Good morning!
Two friendships formed by a shared passion for hockey ended in January.
Fred Macdonald was a retired state police lieutenant from Sturbridge who moved to the county after he married his second wife, Paula Tenanes, of Whately. We met and whittled time watching our sons Rick and Mat skate between the orange cones at Collins-Moylan Arena in Greenfield.
Fred was serving civil process papers, and he was keenly aware that the part-time job was a step down in both pay and profile. One night at the Elks Club, a group of disgruntled jail workers egged him into running for sheriff.
The job carried a six-year term, and Fred had the street cred to make a run. As a longtime cop and member of the Massachusetts State Police boxing team, he was the type of candidate people sought to take on the incumbent sheriff Donald “Red” McQuade.
McQuade had also been a retired state police lieutenant when Governor Michael Dukakis appointed him sheriff in 1976. McQuade’s predecessor had operated a “Goodfellas” jail operation and McQuade was an old school hardass. His doppleganger was the foreboding 19th Century jail that was straight out of a Stephen King novel.
Fred announced his candidacy and promised to build a new jail and create more jobs. His supporters handed out bumper stickers that said “Better Fred than Red” and waved signs at intersections.
He won the Democratic primary with 73.9 percent of the vote and beat his Republican opponent by a similar margin. He oversaw the construction of a $35 million jail and opened Community Corrections inside the Greenfield Armory.
Fred gave me a job in civil process working for Jack Phelps and Carol Smith. The office was far from the prying eyes of the jail, but someone over there ratted me out for wearing shorts to work.
Phelps got a call from Fred, who told him if he ever saw me wearing shorts on the job, “He’s fired, and you’re fired!”
A few weeks later I was on Federal Street and Fred was sitting in traffic waiting for the light to change. “Nice pants!” he yelled.
Fred adhered to the saying, “The man makes the cop, the cop doesn’t make the man.” He parked where everyone else parked and paid what everyone else paid. When he got a speeding ticket, he went to court to appeal and sat on the bench outside the magistate’s office with all the other scofflaws.
He loved to climb mountains and convinced a few of his trooper friends including John Richardson to do an overnight trek up Mt. Washington. He struggled to keep up and was rearranging his gear when he discovered that someone had slipped a boulder in his backpack.
He loved pomp and circumstance, and always accepted Northfield Mount Hermon’s invitation to open and close the convocation and commencement ceremonies. He wore a black top hat and tie and stood at attention gripping a medeival seven-foot halberd.
He announced his retirement in 2010, and though he left grudgingly, he knew it was time. They sold their house in Deerfield and moved to West Brookfield to be close to Rick and his wife Jessica.
Last summer, Macdonald’s daughter from his first marriage, 60-year-old Janet Kastberg, was murdered outside her Brimfield Road home in Holland by her former husband. The turnout at her wake was enormous, cars overflowed out of the parking lot and mourners lined up outside the funeral home.
Fred was suffering from dementia and was sitting with Paula on a sofa at the back of the room. A retired trooper who’d been under his command approached him and smiled. “Remember me Freddie? You were the best boss a guy could have. You were the best…”
What made him the best? He was funny and self-deprecating, fiercely loyal and quick to temper. He played bocce and dominos and visited Scotland with his two daughters and Rick. He loved a stiff drink by the pool with his friends Billy and Sharon Melnik and Bill and Gladys Jarvis. He worshipped Paula the 38 years they were married, and she reciprocated to the end.
Shortly after his death, NMH’s Head of School Charles A. Tierney III emailed the NMH Community: “He stayed on as our very own “Sheriff Emeritus” for several years beyond his official duties for Franklin County. Clearly, he loved the NMH students and community, and we loved and appreciated him.”
The same could be said of most everyone else who knew Fred. He loved the journey and invited them along for the ride.
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Obituaries give us clues to things we don’t know about our friends. On November 8, 1965, I was in eighth grade and probably playing touch football the day 21-year-old Bill Delia was wounded on Hill 65 in Vietnam.
Years later, we met (or collided) playing hockey at the Greenfield rink. Afterward, we went out for pizzas and beer. He wore a faded Army jacket with an Airborne patch on the shoulder.
After some Googling, I learned that he had been wounded during an attack on the 173rd Airborne Brigade near Bien Hoa that killed 48 U.S. soldiers. Surviving that day made him the man I knew, someone with a relentless competitive spirit and a joy for sports.
I doubt Bill knew how to skate before the rink opened. He owned black Langes and hustled to the front of the net and scored goals.
He played slo-pitch softball at Abercrombie Field, and on weekends he journeyed to far-flung locales for tournaments. When his boss asked which was more important, plastics or softball, Bill told him softball and quit.
Indeed, Bill was better at being his own boss. He became a business owner and landlord who reffed and coached hockey and set his own schedule.
In 1993 (or thereabouts), Bill and I won a three-year bid to manage the rink — we were the only bidders. We kept the compressors working and used a payroll company to do the taxes and miraculously didn’t need to tap into the performance bond to stay in business.
Three years was enough, and Bill decided to get into the cell phone business. His boys were grown and his father lived in Virginia, so he pulled roots and moved to Culpepper.
I stopped on my way to Florida once to visit. Same old Bill, upbeat and telling jokes. I’d heard he had prostate cancer, but he emailed last summer that he still had enough energy to mow the lawn.
Every Christmas he sent me a card, and every year I’d hustle to the store and send one back to him. He was 74 when he died at his home in Virginia on January 14.
Now there will be one less card on the shelf and one less friend to email, and I’ll never know how he survived that day on Hill 65.
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached by email at sports@recorder.com.