RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

Lowell: A Jack Kerouac Destination City?

Lowell: A Jack Kerouac Destination City?

Steve Edington
Past President of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac

On May 13, 2026, the Lowell Sun carried a front-page article about Representative Lori Trahan’s tour of the proposed Jack Kerouac Center for Lowell at the former St. Jean Baptiste Church. She was accompanied by Sylvia Cunha, Director of Marketing and Business Development for the Jack Kerouac Estate, and David Ouelette, who has deeply been involved in the effort to create the Kerouac Center on this site.

These are some of my thoughts on this exciting possibility, drawing on my thirty-plus years of involvement in the Kerouac scene in Lowell:

These are quotes from three websites of museums or centers that honor the literary, artistic, or musical legacies of those for whom they were created:

“The James Joyce Center [Dublin, Ireland] is a museum and cultural institution which promotes the life, literature, and legacy of one of the world’s greatest writers, James Joyce.”

“The Beatles Story is a museum in Liverpool, England…The museum was recognized as one of the best tourist attractions of the United Kingdom in 2015.”

“As one of the largest literary museums in the United States dedicated to a single author, the National [John] Steinbeck Center [in Salinas, California] began as an initiative to create a forum for his writings and one that would inspire successful literary and educational programming.”

There are other similar locales I could cite, but I’ll keep it to these.  I have visited the Steinbeck Center several times and come away marveling at how it so wonderfully captures Steinbeck’s life and literary legacy.

Lowell, Massachusetts now has an opportunity to join these ranks with the creation of a Jack Kerouac Center in the former St. Jean Baptiste Church. Over the past few decades Kerouac has achieved comparable recognition as those of the people cited here when it comes to his literary and cultural impact world-wide. Lowell is now poised to become a destination city for Kerouac aficionados and scholars from around the world, in ways that would rival Dublin, Liverpool, and Salinas when it comes to the literary and cultural legacies of their “hometown heroes.”

My involvement, and one-time presidency, of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac (LCK) has allowed me to witness the ever-growing attraction of Lowell for devotees of Kerouac, as demonstrated by the attendance at our annual Kerouac Festivals in October. This fall we will host our 38^th annual gathering of “Kerouac Pilgrims” from around the country and world.

The prospect of a Kerouac Center will take our (LCK’s) efforts to an even higher level when it comes to the Kerouac presence in Lowell. The year-round draw of such a Center, the Kerouac-themed material at the Center for Lowell History that reflect his French-Canadian ancestry, the Kerouac Studies program at UMass Lowell, along with the annual LCK Festivals, will put Jack Kerouac at the forefront of the many fine attributes that attract people to Lowell.

Background: In 2022 the Jack Kerouac Foundation was created for the purpose of obtaining the former St. Jean Baptiste Church for conversion into a Jack Kerouac Center. Kerouac was an altar boy at SJB, and his Funeral Mass was celebrated there when he passed away in 1969. The property was owned by Lowell developer, Brian McGowan. In May of 2025 country singer and songwriter Zach Bryan purchased the building for the Kerouac Foundation/Estate. This past March Mr. Bryan also purchased the original “scroll” manuscripts of Kerouac’s novels On the Road and The Dharma Bums along with three Kerouac letters at Christie’s Auction in New York. The Center will become a home for these documents when its preparations are completed.

These preparations are the next crucial steps. The building has been purchased. The documents that will become the centerpieces of its exhibits have been secured.

More work is yet to come! This work includes generating the funds that will allow for the extensive, and necessary, restoration of SJB so the Kerouac Center can become a reality.

With the financial challenges the City of Lowell faces, fully funding the restoration needed for a Kerouac Center is beyond their resources. I get that. At the same time, however, I hope Lowell’s city leaders can understand just how much a Jack Kerouac Center will contribute to the vitality and well-being of Lowell, even as the community leaders of the cities mentioned here did.

Whatever support the city can provide will most certainly rebound to the greater good of Lowell. It will take some dedicated networking to fund the creation of this Center. I hope the city can be a part of such a networking process.

For those wishing to contribute to this effort, here’s the link:

https://jackkerouaccenter.com/pages/donate.

