The University of Massachusetts Amherst
Robert S. Cox Special Collections & University Archives Research Center
CredoResearch digital collections in Credo

Collecting area: Social change

Funeral Consumers Alliance of Western Massachusetts

Funeral Consumers Alliance of Western Massachusetts Records

1959-2020 Bulk: 1964-2020
10 boxes 2.09 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1133

Logo of the Funeral Consumers Alliance

Funerals in the U.S. are an expensive business, and grieving families will often accept what is called “traditional” rather than try to fight for services tailored to their budgets and beliefs. The first memorial societies were founded to combat the often predatory practices of the funeral industry after embalming prices skyrocketed in the 1930s, but the movement didn’t fully catch on until 1958 when investigative journalist Jessica Mitford brought the issue to greater public attention. Her article “Saint Peter Don’t Call On Me,” television appearances, and subsequent book “The American Way of Death” broke taboos surrounding the discussion of burial and sparked the founding of watchdog and consumer advocacy organizations across the country. The Funeral Consumers Alliance of Western Mass (FCAWM), initially known as the Springfield Memorial Society, was founded in 1959, incorporated in March 1962, and by 1963 had federated with other similar organizations to create the Continental Association of Funeral and Memorial Societies (CAFMS). When Canadian groups separated from CAFMS, the federation name changed to Funeral and Memorial Societies of America (FAMSA), and later (2000) the Funeral Consumers Alliance (FCA).

The bulk of the FCAWM records contain organizational records such as correspondence, minutes and agendas for public and private meetings, and financial records. There is also a selection of informational pamphlets and leaflets generated by the FCAWM, other FCAs, and the funeral industry. Additionally, there are several pages from a set of scrapbooks maintained by former members between 1964 and 1978 which contain newspaper and magazine clippings on death, dying, and the funeral industry at large. The collection was acquired from Sandra Ward in 2021, a board member and former president of the FCAWM, and includes material collected both by herself and previous presidents.

Gift of Sandra Ward, 2021

Subjects

Burial insurance--MassachusettsConsumer Protection--MassachusettsDeath care industry--MassachusettsFuneral Homes--Berkshire County (Mass.)Funeral Homes--Franklin County (Mass.)Funeral Homes--Hampden County (Mass.)Funeral Homes--Hampshire County (Mass.)Funeral consultants--MassachusettsFuneral service--MassachusettsFuneral supplies industry--MassachusettsUndertakers and undertaking--MassachusettsWake services--Massachusetts

Contributors

Funeral Consumers Alliance of Western MassachusettsWard, Sandra Nichols, 1943-

Types of material

Agendas (administrative records)Articles of incorporationAudiocassettesBookletsBrochuresBylawsCorrespondenceFliersInstructional materialsLeaflets (printed works)Legal correspondenceMailing listsMembership applicationsMembership listsMinutes (administrative records)NewslettersNewspaper clippingsPrice listsSubscription lists
Restrictions: none none
Garboden, Clif

Clif Garboden Collection

ca.1965-2011
72 boxes 12 linear feet
Call no.: PH 075
Depiction of Clif Garboden, ca.1968. Photo by Jeff Albertson
Clif Garboden, ca.1968. Photo by Jeff Albertson

A noted figure in the alternative press and a former president of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, Clif Garboden was a long-time editor and writer for the Boston Phoenix. Arriving as a student at Boston University in 1966, Garboden was drawn into a close-knit, creative community on the BU News staff that included Raymond Mungo, Peter Simon, and Joe Pilati, filling a versatile role that entailed work as writer, editor, and photographer. After graduating in 1970, Garboden moved immediately to the Phoenix where he applied his signature wit and occasional snark to a wide range of topics. Apart from a six year period when he worked for the Boston Globe, Garboden was an indispensable part of the Phoenix editorial team until he was laid off in cost cutting moves in 2009. After a lengthy struggle with cancer, Garboden died of pneumonia on Feb. 10, 2011. He is survived by his wife, Susannah (Price), and children Molly and Phil.

