Gloucester Daily Times September 2, 2011
Joseph Everett Garland, of Gloucester, Massachusetts, passed away peacefully at his home on Tuesday, August 30, the last sound he heard being the cannon of Capt. Tom Ellis’ schooner Thomas E. Lannon booming out in salute. He had been in declining health since suffering a stroke in mid-August, 2011.
Joe was born in Boston, but had Gloucester roots for generations back through the Niles and Rogers families; he was the fourth Joseph Garland to live in Gloucester. Although he had a privileged upbringing – he attended Roxbury Latin School and spent summers at Riverview, the old family place on the Annisquam River – that did not define him. While a student at Harvard, he was swept up, with millions of his fellows, into the upheaval of World War II. His army service in the Intelligence & Reconnaissance Platoon of the 45th Infantry Division’s 157th Regiment took him to both Italy and France – experiences that he relates in his twenty-fifth and final book Unknown Soldiers, a moving chronicle that he completed in the years before his death.
Following the war, he worked as a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune, Boston Herald and Providence Journal. Due to his union-organizing, he found opportunities diminishing in this field, and turned to freelance work. By the late 1950’s, he’d made Gloucester his home, and began to write books. His biography of Howard Blackburn, Lone Voyager, appeared in 1963, and perhaps more than anything else has ensured Blackburn’s enduring fame. Lone Voyager was followed by That Great Patillo, another tale of a larger-than-life Gloucesterman, and books covering the era of the fishing schooners.
Drawn to the sea himself, and having a connection to Blackburn (his grandfather had operated on him after his fateful voyage), Joe restored Blackburn’s own boats Great Republic and Cruising Club, and spent many happy days sailing them with family and friends. When, as part of the city’s 350th anniversary celebration, a classic wooden boat race was held, Joe skippered his schooner, Bandit, with two local fishing captains as crew in a memorable escapade. Later, he was an instigator in the successful effort to bring the schooner Adventure back to Gloucester. From the deck of Black Bess, his home on Eastern Point, Joe kept watch on the ups and downs of the fishing fleet. He was good with his hands and loved doing the repairs and building projects himself. He maintained his literary output, and in Eastern Point turned his attention to the history of his home turf, then enlarged the scope in Boston’s North Shore and Boston’s Gold Coast. His work is marked by broad and meticulous research as well as photographic records, with an eye for the humorous detail, and a superb writing style.
In addition to authoring books, Joe involved himself in myriad civic issues, many through his column in the Gloucester Times, “Beating To Windward.” He often took a forward position and defended it against all comers. Ill-considered wars, waterfront development, environmental compromise, loss of local control of the hospital and water supply – all felt the sharpness of the Garland pen. Along with a gift for friendship spanning all ages and walks of life, Joe had a strong sense of what is right, and the fortitude to carry it out; a fortitude edging, on occasion, into Yankee contrarianess. Joe was not one to just go along, a quality well- known to all, in particular his gang of Morse and Sibley family friends, with whom he spent many an hour parsing the issues at Sailor Stan’s on Rocky Neck. He became renowned, too, as a provocative public speaker in his role as Gloucester historian. When Garland died he was in the midst of an unfinished manuscript with the draft title Boats Who Have Messed Around With Me, a colorful log of his boating life.
Joseph Garland is survived by his wife of almost 30 years, Helen Bryan Garland; her four children, Anna and her husband Bill Gannett, Janet, Alison and Robert Carlson and his wife Elizabeth; two daughters from his previous marriage to Rebecca Choate, Susan Choate Garland and Peggy Garland and her husband Stephen Tucker; and eleven grandchildren: Alden and Erica Freed; Emma, Robert, Alison and Anne Carlson; Theodore and Sarah Gannett; Abigail and Eli Spindel, and Molly Flomer and her husband Brandt; and a great-grandson, Theodore Flomer..
By Michael Carlson Wed 5 Oct 2011
Joseph Garland, who has died aged 88, was a historian and journalist who chronicled Gloucester, Massachusetts – its fishermen, its boats and its life. His best-known book was Lone Voyager (1964), which told the story of Howard Blackburn, a Gloucester fisherman who, despite having lost his fingers to frostbite, in 1899 sailed single-handed across the Atlantic to Britain in 62 days. Joe was remarkably generous with his knowledge; the author Sebastian Junger spent afternoons with Joe discussing Gloucester before writing The Perfect Storm in 1997.
As a columnist for the Gloucester Times, Joe’s often cantankerous voice championed the working traditions of the town, finding endless wonder in everyday life. He was to his small port what Studs Terkel was to Chicago, with immense empathy for its people and respect for the way they struggled against adversity. His positions – in favour of trade unions and the rights of small fishermen, against development and particularly against wars – were not always popular, but he never pandered to his audience.
His championing of peace was rooted in his own experiences during the second world war. His wartime diaries, recovered by another soldier after he was wounded, formed the basis of the last, and perhaps best, of his 24 books, Unknown Soldiers (2009), a remarkable memoir written decades after he had tracked down his former comrades, then faced writer’s block when telling their stories.
Joe was born into a line of Joseph Garlands, doctors going back three generations. His father edited the New England Journal of Medicine. Drawn to journalism, Joe evaded family tradition by flunking organic chemistry at Harvard, and enlisted in the army. His university background saw him assigned to an intelligence and reconnaissance platoon during the invasions of Sicily and Italy.
After the war, he began his chosen career in Minneapolis, where he worked for the Associated Press, and on papers in Providence and Boston. He joined the Gloucester Times in 1961, when he moved into a house built by his great-great-grandfather, a former mayor of the town.
I met Joe there 10 years ago at the wedding of one of his stepdaughters. He was scheduled to give away the bride, then fire his small ship’s cannon on the minister’s cue. The cue came, but no shot, and as Joe checked the fuse, the cannon backfired, leaving him with gunpowder embedded in his face. He did not miss a beat; wedding and reception carried on. We began a correspondence; few people could so easily recapture the energy and excitement of their conversation in writing.
Joe left another book unfinished, about the many boats he had owned. They included a sloop built by Blackburn, which Joe lost in a storm in 1980. Soon after he had returned home from hospital after suffering a stroke and was lying in bed overlooking Gloucester harbour, the schooner Thomas E Lannon sailed past. Joe’s son-in-law fired the family cannon, and the Lannon returned the salute. A few minutes later, Joe died.
He is survived by his second wife, Helen Bryan, who had been his wartime pen pal; and by two daughters from his first marriage, three stepdaughters and a stepson. During the annual Gloucester schooner festival in September, which he helped to organise, the boats formed a semi-circle facing Joe’s house, and simultaneously lowered their flags to half-mast.
Joseph Everett Garland, writer, born 30 September 1922; died 30 August 2011