More than you really want to know about Wellesley, Mass.
The Wellesley Raiders Cross Country car wash fundraiser will be held Saturday, September 14, 10am – 2pm at Wellesley High School (the location has been moved from Linden Street). Come to support the high school’s largest athletic team (112 athletes) and leave with a clean car! $10 per vehicle.
Many Wellesley residents raise funds via walks, runs and cycling events, but resident Mona Maas’s inspiration for running the New York City Marathon on Nov. 3 really hits home. She’s training for the event and raising $3,500 for Boston Children’s Hospital with a focus on Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia, a rare adolescent-onset neuromuscular disorder that her son Joshua was with diagnosed with 2 years ago.
Maas is hosting a fundraiser on Saturday, Sept. 7 from 4-8pm at Natick Panera in the 9/27 plaza. Drop by and show a copy of the flyer below to ensure that proceeds from your purchase go to this cause. “My hope is that the money I raise for BCH will lead to advancements in neuroscience research and benefit all BCH families who need help,” Maas says.
Joshua has always been active, both in hockey and baseball, his first love. The Xaverian Brothers grad first showed signs of an odd gait at 15 after going through a 6 -inch growth spurt, Mona says. He was diagnosed at the age of 17 with HSP, a surprise since neither Mona, her husband nor other family members having any history of this or other neuromuscular or motor disorders.
“We have connected with a doctor at Cedar Sinai who has one other patient, a year older than Joshua, with the same genetic markers and symptomatology. He has connected with a group in Munich who think they may have another patient in the Middle East who has the same marker. We are hoping to find a patient match that is older in order to determine the prognosis,” Mona says.
Joshua’s body has piled the challenges on him. Not connected with the HSP, he was also diagnosed with retroverted hips (hip overgrows the socket, leading to impingement) at Children’s and has undergone surgery in each of the past 2 years on them.
The good news for Joshua is that his mobility has been improving, and he’s off to a good start as a freshman at Villanova University, which has been accommodating in terms of his room set-up and through other support. He’s studying computer science and statistics.
As for Mona, she started running in 2017, at the urging of her Wellesley friend and fellow runner Katherine Chan, to get healthier and as a way to relieve stress. She completed the Hartford Half in October, 2017, and has run 4 marathons since. Mona’s not going to win any medals for her speed, but she’s earning big rewards through her fundraising.
She’ll be outside Roche Bros. in Linden Square in Wellesley on Saturday, Sept. 7 to raise funds from 10:30am-1:30pm or so.
For more on Mona and Joshua, including Mona’s training diary, visit this BCH fundraising web page.
Linden Square will be hosting a Sidewalk Sale from September 4 – September 8. Loads of merchants will have their goods out all day at the Sidewalk Sale. Don’t miss the discounts at this fun yearly event.
Scoops Lacrosse, which has been offering kids’ clinics on the South Shore, expands into Wellesley this fall. The 6-class program will take at Boston Sports Institute on Rte. 9 beginning Sept. 8. These are no-pads clinics designed to teach fundamentals, and you can borrow a stick. Discounts available for families with more than one participant.
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Wellesley Weston Lifetime Learning (WWLL) will be moving to Wellesley Community Center as its new home. An open house for WWLL and its non-credit courses for adult learners will be held on Sunday, Sept. 8, from 1-3pm.
The fall semester begins on Sept. 9 with a 10am class.
Fifteen courses are offered. Three courses offer different guest speakers each week: American Issues, History Potpourri, and Greater Boston Cultural Institutions. Other courses include Poetry, Drama, Literature, Science, Energy and Climate Change, Jazz and Rock, History, Writing Your Story, and Western Gunslingers. The fee is $60 for one course and $110 for two.
Get more info at www.wwllcourses.org, call 781-205-4204, or email: [email protected]. Brochures with full information about all courses, and registration procedure, are available at the Wellesley Community Center, Wellesley library and COA/Tolles Parsons Center.
Sponsored Content. People of all heritages/identities are welcome to join us as we focus on the role of white people in dismantling racism and building a just society. We’ll examine the impact of white privilege and how being unaware of that advantage helps perpetuate racism. We’ll discuss short readings and share everyday situations in which we did not speak up effectively against racial bias. Using role-playing, we’ll work out effective ways to respond. http://www.wpcr-boston.org
Dates: 9/11/19 – 10/16/19, $85/$95
Newton-Wellesley Hospital (NWH) has appointed Wellesley’s Christopher Collins and Dr. Brenda Haynes to its Board of Trustees.
Collins is a principal at ECG Management Consultants, a healthcare consulting firm, where he heads its national academic healthcare practice as well as the firm’s Boston office.
Dr. Haynes is a former oncologist at Newton-Wellesley Hospital and previously served as a director of the Hospital’s Charitable Foundation. She also currently chairs the Hospital’s Development Committee and Resilience Council. Additionally, she was a member of the Leadership Gifts Committee, Chair of Annual Giving and Board of Trustees at The Winsor School in Boston.
