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My blog - Kerouac centennial anniversary events.
“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion”, Jack Kerouac. (b. 1922 in Lowell, MA –d. 1969 St. Petersburg, FL). Kerouac’s Centennial Project.
In the author’s home city of Lowell, Massachusetts, the “Lowell Celebrates Kerouac” committee is advocating for the community to work together for the purpose of keeping Kerouac’s legacy alive. In the past, I reported about plans to commemorate the centennial plans to recognize Jack Kerouac’s birthday, as a Franco-American son of Lowell.
Several blog links and an article are available below in this update about the Jack Kerouac Estate announcement about the formation of Jack Kerouac Foundation in his native Lowell.
The Jack Kerouac Foundation is intended to further the creative legacy of the world-renowned American writer Jack Kerouac, author of “On the Road” and other novels.
In the author’s home city of Lowell, Massachusetts, the “Lowell Celebrates Kerouac” committee is advocating for the community to work together for the purpose of keeping Kerouac’s legacy alive. In the past, I reported about plans to commemorate the centennial plans to recognize Jack Kerouac’s birthday, as a Franco-American son of Lowell.
Several blog links and an article are available below in this update about the Jack Kerouac Estate announcement about the formation of Jack Kerouac Foundation in his native Lowell.
The Jack Kerouac Foundation is intended to further the creative legacy of the world-renowned American writer Jack Kerouac, author of “On the Road” and other novels.
The Foundation’s first initiative will be to pursue funding for the establishment of a Jack Kerouac Museum and Performance Center in the magnificent former St Jean the Baptiste Church, which was completed in 1896, to serve Lowell’s once-booming population in the city’s “Little Canada” neighborhood.
In fact, the church was the heart of the neighborhood, as well as the city’s French-Canadian population. In fact, the church
“Who doesn’t know of the writer Jack Kerouac?,” asks the literary executor of his estate Jim Sampas. “It seems every day he is referenced in radio programs, films, TV shows, and podcasts. Celebrated figures from former U.S. President Barack Obama to Bob Dylan, iconic fashion designer Kim Jones and so many more speak of his enduring work and unique style of writing he named “spontaneous prose.” And while there have been monuments built to Kerouac, there is no museum or performance center to celebrate this singular author’s artistry. There’s a strong case to be made that no author in history has been more influential in the musical arts as Jack Kerouac and the performance center will celebrate that legacy.”
“It’s an honor to help make a Jack Kerouac Museum & Performance Center a reality — something we at the Estate have targeted for a long time. When Dave Ouellette of ACTION (Acre Coalition To Improve Our Neighborhood) approached the Estate and the Kerouac Centennial Committee with a proposal to pursue the long-empty church building as our preferred site, we recognized it instantly as a perfect fit for our goals,” says Sylvia Cunha, Director of Marketing & Business Development for the Kerouac Estate and Executive Director of the new foundation. “We aim to partner with different organizations and individuals.
“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion”, Jack Kerouac. (b. 1922 in Lowell, MA –d. 1969 St. Petersburg, FL). Kerouac’s Centennial Project.
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| Native of Lowell Massachusetts Jack Kerouac and author of “On The Road”. (1922-1969) |
In the author’s home city of Lowell, Massachusetts, the “Lowell Celebrates Kerouac” committee is advocating for the community to work together for the purpose of keeping Kerouac’s legacy alive. In the past, I reported about plans to commemorate the centennial plans to recognize Jack Kerouac’s birthday, as a Franco-American son of Lowell.
Several blog links and an article are available below in this update about the Jack Kerouac Estate announcement about the formation of Jack Kerouac Foundation in his native Lowell.
The Jack Kerouac Foundation is intended to further the creative legacy of the world-renowned American writer Jack Kerouac, author of “On the Road” and other novels.
In the author’s home city of Lowell, Massachusetts, the “Lowell Celebrates Kerouac” committee is advocating for the community to work together for the purpose of keeping Kerouac’s legacy alive. In the past, I reported about plans to commemorate the centennial plans to recognize Jack Kerouac’s birthday, as a Franco-American son of Lowell.
Several blog links and an article are available below in this update about the Jack Kerouac Estate announcement about the formation of Jack Kerouac Foundation in his native Lowell.
The Jack Kerouac Foundation is intended to further the creative legacy of the world-renowned American writer Jack Kerouac, author of “On the Road” and other novels.
The Foundation’s first initiative will be to pursue funding for the establishment of a Jack Kerouac Museum and Performance Center in the magnificent former St Jean the Baptiste Church, which was completed in 1896, to serve Lowell’s once-booming population in the city’s “Little Canada” neighborhood.
