Of Buddhists, Big Bird and the Walking Dead, Vol. VI

By David "Chet" Williamson Sneade 

American Zen Buddhist Dwight Goddard was born in Worcester in 1861. He is seen as a “vital link in the westward transmission of the dharma,” says Robert Aiken, “Dwight Goddard’s A Buddhist Bible is about to be republished this spring by Beacon Press. Originally printed more than sixty years ago, it was the first English-language anthology of Buddhist teachings and was crucial to the development of Buddhism in America.”

Goddard took the long way to Buddhism. He was a WPI graduate in industrial engineering who made his money with an invention that helped in the WWI victory effort. According to editors at White Crow Books, the publishers of the latest edition of the Bible, he became disillusioned by the brutality of war and became a missionary. “He was sent first to China, and later to Japan, where he lived in and studied at a Zen Buddhist monastery outside Kyoto for nearly one year. In 1924, having moved back to the States, he began writing books on Buddhism. By the time of his death in 1939, he had authored and edited nine titles, among them, The Buddhist Bible, the book credited with influencing the views of Jack Kerouac, iconic Beat Generation author.”

The late Robert Aitken, a prominent Zen teacher, had written extensively about Goddard. He said students of Zen Buddhism would regularly tell him about their “first books” that were introductions to Buddhism, Aitken says “with some frequency, is Dwight Goddard’s durable anthology of translations, A Buddhist Bible, originally published in 1932 and then republished in its present, enlarged form in 1938.”

Jack Kerouac

He also noted that it was Kerouac’s first book. He went as far as saying that “A Buddhist Bible had a direct influence upon the American Beat movement of the fifties—and thus upon the New Age movement that followed, with its efflorescence of Western Zen Buddhism, in the late sixties and early seventies. … Jack Kerouac, cross-fertilizing with Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Whalen, and others who are still engaged in Americanizing Buddhism in their own ways, helped to establish a culture in which Buddhism could grow and flourish in the mid-sixties.”

It is White Crow’s contention that A Buddhist Bible, “together with the collective writings of the Beat Generation on Buddhism, had a big influence on the American generations that followed. Dwight Goddard was unaware of his new-found fame as he died on his 78th birthday in 1939.”

Pitcher Mark Fidrych was born in Worcester in 1954. He lived most of his life in Northboro, where he died tragically in 2009. He was one of the best players to ever come out of Central New England. He won 29 games against 19 losses in his short colorful career. He broke in with the Detroit Tigers in 1976 and won the American League’s Rookie of the Year honors, leading the major leagues with a 2.34 ERA. His record was 19 wins with nine losses. Unfortunately, his career was plagued by injuries and ended after just five seasons.

Fidrych was the son of an assistant school principal who played high school baseball at Algonquin Regional High School and Worcester Academy. The Tigers drafted him in 1974 and, according to Bryan Marquard of the Boston Globe, it was some time in the minor leagues that he picked up his nickname. “One of his coaches with the Lakeland Tigers dubbed the lanky 6-foot-3 right-handed pitcher ‘The Bird’ because of his resemblance to the "Big Bird" character of the Sesame Street television program.”

Fidrych was also seen as flighty as a bird. In his book, No Big Deal, Tom Clark noted that on “May 15 [1976], Fidrych appeared in his first game as a starting pitcher for the Tigers. He held the Cleveland Indians hitless through six innings and ended up with a 2–1 complete game victory in which he gave up only two hits. In addition to his pitching, Fidrych attracted attention in his debut for talking to the ball while on the pitcher's mound, strutting in a circle around the mound after every out, patting down the mound, and refusing to allow groundskeepers to fix the mound in the sixth inning.

"After the game, sports writer Jim Hawkins wrote in the Detroit Free Press: ‘He really is something to behold.’ Rico Carty of the Indians said he thought Fidrych ‘was trying to hypnotize them.’"

His often hysterical antics won him legions of fans, however, an undiagnosed rotator cuff forced him into early retirement. The Tigers released him in 1981 and he signed a free agent contract with the Boston Red Sox, but just couldn’t continue. He was out of the game at the age of 29.

Fidrych moved backed Northboro and worked in construction and occasionally at his mother-in-law’s eatery, Chet’s Diner. As mentioned, “The Bird” died tragically. According to the Worcester District Attorney's office, “a family friend found Fidrych dead beneath his ten-wheel dump truck at his Northborough home around 2:30 p.m., April 13, 2009. The Associated Press reported that Mark appeared to have been working on the truck at the time of the accident. “Authorities said Fidrych suffocated after his clothes had become entangled with a spinning power takeoff shaft on the truck. The state medical examiner's office ruled the death an accident.”

He was 54.

