NH Rejects Aristotle Onassis Oil Refinery in 1974 |
HISTORY MATTERS
Be thankful this holiday that Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis did not turn
3,500 acres along the shore of
Instead, over 1,000 residents of
Those three women gathered at the deeply wooded studio of stone cutter and artist Steve Green last week. They were there to give final approval to a huge granite bench designed to memorialize the defeated refinery. Steve Green lives and works down a winding dirt road near an ancient tavern in the wilds of Lee. His road and property are littered with slabs of rock that look like the cast-off pieces from the building of
“It’s a big honking bench,” Green says of the 1,500-pound slab of granite. “As benches go, this is an altar.”
Made from “tapestry” granite, Green says the seven-by-three-foot bench can seat six. It was quarried in
“I’ve been told it’s the oldest stone in
CONTINUE ONASSIS MEMORIAL
You must remember this
Phyllis Bennett was the publisher of a tiny liberal newspaper called Publick Occurences back in 1974. The struggling seacoast weekly is credited with blowing the whistle on efforts by Olympic Oil to buy up land along
“Home Rule is not a glorious concept,”
But it worked. Conservative New Hampshire lawmakers, realizing that the oil refinery or other such projects might migrate to their own back yards, backed Dudley’s legislation, handing
“I just want to say,” Phyllis Bennett adds almost tearfully, “that Publick Occurences was a journalist’s dream. It was an honor to work in a region where people have a sense of place, and were involved in their community, and have a vision of the future. It was the
The three now-white-haired activists swirled around the granite bench last week, admiring it from every angle and touching its cold polished surface. One jagged side of the bench has been inscribed with a simple message. It reads: “March 1974: Durham Says NO to Olympic Oil Refinery.”
The words on the memorial were polished and cut down to size at a recent wine and cheese meeting in the backyard of Ed Valena’s house in the
“It was originally going to say – Ari go home!” Valena says. “But we settled on something a little more sophisticated.”
Valena, a sometime artist and activist in his own right, “discovered” the Onassis story while living on
“I thought their story had an epic David-versus-Goliath quality,” Valena recalls, “so I wrote a play about it – a musical-comedy, no less.”
Valena titled his play “Oily Vey.” Through the nonprofit Great Bay Stewards he obtained a $5,000 grant from the Greater Piscataqua Charitable Foundation. The money went into building sets and renting the hall. The musical filled the seats at Johnson Theatre at the
Valena and musical director Dave Ervin adapted popular show tunes to fit hilarious new lyrics to dramatize the war between
Ari’s last stand
The goal, from the start, was to create a permanent monument to the events of 1974. Valena’s two-night UNH performance in 2001 raised $2,800, but it took him another decade to finish the project.
“Good things take time,” Valena says, his pride almost showing.
Stonecutter Steve Green recalls how he met Ed and the ladies who defeated the Olympic Oil Refinery. They had admired examples of his stonework, he recalls, but couldn’t find his shop in the woods in Lee. So the determined team drove directly to the Lee Police Station and asked the police to escort them to Green’s artistic hideaway.
‘The ladies were so persistent,” Green says, “that after I heard their story, I almost felt a little sorry for Onassis.”
Installing the memorial bench in
Aristotle Onassis, once called the richest man in the world, died in March 1975, almost on the anniversary of the
This granite bench, Steve Green notes, has a much greater history. It was around in earlier form when the planet had only a single continent. That molten rock rose from 40 miles below the surface and merged with a younger piece of granite some 250 million years ago, long before the
This is the spot, according to Ed Valena, where in 1974 the forces of Good met the forces of Evil in a winner-take-all confrontation. Those few who favored a refinery will disagree, but as Valena tells it, technology lost and the ecosystem won.
“Towns only have so many heroic legends,” Valena says. “I doubt if you could find a story this big anywhere in the Seacoast. You couldn’t do anything that would better capture the spirit of the town.”
Copyright © 2011 by J. Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved. Robinson’s history column appears in the Portsmouth Herald every other Monday and exclusively online at his independent Web site SeacoastNH.com. Signed copies of his latest hardcover gift book --