For fans of Ogden Nash - 08/23/02 08:45 PM
From our Seacoast N.H. newspaper,
NORTH HAMPTON - In 1956 Ogden and Frances Nash bought a home on Little Boar's Head. For the next 15 years the poet and his family were a summer fixture in North Hampton, until Ogden Nash's death in 1971.
This week at the North Hampton library more than 100 people celebrated the 100th anniversary of Nash's birth in Rye, N.Y., in 1902, several North Hampton residents remembered the poet with recitations of his poems, and a commemorative U.S. postal stamp was unveiled to mark the centenary.
Pam Schwotzer, director at North Hampton Public Library, called Nash "America's master of light verse."
"He was a linguist and humorist besides being a poet," Schwotzer said. "North Hampton became his spiritual home, we can truly claim him as one of our own." She noted some of his verse that has become part of the cultural language of the country ("Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker" and Nash's advise to men: "Whenever you're wrong admit it, whenever you're right shut up.")
"His work was unlike anyone else's," Schwotzer said, before reading a proclamation from N.H. Gov. Jeanne Shaheen naming Aug. 19 Ogden Nash Day in the state. North Hampton Post Master Darlene Godfrey unveiled an oversized version of the 37-cent stamp, featuring a portrait of Nash with lines from his poems in the background. Godfrey said the stamp is the 18th in the post office's Literary Art Program. A similar ceremony was held in Baltimore, where the Nash's made their year-round home for many years, Godfrey noted.
Then Robert and Katherine Southworth, who grew up on Little Boar's Head with the Nashes as neighbors, celebrated the poet's life with reminiscences and readings.
"Ogden was a great friend of ours," Robert Sr. said. His wife Kate, noting she always called him "Mr. Nash," recalled that the Nash household "was very neat. The family was involved in different topics, in the community ... They argued fiercely (sometimes about baseball, Ogden's favorite sport: He was a Baltimore Oriole fan) but always listened to one another. Mr. Nash was a wonderful, wonderful person, a gentle, kind man who was always interested in people."
Kate (whose maiden name was Hobson) recalled growing up on Little Boar's Head, spending summers with her own sister Isabel and the two Nash daughters, Linell and Isabel.
"We spent many carefree summers, the four of us, sneaking out of the house at night and walking around the neighborhood ... disrupting traffic," Kate said, recalling times the girls were discovered out and were grounded.
Sam and Robert Southworth Jr., Katherine's brothers, read poems. Sam read Nash's first published poem (in the New Yorker in about 1930), and Robert Jr. read verse on sports and on a newspaper story Nash noticed on the citrus crop in the Soviet Union.
Arthur Tufts of Exeter remembered Nash stopping by his father's roadside stand in Exeter.
"I had never seen a man who parted his hair in the middle," Tufts said. And Shirley Carter recalled how, as a waitress at Bunny's Restaurant, Nash and Clarence, the family butler, "would visit the restaurant and Ogden would give us his order in verse."
The elder Southworth recalled seeing Nash writing every morning in the cottage, from 9 to noon.
"He sat there at his desk constructing poems every day," Robert Sr. said, recollecting visits by the Nash family to the Southworth fish house on Ocean Boulevard for supper, and Ogden's joy in reading his verse at birthdays and anniversaries.
Those attending the celebration laughed out loud at several of the recollections people spoke of, and at the poems themselves, including one that typified Ogden Nash's style:
"God in his wisdom made the fly,
"And then forgot to tell us why."
NORTH HAMPTON - In 1956 Ogden and Frances Nash bought a home on Little Boar's Head. For the next 15 years the poet and his family were a summer fixture in North Hampton, until Ogden Nash's death in 1971.
This week at the North Hampton library more than 100 people celebrated the 100th anniversary of Nash's birth in Rye, N.Y., in 1902, several North Hampton residents remembered the poet with recitations of his poems, and a commemorative U.S. postal stamp was unveiled to mark the centenary.
Pam Schwotzer, director at North Hampton Public Library, called Nash "America's master of light verse."
"He was a linguist and humorist besides being a poet," Schwotzer said. "North Hampton became his spiritual home, we can truly claim him as one of our own." She noted some of his verse that has become part of the cultural language of the country ("Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker" and Nash's advise to men: "Whenever you're wrong admit it, whenever you're right shut up.")
"His work was unlike anyone else's," Schwotzer said, before reading a proclamation from N.H. Gov. Jeanne Shaheen naming Aug. 19 Ogden Nash Day in the state. North Hampton Post Master Darlene Godfrey unveiled an oversized version of the 37-cent stamp, featuring a portrait of Nash with lines from his poems in the background. Godfrey said the stamp is the 18th in the post office's Literary Art Program. A similar ceremony was held in Baltimore, where the Nash's made their year-round home for many years, Godfrey noted.
Then Robert and Katherine Southworth, who grew up on Little Boar's Head with the Nashes as neighbors, celebrated the poet's life with reminiscences and readings.
"Ogden was a great friend of ours," Robert Sr. said. His wife Kate, noting she always called him "Mr. Nash," recalled that the Nash household "was very neat. The family was involved in different topics, in the community ... They argued fiercely (sometimes about baseball, Ogden's favorite sport: He was a Baltimore Oriole fan) but always listened to one another. Mr. Nash was a wonderful, wonderful person, a gentle, kind man who was always interested in people."
Kate (whose maiden name was Hobson) recalled growing up on Little Boar's Head, spending summers with her own sister Isabel and the two Nash daughters, Linell and Isabel.
"We spent many carefree summers, the four of us, sneaking out of the house at night and walking around the neighborhood ... disrupting traffic," Kate said, recalling times the girls were discovered out and were grounded.
Sam and Robert Southworth Jr., Katherine's brothers, read poems. Sam read Nash's first published poem (in the New Yorker in about 1930), and Robert Jr. read verse on sports and on a newspaper story Nash noticed on the citrus crop in the Soviet Union.
Arthur Tufts of Exeter remembered Nash stopping by his father's roadside stand in Exeter.
"I had never seen a man who parted his hair in the middle," Tufts said. And Shirley Carter recalled how, as a waitress at Bunny's Restaurant, Nash and Clarence, the family butler, "would visit the restaurant and Ogden would give us his order in verse."
The elder Southworth recalled seeing Nash writing every morning in the cottage, from 9 to noon.
"He sat there at his desk constructing poems every day," Robert Sr. said, recollecting visits by the Nash family to the Southworth fish house on Ocean Boulevard for supper, and Ogden's joy in reading his verse at birthdays and anniversaries.
Those attending the celebration laughed out loud at several of the recollections people spoke of, and at the poems themselves, including one that typified Ogden Nash's style:
"God in his wisdom made the fly,
"And then forgot to tell us why."
HAPPY BIRTHDAY OGDEN, YOU WERE --> ARE <-- A JOY! 
)