WHITMAN – The tradition of looking after one’s neighbors in need – whether that need be social or financial – while handing that tradition along to the community’s youth has roots as old as time.
Whether those roots are based in religion or culture, they were clearly in practice in the region as Thanksgiving approached, only to ramp up considerably as Christmas and other December holidays such as Hanukkah and Kwanzaa draw near.
Kicking off the seasonal service events began on Saturday, Nov. 16 as the Cardinal Spellman Council No. 347 welcomed a record number of town and area senior citizens, who would otherwise be alone at the Thanksgiving holiday with a roast turkey dinner (or several of the birds), with mashed potatoes, dressing and gravy, cranberry sauce, winter squash, peas and pearl onions, dinner roll and a brownie sundae for dessert.
Members of the Whitman-Hanson football team helped the Knights and Whitman police serve the dinner, including cranberry juice cocktail and fruit cup, without spilling a drop.
The dinner is part of the K of C’s mission to do charitable works for the community as an expression of faith.
This was the 51st year that the Spellman Council has hosted the dinner, member Bob Hayes announced to the diners before the benediction was offered by Parochail Vicar, the Rev. Godfrey Musabe, of the Light of Christ Catholic Collaborative that serves St. Bridget in Abingon and Holy Ghost Church in Whitman.
Born in Uganda, he told the seniors he came to the United States to study at Boston College and now serves as chaplain of an Army National Guard unit when he is not serving his vocation.
“It begins with Thanksgiving,” Musabe said. “Everything is Thanksgiving, and as we come together, we thank God for the many blessings he has given us … for allowing us to be here. We thank God for this wonderful and beautiful country that he has given us. We thank God for the gift of one another.”
He also invited those attending the dinner to, in their own way and according to their own faith tradition, to pray for a moment of thanksgiving before the meal was served, asking a blessing on the volunteers who sacrificed their time to prepare and serve the meal, the gathering to enjoy it and the meal itself.
Six days later, the students of Conley Elementary School included their annual gifts to the community’s food pantry and animal shelter as part of their Thanksgiving basket assembly, now made part of their November monthly school morning meeting.
The children had recently been asked to each bring in a canned good or other food item for a Thanksgiving meal to provide a holiday dinner for 25 families in their community, as well as an abject lesson in how one person’s efforts can do so much.
The children were asked to turn to classmates on either side of them and say what they are thankful for this year.
The big moments came when Student Council President Riley Lusk announced how many baskets were being donated to the pantry.
“I want to start off by saying how amazing it is to see all that our school families have donated,” she said. “Just like we come together as a school to help each other, it’s important to help others in our community, too. Because of all of you, 25 families in our community will get to enjoy Thanksgiving dinners.”
She thanked the students and wished them a happy Thanksgiving.
St, Vincent DePaul Food Pantry President Richard Clark thanked the students on behalf of the pantry for their contributions.
“Everybody here has done great work,” he said. “All the help given the food pantry will be very good for all the families in Whitman that we need to help out because they have food insecurity. I appreciate all the things you guys have done. Keep up the good work!”
“I’m so proud of our school for the kindness we show to animals,” Council member Brody Gould said. “Every year, we ask the Conley community to contribute whatever the can for our Pennies for Paws collection.”
He announced this year, the students raised $450 for the animals being housed at the Whitman Animal Shelter.
Animal Control Officer Laura Howe thanked the students.
“You always make me cry,” she said. “But I’m just so proud of you all. You give me hope every year for the future of our world.”
She told the children that kindness is really all that matters in this world, and the way that Conley students always exemplify it every year, always move her to tears.
“Wow! It really does all begin with one can,” said one of the Council members before the Student Council brought in the baskets as the song, “When Fall Comes to New England,” played. “We are so lucky to live in a community where everyone helps each other.”

HANSON — It’s never easy being freshman — especially on Beacon Hill.
You end up with a basement office space you sometimes have to share with other lawmakers – at least until you get a committee assignment – and there are the ins and outs of getting things done to serve your constituents.
“I’ve got a little bit of time, formally.” Newly-elected state Rep. Ken Sweezey, R-Pembroke said last week, during an interview over coffee at Hanson’s new Restoration Coffee shop on Main Street. “A couple of things have to be done, as far as making sure our office is going to be in line and ready to go.”
He’s also reviewing his homework and is excited to get started.
Sweezey, 29, is facing the staffing challenge right now, as he’s working to hire a legislative aide, as well as preparing for the issues in the state House – all by New Year’s Day. That process will be helped by the availability of some experienced aides whose GOP representatives were not re-elected. The latter by his belief in bipartisanship.
“Fortunately/unfortunately some Republicans did not win or did not choose to seek re-election,” he said. “So, there’s a lot of experience – a good pool of people who have [solid] experience, which I think will be good for a first-time representative.”
They will also need experience in constituent outreach
“Everybody across the district – and this I heard probably more than anything else – was how good former Rep. Josh Cutler’s office was in the district. Amazing. That’s a perfect example of something I want to continue. Josh and I speak and we’re on good terms, so I really hope there will be a lot of partnership there.”
And he’s already got a foot on the ladder toward bipartisanship. He wants to be a conduit for legislation local residents of officials want, regardless of issue or party.
“If you look at the numbers, Trump lost our district 52-48, by the rough number,” he said. “Obviously, I won by about six or seven points, so I out-ran Trump by about eight points – so eight percent of Harris voters, voted for me.”