In fact, the church was the heart of the neighborhood, as well as the city’s French-Canadian population. In fact, the church
was also the site of Jack’s funeral Mass in 1969.
“Who doesn’t know of the writer Jack Kerouac?,” asks the literary executor of his estate Jim Sampas. “It seems every day he is referenced in radio programs, films, TV shows, and podcasts. Celebrated figures from former U.S. President Barack Obama to Bob Dylan, iconic fashion designer Kim Jones and so many more speak of his enduring work and unique style of writing he named “spontaneous prose.” And while there have been monuments built to Kerouac, there is no museum or performance center to celebrate this singular author’s artistry. There’s a strong case to be made that no author in history has been more influential in the musical arts as Jack Kerouac and the performance center will celebrate that legacy.”
“It’s an honor to help make a Jack Kerouac Museum & Performance Center a reality — something we at the Estate have targeted for a long time. When Dave Ouellette of ACTION (Acre Coalition To Improve Our Neighborhood) approached the Estate and the Kerouac Centennial Committee with a proposal to pursue the long-empty church building as our preferred site, we recognized it instantly as a perfect fit for our goals,” says Sylvia Cunha, Director of Marketing & Business Development for the Kerouac Estate and Executive Director of the new foundation. “We aim to partner with different organizations and individuals.
Our fundraising kicks off now, and we plan to show this incredible space to those interested in collaborating with us in March when Jack’s original On The Road scroll returns to Lowell to mark what would have been his 100th Birthday,” she said.
“Memorializing Jack in the place his brother Gerard was baptized, where he himself served for a time as an altar boy, and where he formed a deep bond with the priest who conducted his funeral — Father Spike Morissette — would be incredibly appropriate,” adds Dave Ouellette. “We want to thank Brian McGowan of TMI Property Management & Development, the owner of the building, for helping us pursue our goals. Purchasing and renovating the building would contribute immeasurably to the reputation of Kerouac, our historic Acre neighborhood, and the City of Lowell,” shares Ouellette.
THE JACK KEROUAC FOUNDATION officers comprise CEO: Jim Sampas; Executive Director: Sylvia Cunha; President: Christopher Porter; Vice-President: Michael Millner; Secretary: Steve Edington; and Treasurer Michael P Flynn. The Executive Board members are Suzanne Beebe, Deborah Belanger, Judith Bessette, Dave Ouellette, David Perry, Ryan Rourke, Sean Thibodeau, and Clifford J Whalen.
An article about the Kerouac Project was published in a past blog:
Franco-Americans support Lowell Celebrates Kerouac
Plan ahead and learn more about the 2022, Lowell Celebrates Kerouac programs.
In 2022, the city of Lowell, Massachusetts will be remembering the centennial birthday of their Franco-American native son, Jack Kerouac. The Lowell Celebrates Kerouac committee is strongly advocating for more public support to help organize a celebration for the world famous author of On the Road, the novel that sparked the Beat Generation and has transcended generations.
On The Road by Jack Kerouac was published on September 5, 1957
Franco-American Jack Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac, on March 12, 1922, in Lowell, Massachusetts. He died on October 12, 1969, in St. Petersburg, Florida. He is buried in Lowell, in the Edson Cemetery, located on Gorham Street.
An articles about “The Eternal Kerouac”, by Jay Atkinson published in the Boston Sunday Globe, wrote, “Although Kerouac died at age 47, in 1969, the Lowell native is more popular now than he’s ever been, eclipsing famous contemporaries in the public’s conversation.”
Thank you to the Lowell Sun and Suzanne Beebe for this reprint permission.
This is the second essay published with permission of writers who are supporting recognition for Jack Kerouac. In January, Rev. Steve Edington submitted his essay, with permission to reprint.
“Le FORUM”, published by the Franco-American Centre at University of Maine, will also published the two essays in the bilingual quarterly journal, edited by Lisa Michaud.
Lowell, MA- Jack Kerouac is a world-renowned writer. He opened new avenues for American writers of the 20th century. He was central to the Beat Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. He wrote the founding novel of the Beat Movement: “On the Road.”
He also wrote five novels about Lowell, plus a stream of poems, letters, and other novels exploring life, death, and spiritual realities as he experienced them in his travels, writing, worship, addictions, and relationships. And he was a product of Lowell’s Franco-American community — not speaking English until he was six, always speaking French with his family members, continuously in contact with French and French-Canadian literature and culture, and never abandoning the French-Canadian strain of Catholicism that colored and shaped his worldview.
Do we fully honor him here in his native city? What do we offer visitors from around the globe who come to explore his roots in Lowell and see the places where he lived, studied, worshiped, drank, brawled, fell in love, and played sports even as the larger world called him to grow beyond his birthplace? (Though Lowell constantly called him to return again and again.) How do we establish the link to his ethnic community and the ethnic culture that grounded him?
