Special Guest Speaker Added to Historical Society Event

Photo credit: North Reading Historical and Antiquarian Society.

The North Reading Historical and Antiquarian Society will host “Tales of North Reading: Life in the 1940s and 1950s” on Thursday, April 9 at the Flint Memorial Library, lower level activity room.

Please enter from the parking lot, through the left-hand door near Park Street.

Doors will open at 7 p.m. There will be refreshments and a brief slideshow of photos showing the people and places of North Reading from the time period. The discussion will begin at 7:30 p.m.

Longtime and former residents who lived in North Reading in the 1940s and 1950s will be on hand to give their experiences of what it was like living in town.

Participants will include Billy Post Sr., Don Upton, Dick Ham, Dave Ham, Barbara Long Ham, Irene Turilli Bourne, Caroline Foster Smith and Gordon Hall.

A special guest just added is Virginia McNeil Slep, who writes the “Those Were the Days” column in the North Reading Transcript.

Nancy Henry Ferretti will lead the conversation.

Many of the participants were in the ninth grade Class of 1951 at the L.D. Batchelder School.

They will talk about their formative years of growing up in North Reading.

The town was going through great growth during those years. In fact, North Reading nearly tripled its population between 1940 and 1960.

Hear what it was like living in North Reading.

Find out about what North Reading kids thought of attending high school in another community (Reading).

Discover what events shaped those years and what kids did for fun.

Reminisce about the places that have long gone away, celebrate the few establishments that remain from that time and hear about the “Happy Days” of North Reading.