He went into his second race for the State House knowing he had to pick up the votes of some supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris in order win this time out.
“We had to reach across the aisle,” Sweezey said. “That’s the type of person I am anyway.”
He could tell there was some support for him among Democrats or independent voters planning to vote for Harris.
“There’s a lot of stuff that reaches across the aisle,” he said. “There’s things that everybody, Republicans, Democrats, unenrolled were concerned about.”
He also received endorsements from a lot of unaffiliated voters as well as Democrats who would tell him what their needs were, what they feel their “circle’s” priorities are.
“A lot of it just organically lined up with what I believed, anyway,” he said. “So it was easy because I didn’t have to ‘sell’ them, if you will.”
Sweezey, 29, knows the district well.
He was raised in Hanson and his family owns Sweezey Fence in Whitman, where he used to work summers when he was in high school and college.
He has bachelor’s in arts degree from Loyla in forensic science, and began his career as a civilian law enforcement employee with St. Louis, Mo., Metropolitan Police, working there for four years “unfortunately on hundreds of homicides, assault, robberries, hundreds if not thousands of property crimes as well,” Sweezey said during a debate with opponent Becky Coletts on WATD-Radio during the campaigns
It was at the St. Louis police job that he said decided he needed to get to a system level to make some changes in law enforcement and how they are treated by municipal and state leaders.
Meet Ken
But, first, he had to introduce himself to voters, and like many political candidates, regardless of party have learned across the country – that meant literally introducing himself. That meant knocking on doors and speaking to people.
The concern about the state of America’s democracy, which was a major focus of the Democrat’s national campaign, was less of an issue on the state level, according to Sweezey.
“I do think states’ rights are good, and states should have more sovereignty than they do, but I’d say, honestly, the biggest thing that always came up was bodily autonomy and women’s reproductive rights,” he said. “That’s something that I’ve always been very vocal about since I ran two years ago.”
That first campaign was an education in itself.
“I basically did everything myself,” he said. “I didn’t really have any management; I didn’t have any advisers. I’ve always run to be myself. I’ve never tried to be a national Republican. I’ve never even been a state Republican.”
He also said there were a whole bunch of issues people had on their minds that he just learned about while campaigning.
“I grew up in Hanson,” he said. “I’ve been local around here for a long time, so issues that pertain specifically to Duxbury, there’s so many issues over there. When you start getting to the bay and getting out onto the water, that I just wasn’t aware of because I grew up in one of the two or three district towns that are more inland.”
He’s become a really big advocate for a lot of the issues over there, like beach access, making sure the state doesn’t over-regulate the fishing industry and other shoreline community concerns.
A horizontal district, when mapped out, is more horizontal, shoreline to inland communities within its borders, whereas a number of surrounding coastal districts are more north/south so the geographically oriented issues stay together.
“It’s just more issues, which is fine,” he said. “That just requires a lot more listening and learning – which is good. Over the last three years, we’ve done a lot of that, and this time around, I got a lot of support from the eastern part of the district, where the Sweezey campaign saw its margin changed the most.”
One reason has been the work he put in, making more than 12,000 doors this time on the campaign trail … knocking on more than half of those doors himself.
“I was knocking on doors nearly every single day for eight months,” he said. “That was a big difference.” In his first campaign, his people were able to knock on about 5,000 to 6,000 visits.
“We were able to more than double that,” he said. “I’ve gone through a lot of shoes. My shoe budget is big.”
But the hard work was worth it, as Sweezey made sure they were getting to everyone – and some folks more than once. In doing so, he discovered something about area voters.
“A lot of people are not expecting someone to knock on their door these days,” he said.
But those voters who were engaging shared their issues of concern and heard him out on the three main issues on which he was running.
“This time around, immigration was a massive issue in Massachusetts – the right-to-shelter law and how it relates to the amount of money that we’re spending and this crisis that’s going on in the state,” he said, noting that the state budget and government transparency and the way the COVID pandemic was handled are also big concerns of his. “I don’t blame anyone for coming here. I believe America is the greatest country on Earth … the way I describe it is, it’s a math problem. “It has nothing to do with the people who are coming here,” he said. “We simply can’t afford to allocate a billion dollars a year.”
Where COVID is concerned, he blames anyone who closed a business or schools, which he said caused almost all of our problems.
“That wasn’t a federal thing,” he said. “That was local. We needed in-person education [after that first June was over.]” He also said he doesn’t feel that people had realized how much local government touches their lives.
Sweezey argues that the current immigration situation is simply unsustainable.
While he said the region is lucky to have so many fully engaged Select Boards, towns like Hanson are the smaller towns in the district and are divided between state districts.
“They feel left, behind, really,” he said. “I don’t even think that’s indicative of any past leadership.”
He said he is excited to work with people who represent other sections of Hanson as well as surrounding towns, because it seems the stakeholders are not always at the table when legislation is being passed. He plans to sit down with as many department heads across the district before he is sworn-in – simply to listen and find out if there are any bills pending that haven’t yet gone through.
“What’s tough for our towns down here is that a lot of those are going to mean money, Hanson in particular,” he said. “There’s some serious budget shortfalls that are looming, and it’s not just Hanson. Most towns on the South Shore are facing the same concern.”
He also wants to see some tweaks on the police reform and, particularly on the recertification requirements; and revising regulations on the MBTA Communities law.