Poet Diana Der-Hovanessian was born in Worcester in 1934. She was a highly-educated and honored writer, translator, and educator. According to a disembodied scribe on her website, Der-Hovanessian was “twice a Fulbright professor of American Poetry and is the author of more than 25 books of poetry and translations.

The site also points out her poems were published in a string of publications, including The American Poetry Review, Partisan, and Nation, as well as a raft of anthologies, such as Women on War, Voices of Conscience, and Two Worlds Walking, among many others.

Der-Hovanessian was a graduate of Boston University, who completed her graduate work at Harvard University. Her obituary tells us that she taught workshops at many universities as well as “being a visiting poet and guest lecturer on American poetry, Armenian poetry in translation, and the literature of human rights both here and abroad.”

In many ways, it can be said that Der-Hovanessian was a poet’s best friend. “She served on the boards of Poetry Society of America and the translation board of Columbia University. Honored by PEN International and the Writers Union of America with the Golden Pen award in Boston, she also has awards from NEA, Poetry Society of America, PEN/Columbia Translation Center, National Writers Union, Armenian Writers Union, Paterson Poetry Center, Prairie Schooner, American Scholar, the Armenian Ministry of Culture, and many others too numerous to list.”

Dr. Robert Marik honoring Der-Hovenessian

It should also be noted that growing up in a strong Armenian family and Worcester neighborhood, the poet had worked tirelessly to educate the public about the Armenian Genocide. She died in 2018 at the age of 83.

Jack Devereaux (far left) in The Sentimental Lady 

Actor John “Jack” Devereaux was born in Worcester in 1881. (Not to be confused with the fictional character “Jack Deveraux,” played by Matthew Ashford in the soap opera Days of Our Lives.) There is a funny little story about his humble beginnings. It reads something like this: Young Jack was from a family that looked down upon their son’s aspirations to become a thespian. The tale was picked up by The Green Book Magazine, a publication dealing with all things related to the theater back in the 19-teens. “At the early age of fourteen, this youth startled his fellow townsmen of Worcester by appearing at a local club in a German sketch, written by a man who was as bad an author as Jack was an actor. One woman in the audience turned to a neighbor said: ‘Aren’t those boys dreadful!’ ‘Yes,’ admitted the other,’ and one of them is my son.’ It was Jack’s mother.”

Undaunted, Jack became one of the best-known classical actors of his generation. He went to private school at Exeter before heading to Georgetown for college. Evidently, his talent was not recognized there either. A professor of elocution, “who was an actor of the old school, told Jack that ‘he would never make good on the stage because he was too natural, whereas he ought to be artificial. Just the same, Jack persisted in acting like a human being.”

The Green Book Magazine also noted that the world of theater created a seven-year breach between Jack and his family, but “so severely was he bitten by the stage bug that he kept right on treading the boards. And later on, he had an opportunity to impersonate extreme types of college boys, as the drunken student in Just Out of College, and Colton, the bad boy in Brown of Harvard. This season after a flying trip with The Aviator and a trial of Marriage a la Carte, Jack has been helping to make them chuckle at Baby Mine. From there, Devereaux’s career path was set. He was tall, dark and handsome, and most importantly, now deemed talented. He first appeared on Broadway in the 1905 production of Just Out of College. The following year found him in Brewster’s Millions. His theater credits also include New Brooms, The Famous Mrs. Fair, His Majesty Bunker Bean, A Pair of Sixes, The Senator Keeps House, among many others.

He made his film debut in 1915, appearing in The Sentimental Lady. One of his more noteworthy roles was in the 1917 comedy called The Man Who Made Good. According to the Independent Movie Database (IMBd), he was “last seen on screen in Superstition co-starring with Veta Searl for the Allan Dwan Production Co. in 1922.”

Devereaux died in New York City in 1958.

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Artist Anna Elizabeth Allen was born in Worcester in 1879. Often referred to as Elizabeth Allen, she was a well-trained painter who studied with Valentine Henman at the Boston Art Institute. She was also trained by Charles Woodbury in Maine and Hugh Breckenridge in Gloucester.

Boothbay Harbor, Maine

Allen is often described as a painter who depicted “beautiful landscapes and seascapes” of the realistic school. She moved to Florida in 1929 and remained there until her death in 1959. “She had a fine picture sense and never hurried in selecting her point of view,” wrote art critic Fred Frankel. “She loved the Florida scene and painted in every direction from Orange City: The Atlantic Ocean at Daytona, with its varied colored beach, its sand dunes and scrub palmetto; shrimp boats and the high round arch in the ruins of the old stone mill at New Smyrna, a rustic bridge at Juniper Springs.”

Frankel described a wide swath of Florida scenes that Allen also captured. He noted that her palette was loaded with “happy colors, reflecting her own gentle happy temperament. Never did she paint the turbulent, the foreboding or fearsome in nature, and never with a heavy brush. Rarely did she place a figure in the scene to distract from the message that tree and sky could tell so calmly.”

