Reading Counter Culture is like reading the "Cliff or Spark Notes" of an extraordinary family's journey from the start of the 20th century to today. It is the tale of an era in American history as witnessed and acted upon by a family of first and second generation immigrants to the US - in which each decade yielded countless stories that, told over, would form the template of an American success story for the ages. Courage, tragedy, humor, resiliance, happiness, sadness and hope all were a part of the Dunfey family tableau.
I describe the book as Cliff notes because 360 pages just cannot do justice to the colorful and amazing story of this family of 14. Having been through the process of interviewing only some of the extraordinary people profiled in this memoire I can tell you that a 20-30 episode podcast series would be needed to even come close to doing justice to their legacy. Perhaps this podcast will lead to just such a series but understanding the basics of the rise of the Dunfey family is a study in the American dream and a celebration of how tenacity, hard work and a deep and abiding commitment to community, service, social justice and progressive ideals can change history.
In the summer of 1913 two cottages in the beachside community of Salisbury Massachusetts housed separate "clubs" of young single women and men from the Mills of Lowell. It was here that Leroy "Roy" Dunfey and Catherine ("Kate") Manning met, fell in love and - by labor day - were engaged.
Product detailsPublisher : UNKNO (March 1, 2019)
Language : English
Hardcover : 320 pages
ISBN-10 : 1942155158
ISBN-13 : 978-1942155157
Item Weight : 1.95 pounds
Dimensions : 6.9 x 1.1 x 10.1 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #968,873 in Books (
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Traveler & Explorer BiographiesCustomer Reviews:
4.8 out of 5 stars
17 ratingsLeRoy “Roy” Dunfey 1892-1952
Catherine “Kate” Manning 1894-1982
Dunfey Children
William "Bud" Dunfey
Walter Dunfey
John "Jack"
Gerald "Jerry" Dunfey
Roy Dunfey
Paul Dunfey
Robert “Bob” Dunfey
Richard "Dick" Dunfey
Eleanor Dunfey
Catherine Kay Dunfey
Mary Dunfey
Eileen Dunfey
Reading Counter Culture is like reading the "Cliff or Spark Notes" of an extraordinary family's journey from the start of the 20th century to today. It is the tale of an era in American history as witnessed and acted upon by a family of first and second generation immigrants to the US - in which each decade yielded countless stories that, told over, would form the template of an American success story for the ages. Courage, tragedy, humor, resiliance, happiness, sadness and hope all were a part of the Dunfey family tableau.
I describe the book as Cliff notes because 360 pages just cannot do justice to the colorful and amazing story of this family of 14. Having been through the process of interviewing only some of the extraordinary people profiled in this memoire I can tell you that a 20-30 episode podcast series would be needed to even come close to doing justice to their legacy. Perhaps this podcast will lead to just such a series but understanding the basics of the rise of the Dunfey family is a study in the American dream and a celebration of how tenacity, hard work and a deep and abiding commitment to community, service, social justice and progressive ideals can change history.
In the summer of 1913 two cottages in the beachside community of Salisbury Massachusetts housed separate "clubs" of young single women and men from the Mills of Lowell. It was here that Leroy "Roy" Dunfey and Catherine ("Kate") Manning met, fell in love and - by labor day - were engaged.
Parker House Purchase
If the melding of socially responsible business practices, progressive activism and economic success had already begun in the early 60's, the purchase of the "Grande Dame of Boston", The Parker House would kick it into overdrive.
But there was still something missing.
Fred Jervis, their planning and managing change guru, had the family focused on the progressive journey that they envisioned for themselves, both individually and collectively, beyond the Dunfey hotel group but they were still missing the vehicle that would take them there.
Individually and collectively they knew they wanted to have a larger impact on their world - to go from success to relevance - but they needed a guiding star and they found it - or more accurately the inspiration for it - in a dusty archive of the Parker House
The Saturday Club
The Saturday Club, established in 1855, was an informal monthly gathering in
Boston, Massachusetts, of some of the greatest minds of our time: writers, scientists, philosophers, historians, and other notable thinkers of the mid-19th century. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendall Holmes, Louis Aggasiz, Charles Sumner, John Greenleaf Whittier just to name a few.
Gathering at the Parker House this brain trust from the Boston area would invite important thinkers: Twain, Thoreau, Booker T. Washington, to share ideas, writings and thoughts. Each month they would gather together to share ideas, to discuss and debate their merits and to advance the cause of civic engagement.
My thanks to author and the youngest member of the Roy and Kate Dunfey clan, Eleanor Dunfey Freiburger. Now before we end today I want to take a moment to speak about the role of the Dunfey "sisters" Catherine "Kay" Dunfey, Mary Dunfey, Eileen Dunfey and, of course, Eleanor. Although the brothers Dunfey feature prominently in the story of this extraordinary family, the brothers themselves would all attest that the sisters were the "glue" that held the family together and saw the family through its evolution from commercial success to social justice titans. As Jerry was fond of saying "when we said that the sisters were praying for us, what we really meant was that "they had our backs."