The Garbdoen collection consists of hundreds of photographic prints, including work for both the Boston University News and the Phoenix and many personal images of family and friends.

Gift of Susannah Garboden, April 2017

Subjects

Boston PhoenixBoston University News

Types of material

Photographs
Geisler, Bruce

Bruce Geisler Collection

1969-1984
21 boxes 30 linear feet
Call no.: PH 049
Depiction of Renaissance Community, ca.1974
Renaissance Community, ca.1974

Access restrictions: Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA in advance to request materials from this collection.

In the early 1970s, the documentary filmmaker Bruce Geisler dropped out of Pomona College one semester short of graduation, drove across country, and joined the Brotherhood of the Spirit commune, then the largest commune in the eastern United States. During his four years living with the Brotherhood, later renamed the Renaissance Community, Geisler learned the craft of filmmaking, before returning west to earn an MFA at the film school of the University of Southern California. Geisler has received a number of awards as a screenwriter and filmmaker including the Grand Prize for Best Screenplay from Worldfest Houston and the Dominique Dunne Memorial Prize for Filmmaking, and, in 2007, he released his feature-length documentary, Free Spirits, about the Brotherhood of the Spirit/Renaissance Community and its ill-fated founder, Michael Metelica Rapunzel. Geisler is currently a Senior Lecturer in the UMass Amherst Department of Communication.

Documenting everyday life in a Massachusetts commune and performances by the commune bands (Spirit in Flesh and Rapunzel), the Geisler collection was assembled in conjunction with the making of the film Free Spirits. In addition to many hours of both raw and edited film footage taken by members of the Brotherhood of the Brotherhood of the Spirit and Renaissance Community, the collection includes a rich assemblage of still photographs, ephemera, and newspaper clippings relating to the commune.

Subjects

Brotherhood of the Spirit (Commune)Communal living--MassachusettsRenaissance Community (Commune)

Contributors

Geisler, Bruce

Types of material

PhotographsVideotapes
George Cooley & Company

George Cooley & Co. Ledger

1843-1851
1 vol. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 111

Ledger, begun by George Cooley in 1843 to record the accounts of his soapmaking business in the Cabotville section of Chicopee, continued by Titus Chapin, an ardent abolitionist, and Mordecai Cough who managed the business following Cooley’s death (or departure) in 1848. The 1843 date coincides with the coming of many small businesses to Cabotville in connection with the growth of industries there at the time.

Cooley accepted goods, services and cash as payment. The most frequently accepted goods had relatively obvious value to a soap maker: grease and ashes, tallow, pork, scraps and skins, and candles. Some of the services bartered were repairing wagon, shoeing horse, fixing wippletree, making 30 boxes, and covering umbrella. The business sold gallons, bars, and cakes of soap. Mount Holyoke Seminary bought 28 “fancy soaps”. Also listed were shaving soap and hard or hand soap. In addition, sales sometimes included candles, butter, mop handles, molasses, apples and potatoes, squashes, satinet, cheese, cord wood, paint, and rosin. Some of the listings were annotated with regard to the customer’s character: Ashad Bartlett was seen as “bad and poor and fights with his wife”‘ Norris Starkwether was “an honest man”; and Miss L.B. Hunt “eloped with a man”.

Subjects

Chicopee (Mass.)--HistorySoap trade--Massachusetts

Contributors

George Cooley and Company
Gershuny, Grace

Grace Gershuny Papers

1975-1997
2 boxes 3 linear feet
Call no.: MS 793
Depiction of Soul of Soil
Soul of Soil

An organizer, consultant, and educator in the alternative agriculture movement, Grace Gershuny has been active in the field since the 1970s when she worked for the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA), developing its first organic certification program. As a leader in the movement, Gershuny helped to establish both the Organic Trade Association and the Organic Farmer: The Digest of Sustainable Agriculture. Today she continues to write and teach on the subject, serving as a faculty member at a number of colleges, most recently Green Mountain College.

