As a child, his steam fueled hot 1939 children's classic
Dick Berkenbush was West Newbury's fire chief for 37 years and doubled as its police chief for 10. Later, the lifelong resident served nine years as a selectman.
But his public service to his hometown began even before he was out of grade school.
Berkenbush, now 81, helped put West Newbury on the map with his role in the making of Virginia Lee Burton's 1939 children's classic, ''Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel."
Although she was long associated with Gloucester, Burton chose West Newbury as the model for the fictional town of Popperville.
And little Dickie Berkenbush was the one who suggested that Mary Anne, the old steam shovel, could be rescued from the scrap heap if she could be converted into the heating system for the new Town Hall.
Berkenbush's wife of 15 years, Sue, has mounted an exhibit at the GAR Memorial Library in West Newbury celebrating the life and work of Burton, a close friend of the Berkenbush family and a resident of Gloucester's Folly Cove from 1932 until her death in 1968. The exhibit will be up through next month. ''She was a talented person in so many ways," Sue Berkenbush said. The exhibit includes copies of Burton's award-winning books; information about her life as a dancer, teacher, and wife of sculptor George Demetrios; and several intricate designs from her block-printing work with the renowned Folly Cove Designers, which she founded. It also includes a sketch she once made of Dickie in short pants.
Dick Berkenbush's childhood home at West Newbury's Chestnut Hill Farm was a lively, intellectually rigorous place where some of Boston's most creative students were frequent guests. His grandfather, Ralph Albertson, was a minister, social reformer, and Harvard librarian who was in the habit of inviting undergraduates from the area's more prestigious colleges to spend weekends with him, his wife, Hazel, and their family. ''I think he was looking for free help with the haying," Berkenbush joked.
There also was the attraction of
''You never knew when your bed would be taken over by some guest and you were relegated to the attic," Berkenbush said. There were younger boarders, too. Sue Berkenbush -- then Sue Williams -- first met Dick and his family at the age of 13 when she stayed at the farm.
''I replaced two boys from England," she said. Decades later, after having six children with her first husband, she married Dick Berkenbush. Burton's richly detailed print work with the Folly Cove Designers, for placemats, table runners, and other domestic goods, was nationally recognized, highlighted in Life magazine, and sold through retail outlets such as Lord & Taylor.
At the library, Sue Berkenbush noted a framed pattern of whispering women, which Burton called ''The Gossip." ''Any tearoom you went to had this wallpaper," she said. The artist's repeating designs of lobstermen, ballerinas, and other favorite subjects seem to be in constant motion. ''That's so typical of Jinny's designs," said Sue Berkenbush, who provided many of the examples from the family's private collection.
Burton took much of her inspiration from her own life and surroundings. Her son, Michael, who had a toy steam shovel in his sandbox, was the model for Mike Mulligan. The powerful snow plow from another of her books, ''Katy and the Big Snow," was based on the real-life pride and joy of the Gloucester Highway Department. In March 1938, she attended a Town Meeting in West Newbury, sketching the setting and the participants. Those sketches became the basis for the new Town Hall of Popperville, where Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne would dig out the basement in a single day.
At dinner on Chestnut Hill that evening, the author told the Albertsons and Berkenbushes about her dilemma. She had written Mike and Mary Anne into a literal corner -- they were stuck in the hole they dug for the Town Hall basement. Dick, then about 12 years old, suggested the steam shovel could become the building's heating source. It was a simple notion, he said. ''My father had a garage in town that had a steam heating system, so I was familiar with it." In the first edition of ''Mike Mulligan," Burton credited her young collaborator as ''Dickie Birkenbush."
The misspelling has remained in print ever since, through an estimated 70 million copies sold. Berkenbush said: ''Some of them are probably worn out by now." 