back

Keene’s All America City heritage

EDITOR’S NOTE: In 1965, private and government interests in Keene entered — and won — the “All America City” competition sponsored by the National Municipal League and Look magazine.

The contest was a way to get visibility for Keene, and to acknowledge significant economic development and government organization gains that had been made and that were in the works.

The following narrative is by Robert L. Mallat Jr., who was Keene’s mayor at the time. The lightly edited transcript is from an interview at The Sentinel in 1999.

In the early part of the ’60s, the community was just starting to come back. In the ’50s, the mills had closed, things were downhill and now we were starting to come back up.

The regional development commission had come into being, and we were starting to put things back together. The community was starting to come alive and we picked up on it. We finally got a housing authority going. We were expanding the airport. There was some industrial growth — American Optical had taken off, MPB had moved from Carpenter Street down there and was growing, Kingsbury was vibrant, Markem was vibrant and we had within the community some leaders from community business who were interested in the growth and development of the community and you could tap into them as resource to make...

Guys like Arthur Whitcomb, Jim Ewing, Dick Clarke with Clarke Distributors, Hank Frechette who was then Kingsbury, and Mr. Kingsbury himself, BJ. These were all people who were behind the scenes but they were really interested in seeing this community grow.

And if it hadn’t been for the people getting together and forming the Keene Regional Industrial Foundation in the ’50s, nothing would have gotten done. The private community was the one spending the time and the money to help promote Keene.

The City Council repeatedly refused to appropriate money for industrial development. I tried my damndest to get them to put up $10,000 a year and put it to industrial development, and they wouldn’t. But the private community had the ... interest, the loyalty, the roots. So the people who have roots here, who are interested in promoting and doing things in the community, that’s what got us through.

Winning the All-America City competition would not only recognize that which we had accomplished, but would say to the business community who weren’t here that if you’re looking for a place to be, if you want to be in a community that’s on its way, then you better take a look at Keene, New Hampshire.

Frank Saia was the city manager at the time. He was a young Harvard graduate who had served an internship I think in Holyoke or something, and we brought him on as the city manager. He may have been active in the National Municipal League, which may have brought the All America City competition to our attention.

We took a delegation out to San Francisco, and that delegation was Dick Clarke and Bob Clark. One of them was president of the Chamber, the other was chairman of the All America City Committee. And Tutt Bell, myself, Bill MacGowan, who was the head of the chamber at that time, and Frank who was the city manager.

Ken Zwicker (The Sentinel’s editor at the time) had done the writing for the presentation. And George Kingsbury, who owned Tilden’s (a photo shop and stationery store) at that time, used this system that Kodak had come out with whereby you could have two slide machines and when one would fade off the other would come on, so you didn’t lose any time.

So I think it was Tutt, who was a camera bug, got George to get those from Kodak, and we took those to California and so we spent a lot of time here first getting the pictures made that we wanted to use, culling them out so it went with the message that we had sent out there, the story that Ken had written.

I delivered the presentation and we did it, we did it right on the money, we started on time and we ended on time.

 We were in a category of probably 15,000 to 25,000 population and then were was 25,000 to 50,000, or 50,000 to 150,000. And then there were the big cities.

It was an annual award. The only other candidate that I was aware of that had won it prior to that time I think was Gardner, Mass., but I don’t know of any other community in New Hampshire had won it before us or subsequently.

We made the presentation in November just before Thanksgiving, and I believe we were advised in February or March. A letter came from the National Municipal League to the office of the mayor. I opened it. I was anxious, and when I learned we had been selected, I think I called one of the Clarks, but maybe my first call was to Ken because without him we never would have made it. It was his skill. The community created the story. I told it but he wrote it and that was what made the difference.

We had a celebration, and The Sentinel had a field day because we decided — I mean, we were excited — we decided it would be a black-tie affair at the then-Winding Brook Lodge. The National Municipal League and Look Magazine would come in and make the presentation, so we decided it would be a black-tie affair, you know Keene never had a black-tie affair, but this was a major, major accomplishment.

And so we decided to do the black-tie affair and Ken did a number on us that was absolutely unreal. He never let up.

Oh yeah! Oh yeah! And we regrouped after he banged us. We asked, ”What are we going to do?” and we decided to go through with it. It was in May, sometime in the spring of ’65.

As for the impact, it certainly wasn’t a rush of companies wanting to move here. They weren’t stampeding down Main Street. I don’t recall anything that we ended up saying company XYZ is here because of the All America City award.

You know we also put on the American Legion’s World Series about that time and I think before we were named an All America City I think we had the World Series, we had the World Horseshoe Pitching Tournament, we were being served by, part of our story was about airline service, we had direct service, Northeast Airlines were serving us to New York, also we had Mohawk serving us, and so there were a lot of things going on. We were running air shows about every other year that really drew great crowds and getting that All America City award maintained the spirit within the community.

People liked to be with a winner, and so getting community volunteers and getting together to undertake to make improvements and so forth was a lot easier then. Keene was doing a lot of things, building the school, expanding the sewer and water lines, expanding the airport. The community was doing very well.

Things are different now. There’s not the number of events or the coming together of the community like there was in those times. There’s the Pumpkin Festival, yes, but the community is politically almost ready for a revitalization. That’s what happened through the ’60s, when people started to get active.

I’m concerned that we do not have in the community today — the roots, the ownership — that we had back in the ’50s, the ’60s and early ’70s. You look around and it’s the same faces today, many of the same faces today trying to do things that worked in the ’60s. You know there’s not a lot of new blood coming in and taking on the responsibilities that are needed to lead this community.

The business community is almost non-visible. The banks are almost all owned elsewhere so you don’t have the businessmen in the community sitting on the banks, making the decisions of local investments. Your Main Street has got half a dozen places that are locally owned. It’s all outside money. And the people who are starting to raise their families, like I was in the ’60s, they don’t have time for the community.

On the other hand, we have all kinds of volunteers. The volunteer program with the United Way, that’s one of the best. But that’s a short stand. You can get people that will take on a project if they can see maybe a six-week or two-month life.

But for the long term, I don’t see the interest and vibrancy in the community that I used to. I don’t know what it’s going to take.

back