This year is the Lowell Bicentennial. It’s a time for looking back at Lowell’s rich history, and a time for looking ahead to what is yet to come. The creation of a Kerouac Center to highlight Jack Kerouac’s world-wide literary and cultural legacy can be a vital and exciting piece of Lowell’s future.

****

Steve Edington is a past President and current Treasurer of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac. He is the author of three Kerouac themed books, including his latest one, The Gospel According to Jack—Tracking Kerouac in My Life. He is also the Minister Emeritus of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua, New Hampshire.

History of Memorial Day

This blog post first appeared last year. It’s the text of remarks I delivered at the city of Lowell Memorial Day observance at Lowell City Hall on Saturday, May 31, 2025.

History of Memorial Day

By Richard Howe

Good afternoon. My topic today is the history of Memorial Day. To understand that, you must begin with the American Civil War. From 1861 to 1865, more than 700,000 people died while serving in the military making it the costliest war in the history of the United States. Here in Lowell, of a population of 36,000, more than 5,000 served and 646 of them died. That’s the equivalent today of 2,100 deaths.

After the war, those who survived felt a duty to preserve the memory of those who made the supreme sacrifice. In 1868, General John Logan, the commander of the Grand Army of the Republic which was the largest veterans organization in the country, ordered that all GAR members should observe May 30 as Decoration Day, an occasion to place flowers on the graves of fallen soldiers. The size and influence of the Grand Army of the Republic caused Decoration Day to become a nationwide event. By 1890, all northern states had adopted it as an official holiday and in the aftermath of World War I it expanded to honor the dead of all American wars. In 1967, Congress changed the name of the holiday to Memorial Day and moved it from May 30 to the last Monday of the month.

One hundred years ago here in Lowell, Memorial Day began with veterans organizations attending church services then going to all the cemeteries in the city to place flowers on the graves of deceased comrades. All would then gather next door at Memorial Hall, now the Pollard Library, for lunch and socializing. At 3pm, everyone would walk to the South Common to form up for the big parade that at its peak involved 7500 marchers and 75,000 spectators.

While we are disappointed that parades like that have faded from our culture we should not grow discouraged. In his 1868 order that created the first Memorial Day, General Logan said there is no prescribed form the observance should take but that each community shall hold such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.

In the spirit of General Logan, thank you all for being here today to fulfill the solemn trust of honoring those who have given their lives in service of our country.

Book Review: “Regret to Inform You”

Book Review: “Regret to Inform You”

Review by Leo Racicot

Book by Richard P. Howe Jr.

History, when viewed from a distance, is often a matter of staggering numbers, of sweeping troop movements. But in Regret to Inform You: The Human Cost of WWII in Lowell, Mass. Historian Richard Howe Jr. performs a staggering act of literary and historical restoration. He brings the global theater of conflict down to the neighborhoods, triple-deckers, the mill-heavy streets of Lowell, reminding us that global tragedies are always, at their core, heartbreakingly local.

The premise of the book is as straightforward as it is emotionally stunning: Howe seeks to return a face, a family, a specific story for every single one of the 441 sons and daughters of Lowell who left for World War II and never came home.

Rather than allowing these names to remain frozen in the bronze and stone of the city’s memorial tablets, Howe meticulously excavates the archives to reconstruct who these people actually were before they became casualties of war. He reawakens them, Lazarus-like.

By detailing their local backgrounds—where they went to school, which mill or neighborhood shop they worked in, and who was left waiting for them at home—the book moves compassionately beyond a simple military checklist.

Howe documents the precise circumstances of their deaths, spanning the entire timeline of American involvement in the war from the initial shock at Pearl Harbor to the final, horrifying days of Hiroshima.

With his characteristic meticulous eye for detail, the author ultimately creates a haunting echo of the sacrifices these courageous people made in the name of freedom. He resurrects them as real human beings, releasing them from the anonymity of being mere names on a monument. Thanks to his empathy, they live again.

The book’s end result presents the sheer weight of global war when viewed through a telescopic lens of personal loss, the devastating cost of so many lives lost but not lost in vain.

