Former United Shoe Machinery employees reunite at Cummings Center

More than 20 years after the opening of Cummings Center, everyone in the city still knows of someone who used to work at the site when it was “The Shoe,” according to Beverly historian Fred Hammond.

Hammond was the guest speaker at a September 15 reunion of 30 people, including former United Shoe Machinery Corporation (USMC) employees, their wives, and other family members. The lively group enjoyed lunch from local favorite Marino’s Cafe, reminisced about The Shoe, and listened to presentations by Hammond and Cummings Center general manager Steve Drohosky.

Hammond, a retired Beverly High School teacher, member of Beverly Historical Society, and author of Reflections of 20th Century Beverly, shared many interesting facts with the group. After it was built in 1903, he explained, The Shoe was the biggest reinforced concrete structure in the world, a fact that he feels has been grossly overlooked by historians.

Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable agreed, writing in a 1997 Wall Street Journal feature story, “The Shoe was, and is, the single most important, and generally unrecognized, concrete landmark in this country.”

For Beverly natives, Hammond explained, there used to be two certainties in life: there would never be a new Beverly–Salem bridge and if The Shoe were to fall, the city would be taken down with it. Both “certainties,” however, were disproved in the nineties, when a new bridge was completed and Cummings Properties took possession of The Shoe and began revitalizing it as Cummings Center.

In 1915, according to Hammond, The Shoe was the largest taxpayer in Beverly, at $20,000.

“Cummings Properties is now the largest taxpayer in the city by far, making projects like the new Beverly High School possible,” said Hammond.

The North East Club, which refers to the location in The Shoe where its members worked, not the region of the state, was organized in 1940 for master members of the Masons employed at The Shoe.

The master of ceremonies for the reunion was well-known Beverly volunteer and fellow Mason John Maihos. He is also director of human resources at Cummings Center client firm Blue Vase Marketing and serves as The North East Club’s current chief.

The reunion was made possible through the collaboration of The North East Club and Cummings Center, which has become a defacto museum for The Shoe, preserving and displaying everything from actual shoe-making machines to old photographs to drafting equipment to company journals.

“We take great care to preserve and share the artifacts that are entrusted to us,” Drohosky said. Although he has turned away some, like the offer to purchase and pay for shipping of a large USMC shoe-making machine from Thailand.

After welcoming the group, Drohosky invited them to share. Attendees regaled each other with old stories and facts, such as how, due to the enormity of the campus, messengers delivered mail on roller skates.

Marblehead resident Glover Broughton, the Club’s scribe and former chief for the 1963–1964 and 1965–1966 terms, explained that full members must be third-degree Masons in good standing, but as membership has dwindled with time, its events have been opened to include anyone interested in keeping memories of The Shoe alive. According to Broughton, the Club’s sole purpose now is “to have fun.”

After graduating from Wentworth Institute with a degree in pattern making and machine design, Broughton became a draftsman at The Shoe in 1953. He retired in the late eighties.

Dave Delorey, a Lynn native and Lynn Trade School graduate moved to Beverly in his twenties and has lived there ever since. He worked as a third-class machine operator at The Shoe from 1959 to 1987. He sported suspenders and proudly wore a USMC hat. When asked how many people worked at The Shoe in his time, he joked, “about half!”

Lifelong Beverly resident Philip Post, an active director of The North East Club and chief for the 2005–2006 term, started out working on the summer grounds crew in 1948. He was one of the many USMC staffers who came to The Shoe through a collaboration with Beverly’s former Patton Vocational School.

Anyone interested in learning more about The North East Club can contact Maihos at jmaihos@comcast.net.

PHOTO: Cummings Properties vice president and Cummings Center general manager Steve Drohosky speaks with former United Shoe Machinery Corporation employees