T’bridge Show History
Is Lavishly Illustrated

Tunbridge fifth graders work on the various production aspects of the play "The Crayon Plan," written by classmate, Larissa Stride, as part of the Project Playwright program, which couples elementary students with professional playwrights from Briggs Opera House in White River Junction. Here, Taylor Larmie shows his crayon costume design to playwright, Larissa Stride. (Herald / Tim Calabro)

A 175-page book just published by the Tunbridge Civic Club can tell you just about all you’ll ever need to know about the 56-year history of the Civic Club shows.

Linda Lazaroff took on the huge job of collecting hundreds of photos, plus news accounts, and programs, labeling carefully identifying all the dozens of people in the photographs and keeping track of each year’s program.

Fittingly, the book begins with a fine photograph of Merle Howe, who at the age of 84 was the only Civic Club member to have performed in all the shows.

It ends with a photo of Marty Young and his ever-present fiddle. Marty was in the show from 1982 to 2000, and his family and friends donated generously to creating the book. A couple of dozen other sponsors—not only from Tunbridge but from several Central Vermont towns—are acknowledged.

Until the early 2000s, the Civic Club show was run as a traditional minstrel show, and the photographs show the transition from that aspect to the more recent shows. It’s also fun to see people getting older and then to flip backwards in the book and see them getting younger!

The book ends with a set of portraits, and a list of all the chorus numbers ever sung in the Civic Club show. Then there are a series of more detailed interviews of Arlene Howe Stockwell, Merle Howe, Hilda Rogers, John Pease, Tim Mullen, J. C. Bradford, and Roger and Hazel Welch.

All proceeds from the sale of the book will "benefit the community of Tunbridge," Linda Lazaroff says.