Cypress Trees

In her lifetime, Allen exhibited throughout the southern states and was a long-time member of the Orlando Art Association. She was the recipient of numerous state, county and city awards, Allen was also a member of the Florida Federation of Arts, Southern States Art League, and the Gloucester Art Association.

She died in Orange City, Florida in 1959.

Producer Gerald “Jerry” Colbert was born in Worcester in 1942. He is best known as the founder and executive producer of A Capitol Fourth and The National Memorial Day Concert held every year in Washington, DC. According to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), they are “two of television’s longest-running live shows that commemorate America’s most important holidays.”

Though born in Worcester, Colbert grew up in Boylston. He went to St. John’s for high school and the College of the Holy Cross. Colbert told HC student Rebecca Smith that the school was a formative place. “It taught me a lot about life, philosophy, and religion. It made me reflect on what I wanted to do with my one precious life,” recalls Colbert. “It was there that I realized that I wanted to help others.”

After graduation, Colbert volunteered to teach English and math to Iraqi school children in Baghdad. Smith reported that his time in the Middle East “strengthened his desire to serve others.” He returned to the states, married, and moved to Chicago where he “ministered to the inner-city poor (Southside) and fought for civil rights during the tumultuous ’60s.”

These moves were life-changing experiences, but Colbert wanted to do something on a much larger scale. “He realized that he could promote justice and action to millions of people at once using the medium of television,” Smith said. “So he learned all he could about the theory and practice of television at the Center for Understanding Media in New York.”

“It’s one thing to have an idea of how to reach people and make a difference,” Colbert said. “But it’s another thing to learn how to do it and see it through.”

Colin Powell, Colbert, and George Clooney, 1995

According to PBS television, in establishing The National Memorial Day Concert, Colbert set out to create a memorial service for the nation. “His energy, creativity, and determination led to moving concerts of gratitude year after year featuring music, song, images, and spoken word. Jerry’s compelling way of sharing stories of war and its aftermath has helped Americans understand the hardships faced by our service men and women and their families.”

Colbert died in Harwich Port in 2017.

Actress Irene Ziegler was born in Worcester in 1955. In December of 2017, she suffered a home invasion while she was in the house. Her husband had just left for work. Two men entered the home and put a gun to Ziegler’s head. Recounting the incident in Style Weekly, writer Richard Grislet said, “They bound her with duct tape, searched her house for valuables, then fled. Four hours passed before her husband discovered her, still bound on the kitchen floor. The case remains unsolved. Ever since then, things haven't been quite the same for Ziegler. Ten days after the home invasion, her husband asked for a divorce. Then she had a car accident. … But Ziegler, 56, isn't letting adversity keep her out of the spotlight.”

Best known for her portrayal of the broadcasting woman in the television series, "Walking Dead," Ziegler is also a critically-acclaimed author, playwright, and voiceover artist, who reclaimed her life through her work.

According to the Independent Movie Database (IMBd), Ziegler “grew up on a lake in pre-Disney central Florida, the setting for her acclaimed first book of fiction, Rules of the Lake, and its sequel, Ashes to Water. Irene has also co-edited eight collections of monologues, published by Smith & Kraus. Rules of the Lake, was a recipient of the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award in Drama. Her plays have been produced internationally.”

Ziegler’s voiceover work includes a parade of radio and television commercials and reel of documentaries. In addition to “Walking Dead,” her television acting credits include “Dawson Creek,” “Homicide: Life on the Street,” and “A Haunting,” among others. IMBd singles out frequent parts in “Mr. Mercedes,” “The Red Road,” and “American Gothic.” and “featured or guest starring roles in Three Rivers, and Satisfaction.” Her film appearances include Safe Haven, Premonition, The Runaway Jury, G.I. Jane, The Vernon Johns Story, and Love's Deadly Triangle: The Texas Cadet Murder, among others.

She currently lives in Virginia where she continues to do voiceover work and is involved with Theatre IV and Cultural Arts Center. “Critics loved her starring turn in last year's Kimberly Akimbo,” says Griset. “The play focuses on a teenager with a rare condition that causes her body to age rapidly, meaning Ziegler had to act like a 16-year-old.”

Kimberly Akimbo director Anna Johnson says Ziegler is an inspiration. "She's one of the finest actresses with whom I've worked," says Johnson. "She's a chameleon. With some actors, you can just tell that every role she does is different."

Novelist Noah Gordon was born in Worcester in 1926. “A lot happened that year,” he says, writing in the bio section of his website. He presented a shopping list of items including the fact that in “Germany, a man named Paul Joseph Goebbels was appointed the head of the Berlin branch of a nondescript political group, the Nazi Party. In Italy, Dictator Benito Mussolini brought back capital punishment. Henry Ford set the price of his Model T at $350, and people were buzzing about the first moving pictures with sound – ‘talkies.’ The average annual income in America was $1,313. Bread was nine cents a loaf, and a gallon of gas cost a dime.”

