FORWARD BY NORM DeMERCHANT:  Leonard Dionne was a great human being and I never had the opportunity to meet him personally.  You may ask yourself "How does Norm know he was so great if he never met the man?"  That is easy, I am very honoured to know his son Mark and through him, it is very obvious. 

Although you see Vaughan and I taking credit for much of the DeMerchant family history and genealogy, we would have next to nothing without the help and support of people like Mark Dionne.  Words can not express how grateful I am to Mark for his guidance over the years and they can not express how sorry I am at the loss of his Dad.  I hope you will take the time and get to know Leonard Dionne through the words his son spoke when he said goodbye to his father one last time.

Leonard Dionne was a Great Great Grandson of John Cuffman/DeMerchant.  

Leonard Dionne was born in 1916 in Van Buren, Maine, with Canada in view across the St. John's River. He and his 11 brothers and sisters spoke French until they moved down to Lawrence, Massachusetts around 1921. At that time they were very poor and he told of picking up pieces of coal he found in the street.

Even into his old age, my father told admiring stories of both of his parents. His mother claimed she was descended from French royalty, and she expected to be treated like it. He said his father was the strongest man in Van Buren. His father worked on the steam railroad, and one day he brought home a small set of watchmaker's tools that were abandoned in a train wreck. He gave them to Leonard, who taught himself to use them.

They moved to Somerville, where the large family was extremely close. In the winter, crowds would watch them figure skating on the Charles River. He attended The Little Flowers School, and he said that the nuns at that junior high school taught him more than most colleges. By the time he left High School, the Depression was on, and he found work with the Civilian Conservation Corps.

His mechanical abilities helped him get a job repairing typewriters in Harvard Square. During World War II he worked at the new Polaroid Corporation, designing heat-seeking, guided bombs for the Navy. There he met the beautiful Ruth Sweet, and they went on picnics in the countryside, including a place named Westwood. In his spare time, he helped out as a mechanic for friends who raced sports cars.

They married in 1947 and traveled across the country by car, camping in a pup tent and visiting Yellowstone and Glacier Parks. Later they would travel often, driving their VW bus to Alaska, and eventually going to Spain, India and Nepal. In 1948 they moved to a house in Westwood that his friend John Lothrop had first noticed. They have lived in Westwood ever since, raising 3 children, and they were happily married for 56 years.

In 1964 Polaroid assigned him and one other engineer to a new secret project. For several years, no one in his family knew what he was working on. Eventually we learned about the SX-70 camera, and he was in charge of a workshop with dozens of highly skilled modelmakers who built the original cameras by hand from raw materials.

He bought a Volkswagen beetle in 1954, when everyone would point at it and laugh, but he was way ahead of his time in thinking that big, gas-guzzling cars were wasteful. Later he taught me how to take out the engine and replace it with a Porsche engine. He also taught me how to play chess, run a lathe, weld metals and to take responsibility. He could fix anything, which had the unfortunate consequence that my mom never got any new appliances. In 1975, he donated a kidney for a life-saving transplant, which allowed my brother Jim to live another 25 years.

Though he never went to college, he was as knowledgeable as most engineers, having taught himself the principles of optics, metallurgy, and the skills of managing people. Eventually he retired from Polaroid, and started his own business repairing and restoring antique watches. He was known as one of the best in the business, skilled at handcrafting missing parts for the most complicated watches. He was seen tooling around town in his antique convertible Porsche, which had its own share of handcrafted repairs.

He never stopped reading and educating himself and passing on useful bits to us all. He was always a quiet man, but when illness made it hard for him to speak, we all realized how many important things he had to say. Until near the end, I knew he was OK because he would take my hand firmly and show me that his grip was still like iron.

He was an energetic, optimistic man who always strove to put his skills to good use. He never held anything back from his wife and children, and he was always ready to help everyone. He was a wonderful, loving father-in-law to his son- and daughters-in-law, and a great grandfather. We remember him as a kind and wonderful human being.

BY MARK DIONNE.  NOVEMBER 2003.