There’s Commemorative Park on Bridge Street with its lovely polished monoliths engraved with passages from his books. There’s the plaque on the Lupine Road cottage where he was born and lived in his infancy. There’s a growing archive of materials by and about him being gathered, organized, and digitized by the Kerouac Center at UMass Lowell for scholars, writers, and Kerouac devotees of every background and calling. There’s the Kerouac corner at the Pollard Memorial Library, where he spent days expanding his mind and mastering his command of English as he read omnivorously and encountered the great minds of literature. There’s a small Kerouac display at the National Historical Park Visitor’s Center on Market Street. But there is no one place in Lowell where short-term visitors can view exhibits or attend events that provide a comprehensive look at his life and work in the context of his city and its Franco-American community.
Other cities and towns manage to honor their artistic giants, whether the artist lived there for years or was born there and left. Stockbridge has its Norman Rockwell Museum. Salinas, Calif., has its Steinbeck National Center. Tulsa, Okla., has its Woody Guthrie Center, while small-town Okemah, Okla., (Woody’s birthplace), is working to restore the original Guthrie home.
Cambridge has the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow House. Concord has the Alcott family’s Orchard House, where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women. Concord also has the Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne homes. Lowell itself has the Whistler Museum, the birthplace of an artist who lived here the first three years of his life, despised the city and its industrial nature, and never returned, famously saying when he declared himself to have been born in St. Petersburg, Russia, “I shall be born when and where I want, and I do not choose to be born in Lowell.” Can’t we at least provide a museum or center on the scale of the Whistler Museum for a world-famous author who loved the city of his birth, wrote about it, visited regularly, and is buried here?
Right now, the church where Kerouac was baptized and the school he attended for a few years — St. Louis de France in Centralville — stands empty, unused, and awaiting sale by the Archdiocese of Boston. Kerouac wrote about those buildings in his novel Visions of Gerard. At this writing, there is no public commitment on the part of the Archdiocese to preserve them as part of any purchase agreement. Nor has the city exerted any discernible effort to influence the Archdiocese in its sale of the St. Louis site, although a 2005 survey conducted by the Massachusetts Historical Commission recommended it be declared eligible for the National Register of Historical Places.
Shouldn’t the city at least consider what it might do to keep those buildings standing — and how at least one of them (perhaps the church?) might become a center for public exhibits and events centering on Kerouac, his work, and the Franco-American community that shaped him? Couldn’t the city explore with UMass Lowell’s Kerouac Center how a partnership of the two could work with the Archdiocese to achieve mutually satisfactory goals while fully honoring the native son who helped change American literature in the 20th century? Opportunities like the St. Louis site’s availability don’t arise every day. Surely, the city, the university, and the Archdiocese can find a way to capitalize on it. The only thing that seems needed is the will.
“Memorializing Jack in the place his brother Gerard was baptized, where he himself served for a time as an altar boy, and where he formed a deep bond with the priest who conducted his funeral — Father Spike Morissette — would be incredibly appropriate,” adds Dave Ouellette. “We want to thank Brian McGowan of TMI Property Management & Development, the owner of the building, for helping us pursue our goals. Purchasing and renovating the building would contribute immeasurably to the reputation of Kerouac, our historic Acre neighborhood, and the City of Lowell,” shares Ouellette.
THE JACK KEROUAC FOUNDATION officers comprise CEO: Jim Sampas; Executive Director: Sylvia Cunha; President: Christopher Porter; Vice-President: Michael Millner; Secretary: Steve Edington; and Treasurer Michael P Flynn. The Executive Board members are Suzanne Beebe, Deborah Belanger, Judith Bessette, Dave Ouellette, David Perry, Ryan Rourke, Sean Thibodeau, and Clifford J Whalen.
An article about the Kerouac Project was published in a past blog:
Franco-Americans support Lowell Celebrates Kerouac
Plan ahead and learn more about the 2022, Lowell Celebrates Kerouac programs.
In 2022, the city of Lowell, Massachusetts will be remembering the centennial birthday of their Franco-American native son, Jack Kerouac. The Lowell Celebrates Kerouac committee is strongly advocating for more public support to help organize a celebration for the world famous author of On the Road, the novel that sparked the Beat Generation and has transcended generations.
On The Road by Jack Kerouac was published on September 5, 1957
Franco-American Jack Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac, on March 12, 1922, in Lowell, Massachusetts. He died on October 12, 1969, in St. Petersburg, Florida. He is buried in Lowell, in the Edson Cemetery, located on Gorham Street.
