The first class to graduate from the University of Massachusetts was in 1863. A hundred years later, the centennial class of 1963 had the names of all of the graduates inscribed in pink granite in their own honor.
Freakin egomaniacs! Anyway, one of the members of that august class will no longer be able to visit the shrine and reflect upon their immortality - Gordon Oakes!
If you read his obituary, you might get the impression that his life was an unbroken string of good deeds. The truth, however, is more complicated.
Gordon N. Oakes was the head of the legendary and now defunct Monarch Life Insurance Company. It failed on Oakes's watch in a particularly ugly collapse that wiped our the jobs and life savings of many of their employees. Worse, as the company was sinking, the Oakes administration urged employees to invest in their firm as a way of bolstering it. But critics claimed the company was not clear in describing their true financial condition, so those loyal investors were caught surprised and broke when the company suddenly collapsed.
Oakes was also behind the construction of the Mullins Center at UMass, thereby turning the Springfield Civic Center into the white elephant it is today. The only thing that was keeping the Civic Center half way afloat were the big rock concerts they used to put on, many of them drawing fans from the local colleges. However, thanks to Oakes successful lobbying for building the Mullins in Amherst, UMass and the other regional college students no longer had any reason to come to Springfield because they had their own, closer and larger facility to host their rock and roll shows.
With friends like Gordon Oakes, Springfield didn't need any enemies.
Downtown Springfield by John Baiback
Red sky over the Forest Park section of Springfield.
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| photo by m. vennell |
Oh no! The Northampton comics store on King Street has gone out of business!
The other day I went to Tandem Bagels in the heart of downtown Florence.
They have good breakfast sandwiches.
3 comments:
yeah but the casino was supposed to revitalize Downtown Springfield......
why does UMass cost so much to attend?
Seemed inevitable the sports programs at UMass were gonna need a big arena, though
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