and The Sex Education of Children: A Book for Parents. She moved to Valatie, New York, where she retired in the 1930s but continued her work as a social reformist. In the 1940s, she helped organize the World Federalists to promote world peace. She died in 1947 at the age of 75.

Rockabilly guitarist and singer Tony Rand was born in Worcester in 1914. He was the son of Pietro and Mary (DeBonis) Ranucci. In the mid-50s, he recorded two sides for Columbia. They were reviewed in the May 13, 1957 issue of Billboard Magazine: “Seven Come Eleven’ backed “Can’t Be True or Can it?” A second top-notch chunk of young talent kicked off by Columbia. The rockabilly pounds out a frantic, power-packed version of the tune that’s already breaking for Rusty Draper. On the flip, there’s an exciting rumba blues with a sharp interplay of Rand’s belting, a tricky chorus and tenor sax honking."

Rand toured in support of the record, sharing the stage with a bevy of the best-known performers from the 1940s into 1960s, including The Mills Brothers, The Four Seasons, Dean Martin, and Frankie Lane.

He was born Anthony Ranucci. He was a graduate of Commerce High School and a member of the Local Musician’s Union #143. He co-authored “Seven Come Eleven” with Martha Gold and it was produced by Mitch Miller. In the 1980s, the record made a comeback in a European rockabilly revival, charting in Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and Germany. The song was also a minor hit for Rusty Draper in the UK as the B. side of his skiffle take on the Chas McDevitt's tune “Freight Train.”

According to his obituary in the Worcester Telegram, Rand was a self-taught guitar player who “parlayed a musical talent nurtured by his family into a half-century career and a gold record. Early in his career, he led the Tony Rand Trio, but then continued on his own. He sang and played his wide-bodied guitar at area clubs as well in famous venues throughout the country such as the Dean Martin Club in Miami Beach.” He also recorded for Gulfstream Records.

His obit also noted that after retiring from the national entertainment circuit, he continued to perform “at weddings, banquets and other events. … He also gave at least three weekly charity performances. His generosity earned many awards, including a key to the city and the establishment of "Tony Rand Day" on Feb. 26, 1970.”

He died in 1999 in his home at 63 East Central Street, Worcester.

Actress Marguerita Padula was born in Worcester in 1891. Very little is known about this rather obscure artist. She is singled out for three key movies of her career, Hit the Deck, The Cuckoos, and Lady of the Tropics.

Padula worked extensively in vaudeville and the theater before appearing on film. Critics said that her forte was character acting and singing. She was a contralto. Her performance of the song, “Hallelujah” in Hit the Deck was “particularly well accepted.” There were two versions of the film. Padula sang in the 1930 version.

Writer Jeff Cohen in his piece Vitaphone Varieties found a 1930 press release for what he called a currently quite lost RKO part-Technicolor musical. It read: “Bigger and better -- to borrow an ancient and often abused movie slogan -- briefly describes Radio Pictures' version of the popular stage success Hit the Deck. Although the musical comedy established box office records throughout the United States, the stage offering could only suggest the immense scope, color and narrative value of 'Hit the Deck' in its present celluloid form.

"The 'Hallelujah' song is an example of what is meant. It was a solo on the stage. In Radio Pictures' interpretation, it becomes a lengthy sequence -- a Negro spiritualist meeting which involved 100 vocalist, dancers and players, and introduces to film fans the colorful Marguerita Padula, a singer whose voice has a startling range of four octaves! This same parallel may be expected in other comparisons of the old and new Hit the Deck.”

In 1930, The New York Times reviewed The Cuckoos. The unidentified critic said it was a “pleasantly irrational screen comedy, with sequences in color and riotous and, at times, ribald buffoonery is The Cuckoos, at the Globe [Theatre], which manages to live up to its title and provides tuneful music and good dancing as well as spirited slapstick.”

Padula and Bing Crosby in the Road to Singapore

Padula also appeared in King Vidor’s Billy the Kid, The Happy Hottentots, The Road to Singapore, The Gangster, and Kid Dynamite starring the Eastside Kids.

Note: On the back of the top photo was inscribed, “Marguerita Padula in “Song Study of Boys.”

She died in 1957 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Boxer Bob Benoit was born in Worcester in 1946. This middleweight turned light heavyweight made his professional debut at 20 years-old at the Four Seasons Arena in Walpole. He knocked out Dave Horne and won his next seven contests making him a young fighter to watch. In fact, Ring Magazine took note, naming him the “Prospect of the month” in March of 1967. By the time his career ended he amassed an impressive record of 37 wins against eight losses.

Benoit came up fighting four to 10-round matches in smoke-filled gyms throughout New England for $50 a night. He was showcased in Nova Scotia and London. He fought Eddie “Red Top” Owens twice for the New England light heavyweight title, losing both times in punishing matches held at the Worcester Memorial Auditorium.

"Red Top" Owens

Writer Austin Killeen attended one of Benoit's early bouts. “It was in the winter of 1966,” he said, “on a cold night, that I drove from Springfield to Walpole Massachusetts to watch a professional boxing card. While waiting for the main event, I took my seat to watch the obligatory undercard. One of the first participants in the ring that evening appeared to have gotten lost on the way to his high school science fair. It appeared he hadn’t been exposed to the sun since his parents took him to Cape Cod as a 9-year-old. This was to be my introduction to Bob Benoit. ...

“At the sound of the opening bell, Benoit found himself pinned with his back against the ropes. His aggressive opponent, hoping to end things early, threw a series of looping punches to Bob’s head and arms. I turned to my friend and said: 'This won’t last long.' I was right about the outcome but wrong about the winner.”

Killeen continued to follow Benoit’s career and took the time to interview him. He noted that the boxer had moved around quite a bit as a child attending “14 school systems during his 12 years of school. … Bob’s family finally settled in Oakham, with a population of 350 people. Ironically, his next door neighbor was Bob Longvall, a boxing instructor. Needless to say, that’s how Bob got his official start in the square circle.”

Benoit retired from boxing in 1974 to become a Massachusetts State Policeman. He married his high school sweetheart and the couple had two children. Benoit stayed in the fight game, forming a State Police team that presented hundreds of charity bouts throughout New England. He lives in Oakham.

This is a work in progress. Please send all suggestions, comments, and corrections to walnutharmonicas@gmail.com.   Thank you.