The Daily Item of Lynn
Sept 20 2004
Estimated 100,000 attend 21st Peabody International Festival
By Jack Butterworth
PEABODY — An estimated 100,000 people crowded into Peabody Square
Sunday afternoon to enjoy art, music, dance and food from the city’s
diverse cultural traditions and remember the former Peabody mayor who
brought the Peabody International Festival together 21 years ago.
As always, it was a day to support high school students, service
clubs and cultural groups, a day to sing and dance to the music of
the world, or just to inhale the aromas of sausages and pies and
cotton candy and look at young people in bright peasant costumes.
Peter A. Torigian was a man who could walk through the booths
crowded together along Lowell Street, greet the volunteers at each
booth by name and order food from each, correctly pronounced.
Mayor Michael Bonfanti asked for a moment of silence for
Torigian.
“I can’t tell you how proud I am to be with you today,” he said.
Referring to the intolerance and injustice that can be seen elsewhere
in the world, he told the crowd, “If we can live in harmony here it
can be done throughout the world.”
U.S. Rep. John Tierney, D-Salem, attending the festival with his
wife, Patrice, said, “What a wonderful tribute to Peter Torigian and
all the wonderful things he did for the city. Tolerance and diversity
were important to Peter Torigian.”
Councilor and former festival Chairman Judy Selesnick remembered
the first festival: 27 booths, 22 of them serving food, and nearly
8,000 people when 1,500 were expected.
“By 2 p.m. there wasn’t a morsel of food in Peabody Square,” she
said, “and at 6 Mayor Torigian took Jackie (Torigian) me, Mary
(Bellavance) and Debbie (MacGregor) to dinner because we missed out
on any food.”
One year there were skydivers, who missed Peabody Square and
landed on the rooftops of nearby homes. They didn’t come back.
Mayor or not, Torigian’s one traditional duty at the festival
was introducing the traditional Armenian dancers from Sayat Nova of
Boston. This year, with former Councilor John McGinn doing the
introduction, Sayat Nova announced that the proceeds from their booth
would go to the Peabody Lynnfield YMCA for the Y’s renovation.
Chairing the fund-raising for that was Torigian’s last civic project.
The former mayor’s influence could be felt elsewhere, in the
Peabody Art Association art show next to City Hall, where instructors
Marcy Consalvo and George Sippel displayed model ships from the class
they teach at the Peter Torigian Community Life Center.
Ruth Mowder stood by for the 10-year-old Peabody Art
Association, whose members loan artwork to the mayor’s office and
other City Hall offices.
At the Friends of the Library table Library Director Martha
Holden said the library’s 150th anniversary celebration Saturday
night, which began as a tribute to George Peabody for funding the
first city library, included a dedication to Torigian as a tribute.
“He brought culture back to the city,” she said. Attended by
nearly 300 persons, the event featured music from a number of
historical periods. There weren’t any dancers on the floor for the
earliest music, from the 1860s, and Holden had to agree that Torigian
probably would have given that a try, along with the swing era music
that was dedicated to him.
“It was beautiful,” Library Trustee Darryl Anne McCarthy said.
“It couldn’t have been better.”
Judy Meserve and Barry Osborne, the new Festival co-chairs
greeting the crowd for the first time, praised Bonfanti for believing
in the festival and Selesnick and Bellavance for running it so
efficiently for the past 20 years.
“This will never die,” Osborne said. “This event runs itself.”