Regret to Inform You is an essential addition to the history of Lowell, a dense, reverent, incredibly important work of remembrance that ensures the names inscribed on the city’s monuments are remembered not just for how they died but for the community they lived in, the lives they left behind.

For anyone invested in military history, local heritage, or the quiet, stories of ordinary people caught in the grip of extraordinary times, this is a deeply rewarding read.

Seen & Heard: Vol. 20

Event: Lowell High Civics Day – On Monday, May 18, 2026, I attended the Lowell Public Schools Civics Fair at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. More than 300 middle and high school students participated. Organized in teams of four, each group identified and researched a public policy issue then devised an advocacy strategy to implement their objectives. The four sessions I was briefed on were on improving literacy; making health care more affordable; educating younger students on resisting and reporting sexual assault; and improving the English Language Arts curriculum now in use in Lowell. All of the students I heard from were eight graders. They were uniformly impressive in their mastery of their topic and their ability to passionately convey their position on the issue.  

Book Review: “True Yankees: The South Seas and The Discovery of American Identity” by Dane Morrison (2014). When writing about the founding of Lowell, I always say that Francis Cabot Lowell and his colleagues made the money they invested in the new textile mills from trading with China and India. Beyond that simple assertion, I didn’t know much of the backstory, but I’m trying to learn more about it. In True Yankees, Dane Morrison explores how the “Great South Sea” trade (1784–1844) served as a crucible for American identity. Beginning with the Empress of China in 1785, these voyages transcended commerce; they functioned as vital evidence of a unified nation. Lacking the resources for a state-backed monopoly like the British East India Company, the U.S. relied on independent traders, several of whom published accounts of their journeys. This “China Trade” literature helped shape a national character of American exceptionalism. However, when European wars ended in 1815, the trading advantage held by the neutral Americans vanished and merchants sought other investment opportunities which is the origin of the funding that built the mills of Lowell, Massachusetts. 

Obituary: Philip Caputo – “Philip Caputo, 84, Author of Blistering Vietnam War Memoir, Dies” by Joseph Berger, New York Times, May 10, 2026. Having been born in 1958, I was too young to have served in Vietnam, too young to have even worried about it. But I was fully aware of the war. Each night’s TV news broadcast brought the war into our house. That exposure, and the continuing importance of the Vietnam War on our culture and politics, has made me a lifelong student of that conflict. 1977 was a remarkable year for Vietnam books: Michael Herr’s Dispatches and Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War were both published that year. Despite having just graduated from high school, I bought both in hardcover and devoured each. Herr’s book still sits on my bookshelf, but I lost Caputo’s memoir although that had a bigger impact on me. 

Newspaper article: “Beijing Views Trump’s America As Sinking Empire” by Li Yuan, New York Times, May 14, 2026. This was truly an astonishing article to read. The reporter reviews various papers, speeches, and comments by Chinese leaders and academics over the past year. For most of its recent history, China has seen itself as striving to catch up to the west, but more recently, it sees itself as a superpower poised to surpass it. “Chinese nationalists and state-linked commentators say they have Mr. Trump to thank.” Whether it’s January 6th, violent immigration raids in Minnesota, erratic decisions on tariffs, irrational hostility towards longtime allies, and most recently, the war of choice against Iran, Trump has repeatedly done things, in the eyes of the Chinese, that have weakened America, all to the benefit of China. 

Podcast: “The History Wars and America at 250” New Yorker Radio Hour podcast. Historian Jill Lepore interviews fellow historians Beverly Gage and Jelani Cobb about the semisesquicentennial of the United States. Both Lepore and Cobb are staff writers at the New Yorker. Lepore teaches at Harvard and won a Pulitzer Prize for her book on the US Constitution. Cobb is the dean at the Columbia School of Journalism. Gage teaches at Yale, won the Pulitzer for her biography of J. Edgar Hoover, and is just out with a new book, This Land is Your Land: A Road Trip Through American History. Much of the podcast compared the feeling in the country about the 250th anniversary to the experience 50 years ago at the 200th anniversary. They agreed that each generation often feels that their time is the worst of all, but if you look objectively at the past, things have always been bad (and good). But they also agreed that there is something different about this era, mostly because the Trump regime is promoting a story of US history that excludes so many.