NORTHAMPTON — Dorothy Meehan of Northampton joined the centenarian club on Nov. 18, celebrating her 100th birthday at the Bluebonnet Diner surrounded by dozens of family and friends.
Born in Ashfield as one of 11 children, Meehan (whose birth name was Dorothy Roberts) moved to Northampton and worked as a nanny to support herself while she attended Smith Vocational School. She held a variety of jobs before retiring, including at the Pro-Brush Shop and Country Miss store on Green Street. She married her husband Francis Meehan in 1947.
Heather Willard, the wife of Meehan’s grandson Todd Willard, said that despite her age, Meehan remains very much full of life. She was still driving up until six months ago, and still gets on the ground sometimes to look for lost objects. She also still helps take care of her septuagenarian son, Michael Meehan, a paraplegic.
“She’s spunky,” Willard said. “Until recently she was doing all her own lawn care and housework. We had to break her snowblower so she wouldn’t use it, though she still shovels snow.”
Though only one of Meehan’s siblings is still living, Willard estimated that about 80 of the 90 people at her 100th birthday were immediate blood relatives and their families.
Asked what they key for a long life is, Meehan responded that “being a hard-working farm girl” and love for her family is what she considers most important, according to family members.
The city of Northampton received a perfect rating from Human Rights Campaign, one of the most influential advocacy groups for LGBTQA+ rights in the country, as part of the group’s Municipal Equality Index.
The index measures cities across the United States on how inclusive they are of LGBTQA+ community needs and livability. Northampton obtained a perfect score of 100 for the year, the fifth straight year it has gotten a perfect mark.
“The city of Northampton and the mayor’s office have worked hard to institute the changes necessary to raise its MEI from 89 in 2017 to attain a perfect score for the past five years,” Court Cline, a mayoral assistant and executive liasion for the LGBTQA+ community for Northampton, said in a statement.
Measures used to assess cities in the index include non-discrimination laws, municipal services, and leadership on LGBTQA+ equality. Other cities in Massachusetts that received a perfect score include Boston, Cambridge, Worcester and Provincetown.
A group of Northampton citizens are raising concerns about saving historical buildings in the city, hoping to use a Historical Commission and Council on Community Resources meeting to present how to preserve many of the 19th-century buildings in the city.
“Developers are constructing numerous, expensive, propane-fueled, cookie-cutter-style homes that do not respect the character of the neighborhood,” said Jacqueline McCreanor, a member of the group, which includes residents of all of Northampton’s seven wards. “These developers have no stake in Northampton’s inventory of historic housing or its future sustainability.”
The push comes as the city looks to build more affordable housing for low-income residents amid rising house prices.
Group members, who have not given themselves a formal name yet, are proposing the creation of a neighborhood conservation district, which is used in other cities in Massachusetts such as Cambridge to preserve historical buildings. The group plans to give a presentation by Eric Hill, survey director for the Cambridge Historical Commission, on the topic of NCDs at a future Council on Community Resources meeting.
Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.