An articles about “The Eternal Kerouac”, by Jay Atkinson published in the Boston Sunday Globe, wrote, “Although Kerouac died at age 47, in 1969, the Lowell native is more popular now than he’s ever been, eclipsing famous contemporaries in the public’s conversation.”
Thank you to the Lowell Sun and Suzanne Beebe for this reprint permission.
This is the second essay published with permission of writers who are supporting recognition for Jack Kerouac. In January, Rev. Steve Edington submitted his essay, with permission to reprint.
“Le FORUM”, published by the Franco-American Centre at University of Maine, will also published the two essays in the bilingual quarterly journal, edited by Lisa Michaud.
Lowell, MA- Jack Kerouac is a world-renowned writer. He opened new avenues for American writers of the 20th century. He was central to the Beat Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. He wrote the founding novel of the Beat Movement: “On the Road.”
He also wrote five novels about Lowell, plus a stream of poems, letters, and other novels exploring life, death, and spiritual realities as he experienced them in his travels, writing, worship, addictions, and relationships. And he was a product of Lowell’s Franco-American community — not speaking English until he was six, always speaking French with his family members, continuously in contact with French and French-Canadian literature and culture, and never abandoning the French-Canadian strain of Catholicism that colored and shaped his worldview.
Do we fully honor him here in his native city? What do we offer visitors from around the globe who come to explore his roots in Lowell and see the places where he lived, studied, worshiped, drank, brawled, fell in love, and played sports even as the larger world called him to grow beyond his birthplace? (Though Lowell constantly called him to return again and again.) How do we establish the link to his ethnic community and the ethnic culture that grounded him?
There’s Commemorative Park on Bridge Street with its lovely polished monoliths engraved with passages from his books. There’s the plaque on the Lupine Road cottage where he was born and lived in his infancy. There’s a growing archive of materials by and about him being gathered, organized, and digitized by the Kerouac Center at UMass Lowell for scholars, writers, and Kerouac devotees of every background and calling. There’s the Kerouac corner at the Pollard Memorial Library, where he spent days expanding his mind and mastering his command of English as he read omnivorously and encountered the great minds of literature. There’s a small Kerouac display at the National Historical Park Visitor’s Center on Market Street. But there is no one place in Lowell where short-term visitors can view exhibits or attend events that provide a comprehensive look at his life and work in the context of his city and its Franco-American community.
Other cities and towns manage to honor their artistic giants, whether the artist lived there for years or was born there and left. Stockbridge has its Norman Rockwell Museum. Salinas, Calif., has its Steinbeck National Center. Tulsa, Okla., has its Woody Guthrie Center, while small-town Okemah, Okla., (Woody’s birthplace), is working to restore the original Guthrie home.
Cambridge has the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow House. Concord has the Alcott family’s Orchard House, where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women. Concord also has the Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne homes. Lowell itself has the Whistler Museum, the birthplace of an artist who lived here the first three years of his life, despised the city and its industrial nature, and never returned, famously saying when he declared himself to have been born in St. Petersburg, Russia, “I shall be born when and where I want, and I do not choose to be born in Lowell.” Can’t we at least provide a museum or center on the scale of the Whistler Museum for a world-famous author who loved the city of his birth, wrote about it, visited regularly, and is buried here?
Right now, the church where Kerouac was baptized and the school he attended for a few years — St. Louis de France in Centralville — stands empty, unused, and awaiting sale by the Archdiocese of Boston. Kerouac wrote about those buildings in his novel Visions of Gerard. At this writing, there is no public commitment on the part of the Archdiocese to preserve them as part of any purchase agreement. Nor has the city exerted any discernible effort to influence the Archdiocese in its sale of the St. Louis site, although a 2005 survey conducted by the Massachusetts Historical Commission recommended it be declared eligible for the National Register of Historical Places.
Shouldn’t the city at least consider what it might do to keep those buildings standing — and how at least one of them (perhaps the church?) might become a center for public exhibits and events centering on Kerouac, his work, and the Franco-American community that shaped him? Couldn’t the city explore with UMass Lowell’s Kerouac Center how a partnership of the two could work with the Archdiocese to achieve mutually satisfactory goals while fully honoring the native son who helped change American literature in the 20th century? Opportunities like the St. Louis site’s availability don’t arise every day. Surely, the city, the university, and the Archdiocese can find a way to capitalize on it. The only thing that seems needed is the will.
Suzanne Molleur Beebe
Lowell born and raised Franco-American
Check out this blog about “On The Road” at this site here.
Lowell born and raised Franco-American
Check out this blog about “On The Road” at this site here.
Labels: Lowell Massachusetts, On The Road, Suzanne Molleur Beefe
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