nat whittemore
Interviewed by Chris Ulian
Early Life - Audobon Road
Nat Whittemore was born in 1938, in a house at 33 Audobon Road that his father bought for $5,000 during the Great Depression in 1933, immediately after he graduated from Harvard. Nat lived in that house through high school, in what was then a very rural part of Wellesley. He says, "It was all woods...one morning my mother was taking a shower in the first floor and she thought there was somebody trying to break into the house through the window. She peeked out and there was a cow looking in at her - I mean it was a really rural area." Not until World War II did the area become the residential neighborhood that it is today. During the war, the men who had not gone to fight cleared the land today covered by the houses of Essex, Suffolk, Bristol, and Lowell roads. "It was all woods and there was a large field, so the men built big victory gardens. There was nothing basically from Route 9 at Audobon Road all the way to somewhere in Weston, or Route 30 I guess. And then after the second World War all of the construction began behind us; Lowell, Hampshire, Essex, Suffolk, all those roads were put in and all the houses were built. I thought it was very well done, I mean there were nice houses built, and the streets weren't laid out like a city - they had curves. The one thing that I thought was very bad was that the utility wires - the telephone and electric wires - weren't put underground at the time." In Nat's elementary school days, his father would gather the family around the radio to listen to the news - "he was very insistent that he wanted to listen together," says Nat. "He would explain things, like I had no idea where a lot of places were. A lot of it was on the second World War coverage." During World War II, Nat's father worked as an air raid warden for the family's neighborhood, going around to make sure that the lights in each house were off and that car headlights were dimmed. In fact, Nat says that "One of my first household jobs was to walk around when it started to get dark or when the streetlights went on and to pull down all the shades." Wellesley was also affected by the nationwide rationing that went into effect during the war - access to food and gasoline was controlled by a rationing board. "My parents had a place in New Hampshire and they hadn't been up in several years so they finally got some gas from the rationing board so they could go up and come back, but it was a lot of people on bicycles in those days!"
From Elementary School to WHS
Nat attended Brown Elementary school, which is now an apartment complex adjacent to the Brown playing fields off of Cliff Road. Boys played baseball, basketball, and flag football against boys from the other elementary schools in town, but there were no organized recreational sports in town - Nat says that "We used to go over to the Brown School and pick up our own teams and play over there. Later, Little League was much more organized but we didn't have that. Mostly it was baseball. And then in junior high school the homerooms used to play each other, the boys would play football, basketball, and baseball." Once in high school, boys could choose from football, basketball, hockey, and baseball, and girls had the option of taking part in field hockey, basketball, or softball. These sports were interscholastic - the teams played opponents from other high schools. However, sports participation rates were much lower back then, as according to Nat "it was the same group of athletic boys to play all three seasons." It was during Nat's time in elementary school that he first watched television; "I was in the 6th grade at the Brown School and one of my classmates had a television so the mothers got together and made some kind of spaghetti lunch. Then we were all marched up from Garden Road up to somewhere on Cliff Road to this youngster's house, and we watched President Truman's inauguration. They had a little black and white. But a lot of us, other than when you walked by the stores in Wellesley Hills, had never seen a television before. We didn’t get one until some years later - my father was a true Yankee with short arms and deep pockets, so my grandmother bought a television so we could watch it. Most of the time we watched the news, but a lot of it was test patterns - nothing like the programming of today. It was just Channel 4 and finally Channel 7 went on the air." When Nat was a child, the Boston Braves baseball team moved out of town, but Nat remembers that before they moved there were "a lot of zings back and forth" between fans of the Braves and the Red Sox - not unlike Yankees and Red Sox fans today. Nat continued to be invested in sports in high school - he attended the Needham-Wellesley football game all four years. Such was his fandom that he engaged in some unruly antics in his senior year: "When my class was playing [on Thanksgiving in 1955] I went over to Needham at about 4 o’clock in the morning with lime, and I wrote WHS on the Needham field because we were playing there. I had some red spray paint and I sprayed the goalposts, I painted the goalposts. Fortunately I wasnt caught; I'm sure my father would not have approved...but unfortunately, we lost." Social life at the high school was full of school dances, highlighted by the junior and senior proms. "Record hops" that were held at the Unitarian Church were also popular - Nat remembers that "they had DJs and all of that. So if you had a girlfriend you were going to the record hop. It was good, it was fun." Classes at the school included driver's ed, which half of the sophomore class took first semester and half took second semester. A passing grade in that class exempted students from the written portion of the license exam at the registry. Excitement around the course was high; Nat says that "naturally the minute I was 16 I was on the telephone making an appointment with the registry to get my driver’s license. And there were no restrictions then, you know, you could take whoever you wanted. If you had a driver’s license, you were very popular with the girls." Other courses were much the same as they are now, but Nat found one of his most beneficial classes to be typing, since there was no keyboarding in those days. There was no Internet either, and research was carried out in either the town or the school library. Racially, the school (and the town as a whole) was very homogenous in the 50's - Nat says that "it was all white, there were no black families at all" (the METCO program was brought to Wellesley in 1966 as part of busing programs to fulfill Supreme Court orders that required the integration of all schools).
