Holyoke, Mass

[adapted from the Berkshire Evening Eagle, 12 Feb 1947.]

Above: Doris Schubach (center) and Walter Noffke (right), featured on the cover of Skating, (Official Publication of the United States Figure Skating Association) 1943. From the personal collection of Laurel O’Donnell.

Stockholm—A hard-working group of American figure skaters are getting in their practice licks at Stockholm Stadium in preparation for the world championships starting tomorrow and continuing through Sunday.

The U.S. competitors, first to arrive, find that the present wave of extreme cold makes training on the outdoor rink a hardship, as many of them are accustomed to the comparative comfort of indoor arenas.

Swedish spectators watched with grave interest today as Mr. and Mrs. Walter Noffke of Holyoke, Mass., and Karol and Mrs. Michael Kennedy of Seattle, Washington went through their routines in the chill wind. The Noffkes have won the American pairskating title three times.

Note: The Schubach family is connected to my own family genealogy via marriage.  Contact by anyone with connections to this family group would be welcome.

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[In part from the Appleton (Wisconsin) Post Crescent, 12 March 1923, “Ambitious.”]

Leo McNulty

Holyoke, Mass.—Leo McNulty, attending Rosary high, a small local parochial school has ambitions.  He wants to become an athletic star at Notre Dame, where he becomes a freshman next fall.

Meantime, McNulty is practicing up for such a time.  The results to date are promising to say the least.

McNulty is serving his second year as captain of the school basketball team, which has won more than 30 straight victories.  Last season he threw 209 floor baskets, leading 30 high school and academy teams.

He was rated the best scholastic quarterback in New England last fall. As an outfielder and slugger he’s a big part of Rosary high’s baseball team, too.

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About seven years ago or so I inventoried the tombstones at the Rock Valley Cemetery (the entire database is available elsewhere on this site).  When I was there, the cemetery was looking cared for and in pretty good shape. Over the years the condition of the cemetery has been, at times, severely neglected.  In fact Holyoke owes a lot to Earle Brick for the current restoration and maintenance of the cemetery.  All without remuneration I might add. 

However, this was not the first time Rocky Valley Cemetery was brought back from severe neglect. In a 1945 issue of the Holyoke Transcript there is an article about the city of Holyoke taking over Maintenance of the “Old West Holyoke” Cemetery formally known as the Rock Valley Cemetery.

The well-known and much beloved Rev. E. B. Robinson of Grace Church is said to have driven past the cemetery one day, and — unable to see the headstones due to the unchecked growth of the grounds — initiated action. First, a group of Amherst College student volunteers cleaned the site, then the City of Holyoke accepted responsibility for the maintenance. The Amherst College student volunteers were not involved by chance but through a connection to the College via a notable alum buried at Rock Valley.

Among the graves at Rock Valley Cemetery, the Perkins clan has a large family plot where buried were John in 1792 and his wife Mary in 1799.  The most famous of the Perkins family, and a man whom Holyoke as well as Amherst College lays claim to is Justin Perkins, who volunteered as the first missionary to the Nestorians in Uramia, Persia in 1834.

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