WATERTOWN

Home for the holiday's, and friends

On Thanksgiving eve, impromptu reunions

By Emily Sweeney, Globe Staff Correspondent, 11/29/2001

t's a Watertown tradition: Everyone reunites at a local bar the night before Thanksgiving.

That's why Marshall Bradstreet, a member of Watertown High School's C lass of 1981, returned to his hometown last week. He went to the reunion at Donohue's, an Irish bar on Bigelow Avenue, and ran into two of his classmates, Mary Ann Burns and John Labadini. Bradstreet works all over the country for Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Burns lives in Los Angeles, where she works as an MRI technologist, and Labadini is a mutual fund executive living in Louisiana.

The trio, who graduated together from Watertown High in 1981, reminisced about how Bradstreet and Burns sat near each other in homeroom and their nights of drinking with friends on the fairways of the Oakley Country Club.

''That's the beauty of this; you never know who you're going to see,'' said Bradstreet, who flew into town that morning from California.

The reunion was sponsored by www.ForeverWatertown.com, a Web site created by native Dan McCarthy. The site is dedicated to Watertown memories, and features a hall of fame of Watertown athletes, old photos, and a message board. The site lists old hangouts like the MDC Pool, Dairy Joy, and Erickson's Pharmacy on Main Street.

McCarthy, who moved to Burlington 12 years ago, used to own the Reunion Cafe in Watertown Square, where locals gathered on Thanksgiving eve to meet and reminisce about high school days and football games between the Belmont Marauders and Watertown's Red Raiders.

While hundreds of revelers showed up at Donohue's last week, McCarthy said he was disappointed to see so few faces of old-timers. The front room was packed with a younger crowd, some of whom graduated as recently as 1997. But it was a good mix of young and old, and everyone seemed to enjoy '70s music from the Bee Gees and current hits by Daft Punk.

McCarthy, who graduated from St. Patrick's High School in 1978, said he may plan a gathering for the ''old guard'' next year at a local hall, as the new generation takes over the bars and carries on the Thanksgiving eve tradition.

''Now everyone's children are showing up at the bars,'' said McCarthy, 41. ''I'm trying to keep something going that may have died a couple years ago.''

John Donohue, 31, known as J. D., has owned Donohue's since 1998. He's the type of guy who still refers to the FleetCenter as ''the Garden,'' and was happy to host the all-Watertown reunion at his bar. Donohue graduated from St. Patrick's in 1988, and said the crowd was diverse.

''If you look around, we have people who are post-college age all the way to people in their 60s,'' said Donohue last week, as he directed people to free slices of pizza in the back function room and handed out cans of Bud Lite.

Jerry Nally, a Watertown resident who now lives in Belmont, sashayed through a group of Belmont men at the bar and introduced himself. Wearing a Donegal tweed cap and a knit sweater, Nally recalled the days when he played football for Watertown High in the 1950s. Nally said his team beat Belmont in the Thanksgiving day game every year until he graduated in 1952.

Bradstreet said reunions like these preserve Watertown's sense of community, and make him want to come back home every year.

''Some of us have moved far away, traveled throughout the world,'' he said, ''but we're still proud to call ourselves townies from Watertown.''

Emily Sweeney can be reached at esweeney@globe.com.

This story ran on page W1 of the Boston Globe on 11/29/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.