After High School
After Nat graduated from Wellesley High in 1956, he got a job as a television cameraman, a job that he would keep for the next 51 years. One day in 1963, as he drove to an assignment in Boston, disturbing news came in over the radio; "I was just driving into the Sumner Tunnel when I heard two police units talking on one of the radios in the car, and they said 'Did you hear? the President was just shot.' And then I went into the tunnel and I couldn't hear anything! The tunnel was all one way in those days, and it was cobblestone so you couldn't speed and you couldn't pass anybody. That was quite the suspenseful tunnel ride." In the following years of the Cold War, Nat remembers an environment of fear and nerves; "It felt very close to home...the fear was very prevalent. We really thought there was going to be a nuclear war. Some of the companies here in Wellesley bought property outside the 60 mile limit up in New Hampshire where all of their records were kept and all of their people could go if the bomb dropped in Boston. Or Watertown was a big armory, so that was a big target. My father's company spent money so he could live in his summer cottage up in New Hampshire year round, because they thought the company would be moving up there. A lot of the executives in his company even bought places up there to get out of here - nuclear warfare was really expected. Anyone that was a thinking person who lived near a big city was nervous. Especially if you lived on the coast, because it was closer to Russia, and it was a target." Nat was in the military for 6 years as a combat photographer, and during the Cuban Missile Crisis his unit was put on standby - "we had to have all our bags down at the big Army base, where the guys from around here went down to get on the big ships to go across the Atlantic, and we were all ready to go."
Early Life - Audobon Road
Nat Whittemore was born in 1938, in a house at 33 Audobon Road that his father bought for $5,000 during the Great Depression in 1933, immediately after he graduated from Harvard. Nat lived in that house through high school, in what was then a very rural part of Wellesley. He says, "It was all woods...one morning my mother was taking a shower in the first floor and she thought there was somebody trying to break into the house through the window. She peeked out and there was a cow looking in at her - I mean it was a really rural area." Not until World War II did the area become the residential neighborhood that it is today. During the war, the men who had not gone to fight cleared the land today covered by the houses of Essex, Suffolk, Bristol, and Lowell roads. "It was all woods and there was a large field, so the men built big victory gardens. There was nothing basically from Route 9 at Audobon Road all the way to somewhere in Weston, or Route 30 I guess. And then after the second World War all of the construction began behind us; Lowell, Hampshire, Essex, Suffolk, all those roads were put in and all the houses were built. I thought it was very well done, I mean there were nice houses built, and the streets weren't laid out like a city - they had curves. The one thing that I thought was very bad was that the utility wires - the telephone and electric wires - weren't put underground at the time." In Nat's elementary school days, his father would gather the family around the radio to listen to the news - "he was very insistent that he wanted to listen together," says Nat. "He would explain things, like I had no idea where a lot of places were. A lot of it was on the second World War coverage." During World War II, Nat's father worked as an air raid warden for the family's neighborhood, going around to make sure that the lights in each house were off and that car headlights were dimmed. In fact, Nat says that "One of my first household jobs was to walk around when it started to get dark or when the streetlights went on and to pull down all the shades." Wellesley was also affected by the nationwide rationing that went into effect during the war - access to food and gasoline was controlled by a rationing board. "My parents had a place in New Hampshire and they hadn't been up in several years so they finally got some gas from the rationing board so they could go up and come back, but it was a lot of people on bicycles in those days!"
