Early Tuesday morning, thinking about bacon and sunnyside eggs, black toast and cream cheese, we made our way onto Shirley Avenue and into the Bagel Bin. The Bin had just reopened after closing for a vacation for a week.
Seated there, at the back of the Bin was an old time Revere fellow, three time Pulitzer Prize winning photographer, Stanley Forman.
He’s 67 now, in fact on Tuesday it was his birthday.
The Revere High School grad who gained national fame for taking some of the most stunning news photographs of the 20th Century, was circumspect about his fame and even about his career, which has seen him go from taking photographs for the Boston Herald way back to shooting video for Boston’s major television stations.
He lives in Beverly now and has to adult daughters, both of whom are college types seeking real careers in the private sector.
As for Stan, who loved being among his high school classmates at the Bin – Richard “Sarge†Sargent, former mayor and now councilor at large Bobby Haas, former Revere Fire Chief Dan Doherty and Moe Mahoney – it was like old home week.
“I drop by about once a month,†he told some of his buddies he hadn’t seen since the onset of the summer.
He said he’s got a book of photographs coming out in a few months and that everything is set to go but that he would not be retiring anytime soon.
Forman gained national fame when he shot the famous image of a black man being stabbed in the stomach with the tip of an American flag pole by a white kid during a racial outbreak during the bussing era.
He shot that photograph across the street from Boston City Hall. The black man was Attorney Ted Landsmark and the photograph came to be known as “The Soiling of Old Glory.â€
Forman always recalls his days in Revere and the love he has shared a lifetime with his childhood friends.
“I’ll be working forever, it appears,†he said Tuesday morning at the Bagel Bin. I’m just a guy from Revere who managed to take some nice photographs – and that’s it,†he added.
Sandcastle stats
It is fairly impossible to line up all the relevant statistics pertaining to the Sandcastle Festival but here they are. Organizers are expecting hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people to pass by the sand sculptures. Some estimates even talk about 1 million people passing by during the next week to ten days..
It is known from past experience that at least 500,000 will be making the trek.
The implication is this: if that number of people come to Revere Beach, they will drink bottled water, eat fried dough, drink ice coffee, purchase slush or ice-cream of all kinds and whatever else will be for sale in the long line of “shops†in tents spaces that will be selling everything from t-shirts to sunglasses to trinkets and memorabilia.So the numbers are really staggering and the event hasn’t yet begun in earnest.
Dan Doherty
Former Fire Chief Dan Doherty has been retired almost 10 years and he says he wishes he was still working!
That’s right, he misses doing what he did for so many years.
We ran into the chief earlier this week.
He said he had some health issues recently that he had overcome and that he was enjoying himself, doing a bit of fishing every now and then and a round of golf here and there.
As always, he was quiet and unassuming but interested in everything around him and all his friends.
Senator Anthony PetruccelliÂ
Revere’s popular Senator Anthony Petruccelli has been working hard, as the saying goes on Beacon Hill.
Petruccelli finds himself on two very influential and important conference committees.
He is on the Healthcare Payment Reform committee, which has the responsibility of bringing down healthcare insurance costs, et cetera.
Nothing really is bigger than this right now, especially with the Republicans trying to kill National Health Care.
He is also on the Foreclosure Conference Committee – the chair, actually of that committee, which is going to make it much more difficult for the banks to foreclose on Massachusetts homeowners.
In both cases, he was chosen to be on those respective committees by the senate president with whom he has a close working relationship.
What this says about Petruccelli is that he is heading for a significant leadership role in the senate.
Where exactly he will end up is a question mark.
But with so many senators leaving to pursue other careers, Petruccelli’s straight and true path in the senate becomes more important than ever before especially when it comes to leadership.