His mother gave birth at home in their Providence Street apartment. His father was a pawnbroker in town at the time. Noah was a student at Grafton Street Junior High when WWII broke out. “The fighting still raged in February of 1945, when I was graduated from Classical High School,” he said.

After serving in the Navy, Gordon was a student at Boston University, where he studied journalism. Upon graduation, he moved to New York and got a job as a junior editor in the periodicals department of the Avon Publishing Co. “I worked at Avon for two years and then on a small-size news and picture magazine called Focus,” he said.

Gordon also tried his hand at freelancing. A year into it, Gordon moved back to town, taking a job as a reporter for the Worcester Telegram, where he remained until 1959. He was then hired as a general assignment reporter at the Boston Herald.

In 1965, Gordon released his first novel. Called The Rabbi, it gained a modicum of success, spending more than 20 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list. Unfortunately, it never generated great sales. The release of his fourth book in 1986 changed his fortunes.

“I like to think that I came of age as a storyteller with my fourth book, The Physician. There was bad luck in its American publication. … Enter, perhaps a year later, a publisher from Germany named Karl H. Blessing. He read the book in New York, loved it, and bought it. He made certain that every clerk in every book store in Germany received a reading copy, and the result was a publishing phenomenon in that country, where sales of The Physician have topped eight million copies.”

Gordon has released a series of novels since. Now in his 90s, the author lives in the Boston area and continues to write. "I am grateful to every reader," he says, "for enabling me to spend my life as a scribbler of tales."

Artist Edith Ella Baldwin was born in Worcester in 1870. The Rubenstein Library at Duke University has collected her papers and describes the collection as this: “[It] consists of 39 unpublished volumes of stories, novels, poetry, lecture notes, and family history from Edith Ella Baldwin, including a novel about sex education for women, diary excerpts describing her visits with painter Mary Cassatt, and typescript copies of letters from her aunt, Ellen Frances Baldwin, dating from 1848 to 1854.

“Edith Baldwin's writings tend to cover timeless themes of religion and love, although some compositions include contemporary issues such as automobiles, labor strikes, and women's rights. Each volume is arts-and-crafts style construction with typed texts, frequently annotated by hand.”

Portrait of Katherine Sullivan

Baldwin was a well-trained painter who studied extensively in Paris under William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury at the Académie Julian. While in France she also took lessons with Gustave-Claude-Etienne Courtois, Julius Rolshoven and Henry Mosler.

Known for her portraits and miniatures, she exhibited at such prestigious venues as the Salon of the Champ de Mars, National des Beaux Arts, the Society of American Artists, and the Worcester Art Museum. She lived for many years at 11 Cedar Street in Worcester.

Along with her fiction and poetry, the Rubenstein Library collection also includes "lecture notes from several courses she took on bookbinding, cooking, nursing, and art. There are also her efforts at preserving her family's history, including a copy of her aunt's diary, dated 1848-1854; several of her grandfather's sermons; a volume of stories and poems by her younger sister, who died at age 11; and selected excerpts of her own journal kept while studying art in Paris from 1889-1892."

The family plot in Rural Cemetery

Baldwin died in 1940. She is buried in Rural Cemetery.

Actress Alice Hollister was born in Worcester in 1886. Her parents were French-Canadian immigrants and young Alice was educated in a convent. Ironically, she is considered as one of the silver screen’s first vamps. Her maiden name is lost to the ages. In 1903, at the age of 17, she married a young cinematographer by the name of George Hollister. He would become a pioneer in cinematography for the Kalem Film Company in New York City. The couple’s partnership would produce reels of films together.

As the story goes, Kalem sent film crews to the warm climes of Florida in the winter months and Alice went along for the ride. Evidently, they needed a woman for a small role and she jumped in. In a career that only stretched less than 15 years, the “dark-haired beauty,” appeared in more than 90 silent films -- her first being “By a Woman’s Wit, which was shot by her husband and directed by Sidney Olcott.

Robert K. Klepper in his book, Silent Films, 1877–1996: A Critical Guide to 646 Movies, noted that it was Hollister’s appearance in The Vampire in 1913 is the film that “made her the first recognized vamp in cinema, predating Theda Bara in A Fool There Was.” Although she was known as a vamp, her most important role was starring as Mary Magdalene in From the Manger to the Cross. It was filmed on location in Palestine in 1912. The work has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Her last onscreen appearance was in the Fox Film Company release titled, The Dancers. It was directed by Emmett J. Flynn and also starred George O'Brien.

Alice Hollister died in 1973. She is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, USA.

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