From Elementary School to WHS
Nat attended Brown Elementary school, which is now an apartment complex adjacent to the Brown playing fields off of Cliff Road. Boys played baseball, basketball, and flag football against boys from the other elementary schools in town, but there were no organized recreational sports in town - Nat says that "We used to go over to the Brown School and pick up our own teams and play over there. Later, Little League was much more organized but we didn't have that. Mostly it was baseball. And then in junior high school the homerooms used to play each other, the boys would play football, basketball, and baseball." Once in high school, boys could choose from football, basketball, hockey, and baseball, and girls had the option of taking part in field hockey, basketball, or softball. These sports were interscholastic - the teams played opponents from other high schools. However, sports participation rates were much lower back then, as according to Nat "it was the same group of athletic boys to play all three seasons." It was during Nat's time in elementary school that he first watched television; "I was in the 6th grade at the Brown School and one of my classmates had a television so the mothers got together and made some kind of spaghetti lunch. Then we were all marched up from Garden Road up to somewhere on Cliff Road to this youngster's house, and we watched President Truman's inauguration. They had a little black and white. But a lot of us, other than when you walked by the stores in Wellesley Hills, had never seen a television before. We didn’t get one until some years later - my father was a true Yankee with short arms and deep pockets, so my grandmother bought a television so we could watch it. Most of the time we watched the news, but a lot of it was test patterns - nothing like the programming of today. It was just Channel 4 and finally Channel 7 went on the air." When Nat was a child, the Boston Braves baseball team moved out of town, but Nat remembers that before they moved there were "a lot of zings back and forth" between fans of the Braves and the Red Sox - not unlike Yankees and Red Sox fans today. Nat continued to be invested in sports in high school - he attended the Needham-Wellesley football game all four years. Such was his fandom that he engaged in some unruly antics in his senior year: "When my class was playing [on Thanksgiving in 1955] I went over to Needham at about 4 o’clock in the morning with lime, and I wrote WHS on the Needham field because we were playing there. I had some red spray paint and I sprayed the goalposts, I painted the goalposts. Fortunately I wasnt caught; I'm sure my father would not have approved...but unfortunately, we lost." Social life at the high school was full of school dances, highlighted by the junior and senior proms. "Record hops" that were held at the Unitarian Church were also popular - Nat remembers that "they had DJs and all of that. So if you had a girlfriend you were going to the record hop. It was good, it was fun." Classes at the school included driver's ed, which half of the sophomore class took first semester and half took second semester. A passing grade in that class exempted students from the written portion of the license exam at the registry. Excitement around the course was high; Nat says that "naturally the minute I was 16 I was on the telephone making an appointment with the registry to get my driver’s license. And there were no restrictions then, you know, you could take whoever you wanted. If you had a driver’s license, you were very popular with the girls." Other courses were much the same as they are now, but Nat found one of his most beneficial classes to be typing, since there was no keyboarding in those days. There was no Internet either, and research was carried out in either the town or the school library. Racially, the school (and the town as a whole) was very homogenous in the 50's - Nat says that "it was all white, there were no black families at all" (the METCO program was brought to Wellesley in 1966 as part of busing programs to fulfill Supreme Court orders that required the integration of all schools).
After High School
After Nat graduated from Wellesley High in 1956, he got a job as a television cameraman, a job that he would keep for the next 51 years. One day in 1963, as he drove to an assignment in Boston, disturbing news came in over the radio; "I was just driving into the Sumner Tunnel when I heard two police units talking on one of the radios in the car, and they said 'Did you hear? the President was just shot.' And then I went into the tunnel and I couldn't hear anything! The tunnel was all one way in those days, and it was cobblestone so you couldn't speed and you couldn't pass anybody. That was quite the suspenseful tunnel ride." In the following years of the Cold War, Nat remembers an environment of fear and nerves; "It felt very close to home...the fear was very prevalent. We really thought there was going to be a nuclear war. Some of the companies here in Wellesley bought property outside the 60 mile limit up in New Hampshire where all of their records were kept and all of their people could go if the bomb dropped in Boston. Or Watertown was a big armory, so that was a big target. My father's company spent money so he could live in his summer cottage up in New Hampshire year round, because they thought the company would be moving up there. A lot of the executives in his company even bought places up there to get out of here - nuclear warfare was really expected. Anyone that was a thinking person who lived near a big city was nervous. Especially if you lived on the coast, because it was closer to Russia, and it was a target." Nat was in the military for 6 years as a combat photographer, and during the Cuban Missile Crisis his unit was put on standby - "we had to have all our bags down at the big Army base, where the guys from around here went down to get on the big ships to go across the Atlantic, and we were all ready to go."