January 22nd -- January 28th

 

January 23, 2011

January 28, 1902 - First Annual Meeting of Brookline Historical Society
January 24, 1995 - Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy buried at Holyhood Cemetery
January 23, 2011 - Launch of Brookline's Climate Action Week
January 27, 2019 - Martin Luther King Jr. bust installed in Town Hall

January 28, 1902
First Annual Meeting of Brookline Historical Society
Nine months after receiving its official status as an organization from the office of the Secretary of State, the Brookline Historical Society held its first annual meeting in the Grand Army of the Republic Room of Town Hall.

The Society, which had its origins in the less formal Historical Publications Society seven years earlier, was dedicated to "the study of the history of the town of Brookline, Massachusetts, its societies, organizations, families, individuals, events" and other aspects of the town's past. 

Members -- there were 110 at the time of that first meeting -- received an engraved certificate (see below) showing the Edward Devotion House (the Society's headquarters) and seven other landmarks of the town: the 1873 Town Hall; the 1869 library building; the Baptist Church; the First Parish Church; the 1895 High School; and two Colonial Era houses, the Aspinwall House and the Gardner House, both of which had since been torn down.

Today only the Devotion House and the 1893 building of First Parish remain standing. The Society does however, still have the metal plate used to print the certificates.

January 24, 1995
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy buried at Holyhood Cemetery
When Rose Kennedy, mother of President John F. Kennedy and matriarch of the large Kennedy family, died at age 104 she was laid to rest in a private ceremony at the family plot at Holyhood Cemetery in the Brookline part of the Chestnut Hill neighborhood.

Grave of Rose and Joseph Kennedy and other family members at Holyhood Cemetery

Holyhood, founded in 1857, is the second oldest cemetery in Brookline. (Only the Colonial Era Old Burying Ground on Walnut Street is older.) The Kennedy plot is the burial site for several family members, including Rose's husband Joseph Kennedy, their daughter Rosemary, and two sons of Robert F. Kennedy. 

Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, the son of John and Jacqueline Kennedy, who was born prematurely and died after two days in 1963, was initially buried here, but was later moved to his father's resting place at Arlington National Cemetery after JFK's assassination. The family plot at Holyhood also marks a pregnancy by Joan Kennedy, Ted's wife, that ended in a miscarriage in 1964.

January 23, 2011
Launch of Brookline's Climate Action Week

A joint venture of the volunteer group Climate Change Action Brookline and the Select Board's Climate Action Committee, this event kicked off with a ceremony at the Lincoln School, followed by a week of contests, presentations, exhibitions, and workshops.

"The focus is on moving people from understanding climate change as an issue to taking action," Mary Dewart, one of the organizers, told the Boston Globe. The event was an expansion of Climate Action Day, first celebrated in the town a few years earlier.

Events and exhibits from the second Climate Action Week (2012)

Both sponsoring organizations had their roots in the early 2000s. The volunteer group -- now known as Climate Action Brookline -- was formed in 2000 and become a founding member of the Massachusetts Climate Action Network. The Select Board's committee, formed in 2008, was an outgrowth of the board's 2002 Local Action Plan on Climate Change.

January 27, 2019
Martin Luther King Jr. bust installed in Town Hall
A bronze bust honoring Martin Luther King Jr. by world-renowned African American artist John Wilson, a resident of Brookline for 50 years, was installed in the lobby of Town Hall shortly after the annual celebration of MLK Day. More than 200 people, including Wilson's wife, Julia, and other family members, attended.

John Wilson bust honoring Martin Luther King Jr. in Brookline Town Hall

The bust, a 1982 scale model for a large bust installed in Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Buffalo, was donated to the town by the Committee to Honor John Wilson, which raised funds from community members. 

Wilson, who died in 2015, created many works over his long career, including a 1986 bust of MLK in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, the first work of art honoring an African American in the Capitol building.