Aron Paul Tritter, 101; crafted BC High Cross

By Gloria Negri, Globe Staff, 9/4/2003

Six years ago, at the age of 95 and with a little help, Aron Paul Tritter climbed the steps up to the roof of Boston College High School.

Still bursting with pride at the sheet metal work he had done nearly half a century earlier, Mr. Tritter showed his son, grandson, and a school custodian how he had crafted the two-story stainless steel stand and cross that serves as a beacon on top of the Dorchester high school.

Mr. Tritter, 101, died Aug. 28 at the Jewish Home for the Elderly in Fairfield, Conn., after a lifetime of welding steel.

A photograph of him standing in front of the high school with the cross and its ornate shaft in the background hung on the wall by his bed in the nursing home, said his son, Henry Tritter of Bethel, Conn.

"My father never had any formal education," Tritter said. "He just went to work as a boy in Poland, as his father and grandfather had done before him, as sheet metal workers."

As a longtime employee of the E. Van Noorden Company of Roxbury, Mr. Tritter fabricated a variety of metal objects in copper and stainless steel, including the cross and the original marquee at the Hynes Convention Center.

He did work for grocery and department stores, and welded the metal hoods over the cooking areas of many Boston restaurants, along with the duct work on buildings throughout the area. His craft was seen by thousands, but no one knew the creator.

"He taught me everything I know," said Jack Strachman of Lake Worth, Fla., who met Mr. Tritter in Roxbury at the age of 7 and later worked with him at Van Noorden. "He was a master mechanic and could do stuff others couldn't. Van Noorden chose him for their toughest jobs.

"That's why they picked him to do the cross at BC High. I remember well how he made it in three pieces and how they had to be lifted into place with a crane. When all the pieces were in place, they fit like a glove because of his skill," Strachman said. "He was a smart man who never lied about anything and was always straight-up."Mr. Tritter, who was known as Paul, was a lifetime member of the Sheet Metal Workers International Association, Local 17.

He was born in Kielce, Poland, on June 20, 1902, one of six children. He learned the sheet metal trade from his father and worked side by side with him both in Poland and after they immigrated to the United States. Mr. Tritter left Poland separately from his family, his son said, to escape conscription in the Russian Army during the Tsarist regime. The rest of the family settled in Boston in 1919, and he arrived a year later, after a short stay in Canada.

Mr. Tritter and Etta Wilensky were married in 1942 and lived in Lynn until 1950, when they moved to Roxbury and later to Dorchester and Mattapan, their son said.

They moved to West Palm Beach, Fla., when Mr. Tritter was 70 and, when the couple's health began to fail, to the Jewish Home in Fairfield 10 years ago.

The couple observed their 50th wedding anniversary in 1992. Etta Tritter died in 1995. When Mr. Tritter wasn't involved with work projects, he created things out of metal and wood for his family.

His granddaughter, Beth Tritter of Washington, D.C., recalled the doll house he made for her 10th birthday, carving the miniature furniture with his strong hands and surgeon's dexterity, as well as installing its electricity.

He was still offering to make things for her well into his 90s. "When my husband and I moved into a new house a few months ago, he wanted to make things for us like the copper lanterns he had made for us earlier, but he didn't have the strength," she said.

"He was a fabulous guy," she said. "Though he had little formal education, he was very interested in literature, mostly Yiddish, and was talking presidential politics right to the end." Mr. Tritter's grandson, Paul Tritter of Jamaica Plain, remembered his sense of humor and the visits to their grandparents in West Palm Beach.

"He was always in the mood to kibbitz -- that's Yiddish for joking around," Paul said.

"And, when my grandmother baked mandel bread, my grandfather was always the first one to taste it. He used to say he had to test it to see if there was any kerosene in it."

His grandfather was always "a very modest man," Paul said, and the fact that his work would garner public attention at the time of his death would have suited him.

It was years after he had made the BC cross that Mr. Tritter confided a secret to his family: He had inscribed his name on the hollow inside of the giant cross.

Besides his son and grandchildren, he leaves a great-granddaughter and several nieces and nephews.

Services have been held.