01907 Summer 2022

2 | 01907
LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER
TED GRANT
A publication of Essex Media Group
Publisher
Edward M. Grant
Chief Executive Officer
Michael H. Shanahan
Directors
Edward L. Cahill
John M. Gilberg
Edward M. Grant
Gordon R. Hall
Monica Connell Healey
J. Patrick Norton
Michael H. Shanahan
Chief Financial Officer
William J. Kraft
Chief Operating Officer
James N. Wilson
Controller
Susan Conti
Editor
Thor Jourgensen
Contributing Editor
Courtney La Verne
Writers
Bill Brotherton
Gayla Cawley
Allysha Dunnigan
Oksana Kotkina
Steve Krause
Alena Kuzub
Jakob Menendez
Illustration
Sam Deeb
Edwin G. Peralta Jr.
Emilia Sun
Photographers
Olivia Falcigno
Spenser Hasak
Alena Kuzub
Jakob Menendez
Advertising Sales
Ernie Carpenter
Ralph Mitchell
Patricia Whalen
Design
Edwin G Peralta Jr.
Advertising Design
Emilia Sun
INSIDE
4 What's up
6 Art attack
10 To the rescue
12 House Money
14 Wayne's world
18 Stretttccch
21 Women rule
24 Lydia's Legacy
30 Sea stalwarts
ESSEX MEDIA GROUP
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Covering 01907
One of the – if not the – favorite parts of my job is dealing with the visual team of the Essex
Media Group staff: the photographers and designers.
They’re young – average age of what seems to be about 12, I swear – and talented. Ultratalented.
And one of my favorite things to work on with them is selecting covers for our magazines.
We’ve had some good covers on 01907, beginning with Governor and Lauren Baker and,
along the way, Dick Jauron, Mike Lynch, Tony Conigliaro, ESPN’s Todd McShay, Tuffy Tufts
licking a lobster, Lesley Stahl, Calvin Coolidge’s Summer White house – and a fish.
The selection process is fun. Photographers Spenser Hasak and Jakob Menendez and
designers Sam Deeb, Edwin Peralta, and Emilia Sun and I review the dozens of photos taken
for the magazine and pick a winner.
For this edition of 01907 they went for the black and white photo of Lydia Breed, who died
in 2019 at the age of 94. I found that interesting – again, given their ages.
And while the designers and photographers were selecting Lydia Breed for the cover, the
other end of the EMG age spectrum – veteran writer and editor Steve Krause – was rambling
on about a Groucho Marx song, “Lydia the Tattooed Lady,’ from the Marx Brothers movie “At
The Circus.”
I suspect Lydia Breed didn’t have many tats.
In this issue of 01907, photo-journalist Menendez takes a look at the life and legacy of
Lydia Newhall Breed, whose name recalls two of Lynn's seminal families.
Menendez urges us to do the proverbial deep dive on the woman. Menendez writes that
beyond her art – some of which is on display at the Lynn Museum & Historical Society – you
need to see the beautiful world of colors and lines that Lydia Breed created in her lifetime as
a printmaker in Swampscott. Included are landscapes, religious depictions, and expressions of
activism, Lydia did them all with a distinct stroke that would come to define the era of art in
Boston during the 1950s.
Renee Covalucci, the current president of the Boston Printmakers, told Jakob: “Lydia was
part of a movement in Boston. By the 1940s, Boston was starting to have a voice in the art
history landscape. New York went completely abstract and Boston stayed with subject matters,
figuration, and there was a group called the Boston Figurative expressionists. Lydia followed
the philosophy of them pretty purely in the way she develops her prints. She abstracts them a
little … she adds emotion, she adds tension, she adds expressive elements that make it feel like
it sparkles. She really represents that philosophy really well.”
Lydia was born in September 1925 into a family of dynasty status. She was a distant relative
of Allen Breed, who helped settle Lynn after he sailed across the Atlantic in 1630. Like those
ancestors before her, Lydia would go on to live a life of service to her communities as an active
member of multiple organizations such as the Lynn Historical Society, Friends of Lynn Woods,
and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lynn.
Check out Jakob’s story and eye-catching shots that trace her legacy.
Which brings me to Doneeca Thurston, the executive director of the Lynn Museum – who
actually started at the museum as a student volunteer in 2010.
Doneeca understands the importance of having bodies of work in the museum that anybody
in the community can relate to, whether they grew up here or are recent transplants. She says
her ability to bring in artists and exhibits that trace back generations – but still manage to be
timely and relevant – is why she's at the helm of the museum.
The museum itself was founded in 1897 to "to collect, preserve and illuminate the city's
remarkable history" and Thurston should be proud in knowing that she has excelled in carrying
the museum's mission into the 21st century.
Anyway, check out Jakob’s story and the eye-catching photos – and count me as a fan of
both Jakob and Doneeca, his tour guide.
They helped make this edition of 01907 worth your attention. Enjoy.
COVER Swampscott's Lydia Breed (circa 1950) left her mark in ink-and-wood block art. COURTESY PHOTO BY JAN BREED