From his screened-in balcony, Dorval points out some of the changes he has witnessed during his lifetime in the downtown area of the Amoskeag Millyard. Photo by Andy Smith.
It is the early 1930s, and a seven-year-old Romeo Dorval is being rolled through Manchester’s cobblestone streets in a toy wagon. He is too young to understand the economic realities that are devastating his city and the entire nation. But he can sense that something is changing. The streets aren’t as busy. There are fewer people around. And his father, Nestor, pulling the wagon and surveying the city, has tears in his eyes.
“Everything was empty,” the 83-year-old Dorval recalls. “That always stayed in my mind, because you don’t see anything like that. And it was the only time I remember my father crying.”
Since then, Dorval has watched the Queen City rise and fall a few times over. Born and raised in Manchester, he has traveled halfway across the world but never found another place he’d rather call home. Today he has a bird’s-eye view of the city’s most recent revival.
From the balcony of his Canal Street apartment, Dorval looks down on a lifetime of memories. As an altar boy, he trudged to St. Augustine’s before sunrise to work the scandalous 5 a.m. secret weddings for couples who were with child. His father owned the Traveler’s Lunch restaurant at the corner of Canal and Granite. He cross-country skied through neighborhoods that are now fully developed. He attended St. Joseph’s High School for Boys, which is now Trinity High. And he bought his first house with his late wife Rita on Norton Avenue.
Perhaps what makes this view so special is that Dorval can say that in some small way he contributed to its creation. As a member of the Manchester Housing Authority from 1968 to 1980, he helped lead the ambitious rehabilitation of the Amoskeag Millyard, which stretches out along the Merrimack River for about a mile. They once employed thousands of textile workers, but when Amoskeag Manufacturing Company closed its doors in 1936, those jobs disappeared and the millyard went into decades of decay.
Though progress would take time, Dorval weighed in on decisions that laid the groundwork for today’s flourishing millyard. Streets had to be re-routed, and buildings had to be repaired or in some cases completely rebuilt. Canal Street was widened, and train tracks were laid down where the canal once flowed.
Dorval remembers the process as challenging, due in part to the resistance to a changing economy. As the Housing Authority explored ways to prepare the mills for new types of industry, Dorval says they were limited by the restrictions of federal funding, which required the promotion of manufacturing.
St. Augustine’s, where Dorval served as an altar boy. Photo by Kate Harper.
“But those types of companies were struggling, and going out of business,” Dorval explains. “It was already proven that you had to have a different mix of industries in there besides manufacturing. And now you see all kinds of offices and startups and incubators in there. That’s what you need, and it’s made a 180-degree turnaround.”
Beyond the millyard, Dorval points to a neighborhood where he walked door-to-door campaigning with 1988 presidential candidate Al Gore. With its First in the Nation primary status, New Hampshire has been the perfect place for a political junkie like Dorval. He spent his professional life in the banking industry, but always considered politics a hobby and even spent some time between 1978 and 1980 as the state’s Democratic Party chairman.
“Some guys went to the country club,” Dorval says. “I did politics.”
Though he loves following campaigns and acknowledges the importance of effective governance, Dorval doesn’t take the game of politics too seriously, jokingly referring to it as “writing letters, making phone calls, and all that junk.”
But once in a while, he can still get caught up in a politician, as he did with U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter. He started following Shea-Porter early in her primary campaign, and wound up a key member of her Manchester team during her surprise win in the 2005 election. It was the first campaign he’d assisted since Gore in 1988.
Dorval has done a fair share of traveling and saw a lot of the world from a boat with the U.S. Navy. He was stationed in the South Pacific during World War II and participated in the liberation of China. But he said he has never seen anything enticing enough to lure him from New Hampshire. At his 50th high school reunion in 1991, his former classmates seemed to confirm that he’d made the right decision.
“One guy came from Cleveland and another from California, and they said, ‘We see in Manchester today what we went looking for when we left,’” Dorval recollects. “I guess I could always see what we had here in Manchester, being close to Boston and top-notch vacation places. We have the mountains and the lakes. There’s such a variety of life in this state.”
