My column about the hockey game at Warner’s Pond prompted a couple of people to contact me about the game and about growing up beside Warner’s Pond.
Rick Loughlin reminded me that he participated in the hockey game and provided me with the names of other West Concord kids on their team. A couple of days later, I bumped into Ken Estes as he walked toward Concord center. He confirmed Rick’s information that Jim Condon, Billy Flinchbaugh, Doug Locke, Vinnie Lonergan, Rick, and he all played for the West Concord team.
Oddly, I have not heard from a single person wanting to be identified with the Concord team.
Brian Lanigan, a successful banker at Middlesex Savings Bank, wrote that his “parents’ best friends In West Concord were the Woodins.” Mr. Woodin and Mr. Lanigan built a raft and a little beach at water’s edge. In addition to being “in that pond and on that dock all the time” they took swimming lessons at a small beach near the prison. He added that “every day everyone went home covered in silt and needed a shower,” which meant “an outside hose down or run through the sprinkler.” He concluded by saying that “Warner’s Pond was a great asset to West Concord then and I’m very pleased to see it being appreciated now.”
It amazes me the coincidences one experiences in life. I often say that it is a small world, especially if you don’t go anywhere.
Coincidentally, a good friend and I are in contact with a college classmate who lives outside of Portland, Maine. The classmate mentioned that he was on an email group with Colby graduates which included Eddie Woodin. On one of our trips to visit our classmate, we took a detour to drop in at The Eddie Woodin Company in South Portland Maine. It turned out that Eddie had played football with both my brother Bill and my friend’s brother at Colby!
Noting that Eddie had a massive ring on his finger, I later “googled” him to determine what recognition he had received on account of his baseball and football career. Rather than earned run averages, batting averages or passing completion percentages, I learned that he has been a successful businessman with a strong philanthropic bent. In an article in the Colby Alumni magazine he talked about why giving away his money doesn’t faze him. “I started at zero,” Eddie said. “What if I go back to zero? What have I lost? Nothing.”
Warner’s Pond! Their stories make me wonder if there isn’t something special about the water..
