We went out for a bike ride today through a part of Lowell we don't know all that well, Fort Hill Park, Shedd Park, and the Lowell Cemetery area. We spent some time hanging out with the late Senator Paul Tsongas, where he rests on a bluff above an extremely paintable stretch of the Concord River.
Spent some time thinking about people who give theirs lives to public service, and people who use the benefits of their position to benefit others as well as themselves. Case in point is Freeman Shedd, who deeded 30 acres of his land to Lowell for a recreation park about a hundred years ago. He seems to have made his fortune in cologne, among other enterprises, and certainly lived in a grand house on Andover Street as a reward for his success. Nobody said he had to give anything back to the city of his birth, yet he did. I don't know whether he was a pleasant man, or a deeply thoughtful one; but I am grateful to him.
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