Remembrances – Romeo Dorval – Spring 2007
From his screened-in balcony, Dorval points out some of the changes he has witnessed during his lifetime in the downtown area of the Amoskeag Millyard. Photo by Andy Smith.
It is the early 1930s, and a seven-year-old Romeo Dorval is being rolled through Manchester’s cobblestone streets in a toy wagon. He is too young to understand the economic realities that are devastating his city and the entire nation. But he can sense that something is changing. The streets aren’t as busy. There are fewer people around. And his father, Nestor, pulling the wagon and surveying the city, has tears in his eyes.
“Everything was empty,” the 83-year-old Dorval recalls. “That always stayed in my mind, because you don’t see anything like that. And it was the only time I remember my father crying.”
Since then, Dorval has watched the Queen City rise and fall a few times over. Born and raised in Manchester, he has traveled halfway across the world but never found another place he’d rather call home. Today he has a bird’s-eye view of the city’s most recent revival.
From the balcony of his Canal Street apartment, Dorval looks down on a lifetime of memories. As an altar boy, he trudged to St. Augustine’s before sunrise to work the scandalous 5 a.m. secret weddings for couples who were with child. His father owned the Traveler’s Lunch restaurant at the corner of Canal and Granite. He cross-country skied through neighborhoods that are now fully developed. He attended St. Joseph’s High School for Boys, which is now Trinity High. And he bought his first house with his late wife Rita on Norton Avenue.
Perhaps what makes this view so special is that Dorval can say that in some small way he contributed to its creation. As a member of the Manchester Housing Authority from 1968 to 1980, he helped lead the ambitious rehabilitation of the Amoskeag Millyard, which stretches out along the Merrimack River for about a mile. They once employed thousands of textile workers, but when Amoskeag Manufacturing Company closed its doors in 1936, those jobs disappeared and the millyard went into decades of decay.
Though progress would take time, Dorval weighed in on decisions that laid the groundwork for today’s flourishing millyard. Streets had to be re-routed, and buildings had to be repaired or in some cases completely rebuilt. Canal Street was widened, and train tracks were laid down where the canal once flowed.
Dorval remembers the process as challenging, due in part to the resistance to a changing economy. As the Housing Authority explored ways to prepare the mills for new types of industry, Dorval says they were limited by the restrictions of federal funding, which required the promotion of manufacturing.
St. Augustine’s, where Dorval served as an altar boy. Photo by Kate Harper.
“But those types of companies were struggling, and going out of business,” Dorval explains. “It was already proven that you had to have a different mix of industries in there besides manufacturing. And now you see all kinds of offices and startups and incubators in there. That’s what you need, and it’s made a 180-degree turnaround.”
Beyond the millyard, Dorval points to a neighborhood where he walked door-to-door campaigning with 1988 presidential candidate Al Gore. With its First in the Nation primary status, New Hampshire has been the perfect place for a political junkie like Dorval. He spent his professional life in the banking industry, but always considered politics a hobby and even spent some time between 1978 and 1980 as the state’s Democratic Party chairman.
“Some guys went to the country club,” Dorval says. “I did politics.”
Though he loves following campaigns and acknowledges the importance of effective governance, Dorval doesn’t take the game of politics too seriously, jokingly referring to it as “writing letters, making phone calls, and all that junk.”
But once in a while, he can still get caught up in a politician, as he did with U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter. He started following Shea-Porter early in her primary campaign, and wound up a key member of her Manchester team during her surprise win in the 2005 election. It was the first campaign he’d assisted since Gore in 1988.
Dorval has done a fair share of traveling and saw a lot of the world from a boat with the U.S. Navy. He was stationed in the South Pacific during World War II and participated in the liberation of China. But he said he has never seen anything enticing enough to lure him from New Hampshire. At his 50th high school reunion in 1991, his former classmates seemed to confirm that he’d made the right decision.
“One guy came from Cleveland and another from California, and they said, ‘We see in Manchester today what we went looking for when we left,’” Dorval recollects. “I guess I could always see what we had here in Manchester, being close to Boston and top-notch vacation places. We have the mountains and the lakes. There’s such a variety of life in this state.”