Almost all my neighbors in Newton Highlands were staunch Republicans when I grew up here during the late 1940s and 50s. None more so than Dorothea Cogswell,, a descendant of the State’s first colonists and a pillar of Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church on Walnut Street.I was up from Washington D.C. during the late 1970s when one of those periodic OPEC embargoes hit Boston hard with major shortages of gasoline and heating oil. It was bitterly cold on Christmas Eve when I went over to check on how Miss Cogswell was doing. She was in her late 70s and lived alone. She greeted me effusively at the door with two heavy blankets draped around her shoulders. Her living room felt almost as cold as the night time temperature outside. I said something like “My God Miss Cogswell, why are you keeping it so cold in here”. She replied almost casually, “President Carter has said we should turn our thermostats down. He wouldn’t have asked us to do this if he didn’t think it was in America’s interest to do so. He’s our President and he’s also an honest and truthful man. This is the patriotic thing to do.”

There was probably no way in Hell that Miss Cogswell was ever going to vote for a Democrat, but she trusted Jimmy Carter as a man and as our President to do the right thing even if he was a Democrat, and a Southern Democrat to boot. And she also respected the fact that I was a pretty solid Democrat because she had trust that I, too, was a patriot and a good citizen.  In fact, all my Republican neighbors felt that way about me and I certainly respected them. I think they secretly felt that I was a good kid who would eventually mature and become a good Republican.  That never happened.    

Some things are a lot better now than they were then, but there are things that clearly are not. The loss of trust and respect for authority and public institutions, and the coarseness of public discourse are clear examples of trends going in the wrong direction.   I’m positive Miss Cogswell would not have been pleased with any of it. We had a brutal season with polio here in Newton and across the nation in 1955.  I’ve wondered in recent days what the reaction would have been if President Eisenhower had asked all of us to wear masks, social distance and avoid travel outside our immediate community.  I’m virtually certain that the people I knew in Newton (Republicans and Democrats alike) would have responded positively and would have done so with pride and joy. There are still a lot of things we can all learn from our past and I wanted all of you to know about Miss Cogswell because I can think of no finer example of what’s been good in this country and this city.