Citizen's Canes
Over the years they've been shunned and cherished, lost and found, burned and (perhaps) even buried. The walking sticks known as Boston Post Canes, given to the oldest residents in hundreds of local towns, now celebrate their 100th year. This is the story of one of those canes.
Manson Haws was a civic leader and successful businessman built from Yankee stock as sturdy as the granite walls of the chapel he donated to the Evergreen Cemetery in his lifelong town of Leominster. Haws owned a shoe factory there for more than 45 years and served the town as a justice of the peace, a selectman, a longtime moderator of town meetings, and a director of local banks and railroads. Even retirement and old age couldn't slow Haws down. Still hale and hearty at age 78, he began to till the land as a farmer.
The manse where Haws drew his final breaths at the age of 95 still stands -- fittingly given the original owner's longevity -- as a rest home for the elderly. Sandwiched today between the hustle of Route 2 and the bustle of a Dunkin' Donuts, the Second Empire-style house looks like a quaint anachronism. Much like his old home, the ebony cane that Haws once clutched in his weathered hands has survived despite a dizzying century of change.
That cane and others like it are reaching a historic milestone this year. It's been 100 years since Manson Haws, at age 92, first received a Boston Post Cane to celebrate the fact that he was the oldest resident in his town. Haws was just the kind of man that Edwin Grozier, the shrewd publisher of the Boston Post, wanted to exalt when he devised the publicity stunt. Grozier intended his walking sticks to be "a tribute to honored and useful lives, to thrift, temperance, and right living, and above all, to the superb vigor of New England manhood." Seven hundred walking sticks were given out in 1909, and they were supposed to be passed from oldest resident to oldest resident in a never-ending tradition. In some towns, the canes have unfortunately been lost to time, while other communities shun them as cursed "kisses of death" that are incarcerated seemingly for the protection of their elderly citizens. But even though the presses of the Boston Post went quiet in 1956, the unique and charming ritual of presenting staffs bearing the newspaper's name to the most senior of citizens endures in hundreds of New England hamlets.
When Grozier bought the Boston Post in 1891, it had fewer than 30,000 subscribers and was struggling for survival amid the brutal competition posed by the nearly dozen dailies crammed together on the narrow stretch of Washington Street in Boston dubbed "Newspaper Row." To boost circulation, Grozier relied on creative promotional schemes, such as giving away Ford automobiles to readers sending in the best news items and awarding a rocking chair to New England's oldest couple. By the time he died in 1924, Grozier had succeeded in his quest to make the Post the "great breakfast table paper of New England," and circulation had soared to more than 500,000 copies a day.
The Boston Post Canes were perhaps Grozier's most successful marketing initiative, boosting circulation by 50,000 in the year following their distribution in August 1909. The 3-foot-long canes were crafted from African ebony and topped with 14-karat gold heads that were engraved with the town's name. Grozier sent the canes to 700 towns in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine. The publisher excluded cities from the list of recipients. (Leominster has a cane because it didn't become a city until 1915.) According to Grozier's instructions, "The idea is that the cane shall always be owned and carried by the oldest citizen of your town, and that upon the decease of the present oldest citizen it shall be duly transmitted to the then oldest citizen, remaining always in the possession of whoever is the oldest citizen of your town."
When confusion arose as to whether women were eligible to receive the walking stick, Grozier made it clear that the league of cane holders was to strictly be an all-boys' club. "The word 'citizen' has been intended by the Post to mean the oldest registered male voter," he wrote in the paper. Even though women finally gained the vote in 1920, it wasn't until the 1930s that the Post gave its blessing for women to possess the canes. The Post prescribed no racial restrictions on eligibility, but the first class of cane holders -- mostly bearded, balding, white men -- was anything but diverse.
Grozier not only had a flair for publicity but also a nose for a good story. The canes gave him both. "A man who has managed to cheat death is always an interesting figure," the publisher once said. A century before "hyperlocal" was talked about as a salve for the ailing newspaper industry, Grozier understood the appeal of community stories to his readers. For months after the canes were distributed, the Post published photographs and biographies of recipients, including Manson Haws.
After Haws passed away, Leominster's Boston Post Cane was given to various residents until it was lost in the 1930s. Its whereabouts were a mystery for 60 years. Dean Mazzarella, Leominster's current mayor, feared the cane was gone forever until he got a call from his secretary one day in 1998 telling him the cane had been found on
It's not unusual for towns to lose track of their walking sticks. Oftentimes, heirs, unaware that the cane is a living loan and not the property of the deceased, have kept the staffs or sold them at estate sales. Canes have been burned and stolen. Natick's cane is even thought to be buried with one of its recipients, according to Jennifer Hance, executive director of the Natick Historical Society. Exhaustive research done by Barbara
As was the case in Leominster, long-lost canes can surface in random places. Boston Post Canes have been discovered in dirty dumpsters and dusty closets. Leicester's cane was missing for 90 years before the great-grandson of the cane's original recipient discovered it in an attic; West Newbury's cane was missing for 20 years until it was found in a town vault last year.
