Voices and Faces:  A unique view of Brownington

Voices and Faces, Portrait of a Community; text and photos by students of Brownington Central School; published in 2002 by Orleans County Historical Society in Brownington; 142 pages; softcover; $10.

reviewed by Jennifer Hersey

The residents of Brownington have been given a special gift — a book compiled by fifth- and sixth-graders of Brownington Central School.  It offers a unique perspective on the area, the townspeople, and rural life.

Voices and Faces, Portrait of a Community began as a project in 1998 to celebrate Brownington’s bicentennial in 1999.  Folks at Old Stone House asked John M. Miller to take on the project.

Garret Keizer sums up the feeling of the book aptly in the preface where he writes, “The images we find in Voices and Faces are what an old man wants to call to mind at the end of his life; they’re the visions of an expectant woman when she rubs her stomach and smiles.”

It began with Mr. Miller, with the help of teachers Cathy Wasklewicz and Richard Rupert, introducing accounts written about Vermont and “its people, its land, and the hardness of rural life.”

Children read poetry as well as prose, held discussions, looked at maps from 1878 and line drawings from an old catalog, and talked about photography and what people can learn from photographs. Students spent a lot of time learning to interview, to really listen, and to compose photographs.

According to Mr. Miller’s introduction, after some time students began to see how their work was important to the larger community.

Students were asked to respond to statements and questions, the first one being “When I think about Brownington I think about....”

A student identified only as Jim wrote, “Things that come to mind about Brownington are that it is a very old town and there are things and places that no other town could have e.g. the Old Stone House.”

Other students, answering the question, “Why should we learn about Brownington?” wrote, “The people are important because they are not going to be here long,” from Melanie, and “Just in case you get fired and the only other job open is like town clerk,” from David.

The students were asked to write about things as well.  Josh Glodgett wrote “My Gramy’s Picture.”  He said, “My Gramy’s picture means alot to me.  I take it out when Im bored, sad, or just missing her.  It brings back memorys of what we talk about and did.  She died last year.  I keepte the newspaper article about her. Gramy was 86 when she died.  Her real name was Rhoda Glodgett, but to me she’ll alway’s be gramy.  When I think of her I will remember a happy person who loved me.”

James Begin drew a diagram of the underside of his dad’s truck with the caption, “Under my dad truck it is greesy, oily, noisy, fast moving parts, hat.”  He labeled parts with extreme care:  transfer case, rear drive axle, transmission, locking hubs, front drive axle (60 series), drive shaft.

Students also wrote about pets. Jennifer Houston wrote, “My cat and I catch flies together on my fan.  I stand on my bed and Zoey climbs onto my shoulder and puts her front paws on my head.  When she bats from a fly she falls and her claws rip down my skin.”

Writing about seasons and holidays was also assigned.  “In the fall!” by Christina Davignon is a great example.  “In the fall I go trick-or-treating.  These are all the costumes I’ve been.

“Rabbit,
“Witch,
“Cat.

“I was about 4 years old when I was a Rabbit.
“I was about 6 years old when I was a Witch.
“I was about 8 years old when I was a Cat.

“I forget what else I was but here goes the story.  It was Halloween and it was a dark and spooky night.  I was walking and then I saw it, a spooky house.  I can’t remember what road it was on.  I didn’t get a lot of candy that year but I had fun anyway.”

Hunting is a way of life in the Northeast Kingdom, and well-exemplified by Jeremy Williams in “The Gun I Hope To Get.” He writes, “The gun, a 22 rifle is my grandmothers.  She keeps it in the living room on the gun shelf.  Every time I go over there, I look at it.  It was very old but it looks like it’s new.

“Now I am going to tell you what it looks like.  The gun color is dark brown and light brown.  It has a magazine which holds 1-35 bullets at a time.  The magazine goes into the stock and then feeds the bullets into the chamber.  The barrel is about one inch around and the chamber is about half of a centimeter. The barrel and the magazine are black.

“The bullets are a goldish color.”

Stephen Vance also wrote about hunting.  The following is an excerpt. “After a short while the dogs started heading the rabbit back towards us.  The dogs chased the rabbit closer and closer.  I turned to look at my Dad.  He shot at the rabbit and the rabbit flopped over head first and lay dead on the snow.  The dogs raced to get the dead rabbit.  Dad and I hurried over and grabbed the rabbit, we dressed it and gave the guts to the dogs.  After the dogs finished up they ran into the woods.”

Purely descriptive thinking brought out some thoughtful writing such as “Smell see hear touch” by Melanie Lamere. She wrote, “I see a beautiful day. I smell the fresh air.  I hear the wind the nature around me.  And the silence some what.  Now all I hear is people talking.  I feel the branches hitting agenst me.  By the smell of the wind I can tell that it might rain tonight.”

Interviewing and then composing a story based on what they learned was an important facet of the project.  Josh Choiniere and Ryan Fox interviewed Harold and Claire Lyon.  The following is an excerpt.  “The Lyons did their share of work in Brownington.  They’ve retired now.  Right now they’re just taking a breather.”

As part of the interviewing segment, students were asked to look around them and describe the subjects and their surroundings.  There appears a story about Mark Royer by Stephen Vance.  “Mark is a 28 year old average sized man, I’d say about 5 feet 9 inches tall, wearing chainsaw chaps and a flannel shirt and had rubber boots on his feet.  The first thing I noticed when we got out of the car was how cold the wind felt and that it was raining lightly.”

Readers may glimpse parts of a person’s character and personality in the pieces written by the students. Heather Chase, in a story about Erma Ticerhurst, writes, “She had a piano and if she didn’t shut the cover those kittens would be running back and forth on the keys all night long.”

The same goes for this excerpt from Adam Lane’s piece about a former teacher, Mrs. Greenwood.  “One time Denny Emerson set fire to the paper towels. The kids didn’t know what Mrs. Greenwood did to him, but he never did it again.”

Ashley Hoadley is quite a promising writer.  Her descriptions of Mr. and Mrs. Hastings are as poetic as prose could ever be.  “While the Hastings talk about the olden days, I’m enjoying the smooth butterscotch candy they give me....

“Mr. Hastings is a tall medium built man.  His hair is as gray as a stormy sky and his voice as old as the cracked black tar in the summer.

“Mrs. Hastings has a lighter colored brownish hair like the sandy beaches at the lake.  She is as beautiful as my mom, her voice is like the wind whipping across the meadows on a mid-summer’s day.”

Voices and Faces is as unique as it is beautiful.  It is an exquisite portrait of a landscape, of its people, of its ways of being. Mr. Keizer wrote of it, “The first time I opened Voices and Faces I had the sense of being suddenly attached to a living thing — what it feels like to hook a trout or mount a horse.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Editor’s note:  The following students took part in this book:  James Begin, Jim Davis, Branden Brewster, Jesse Hinton, Colin Lawrence, Helena Perry, Jeffrey Turgeon, Stephen Vance, Cassie Perry, Jessica Wolf, Cam Davis, Adam Lane, Ashley Moore, May Libby, Josh Folsom, Kristen Beaumont, Josh Bartolomeo, Christina Davignon, Josh Choiniere, Jeremy Williams, Jason Herman, Ashley Hoadley, Heather Chase, Shawntel Young, Jennifer Houston, Ryan Fox, David Lagasse, Logan Vanasse, Josh Glodgett, and Melanie Lamere.

Also acknowledged by Mr. Miller were: teachers Cathy Wasklewicz and Richard Rupert, Old Stone House Museum, A.D. Henderson Foundation, Windham Foundation, Vermont Council on the Humanities, Vermont Community Foundation, and the George W. Mergens Foundation.