The collection consists chiefly of printed material from a run of the Organic Farmer to Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas (ATTRA) publications and organizational newsletters, such as the Rural Education Center. Amongst these publications are a few small but significant groups of materials including notes from Gershuny’s role as the NOFA VT coordinator in 1979 and her drafts and notes for the second editions of The Soul of Soil.

Subjects

Farming--United StatesNortheast Organic Farming AssociationOrganic farmersOrganic farming

Contributors

Gershuny, Grace
Giordano, Al, 1959-

Al Giordano Collection

1969-1996
2 boxes 1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 604
Depiction of

A native New Yorker born in 1959, Al Giordano was drawn into the antinuclear movement as a teenager, becoming an important organizer for the antinuclear and environmental movements. Giordano sharpened his organizing skills through a close association with Abbie Hoffman, with whom he often collaborated throughout the 1980s. Giordano has worked as a journalist for several decades, primarily with the alternative press, founding his own periodical Narco News in 2000 and the School of Authentic Journalism in 2002. He currently resides in Mexico City.

The Giordano collection contains a miscellaneous assemblage of ephemera, publications and newspapers, reports, and a small quantity of correspondence, relating to antinuclear activism.

Gift of Charles Light et al., Nov. 2007

Subjects

Antinuclear movements--Massachusetts

Contributors

Citizens Awareness NetworkClamshell AllianceSeabrook Nuclear Power Plant (N.H.)
Gittings, Barbara and Kay Tobin Lahusen

Gittings-Lahusen Gay Book Collection

ca.1920-2007
ca.1,000 items
Call no.: RB 005

Barbara Gittings and her life partner Kay Tobin Lahusen were pioneers in the gay rights movement. After coming out during her freshman year at Northwestern University, Gittings became keenly aware of the difficulty of finding material to help her understand her gay identity. An inveterate organizer, she helped found the New York chapter of the early Lesbian organization, the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) in 1957, and she became well known in the 1960s for organizing the first gay rights demonstrations at the White House and Independence Hall. Gittings later worked with organizations from the American Library Association to the American Psychiatric Association to address systematic forms of anti-gay discrimination.
The Gittings-Lahusen Gay Book Collection contains nearly 1,000 books on the gay experience in America collected by Gittings and Lahusen throughout their career. The contents range from a long run of The Ladder, the DOB magazine co-edited by the couple, to works on the psychology and sociology of homosexuality, works on religious and political issues, novels and histories by gay authors, and examples of the pulp fiction of the 1950s and 1960s.

Subjects

Gay rightsHomosexuality
Restrictions: Collection currently unavailable due to renovation in SCUA
Goldfarb, Theodore D., 1935-

Theodore D. Goldfarb Collection

1978 June-July
389 digital images 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: PH 071
Part of: Science for the People Collection
Depiction of Oil processing plant machinery, June 1978
Oil processing plant machinery, June 1978

An environmental chemist, Ted Goldfarb was a founder of the Science for the People chapter at SUNY Stony Brook and an organizer of the group’s second trip to the People’s Republic of China in June 1978. The twelve delegates from SftP went with the intention of studying the organization of science and technology in China with respect to how it met people’s needs, and they were toured through a succession of factories, production facilities, farms, schools, and institutes in Guangzhou, Shanghai, Changsha, and Beijing, among other locations.

The nearly 400 slides in this collection were taken by Ted Goldfarb (and handful by his colleague Judith Weinstein) when they were members of the second Science for the People delegation to the People’s Republic of China in June 1978. Reflecting their interests in science and technology, the slides document a succession of factories, production facilities, schools, and institutes they visited, but include shots of typical street scenes, markets, artisans and factory workers, and tourist sites such as the Great Wall, Ming Tombs, and Forbidden City. In addition to the images of China, a handful were taken during a stopover in Delhi and Agra, India, on the way back to the United States.

