Malden Mass. Memories Road Show images and stories now available online

By Carolyn Goldstein and Anne D’Urso-Rose

Last April, more than 100 local community members gathered at the Malden Mass. Memories Road Show event at the Malden Senior & Teen Community Center. They submitted photographs and stories, and recorded memories on video for a statewide historical archive project run by the Healey Library at UMass Boston. These submissions, along with photographs and stories collected virtually since 2020, are now available online for viewing and research in the Malden archive.

The Mass. Memories Road Show project documents people, places, and events in Massachusetts history through family photographs and stories. Local volunteers organize public events to scan family and community photographs and record “the stories behind the photos” to compile an online educational database of primary sources for future generations.

Since its inception in 2004, the project has archived more than 13,000 photographs and stories from across the state.

Malden Stories from the Archive

Malden Mayor Gary Christenson contributed a photo from the 1990s, when he worked at the Grenada Lanes Bowling Alley and earned the nickname ‘Bowling Alley Gary.’

“I spent ten years working at the bowling alley, and it helped pay for my college. I became known as ‘Bowling Alley Gary’ for my tenure there. It was great to work at a bowling alley because my grandfather was an avid bowler and appeared on ‘Candlepins for Cash.’ Loved using that as a connection with my grandfather,” Christenson said.

Malden native Barbara Talanian shared a photo of a shish kebab family cookout from 1975. The photo featured her father, Oscar Talanian, and her uncle, Leo Nanian.

“Here, on the right is my father, Oscar Talanian, and on the left is my uncle. Leo Nanian (who as an adult owned and operated Leo’s Market, Broadway),” Talanian wrote.

“Both my dad and uncle were grilling lamb shish kebabs for the family, on a unique grill in our backyard on Rand Street. My father was loaded down with onions, peppers, and tomatoes to add to the lamb skewers,” she shared.

Many contributors to the in-person event shared photographs and stories, chronicling their immigrant heritage and personal connections to several countries, including Armenia, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Nicaragua, and Peru. Many of the images showed important family events such as weddings, birthday parties, and informal gatherings. 

Estella Guo shared a recent photo taken during her last cross-country meet of 2023, featuring herself, Lilian, Hadjar, Ying Van, Ian Ian Ho, and Emma Yu, she said.

“This photograph was taken during the run at Mystic River State for a meet, and this was memorable because it also happened to be the last meet for cross country of that year,” Guo shared.

Community events such as road races, sports competitions, and high school graduation ceremonies figure largely in the collection. Demonstrating a strong sense of civic pride, many Malden residents chose to share items to document individual and collective initiatives to improve the quality of life in the city. They brought photographs showing themselves volunteering to organize local arts events such as Porchfest, feed the hungry (Bread of Life), facilitate addiction recovery, clean up neighborhood parks and playgrounds, and protest the war in Gaza. 

Souad Akib shared a photo of a youth leadership development program in 2020 at the Malden Public Library, where organizers tracked the progress of participants.

“The American Association of Arab Women created a series of leadership programs, and this one was about evaluating progress,” Akib said.

The photo featured several community members, namely Mourad Afani, Gabrid Toribio, Carlos Matos, Ose Schwab, Manale Souhir, and Fairouz Farhane, he added.

Several contributors shared memories of their experiences working in Malden and the surrounding area. They submitted photographs and stories of themselves and their ancestors on the job in family businesses such as restaurants, bakeries, libraries, arts, and other non-profit organizations.

Donna Favorat shared a photo of her grandfather, Frank Favorat, hard at work in Nelson’s Bakery in the 1940s.

“This is my grandfather, Frank Favorat, who put many hours into Nelson’s Bakery. Very popular bakery in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s,” she said.

Event participants also shared memories of enjoying the natural environment in Malden and the surrounding area with family and friends, contributing photographs and stories of favorite parks and views. An identifying theme of the collection is environmental activism through activities such as community gardening, park planning and cleanup, forest preservation, and urban planning.

Joanie Huang shared a photo of Fellsmere Park, saying, “I got to this place because I live near to there. It’s a very good location. We do exercise there, sometimes we walk along the pond. Now I’m moving to another location.”

The Malden Mass. Memories Road Show event

Malden Reads coordinated the local event at the Malden Senior and Teen Community Center on April 27, 2024, in collaboration with Urban Media Arts, the Malden Public Library, the City of Malden, and the Malden Historical Society. The event coincided with the occasion of the city’s 375th anniversary.

More than two dozen local volunteers, including nearly a dozen members of the Greater Malden Asian American Community Coalition youth group, joined a team of UMass Boston staff members, graduate students in public history and archives, and “Roadies” to welcome over 100 attendants with connections to the city. These included many lifelong residents along with those recently arrived and everything in-between.

The event was originally scheduled for April 2020, but was upended by the pandemic. UMass Boston, in collaboration with Malden Reads and Neighborhood View, arranged for Malden community members to contribute photographs and stories online. In addition to submitting to the archive, the stories collected during the pandemic were highlighted in a series for Neighborhood View. 

The images and stories collected virtually during the pandemic have been combined with those from the road show event. You can view the full collection of Malden photographs and stories at this link.

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University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston was established in 1981 as a repository to collect archival material in subject areas of interest to the university, as well as the records of the university itself. The mission and history of UMass Boston guide the collection policies of University Archives & Special Collections, with the university’s urban mission and strong support of community service reflected in the records of and related to urban planning, social welfare, social action, alternative movements, community organizations, war and social consequence, and local history related to neighboring communities. To learn more, visit blogs.umb.edu/archives.

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