IHC grad tells Seaway builders' story
WHO: Claire Puccia Parham, a 1986 graduate of Immaculate Heart Central School and a 1990 graduate of St. Lawrence University, Canton, is a expert on north country history.
Mrs. Parham, an instructor of American and world history at Siena College in Loudonville, said her parents, Lawrence R. and Juliette W. Puccia, still reside in Watertown.
In May, Syracuse University Press published Mrs. Parham's second book, "The St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project: An Oral History of the Greatest Construction Show on Earth." On July 9, Mrs. Parham will be a featured speaker at the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corp. Celebration Weekend in Massena.
HOW DID YOU BECOME INTERESTED IN NORTH COUNTRY HISTORY? "I went to St. Lawrence University and graduated in 1990. I took a class with a professor whose name was Dr. Alan Draper, and he had us go through the new archival collection in the library on the Seaway project.
"We wrote and presented papers on the project to the St. Lawrence County Historical Society, and I interviewed some workers at that point. It's become my field of interest because, being from the area, I know that not a lot of history is written about it, and it's historically extremely important."
WHAT DOES YOUR NEW BOOK FOCUS ON? "I interviewed 53 Seaway workers and their wives. It focuses on their experiences from 1954 to 1959 in Massena and Cornwall."
WHAT WOULD A TYPICAL EXPERIENCE BE? "Well, many of them spoke quite a bit about the difficulty of building the project and of course the many fatalities that happened on the project. My interviews span from the beginning about who they were to what it was like working there to their memories of it now."
IS ALL YOUR INFORMATION FIRSTHAND OR DID YOU DO OTHER RESEARCH AS WELL? "I had to do a lot of research on the construction and design aspect of it, and I had to be able to explain all of the technical parts of concrete and machinery and geography and the flow of water.
"The interviews certainly were helpful, but I had to provide the background information.
"The workers actually tested me. They wanted to make sure that I wasn't some crazy person out of the blue, so they would test me not only on the project but also on geography. They were very suspicious of me."
DID THEY OPEN UP THROUGH THE COURSE OF THE INTERVIEWS? "Oh, yes. It's really been rewarding for me. I constantly get e-mails from their children or phone calls from them, and I've really become almost part of their group. A lot of them still live near each other, so they kind of brought me into their club. It was a very interesting experience for me."
HOW LONG DID YOUR BOOK TAKE TO COMPLETE? "I did my first interview in 1989. It's a long time, but I had to get my first book ('From Great Wilderness to Seaway Towns,' SUNY Press, 2004) out there and get that behind me to get this published.
"This type of oral history is not something that would be a typical thing for someone to publish."
WHAT ARE YOUR ULTIMATE HOPES FOR THE SEAWAY BOOK? "My ultimate goal is that I have put something out there that has given not only the project but also the workers the recognition that they have always deserved.
"Everyone knows about the Hoover Dam and the Niagara Falls, but these men and their wives really sacrificed their lives for this. So I hope that it teaches the new generation about what I consider to be the greatest construction project in the world."
WHAT OTHER PROJECTS DO YOU HAVE IN MIND? "I'm actually working on a couple of things. I'm trying to interview the Indian ironworkers because they are not in this book at the moment. They were a little elusive for me to interview. I'm also working on doing an oral history of Syracuse China."
If you would like to suggest someone for a Q&A feature, contact Times intern Gabrielle Hovendon at ghovendon@wdt.net.