Subjects

Acrobats--China--ShanghaiChina--PhotographsCotton manufacture--China--Shanghai--PhotographsFactories--China--PhotographsForbidden City (Beijing, China)--PhotographsGreat Wall of China (China)--PhotographsIndia--PhotographsMing Tombs (China)--PhotographsScience for the PeopleTextile factories--China--Shanghai--Photographs

Contributors

Weinstein, Judith

Types of material

Photographs
Goldscheider, Eric

Eric Goldscheider Collection of Benjamin LaGuer

1983-2009 Bulk: 2000-2009
8 6.83 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1176

2006 Valley Advocate article on LaGuer written by Goldscheider

Collection of material on Benjamin LaGuer, a Bronx-born, Puerto Rican resident of Leominster, Massachusetts who was arrested for raping and beating his elderly neighbor there in 1983. He maintained his innocence, rejecting a plea that could have released him after a couple of years. His case went to trial, and he was convicted in 1984 by an all-white jury. He was sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for parole after fifteen years. LaGuer fought to prove his innocence and while in prison, earned a bachelor’s degree from Boston University. LaGuer and his case brought together a diverse group of supporters, including Leslie Epstein, John Silber, Noam Chomsky, Ellen Story, and Deval Patrick, whose support was used against him when he ran for Governor of Massachusetts.

Eric Goldscheider was an instructor and freelance journalist who wrote for the Valley Advocate, Greenfield Recorder, Springfield Republican, Daily Hampshire Gazette, Boston Globe, New York Times, Washington Post, and several university publications. Goldscheider met LaGuer when he taught a Journalism 101 class at North Central Correctional Institute in Gardner, MA in the early 2000s. They remained in close contact after the class and Goldscheider took an increasing interest in LaGuer’s case and wrote several articles advocating for his release.

LaGuer was denied parole several times because he refused to admit guilt, and passed away from liver cancer on November 4, 2020, alone in a prison hospital. Goldscheider passed away 18 months later on May 9, 2022.

The collection consists of material that Goldscheider amassed on LaGuer’s case throughout their 20+ year friendship. It contains correspondence, legal documents, clippings, and audio-visual materials, including several dozen phone conversations between Goldscheider and LaGuer recorded on compact cassette.

Gift of Eric Goldscheider

Subjects

Prisoners--Massachusetts

Contributors

Benjamin LaGuerEric Goldscheider

Types of material

Compact CassettesCorrespondenceLegal documentsPhotographsVideotapes
Restrictions: none none
Goldspinner, Jay

Jay Goldspinner Collection

1973-2012
3 boxes 3 linear feet
Call no.: MS 909

1977 Spring Equinox cover of WomenSpirit

All social change and cultural movements have their associated resources for the exchange of information, ideas, stories, and art. Particularly in the women’s movement, the effort to create newsletters, journals, and other forms of information dissemination was a proactive step taken to assert women’s stories and to locate the power of the press within women-run communities. These periodicals, both large and small in scale, reveal the ways women connected to each other and to larger spiritual and cultural concepts. Local artist, activist, and feminist Jay Goldspinner was engaged with many of these communities, particularly those characterizing the spiritual elements of the women’s liberation and feminist movements, and collected and saved their periodicals. Her collection includes journals focusing on feminist linguistics, goddess myths and spirituality, Wiccan and witch traditions, progressive politics, and women’s spirituality and community in local and international settings. Each is a unique window into discourses of women’s history, feminist movements, and social change work.

The Jay Goldspinner Collection consists of issues of feminist and progressive periodicals, journals, and newsletters from over five decades, along with correspondence, ephemera, and scrapbooks from Goldspinner’s life, especially her work as a storyteller. Published titles represented include Always in Season, Goddessing, The Lonesome Node, The People’s Voice of Franklin County, Themis/Thesmophoria, Wicked Word, and an almost complete run, including the two indexes, of the seminal magazine of feminist spirituality, WomenSpirit.

Subjects

Feminism--PeriodicalsFranklin County (Mass.) --PeriodicalsGoddess religion--PeriodicalsNeopaganism--PeriodicalsSpiritual feminism--PeriodicalsWicca--PeriodicalsWitchcraft--PeriodicalsWomen and spiritualism--PeriodicalsWomen's rights and spiritualism--Periodicals

Types of material

Periodicals