Father and mother

Russell Lovering was born in Massachusetts in 1932 to Everett and Phyllis Lovering.  He was part of a small New England family that included his brother David and sister Barbara.  Dad Everett was a sign painter, Mother Phyllis was a dental hygienist for the town's schools.

Dad was a character in high school, and became part of a troupe that traveled to hospitals and old age homes to perform a tap dancing routine.  The picture to the right shows my father on the right front at age 11, with brother David to the left, Mother, Father and baby Barbara.

After high school, Dad entered the Air Force, and was stationed at Peterson Field in Colorado Springs.  He met Maxine Oliver there, daughter of John and Geneva Oliver from Colorado.  They married in 1954.

My own beginnings

I was born in the late winter of 1955, and I remember an evocative black and white picture taken about that time showing snow in the glare of a streetlight.  We lived in the "projects" in Stoneham, on Calthea Street.  My earliest memories were that of a happy place with a lot of children.

This is a picture of me at two and a half, before sister Cathy was born in 1957.  Must have been posing for Dr. Denton!  We moved from one apartment (actually a "townhouse" with two floors and a basement) to another later that year, and Cathy was born in December of 1957.

The picture to the right was taken in January, 1962, my sister was 4 and me, 6.  There were some doozy winters in the 60s where we lived in Massachusetts, so warm clothes were always in the biggest boxes at Christmastime.

We celebrated Christmas at my grandmother's house.  The scent of the tree mixed with the spiced cider reminds me of those wonderful family gatherings.  The Christmas tree was in a foyer between the dining and living rooms, and always looked so tall to me!  Many of the ornaments were in the family for a very long time, and the lights were the "big bulb" type.  The house wasn't decorated much, except for the orange-bulbed candles in the windows of their house in Stoneham.

Changes

This picture was taken just a few months before, my sister was 3 and I was 5 with my Dad.  It looks like we are on the porch of my aunt Marion's house.

In 1961, my sister and I were home with my mother, when she suddenly left with a suitcase and climbed into a taxi, leaving us alone.  I called my father, and in that succeeding space of time, we were part of a single parent family. I remember my father crying a lot, and soon we all moved to my grandmother's house.  

In 1963, my Dad met a woman named Helen, and after they were married we moved to Bellingham, Mass., to a new subdivision of houses named Wethersfield.  I began the third grade at Center School, while my sister entered first. But I was only in the ancient Center school for a few weeks, then moved to the Pinecrest school in South Bellingham.

In 1965, my half-brother Neil was born, and soon after, more changes were in store.  My parents yelled and fought a lot and in 1966, I was pulled out of school late in the school year and we were off on a cross-country car trip.  We had no idea where we would end up, but it sounded like California.  

Moving

We stopped in Colorado Springs, and through the generosity of a wealthy member of the church we were going to, we lived at his house until we found one of our own and my father found work.  While in Colorado Springs, we caught up with my aunts, uncles, grandfather and grandmother Oliver and cousins.  I never heard anything about my mother Maxine while I was out there.  I had a normal seventh grade experience at North Junior High and made some good friends.

1967 came, and I won a trip to California, visiting Disneyland with other boys who also won their trips by selling newspaper subscriptions. A short stay in Torrance, then I was on a plane to Massachusetts again.  Father had more trouble with the woman he lived with, and soon he and my sister joined me back at my grandmother's house in the fall of 1968. I began school at the new Stoneham Junior High school.

It was here that I began to spend more time with my grandfather Everett, who was a good amateur photographer, and uncle Myron, whose pictures of the B&M trains behind his house inspired me with trains and with photography.  

I was given a Practica single-lens reflex camera, made behind the iron curtain sometime in the 60s, but it had a removable lens.  It had no exposure meter, so I had to guess or use the Kodak "sunlight" chart that came with the film.  In junior high, I used the darkroom to make my own black and white prints.  I won a junior competition in 1970, a table top picture of a model battleship in a cove with a beautiful sunset behind.  It was all done with a projected slide and cellophane for the water.

The picture to the right is my 14th birthday in 1969.  Cousin David (who later became famous in the rock group The Pixies) is in green and my sister is at the far left.  You know, that coat and tie is how we dressed for school back then!  

At my church, we started a newsletter called "The Bridge Over Troubled Waters."  Churning out mimeographed pages, week after week, I began in earnest my writing career.  

Sometime in 1969 there was a birthday party for a girl in my class.  The party was memorable for the spin the bottle game that gave me my first kiss with a girl.  "The Love Theme From Romeo and Juliet" was playing at the time.  Amazing what memories music brings back.

