It Takes a Village...

MARCH 21, 2016
Central Mass. organizations fight childhood obesity

TARYN PLUMB

As the old adage goes, it takes a village to raise a child.

Adopting that philosophy, numerous area organizations are pooling resources and joining forces to combat youth obesity, which affects more than a third of local children and teenagers.

"The case against obesity has been made," said Jennifer Madson, associate director of programs at Girls, Inc. of Worcester, noting the increased risk of health problems in obese kids, such as diabetes and asthma, as well as impacts to mental health. "We are trying to find as creative and engaging ways as possible to address it. There's never enough that can be done." According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. children aged 6 to 11 who are classified obese increased from 7 percent in 1980 to 18 percent in 2012, while the rate of obesity in those aged 12 to 19 jumped from 5 to nearly 21 percent over the same period.

Youth from lower-income households – inner-city areas, for example, or, at the other end of the spectrum, isolated rural areas – are at an even greater risk of becoming obese.

"Poverty and obesity go hand-in-hand," said Kelsa Zereski, director of philanthropy for the Reliant Medical Group Foundation, which gifts annual grants to local organizations that dedicate resources to batting obesity.

Community effort

In 2015, Reliant provided $150,500 to 30 local charities, funding is made possible largely through two major fundraisers, a charity auction and golf classic in the spring and a 5K in the fall.

"It is cheaper to order off the dollar menu at a fast food restaurant," Zereski said, "than to go into the grocery store and purchase fresh food to make a healthy meal for your family."

In the inner city, particularly, children have limited access to sports fields and open areas, said Madson, and many are simply deterred from going outside because they live in high-crime areas.

"It screams all the more that we need to do these types of programs," she said. Many of the 1,800 girls served by Girls Inc. fit into this high-risk category.

Girls, Inc. threads the themes of health, fitness and nutrition throughout its daily initiatives.

Through its Fit Girls program, participants are involved in 100 hours of healthy activities over the school year, such as swimming or dance-offs – or hiking or boating in the summer – and are given healthy snacks daily. Various nutrition programs, meanwhile, inform them about reading and understanding nutrition facts or different ways to get the recommended amount of calcium.

"Nutrition can be incorporated into everything," said Madson. "Fitness can be incorporated into everything."

One program that organizations have found to be particularly effective is "5-2-1-0 – Let's Go!"

Initially developed in 2006 in Maine, the effort stresses a numbers approach: 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, 2 hours or less of screen time, 1 hour or more of physical activity, and 0 sugar drinks.

"We did see an increase in healthy eating choices and physical activity," said Cindy Landry, school age director at YWCA Central Massachusetts, which held a 5-2-1-0 pilot last year at Worcester's Roosevelt and Wawecus Road elementary schools.

As part of that, 91 students from 14 local schools spent two days a week doing physical activities, learning about nutrition, and making snacks such as guacamole and dairy- and nut-free pesto.

Liking broccoli

Reliant Pediatrics has teamed up with YMCA Central Massachusetts to offer a similar initiative at its Central Community Branch in Worcester and Boroughs Family Branch in Westborough.

According to Dr. Martha Waite, a Spencer-based Reliant pediatrician, over the course of eight weeks, children work with nutritionists and personal trainers and do daily fitness activities. Participants establish their own goals to eventually work up to the 5-2-1-0 standard; for example, decreasing their soda drinks from three a day to one (and eventually none), or slowly increasing physical activity to 20 minutes a day (and gradually up to an hour).

So far, 110 children have participated in seven sessions of the program (through which they are required to bring at least one family member) and can maintain momentum with an alumni class.

"We really encourage an entire family to undergo a lifestyle change," said Waite.

In YWCA Central Massachusetts' Learning 4 Fun After School program children do 45 minutes of physical activity a day, learn ways to wean themselves off candy and soda, and plant, taste, smell and study the elements of fresh vegetables and herbs.

"Maybe they didn't even realize that they would like something like broccoli," said Landry. "It's opening their minds."

This is a key emphasis of the Community Harvest Project's Sprouting Minds initiative. Launched in 2013, the nonprofit based at Brigham Hill Community Farm in North Grafton offers various iterations of the program for different ages (pre-k through 12th grade) throughout the year.

Ranging from an afternoon to a full week, Sprouting Minds incorporates a farm tour, seedling plantings, nutrition education lessons, vegetable taste tests and cooking demonstrations. Older students can also "adopt-a-row" of vegetables that they care for from planting to picking.

"We see the excitement build. They change their attitude toward trying new things," said program manager Alicia Cianciola. She joked that parents will sometimes ask, "What did you do to my child? I can't believe they're asking for produce!"

The goal is to ultimately get them to not only eat fruits and vegetables, but like them so it isn't some sort of burden, said Tori Buerschaper, Community Harvest Project's education and outreach coordinator.

