'Smiley' & Santa unite for kids
By Linda Lemmon
Town Crier Editor
PUTNAM — Recently passed veteran “Smiley” Rivera would have been overjoyed, in his element, among the kids at the Danielson Veterans Coffeehouse’s Breakfast With Santa event.
The coffeehouse decided that given Rivera’s love of children, naming the Breakfast With Santa after him was the best way to honor him.
Kids attending the breakfast packed the community room at the Municipal Complex. A reindeer and the Grinch held sway for a while with the kids but the room exploded with excitement when Santa and his elf came in. 
Santa talked to each child and had a special gift for each one. 
Rivera’s family, looking on, probably felt Ismael “Smiley” Rivera was there in spirit.
“He would be so honored with this. He would be eating this up.”
The family brought coloring books for all the kids in attendance Dec. 6.
All the family members agreed that Smiley and his wife adored children. Son Wayne Rivera said his mom and dad had five children and a foster child and they were foster parents their entire lives. And now there are grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Why do they think he liked kids so much? Wayne Rivera said, “Well, he was one of 18 kids himself.” 
Children were definitely important to Smiley and his wife. Family members said when they cleaned out the house they found four cribs in the basement. 
Mrs. Rivera loved kids and whenever anyone had a baby she brought something over to them “even if she didn’t know who they were. They were a neighbor down the street; she’d bring a gift over. She’d just knock on the door and say ‘I see you had a baby.’ And give them a gift.”
Rivera, a U.S. Army veteran, was one of the charter members of the Danielson Veterans Coffeehouse, according to coffeehouse president Fred Ruhlemann. “This (breakfast) is the perfect way to honor his memory,” Ruhlemann said.
Bet Santa felt Smiley there.

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Bright Lights & Music
A trumpet player in the 24th annual Holiday Dazzle Light Parade was decked out in lights. More photos on page 4. Expanded photo array Wed. night on Wed. night on our FB page. Linda Lemmon photo.

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Aspinock Memories
The Union Block Fire – near Christmas 1966
By Terri Pearsall, AHS Curator
 One of the more devastating fires in Putnam occurred on December 11, 1966, at 7 p.m.  A fire broke out in Union Block racing through the block, a landmark since the early days of Putnam. Sixteen local fire companies responded to the blaze. Firefighters worked feverishly to keep the flames from reaching stocks of paint, turpentine and other combustibles stored in the Chandler & Morse Hardware store, which occupied a large area of the building facing the railroad station. 
Explosion rocked the building and debris swirled across Main Street to the roof of the Hotel Putnam.  The heat from the flames was so intense that a window cracked at the Texaco Service Station on South Main Street and hundreds of onlookers had to move up South Main Street to avoid hand-sized cinders that were flying about for nearly a quarter of a mile.
At first the fire threatened the entire main business section of the city, many merchants began removing some of their goods and records from their stores, but then the wind took a fortunate shift in direction saving that section.
The fire left Union Block, The Hotel Putnam, the old fire station in ruins.  Destroyed in the Hotel Putnam were the Bamboo Cocktail Lounge, Lavallee’s Furniture Store, George Benoit’s Barber Shop, a new beauty salon, the Western Union Telegraph Co. office on the first floor.  Dr. David Bates, Dr. Robert Dinolt and Dr. Florence Prosser, all physicians who also had offices in the hotel. 
The old firehouse had been vacant since the summer but lost in the blaze was costly equipment stored there by the city highway department and the fire department’s historical files.  
Other nearby businesses suffered damage without being destroyed.
Two city blocks were leveled, and debris littered the area.  Once again, as they had in 1955, Putnam residents faced the task of redeveloping following a disaster.  Mayor Paul Bourgeois said that Putnam was in much the same position as it was in 1955.  “It rose then and it will now,” he said.
Information in this article is according to an article in the Historical Supplement to the Observer Patriot in 1980 from the archives of the Aspinock Historical Society.
Aspinock Memories graces the pages of the Putnam Town Crier to keep Putnam’s history alive.

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