Listening to Eleanor as she wove the tale of the family and its broad impact on the world, one can't help but sense the pathos, empathy and towering intellect that guided the Dunfey sisters and their unquenchable thirst for social justice that led them first to the convent and later in their lives to an ongoing quest for a meaningful role for the Dunfey family beyond the commercial success of the Dunfey Hotel Group, Omni International and even its successful partnership with Sofia Collier in Socially Responsible Investing. In the case of the Dunfey family, the whole was surely greater than the sum of its parts and the sisters, were an integral part of that whole.
The show notes for this podcast are available at both NHSecrets.blogspot.com and TheRadicalCentrist.US.
Thanks also to Reggae and Jazz musician Free Joseph whose beautiful song "Tell Me Why" will serve to bookend this podcast. Free Joseph reminds us in the opening lyrics of exactly what the Dunfey family has helped the world see - that "we've got to learn to live together.
The Saturday Club
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Club_(Boston,_Massachusetts) Saturday Club (Boston, Massachusetts)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigationJump to searchNot to be confused with
Saturday Evening Girls.
"A Group of the Saturday Club", from Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1896
The Saturday Club, established in 1855, was an informal monthly gathering in
Boston, Massachusetts, of writers, scientists, philosophers, historians, and other notable thinkers of the mid-19th century.
Contents
1Overview2Gallery3Further reading4References5External linksOverview[
edit]
The club began meeting informally at the Albion House in Boston.
[1] Publishing agent and lawyer Horatio Woodman first suggested the gatherings among his friends for food and conversation.
[2] By 1856, the organization became more structured with a loose set of rules, with monthly meetings held over dinner at the
Parker House.
[1] The Parker House served as their place of meeting for many years. It was a hotel built in 1854 by
Harvey D. Parker.
[3][4]The gatherings led to the creation of the
Atlantic Monthly, to which many of the members contributed.
[2] The name was suggested by early member
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.[5]The original members of the group included Woodman,
Louis Agassiz,
Richard Henry Dana Jr., Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, Senator George Frisbee Hoar, and
James Russell Lowell.
[2] In the following years, membership was extended to Holmes,
Cornelius Conway Felton,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and
William Hickling Prescott.
[6] Other members included
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Asa Gray,
John Lothrop Motley,
Benjamin Peirce,
Charles Sumner,
John Greenleaf Whittier, and others. Invitations to the group were considered a sort of affirmation of acceptance into Boston's high society. Ohio-native
William Dean Howells was invited by
James Russell Lowell in 1860 and recalled in a memoir that it seemed like a rite of passage. Holmes joked that Howells's presence serve as "something like the apostolic succession... the laying on of hands". A few years later, Howells was named editor of the
Atlantic Monthly, which published many of the works by members of the group.
[7]In 1884, Oliver Wendell Holmes published a poem titled "At the Saturday Club" in which he reminisced about the gatherings. By then, many of its members were dead. Ralph Waldo Emerson's son, Edward Waldo Emerson, published two books about the Saturday Club and its members in the early 20th century. A version of the Saturday Club still exists in Boston.
Gallery[
edit]
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Louis Agassiz
Benjamin Peirce
Charles Sumner and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1863
Parker's, School Street, Boston, 1855
Ralph Waldo Emerson, ca.1872
Asa Gray
John Lothrop Motley, ca.1860
Further reading[
edit]
Adams, Thomas Boylston. Saturday Club 1957–1986. Boston: Saturday Club, 1988.
Emerson, Edward Waldo.
Early years of the Saturday Club, 1855–1870
. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918.
Emerson, Edward Waldo. Later years of the Saturday Club, 1870–1920. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927.
Forbes, Edward Waldo. Saturday Club: A Century Completed, 1920–1956. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell. "
At the Saturday Club
". 1884.
References[
edit]
^
Jump up to:a b Mellow, James R. Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980: 539.
ISBN 0-8018-5900-X^
Jump up to:a b c Gale, Robert L. A Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003: 210.
ISBN 0-313-32350-X^ Whitehill, Walter Muir. "Review of The Saturday Club: A Century Completed 1920–1956" by Edward W. Forbes and John H. Finley, Jr. The New England Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Mar. 1959), pp. 108–112.
^ Morison, Samuel Eliot. "Review of Later Years of the Saturday Club" by M. A. DeWolfe Howe. The New England Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Apr. 1928), p. 267.
^ Broaddus, Dorothy C. Genteel Rhetoric: Writing High Culture in Nineteenth-Century Boston. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina, 1999: 46.
ISBN 1-57003-244-0.
^ Gale, Robert L. A Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003: 210–211.
ISBN 0-313-32350-X^ O'Connell, Shaun. Boston: Voices and Visions. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010: 92.
ISBN 978-1-55849-820-4External links[
edit]
Guide to the Saturday Club Records
,
Massachusetts Historical SocietyOmni Parker House Boston
at "Historic Hotels of America",
National Trust for Historic Preservation"At the Saturday Club"
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
This article about a
philosophy-related organization is a
stub. You can help Wikipedia by
expanding it.
Categories:
1855 establishments in MassachusettsCultural history of BostonClubs and societies in BostonPhilosophical societies in the United States19th century in BostonPhilosophy organization stubs Global Citizen's Circle Gallery of Images
https://globalcitizenscircle.org/gallery/ (Eleanor spelled it Daggard)
Professor Gwynne Daggett's greatest lesson was the example of his life
By Kimberly Swick Slover
http://unhmagazine.unh.edu/f01/daggett1f01.html
