01940 Winter 2021_Reduced

WINTER 2021 | 27
BY ALENA KUZUB
The Country Store — a
Lynnfield winter holidays
tradition that is more than half
a century old — is coming
back to the Old Meeting House this year
under the Lynnfield Historical Commission.
It will take place on the first Saturday of
December for the 58th time. The Country
Store will be open from 9 a.m. until the tree
lighting at dusk. The Historical Commission
has chosen Karen Nascembeni, who has
been involved in the Country Store for years
with her late husband, Steve Richard, and his
parents to organize the event.
Nascembeni described the spirit of the
Country Store as quintessential Americana.
“It takes you back in time, from huge
cheese wheels from Vermont to homemade
ham-and-beans supper with homemade
coleslaw and brown bread,” Nascembeni said.
There are usually greens, classicallydecorated
wreaths and swags, a kitchen with
hot dogs and ham-and-cheese sandwiches,
and an old-fashioned popcorn station.
The Country Store subcommittee of the
Historical Commission that Nascembeni
chairs is working with the Board of Health
to be as sanitary in the COVID-19 times as
possible.
When we spoke to Nascembeni, the
program of the event was not completely
finalized yet but she knew she wanted to
keep it traditional and make it fun and lively.
“People want to see the cheese guy, first
person on the right,” said Nascembeni about
the tradition.
However, she would like to bring more
interactive activities for children this year.
There will be a traditional North Pole Fish
Hole, but she is also envisioning a crafts
table where children can create hand-made
ornaments to be given “out of love” to families
in transition, who won’t have holiday decor
this year.
“In the past we have donated wreaths,
but I want an activity with an end goal.
Just spreading love to each other,” said
Nascembeni.
They are planning to have schoolchildren
do poster boards with Christmas traditions
from around the world.
“Whenever I do an event, I like to have
some sizzle. This is what I am known for in
my job,” said Nascembeni, who is a general
manager at the North Shore Music Theatre
in Beverly.
This year, she wants to fill the Meeting
House with music. Nascembeni would like
to bring Voices of Hope, a local organization
that performs carols and raises money for
cancer research. She is also hoping to involve
high-school or junior-high-school students
and create a coffee house upstairs, where they
could perform Christmas songs or original
tunes, to keep the space vibrant.
They might put a tent outside,
Nascembeni said, for people who are older
and can’t go up the stairs to the second floor
of the Meeting House.
The Country Store subcommittee would
also like to partner with other groups, like
the Garden Club and Centre Club, that
usually sell raffle tickets to raise funds for
scholarships.
Preparations go for months for just
one magical day, Nascembeni said, and it
takes dozens of helpers from the town and
from other places to put the Country Store
together. Her friends from Melrose, Beverly,
Danvers, Haverhill and Andover who used to
help her make wreaths and other greens have
made visiting the Country Store a holiday
“I
n the past we
have donated
wreaths, but I want
an activity with
an end goal. Just
spreading love to
each other.
”
tradition for their families as well.
The event and the needed supplies are
financed by the Historical Commission.
Proceeds from the Country Store will go
back to the town.
Meanwhile, the organizing committee is
keeping an eye on the COVID-19 statistics in
the town. For now, they have confirmed that
the Country Store will have a Santa Claus.
“My late husband always took pictures
of kids with Santa for decades,” Nascembeni
said.
Her husband was a Lynnfield-born
photographer and a steward of the Meeting
House.
His mother, Edie Pope-Richard, and
his father, Earl Richard, participated in the
Country Store for decades as well. Earl
Richard was the chairman of the greens. Edie
manned the ham-and-beans table. His sister,
Doreen DiFillippo, and her children have
participated in the event as well.
Nascembeni said that her late motherin-law,
who grew up on Pope Farm on
what is now the site of the Summer Street
Elementary School, was one of the best
historians of the town. She was the president
of the Historical Society and the Centre
Club for many years. Nascembeni has her
collection of documents that she is planning
to turn over to the town. Pope-Richard died
in 2017 at the age of 90.
Tragically, in March of 2020, Nascembeni,
her husband and his 99-year-old father
contracted COVID-19. Steve Richard died
from the virus on March 24, 2020 at the
age of 58. His father died just five days later.
Nascembeni spent 31 days in a medicallyinduced
coma, followed by months of
recovery before finally returning home.
Nascembeni grew up in Springfield in
an entertainment family. In her big musical
family, any holiday meant lots of food,
laughter and songs.
“I came out of the womb singing and
performing,” said Nascembeni.
Nascembeni went to college for
broadcasting and worked in radio, TV
and insurance afterwards. Now, she is the
general manager of the North Shore Music
Theatre and the right hand of its owner and
producer, Bill Hanney. She has been with
the company since 2010. She is also the
voice of the theatre, figuratively and literally,
doing a lot of voiceovers for the radio and
TV advertisements, representing it at a lot of
chambers, tourism organizations, and taking
care of government and city relations.
She is very community-oriented,
Nascembeni said. She belongs to more than
a dozen chambers on the North Shore, in
Rhode Island and on the Cape.
“I can pull an event in no time,” said
Nascembeni about her expertise and
organizational skills.
She loves putting on a show for the
benefit of the people who are coming to see
it, seeing the joy it brings them and the smiles
on their faces. Whether it is a dinner party or
the Country Store, she does it as if it is show
time, Nascembeni said.
“I never want to go through life dry,” said
Nascembeni. “I’ve always enjoyed having
fun and laughing. After everything I went
through and my near-death experience and
losing my husband and father-in-law, and
almost my own life, it only makes me want
to celebrate life more, because it would be a
disrespect to my husband's memory and to
the doctors and nurses who saved me.
“So I am smiling again. It is not that I
don’t have sadness every day because I do but
I appreciate how fragile life is and I live every
day to the fullest.”