It was also at this time that my grandmother Phyllis died, while on a weekend holiday with my grandfather.  I was sheltered from the wake and funeral and all I remember is crying a lot.

High School

For some reason, we moved back in with Helen in 1970, to start my sophomore year at Bellingham High School. It was here that I began to really use my photographic skills by working on the yearbook with my friend Mike Hachey (class of 1971).  We developed the black and white pictures in his basement, while listening on the radio to the new "alternative" radio station, WBCN in Boston.

I was also on the Audio-Visual crew, as shown to the left.  I am the one in the square with the radio.  This picture from the 1971 "Epilogue" cracks me up as one that looks staged and no one has a clue. Dave Morin, a teacher and good friend, was the adviser.  I'm sorry that he passed away since high school.

I was in another picture, but my hair got in the way, see this one on the right.  That's Dave Pinsonneault, class of 1972 beside me in each picture.  Other notables in the picture on the left, clockwise from the left is Dave, Mike Perry, Jay Alexander, Ray "Skeeter" Goyette and George "Skip" Beaulieu, class of 1971.  I had some great teachers that year, and some of them offered things beyond school that was exciting, like Mr. Christy playing a new Rod Stewart album that I had never heard of.  

The Drama Club was always important to me, not necessarily from a performing stance but from technical, like lighting or directing.  The senior play that year was "The Miracle Worker" and I have never seen an actress play Helen Keller like Ruth Ann Rushton, at right.  A very memorable performance.

My school year as a junior was a good one, involved with the yearbook, the drama club and the newspaper.  I got to shoot some of the pictures in color, which was an innovation back then.  I also made many friends in the senior class that year, including Skip, whose AMC Javelin took Jay, Me and others to a snow camp in New Hampshire that year on the February break.  We snowmobiled and had a blast.

 And it is with fond memories that the class of '72 brings to me.  It was a great year, lots of events, and a superb Drama club.  

A couple of things began to gel in high school that would shape my future, and it wasn't the friends so much or the subjects I took.  It was the interests that came back to me later.  For the second time in my school career, I helped write a specification and RFP for closed circuit TV equipment.  This was sophisticated for 1971, with three cameras,  a switcher, monitors and VCRs.  We had to find ways to keep this stuff warm, so I trained teachers but it was the AV staff who took the initiative and taped a town meeting (right) , a football game (complete with color commentary by Ken Hammond) and other special events.

The other was my interest in data processing, and that summer, I worked with the town's DP manager learning how to write programs and running the big IBM 360/30 computer we purchased time-sharing on to do school reports and report cards.  Both of these figured prominently in my life later on.

There are two people that I'd like to highlight in the class of 1972: Nancy Tessier, who appeared in the yearbook more than any other female (and had a different pose in every single picture, Nancy where are you?).  And as you can see, she was in a lot of my pictures too.  Nancy was a featured ingénue in some of the plays the Drama Club put on, and I always had a "performer's crush" on her.  A great actress and friend. That year, we performed "Impromptu" and a play written by another member of the class, Paul Dupre called "Antigone 1980," an updated version of the classic by Sophocles.

The other person was my girlfriend, Patty Dupre (at the right) (and no relation to Paul), she was a real sweetheart and unfortunately, I never met her parents as my long hair was a distinct turn-off.  After our double-dates, we would talk into the night on the phone that I had to tiptoe out of my stepmother's room into mine.  Our separate ways began in the fall of my senior year, as she went away to college.

And oh my goodness, the AV staff in 72, I am wearing the same sweater I wore in 71!  Talk about lack of fashion sense.  Well the guy on the TV, whose name escapes me at the moment was better dressed anyway.  That's Mike Perry, resting on top of the TV.  And we had girls in AV for the first time!.

Finally, the end of this long and drawn out section, the graduation year 1973.  That's the year I got a surprise F in Business Management and it was supposed to be a B.  It was fixed except for the final report card, it came back!  Yearbook photographer again,  and I can't show you my senior picture or I'd have to kill you.  Living in the off-again, on-again world of my step mother, there was no money to be had for that picture.  So they used the stupid picture that was taken in 1972.  Also the drama club, and others.  I took my job as yearbook photographer so completely that I went to all my classes with a camera!  I am thankful to the teachers at Bellingham High, especially Mr. Brisson and Mr. Crepeau (at right, who passed away in 1999 from lung cancer).  Glad I graduated and hope I can make it to a reunion sometime.  Come to think of it, maybe I should go to the 1972's class reunions too.

Here are pictures of some of the friends that stayed with me though school, and some have surfaced.  I'd like to hear from some of you!

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