Watertown is the latest municipality to recover its Boston Post Cane after it suddenly appeared last year in the hands of a Delaware antiques dealer. Longtime Watertown resident Charles Morash had been on a 20-year quest to find the cane, which was thought to have been lost after it was given to its original recipient in 1909. When Morash read in a Watertown newspaper that the antiques dealer was selling the cane for $1,600, he worked with Watertown native Ronald Ohanian to raise the money from local families eager to bring the artifact back to town and revive the tradition.
An increasingly mobile elderly population is making it even more difficult for towns to keep tabs on their canes. "The cane holder can move away to a nursing home or move out of state to be with family, so tracking the cane's whereabouts can be a problem," says Michael Bouchard, Groton's town clerk. Compared with decades ago, seniors are not only more likely to move out of town but also to move in as well. That can make a town's task of accurately identifying the oldest resident more difficult, so some towns have instituted residency requirements, with most ranging anywhere from 15 to 75 years, according to Staples.
With logistics becoming more difficult, Henry Taron, proprietor of Tradewinds Antiques & Auctions of Manchester-by-the-Sea and a specialist in antique walking sticks, says the number of towns still presenting the original cane to recipients is dwindling. "Instead, they'll give out a certificate or a replica and keep the original on display in town hall or at the historical society, because they are afraid of losing it. Towns are also concerned that the cane is getting too beat up to hand it out, but some have had real war stories in trying to get the cane back."
After its own war story in recapturing its Boston Post Cane, there was no way Leominster was going to let go of it a second time. "We didn't want to lose it again," Mazzarella says. "I just remember how important it was for us to be able to stand there and actually give it to somebody."
The city instead gives recipients a pin-sized version of the cane made by a local jeweler. The walking stick, along with a unique case believed to have been manufactured by one of the city's old piano factories, is displayed in an anteroom to the mayor's office along with a biography and photograph of the current honoree. "It means just as much to recipients to have the pin and the picture on the wall," the mayor says. "In fact, more people see the cane and the picture here, so we get to tell more people the story."
Not all potential honorees have been eager to receive the Boston Post Cane. This was particularly true of women after the Post finally allowed them to become eligible for the walking stick. "A lot of women didn't want the cane," Staples says. "For one thing, they didn't want to tell their age, and they thought it was hexed. They called it the 'kiss of death,' because right after people got it, they died." Even today, some superstitious seniors refuse the walking stick, believing it to be more parting gift than honor. Nantucket is one town that has retired the Boston Post Cane tradition because potential recipients were scared. "The 'death stick' is firmly ensconced in the vault," Town Clerk Catherine Flanagan Stover wryly remarks. "Every couple of years someone wants to resurrect it, and we just tell them no."
In spite of the supposed hex, many still covet the walking stick. "The recipients are very proud of it," Staples says, "and I don't think women resent it as much as they first did."
Victoria Girouard certainly had no qualms about receiving the cane in 2006 as the eldest of Leominster's 45,000 residents. "It's like the key to City Hall," she says. Girouard's sight may be failing, but her eyes still twinkle with 103 years of memories. They've seen joyous occasions such as her wedding and the births of her children. They have also shed tears of sorrow for the losses of her husband, her teenage son, and other family members. Those eyes have seen incredible history -- two world wars, the Great Depression, and the arrival of automobiles, talking movies, and television. Through it all, Girouard has stood tall like the Boston Post Cane.
Girouard was born in Fitchburg in 1906 and has lived in Leominster for more than 75 years. She can still recall the painful days when women were denied the ballot box. "We felt as if we were nothing when we couldn't vote," she says. Girouard worked in the woolen mills and comb shops that once formed the backbone of this blue-collar city's economy and spent her free time bowling and dancing to big band music with her husband on Saturday nights. Her family includes four daughters, 13 grandchildren, 30 great-grandchildren, and seven great-great grandchildren.
While she has slowed in recent years and had to give up driving at age 97, Girouard is no recluse. She still lives in her home along with her daughter Claire and visits the local Summit
ElderCare facility three times a week to socialize and play games. She listens to books on tape and Red Sox games and still manages to get on her exercise bike from time to time.
Back in 1909, most cane holders profiled in the Post attributed their longevity to predictable actions such as "industry and sobriety," "temperate living," and "moderation in all things." Manson Haws didn't impart much either, pointing to "the simple life" and "regularity." Girouard says she doesn't have any particular secret but offers more details than her predecessor. "I live one day at a time just like everybody else," the 103-year-old says. "I eat good. I sleep good. I don't drink. I don't smoke, and I pray a lot."
Christopher Klein is a freelance writer in Waltham. E-mail him at chris@christopherklein.com 