How old is the Chatham Marconi Maritime Center? What birth-story do you want to hear?  There are several.   This winter the Marconigram will feature birth-stories of CMMC.

The Birth and Infancy of CMMC's Concept and Organization

Thanks to early retirement in 1997, the Colemans realized our long-held dream to live full time in the Chatham house we bought in 1966. I wound up on the Chatham Finance Committee, a great catbird seat from which to see what makes Chatham tick. Chairman Doug Hamilton proposed that the committee visit all of Chatham's assets, including the recently purchased North Chatham MCI campus. We were as baffled as the many town employees who had toured the campus. How could the town use this magnificent, historic property?

Operations building as first seen

In 1999, the Chatham community was shocked and greatly saddened by the suicide deaths of three Chatham High School students. I was deeply touched because I recognized these boys. They were so like Wellesley High School Students with whom I had worked as a school psychologist for over twenty-five years. I joined a taskforce, inspired by The Cape Cod Chronicle challenge to the community to respond, and helped with a suicide teach-in at the Eldredge Library. As I read the responses to the questionnaire I had devised, I heard the community ask for ways to help students connect with one another and with the community.

Suddenly, I saw the promise of the MCI campus as a meeting-place for a cross section of the community. I invited everyone I knew to tour the campus and to return to my home to brainstorm how the campus could be used. I still have the flip chart we used to collect ideas.  It begins "Heart and Soul of Community Based Programs."

Many groups and town committees made plans to meet the challenge of responding to the community's great loss. Chatham Parks and Recreation was planning the Chatham Community Center and hiring a youth services coordinator. I decided to take a long road to prevention and began working with people inspired to develop a vision for the MCI property that would lead to the birth of Chatham Marconi Maritime Center in 2002.  

One of the manager's homes as first seen

• We called ourselves Ryder's Cove Seaport Association and met at the Chatham United Methodist Church with the blessing of its minister, Ricki Aiello.  
• Lewis Masson and his daughter Ruth, Bill Ryder, David Reggio, Fred Peach, Bud Hall, and Lee Baumlin came to talk about the importance of the former RCA Ship to Shore Station and to grieve the loss of the South Chatham transmitting station. Above all, they wanted to save the RCA operations building.  
• Business leaders Len and Betty Magnusson, Bob Norman, Roy Jarrett and Allison Coleman came to help write a business plan.  
• Dick Lumpkin brought business expertise and the history of Navy Radio during World War II.  
• John Dickson, Harwich history teacher and sailing coach, realized that local children seldom had the opportunity to learn to sail. He joined the effort to reuse the MCI property for young sailors as he was developing what became Pleasant Bay Community Boating.  
• Community leaders like Tim Wood and Parker Wiseman came to set our course in researching the history of the campus and its status on the National Register of Historic Places.  
• At Chatham Yacht Club's 2000 winter meeting, Chuck Bartlett and Barbara and John Cotnam were won to the cause by John Dickson and me.

The group's first important decision was to incorporate, raising the question of our official name. Betty and Len Magnusson advised that the place name Chatham be used. I, now understanding that internationally renowned Guglielmo Marconi had built the campus in 1914, suggested that his name be included. The group arrived at the words Maritime Center because the campus had been the center for marine wireless communication under several owners and the US Navy. In the preliminary paperwork, Dr. Roslyn B. Coleman signed on as president, Lenard W. Magnusson as treasurer, and Barbara S. Waters as clerk. The directors were Dr. Roslyn B. Coleman, Leroy F. Jarrett, Leonard W. Magnusson and Barbara S. Waters. Fred Plumb, Esq. completed the legal work needed for incorporation as a not-for-profit corporation. Massachusetts Secretary of State William Francis Galvin sent the 201 C-3 status papers, signed on August 21, 2002, to Chatham Marconi Maritime Center, Inc.

CMMC was beginning to get publicity and with it came some objections to ideas that had been advanced for the use of the campus. Alan McClennen, Junior, then employed by the Town of Arlington, MA as their planner and an Orleans summer resident, advised the organization to talk only about stabilizing the buildings on the Marconi Wireless Campus. With permission from the board of selectmen, CMMC began doing just that: stabilizing the outside of the buildings by removing the damaging ivy and scraping and painting exterior trim. The work we were doing attracted others interested in the project and best of all, The Cape Cod National Seashore.

Dilapidated side entrance to the Operations Building

Lewis Masson, happily painting windows

A paintbrush in every hand!  Dick Kraycir and others

To be continued.