Word of running injuries spreads fast in Wellesley. A lot faster than most of my crew runs these days.
And so it was that I heard about Wellesley resident and Babson College Prof. Rick Cleary‘s ill-fated run near Morses Pond, while I was on a run of my own shortly thereafter.
“Yes, 47 years, 83 marathons and about 80,000 miles of lording my indestructibility over my oft-injured friends was over in a matter or seconds,” wrote Cleary to me.
This message came after he wrote to a group of his running friends to break the news of his injury:
“Hello boot camp buddies and other Babson running pals:
I was supposed to be running a 10 mile race in Manchester, NH this morning with many of you, but my right quadriceps tendon had different ideas. Last night about 6:30 it blew out completely while I was doing a two mile run with Tommy on the Pickle Point trail along Morse’s Pond in Wellesley, a narrow woods path just off a wide aqueduct trail. I stumbled a little and fell, not a hard fall but I knew immediately that something was seriously wrong. I knew this because the space between my quad muscles and my knee cap on my right leg featured a divot about four inches deep and around. It was pretty ugly, and really quite painful. I couldn’t move my lower leg at all. After a few minutes it felt a little better and I tried to stand up. People who live on the perimeter of Morse’s Pond will be talking for years about the howls of the ghost of Pickle Point. It really hurt. ”
Hope you weren’t eating dinner while you read that.
Cleary’s wife, Ann Trenk, was out of town, and their son Eddie Trenk was at a Wellesley High cross country team pre-season camp, but as it would turn out, Rick still had a strong support system.
Fortunately, 13-year-old Tommy Trenk was on hand, and hatched a plan with his Dad to get help.
Rick says Tommy was fresh off the town’s Fire Rescuers camp program, and thanks Wellesley Youth Commission’s Maura Renzella and the Wellesley Fire Department for instilling some handy skills in his son.
The plan:
“Step 1: Run home. (We were about a mile away from home on a rarely used path, though the busier aqueduct path was only perhaps 100 yards away.)
Step 2: Turn off oven. (We had a very good pasta casserole cooking.)
Step 3: Call 911 and tell them your Dad is stuck.
Step 3a: And when you come back bring both of our phones so we can make plans.”
Rick spent the next 20 minutes swatting mosquitoes (fortunately, Wellesley is at a low-risk level for EEE), and tried to stay otherwise still. Until he didn’t.
“Eventually I got bored with that and realized that I could sit up and scoot backwards with my right leg dragging along. It took me about five minutes to go about 50 yards, but it felt good to be able to move on my own. About half way back to the main aqueduct trail, I heard Tommy coming with two police officers and two EMTs; the policemen had picked him up at our house so he could lead them on the trail. The officers were very complimentary of Tommy’s mature approach to leading them to me. The EMT who was driving enjoys off-road trucking as a hobby and really liked getting to back the ambulance way down the aqueduct trail.” (Cleary notes he was sure to mention to the officers that he runs in the Wellesley Police Department’s Officer Savage memorial race each year.)
Tommy called family friends to pick him up, while Rick headed to Newton-Wellesley Hospital’s emergency room. Tests confirmed the original diagnosis, and showed there were no broken bones. Rick made it home just before his wife did, and the casserole tasted great. Nothing to see here…
Though those of you who cross Cleary’s path will see he’s wearing a knee immobilizer and will be sporting crutches. Surgery to re-attach the tendon is slated for this week. “It’s a serious injury but the surgery and recovery are straightforward,” assures a friend of Cleary’s who’s had it done twice.
Cleary concludes that “I’m glad that when I finally got injured it was a no-doubt-about-it doozy. I’d have felt bad saying, ‘My knee is a little sore, I guess I’m finally hurt.’
He now turns his attention to teaching, where he acknowledges his style will be cramped. “It usually involves a lot of movement around the classroom.”
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More: Running every street in Wellesley (you need to scroll down)
As the oldest one among public schools, the Wellesley High School and Needham High School football rivalry is historic. Commemorating this tradition is a boulder with a football and words on it at Morton Field, site of the first game back in 1882.
As we reported early in 2019, thanks to the support of Needham and Wellesley Rotary Clubs, a clean-up of the increasingly dingy boulder was planned. The effort helps to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first graduating class from Wellesley High School (then known as West Needham High School), according to Tory DeFazio, who spearheaded the project.
“As you can see it’s a vast improvement and one can now read the wording of the boulder as intended for the Centennial in
1982,” DeFazio says. “Hopefully this year, we can use this as a photo op site for a group photo of the Needham & Wellesley football captains as we get near the 2019 Thanksgiving Day game, this year hosted by Wellesley.”
Go Raiders…
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