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MONADNOCK PROFILE: Fisk provides firm guidance
Filed Under: freezer by admin September 18, 2010
Despite being the father of one of the all-time great players in Boston Red Sox history, you might say Cecil Fisk is the quintessential “Yankee.”
He was born March 3, 1913, at his parents’ house on Perry Avenue in Charlestown, one street over from his current Elm Street home, the day before the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson as the 28th president of the United States, nine months before the Federal Reserve Act was signed into law, and a year before the beginning of World War I.
But even at the age of 97, he’s anything but frail. In fact, he’s built like an oak.
“He doesn’t have any wrinkles,” said his wife, Leona, 91.
Cecil and his wife met in Pennsylvania while he was working as a salesman for Joy Manufacturing.
“Joy did drilling contracts to check the condition of the land for dams, and we had a contract there,” he said.
Leona’s father was a dam builder, also working on the project. The couple married on May 24, 1941, in Minnesota, her home state.
Shortly thereafter, they moved to Charlestown, where they’d remain for decades to come. They have six children: Calvin, Carlton, Cedric, Conrad, June and Janet.
It was on Elm Street where the Fisks raised their children with a sense of duty, and to be the best they could be.
“Those were the good old days,” said Calvin Fisk, at 65 the oldest of the six children, now a retired physical therapist living in Indiana. “You left the keys in the car, the front door unlocked, and you didn’t need an invitation to visit.
“My dad was a very hard worker,” Calvin said. “We had a little farm right there in the middle of town.”
The Fisks always kept a cow or two, which they used for milk and slaughtered for beef.
“I remember cutting and hanging the beef,” Calvin said. “The kids would run the meat up to Mom from the basement, and she’d be bagging it up to put in the freezer.”
There was always a garden with lots of vegetables, which Leona Fisk would can systematically, and they had berry bushes and grapevines.
“Self-reliance,” Cecil said. “My father had six brothers, and grew up on a self-sufficient farm, so I guess we were descendants of that.”
Chores were doled out equally, with each kid having a section of the garden to weed, the lawn to rake and the driveway to shovel, Calvin said.
The kids were expected to shovel the walkways of some of their neighbors in the winter.
“You didn’t expect to get paid, either,” Calvin said. “(Cecil) told us to do it simply because it was the right thing to do.
“‘If you want it done right, do it yourself,’ is what he always used to say.”
Janet Fisk, at 56 the youngest of the six, also recalls those days fondly.
“We didn’t watch television,” she said. “Lawrence Welk and Mitch Miller, that was it.”
Cecil taught Janet how to drive a tractor when she was 9.
“Organic farming is the big thing now, but that’s how we grew up,” she said. “He always told us, ‘Don’t let other people do for you what you can do yourself.’”
The Fisk home, especially their big backyard, was also where the kids developed a love of sports.
“I always played sports,” Cecil said. “Basketball was the big sport around here in those days. It was very competitive between the three schools (Charlestown, Walpole and Alstead).”
Jim Hogancamp, who grew up on Elm Street, recalls hours spent shooting hoops with Calvin at Cecil’s father’s house on Perry Avenue.
“We played a tremendous amount of basketball in the barn there,” he said. “The Fisk household was always the center of the neighborhood. We’d play capture the flag, hide and seek, softball, baseball, anything. There wasn’t a poor athlete in the family.”
Said Calvin: “My Dad was an all-New England basketball player. He was feared for his two-handed set shot.”
Cecil was especially tough on the kids about their free-throw shooting.
“I won the state free-throw shooting championship as a senior,” Calvin said. “One day I was in the barn on Perry Avenue shooting around, and my dad came up and said, ‘Let’s play, shoot until you make it and then shoot until you miss. You go first.’ So I stepped up to about where the free throw line would’ve been. I missed the first couple, then made 17 or 18 in a row. Then he stepped in and missed a few before making the first one. And do you know how many he made in a row? 58.”
The second oldest of the bunch, Carlton, would eventually go on to become one of the greatest baseball players in Major League history, and is generally considered one of the top three or four catchers of all time.
No matter the accomplishments, however, Cecil never let his children enjoy their accomplishments for long.
“He never had a good word for any of them, it was always criticism,” Leona said.
“I agree,” Cecil said. “But we’re proud of all of them, (Leona) did a great job raising them.”
Calvin recalls a basketball game against rival Walpole during his senior year.
“We won,” he said. “I scored 29 points, and made 14 of 18 shots, and 1 of 2 from the free-throw line. We got home, and my dad couldn’t understand how I could miss a free throw. ‘There’s nobody guarding you,’ he said.”
Tough love was Cecil’s enduring style.
“I was kind of the clown of the family,” Calvin said. “One day I came home and I could see everyone sitting around the table, so I decided I was going to make a grand entrance. I put my shoulder into the door, but did it too hard and broke the glass.”
Without a word, Cecil calmly stood up and walked outside, where he pulled out his pocket knife and cut an apple sapling, and Calvin knew what was coming next.
“But I don’t begrudge him for it,” he said. “He taught us to think before you do something … accountability.”
In the Fisk household, there was always a lesson to be learned.
“With my dad, it was right and wrong, there was no gray area,” Janet said. “He was very strict, and worked very hard to support a big family.”
But despite Cecil’s strictness, or perhaps in part because of it, his children have a sense of admiration for their father that’s only grown over the years.
“He’s just a pillar of strength in every way,” Janet said. “He’s a true Yankee. We all think they’re going to live forever. I can’t imagine not having them around.”
Calvin agreed.
“He’s always been a man of his word,” he said. “You didn’t need to write it do
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