Sentinel and Enterprise, MA
Aug 5 2012
Home is where Harry is
91-year-old has somewhere to be, people to see, but always in Fitchburg
Sentinel & Enterprisesenlandenterprise.com
By Alana Melanson
[email protected] @alanamelanson on Twitter
FITCHBURG — Harry Vizigian is the most difficult 91-year-old man to find.
Vizigian may still live in the same home he grew up in on River
Street, but you’d be hard-pressed to find him there on most days.
Up and out very early every day in his red 1987 Dodge Omni, Vizigian
doesn’t usually return home until the sun starts to set.
“I can’t stay home,” he said. “I’ve got to go out and enjoy things and
do things.”
Most Wednesday mornings, Vizigian can be found enjoying breakfast with
his friends at the City Hall Cafe, giving an Armenian blessing prior
to the meal, but soon he’s off again to other places and seeing more
friends. He also spends a great deal of time at the Fitchburg Public
Library, studying sports, history and “everything I can get a hold
of,” he says.
Vizigian attributes his longevity to the fact that he has never — not
even once — smoked or drank in his life, and he eats lots of fruits
and vegetables.
Vizigian’s father immigrated to the U.S. from Armenia in 1913, with
his mother and brother following in 1920, narrowly escaping the
Armenian Genocide. Though born here, Vizigian learned the Armenian
language from his parents and still speaks it fluently.
Vizigian worked for the Fitchburg Sentinel for about 10 years in the
1930s, beginning as an after-school job. The 1940 Fitchburg High
School graduate’s duties were to proofread and print the major local
and international headlines of the day, by Linotype, on large paper
and paste them in the first-floor windows so that people could read
them as they were walking by outside.
He worked in the original Sentinel building, which was torn down in
the late 1970s and replaced by the current structure.
During the time Vizigian was at the Sentinel, all of the newspaper’s
operations — writing, editing, printing, advertising, circulation —
were run out of the same building, in contrast to today, with layout
occurring in Lowell and printing being done at Devens.
Vizigian also delivered about 300 papers each day, sometimes not
finishing until 7 p.m. or later.
“Papers used to come out at 4 o’clock in the evening those days,” he
said. “They didn’t come out early like they do today.”
And if the press would break down, the newspapers would go out even
later, Vizigian said. There also was not a Sunday edition then, he
said.
One perk of his job was that the Sentinel used to give its employees
passes to the Whalom Playhouse in Lunenburg, where he would see
Hollywood actors such as Martha Raye and John Garfield.
At the time, Main Street was lined with theaters, and Vizigian would
also get to see the vaudeville shows every Sunday, as well as the big
bands that used to come through, led by genre greats such as Harry
James, Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington and Count Basie.
Life was hard in the Depression era, and wages were often only 15 or
25 cents per hour, Vizigian said. He worked many different jobs,
taking what he could, when he could.
“You had to in those days,” he said. “You had to take your job or else
somebody else would take it to put food on the table.”
Vizigian credits his sharp memory to his mother, whom he says was a
very smart woman. He can remember as far back as when he was 3 or 4
years old, the image of his family’s beloved collie that “looked just
like Lassie.”
Vizigian remembers the days when a mere 10 cents could buy a hot dog
and a root beer.
He remembers the 1936 flood, when River Street was navigable only by
canoe and the 1937 hurricane that brought so many trees down that cars
could not pass through for days.
Vizigian remembers the days before Boulder Drive existed, when Main
Street was two ways and devoid of parking meters, filled with horses
and buggies and an area for grazing.
The thought of the empty storefronts that now plague Main Street
couldn’t be imagined then, he said.
“Main Street was booming those days when I was growing up,” Vizigian
said. “It was booming.”
Restaurants, luncheonettes, pharmacies, furriers and stores carrying
shoes, clothing, hardware, jewelry and furniture lined the downtown,
and many were often open until 9 or 10 p.m., he said.
Dressing up and walking down Main Street on Friday and Saturday nights
was the thing to do at this time, Vizigian said, with people
congregating up and down the entire way.
Downtown began to deteriorate in the 1960s and ’70s, he said.
“When the malls came in, it killed everything,” Vizigian said. “As
soon as television came in, the theaters went out.”
Following his stint at the Sentinel, Vizigian worked for a farm, a
cleaning service, a bakery, a gun shop and made luggage before
becoming a facilities maintenance man at General Electric, where he
stayed for 20 years until he took a buyout in 1983.
Vizigian never had any children and “lived the single life” until
1999, when he met longtime companion Beryl Bonczek, an Englishwoman
and a docent at the Fitchburg Art Museum,
Vizigian, who has attended Christ Episcopal Church for 85 of his 91
years and has been an usher there every Sunday for the majority of his
adult life, says he met Bonczek on the day of a big snowstorm.
“Coming out of the church, you couldn’t see two feet ahead of you,” he said.
While Vizigian had dated plenty of other women, he says he’d never
before met one like Bonczek.
“When I met her, I connected,” he said. “She was a nice woman, a very
generous person. She’d do anything for you. And boy, was she smart.”
Back in England, Bonczek studied acting alongside the likes of
Laurence Olivier, David Niven, Helen Mirren and Judi Dench, Vizigian
said, and she sang with Tom Jones.
Bonczek went all over the world, teaching English and art throughout
Europe and as far as Doha, Qatar and the jungles of Papua New Guinea,
he said.
She loved to travel and Vizigian was afraid to fly. He turned down
offer after offer to fly to London to visit her daughter, who had a
dental practice in Exeter.
“I didn’t take the chance to go, and I regret it,” he said.
Bonczek died in her sleep in 2007 at the age of 68, which is “too
young,” Vizigian said.
Six months later, Muffin, their Pomeranian, was struck and killed by a
distracted truck driver in the plaza next to their home, with Vizigian
still holding the leash. A year and a half later, he finally found
another Pomeranian, named Nico, who simply “dropped dead” while out on
a walk, he said.
Vizigian said he was heartbroken and devastated to have these three
tragedies happen in such rapid succession, but he has done his best to
move on.
“That’s life,” he said. “We’ve got to make the best of it while we’re here.”
Vizigian considers each day a gift, but has been left wondering where
his 91 years went.
“It creeps up on you,” he said. “Before you know it, the days and the
months are gone. It’s as if I just graduated from high school.”
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