This week we introduce a new column, Harvard Stories, tales of past and present town life, told by those who have lived it. Our first story comes from Rick Maiore, a former selectman who was deeply involved in efforts to fight plans for a regional airport at Devens. Rick welcomed me into his 19th-century farmhouse on a clear morning to chat about his experiences as an active participant in Harvard’s civic and social life. Here’s his story.
I moved here in 1980. I was with Honeywell; we had a tragic event where the general manager of our group up here was killed when his plane went down in Lake Michigan. So I was asked to come up here on about two days’ notice, and I came up here to take his spot and lived here for three months. We never planned to move to the Boston area, but my family came up and we gravitated towards Harvard. It was a lot like the town we lived in in Westchester County—same size, same profile—so we ended up here. We bought this house about two years into our stay, and I didn’t do any more moving with Honeywell after that.
So you were here for the whole airport saga.
Yeah, I guess that started percolating in the late 80s. From what I gather, at that time the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] was questioning all the major airports in the country, saying, “Are you really planning for the future? There’s going to be tremendous growth.” They made some funding available, so the governor [Michael Dukakis] appointed this commission, and their task was to identify possible sites for an alternate or another major airport for Boston. You know where Logan is; it’s not the best place you’d put an airport if you were to pick it.
So they started going around, and obviously what they were looking for was vacant land. They didn’t want to take out half a village to put an airport in. I think they were looking for something of at least 4,000 acres, and it had to be within so many miles of Boston, or else it served no purpose. They locked onto Fort Devens. At that time it was a military reservation, and they had two sites there, the South Post and the North Post. Of course, this would have been devastating for Harvard; it would have wiped us off the map.
Since there was a railroad line, they thought they could have some sort of transportation directly into Boston, out of this airport. They knew Devens was on the list to be closed, and they thought they could slip right in and take it. So we were really worried.
Not a great place for an airport
They were holding hearings and generating all kinds of information, and I’d go to these hearings and try to point out that this wasn’t a great place for the airport. I was on the town Planning Board then, and in 1990 I ran for the Board of Selectmen. Millie Chandler formed an anti-airport group, and I worked with them.
Then there was a change in administration; Bill Weld and Paul Cellucci came in. They hadn’t been party to this; this had all been set up before they came in. Meanwhile, the town came up with $85,000 to hire a lobbyist to work the halls in Washington, because the money was coming from the feds. Fish and Wildlife claimed the South Fort as a bird sanctuary, so that was gone.
So then it was just the North Fort. Now, we were all this time gauging just how serious these people were, and we found out that they really didn’t have a lot of support. They had the initial grant from the FAA; they had a group of people who thought they were going to make a lot of money. But they had done several surveys, and people living in Boston were saying, “I’m not going to travel halfway out to California to a plane!” People on the North Shore were saying, “Why do I have to go out to Harvard? Where the hell is that?” So, we knew then we were safe.
‘It was all over’
We had high-level meetings, and I knew it was all over when Senator Durand—he was the state senator for this area—he hosted a meeting in his office. Paul Cellucci was there; he was the lieutenant governor. And these people, bless them, hauled out this huge chart, about as big as this table, and put it down, because they were trying to show how much work they’d done and that this was real.
They had this thing that looked like a cone, and it was lightly shaded. Paul Cellucci’s looking at it, and Bob Durand is looking at it, and they asked, “What is that cone?” And the man making the presentation said, “That’s the approach pattern; because of the prevailing winds, about, let’s say, 70 percent of the flights will come in from that direction.” Well, it ended there at the airport, and right in the middle of the cone was Hudson, and both Cellucci and Durand lived in Hudson.
It was all over.
Tyler Alderson, a 2008 Bromfield graduate, grew up in Harvard. Everyone has a story. If you or someone you know wants to share one, email voxharvard@gmail.com.
