Naida Weisberg

Woods Hole, Me and Mine

I have a graduate degree in the Arts in Education for Social Change and am a BCT/RDT, board certified, registered drama therapist with over 50 years of working and playing with all ages in schools and institutions, able and disabled. During the latter part of those 50 years, I co-edited two books: Creative Arts with Older Adults and Expressive Arts with Elders, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London. Those immensely rewarding experiences shaped my life as I raised my family together with my husband, Al, who died in 2013.

From Glendon Road to Agassiz, to Millfield to North, then to Bar Neck Road 5 years ago, my family have been summer residents of Woods Hole since 1965. The best friends who lured us here were MBLers Mona and Paul Gross and Joan and Abe Spector. We had moved to Providence in 1963 from the Chicago area and found the Gross family living across the street (how great is that?!) and Joan and I had been college freshman together. If we were looking for the "absolute best place in the world" to live, learn, and enjoy in the summer, we had to find a place in Woods Hole!

My husband, Alfred, was a chemist with an unquenchable thirst for all matters scientific. The prospect of Friday night lectures, listening to young, and older, intense and brilliant scholars speak about their research was more than just interesting to him -- it literally fed his soul. This was not a difficult decision for us.

We loved Science School for our 3 kids. My son and his cousin were "the janitor" one summer! In recent years, grandchildren John and Max Ribbans -- now college students -- enjoyed the classes, and lately, Andy Weisberg got "dropped off". We loved Stony Beach. Our golden retriever, Winnie, was the only dog not chased off the beach. The children loved her -- and she behaved!

Our first purchase was 11 North St. in 1969, familiarly known as The Woodcock House. On one side of us were Dr. and Mrs. Packard, he a former Director of the MBL. Actually theirs was the mirror image of our house, but we never did find out how that happened. Next to us were the Do, Re, Mi houses leading down to Eel Pond. Then they disappeared, to make way for Swope. Suddenly we had a much better view of the Pond from our kitchen window and a big, sweeping lawn to share between our house and the new dorm. It was and is a lovely park-like area for playing games, and drifting off to sleep.

Our family grew as marriage and grandchildren appeared. Even with the addition of a wonderful, new porch that we loved -- expertly designed by Freda Kaminer -- we were bursting, as they say, at the seams.

An opportunity presented itself on Bar Neck Road and that's where my family are now, happily ensconced in the place we all cherish in the summer.