By Jacqueline T. Lynch, Vice President
July 4, 1951, was the 175th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and found us not only in the throes of the Cold War, but hot one as well. The Korean War began just over a year ago, in the summer of 1950.
We still were a nation of 48 states; Alaska and Hawaii wouldn’t join us until the end of the decade. Harry S. Truman was President; Alben W. Barkley was Vice President. Our mayor was Edward O. Bourbeau.
In Chicopee, we found ourselves on the proverbial frontlines of international events since World War II with the establishment of Westover Air Force Base in 1939. After World War II, in which over 6, 250 Chicopee men and women served; over 160 died, there was the Berlin Airlift and Operation Little Vittles keeping us involved as a community in world crises, and the base was responsible for bringing many newcomers to town. (And Westover drew national attention for being mentioned, and a fleeting glimpse of the base, in the movie The Big Lift (1950) about the Berlin Airlift, with Montgomery Clift.)
The B52 bombers taking off and landing rattled our windows.
The city was changed and changing. The sections on the map in the past vaguely referred to as “Pine Barren,” were slowly starting to fill in with new streets and homes (the new Memorial Drive cut through the center of it like a spine), and schools that would be named for war vets who had died in service to the country. Our population was now over 56,000. Suburbia came to the factory town.
Nearly three weeks after we celebrated the Fourth, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, son of General Arthur MacArthur, mentioned in our post from 1901, came to Chicopee Falls to see both the monument raised to his father and the house in which his father lived until the age of eight, and his grandmother’s grave. More than 10,000 attended the festivities.
The location of the monument, “MacArthur’s Ball,” was moved from the intersection of Broadway and East Street to the altered Church Street during the Urban Renewal project in Chicopee Falls; which demolished the homestead.
We still had several movie theaters in town, but most of them different from the ones mentioned in the 1926 post. Now there was the Victoria and the Rivoli in the Center; the Falls, formerly the Wernick, in Chicopee Falls; and the Willow remained in Willimansett. A new addition: the Air-Line Drive-in opened in the May 1950 on Memorial Drive, that swath of land that was now filling up rapidly with homes, stores and businesses, and now, outdoor movies. All of the change in the geographic center of the city was due to the post-war car culture. It made Springfield and Holyoke easier to go to for shopping and entertainment.
Interestingly, there is little to no mention of 4th of July celebrations in the local newspapers for this year, and none for Chicopee, though some other towns had a parade or fireworks. It may be that MacArthur’s expected visit and procession from Union Station in Springfield to Chicopee Falls may have taken our attention and our resources away from Independence Day celebrations.
Fireworks, after all, were not hard to come by: they were shot off every week in the summer at Riverside Park in Agawam and at Mountain Park in Holyoke.
The ad for the drive-in suggests “Plan a 4th of July picnic in the new Air-Line picnic grove and kiddie land.” After which, as the sun set over the Berkshires, you could watch Whispering Smith (1948), a western with Alan Ladd; followed by China Sky (1945), a World War II movie.
Some folks were getting television, and you could spend your evening with the special kind of fireworks generated by comic Ernie Kovacs or Groucho Marx.
In suburbia, there was something else to distract: a backyard, for some people, the first in their families. Maybe even a barbecue grill.
We were perhaps still so absorbed by World War II in our rearview mirror and the new war in Korea in our present to be distracted by any sentiment for the Colonial era.
But, come back next week for the big one…July 4, 1976, and the Bicentennial.
Sources include:
Springfield Daily News, July 3, 5, 1951.
Springfield Union, July 1, 4, 5, 10, 14, 30, 1951.
Szetela, Thaddeus M. Chicopee (Chicopee, MA: Szetela & Rich Publishing Co., 1948).
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