"It's getting kids more involved in cooking and tasting and trying all sorts of different vegetables," Buerschaper said. "Too often you try something once as a kid and you think 'Oh, I don't like that.' Those prejudices follow you into adulthood."

And other unhealthy habits can, as well.

"Childhood obesity can become a lifelong struggle," said Gabrielle Alan, resource development associate at the YWCA Central Massachusetts. "With a healthy start, we can make a much healthier future, make it less of a battle for them when they get older."

Original story link. 

From the Archives: A Coffee Table? No, that's a Casket!

Woodworker gives caskets two lives

Woodworker Chuck Lakin makes caskets that double as furniture, before their final use

By Taryn Plumb GLOBE CORRESPONDENT

OCTOBER 26, 2011

If you happen to visit Gini Landry’s home in Waterville, Maine, you’ll meet a vivacious, almost-octogenarian with an acute wit and a decades-long dedication to quilting.

And if you’re curious, she’ll show you some of her needle-and-thread creations, 20 or 30 of them, folded up and displayed in a roughly 5-foot-tall rack in her guest bedroom.

And if you’re even more curious, she’ll point out that that very case has a double purpose: When the final hour comes, it will convert into her coffin.

“I’m 4-foot-11-inches tall, and shrinking,’’ the 79-year-old said with a wry grin. “It’s made to fit me.’’

That’s right: Every day, Landry is confronted, quite explicitly, with her own mortality, with a custom-made coffin now serving as a quilt rack and situated conveniently in her home for that fateful day that comes for all of us.

Coffins don’t have to be lined with velvet and propped open vacantly and ominously on funeral parlor sales floors - they can have life before death, at least when crafted by Waterville-based woodworker Chuck Lakin.

The 65-year-old builds simple wood caskets for the not-quite-dearly departed that easily modify into bookcases, entertainment centers, storage chests, wine racks, even coffee tables.

“I don’t think coffins have to be serious, formal things,’’ said Lakin, a retired Colby College librarian.

His morbidly multipurpose creations (www.lastthings.net), starting at a base price of $800 to $900, arose out of his dedication to home funerals, a growing movement in which family members prepare a loved one’s body for burial, rather than having the process handled by a funeral parlor.

Having a coffin available simplifies that process, and also, in a time of grieving, makes decisions easier for the family.

And in the meantime, why not build them so they have multiple uses?

So far, Lakin’s built about 40, typically for friends, but also for Hospice and the Jewish Funeral Home in Portland, Maine.

With hinged sections that fold into each other, shelves that create interlocking lids, or sectional “quick coffin’’ varieties, each pine box can be customized, with those who will (eventually) eternally sleep in them required to lie down and measure their width and height. Lakin also does personalized carvings and engravings, and, upon request, builds the boxes out of different types of wood, such as poplar or walnut.

Seem macabre? If so, it’s only because our culture is so avoidant of death, says Lakin, who describes home burials as personal, moving, meaningful, and spiritual.

“There are people who don’t want to talk about death, or even consider that they’re going to die,’’ agreed Landry, a retired psychiatric nurse. “But death is a natural part of living.’’

She paused and mused, “it may be the best part.’’

In her case, once she “got past the 75 mark,’’ she started to think about her last wishes. She recoiled from the thought of a conventional casket and an elaborate funeral. She prefers her easy quilt-rack-turned-pine-box, in which she intends to be cremated, followed by a simple church service, and finally a burial at a local cemetery.

Still, though she has her final resting place quite handy, she’s certainly in no rush to use it. “I’m trying to stay out of that box,’’ she said with a chuckle.

Original story link. 

The 10th Circle of Hell: The SAT

Student play compares SAT test to Dante’s ‘Inferno’

By Taryn Plumb GLOBE CORRESPONDENT

MARCH 03, 2016

There’s the skateboarder in the midst of an existential crisis. The classic underachiever amidst a family of Harvard alums. The decidedly blasé heir to a thriving family business. The perfectionist who will exhaust herself until she achieves the flawless score of 1,600.

Together, this motley assortment (along with several others) sits in their own fiery circle of hell: an SAT exam room.

We all know the pain of test-taking: the pressure, the pent-up anxiety, the battle against the clock. Students from Lexington Christian Academy have brought that stressful, weighty — some might go so far as to say excruciating — experience to the stage with “Standardize Me,” an original play inspired by the new SAT that’s set to debut on Saturday.

Written and staged by academy students under the guidance of theater director Christopher Greco, the production has been performed four times, most recently at the Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild’s High School Festival preliminary round in Brookline on Feb. 27.

“It kind of feels like a Saturday Night Live skit — it’s absurd and it’s satire,” said Greco. “It raises questions about our standardized tests — are they helpful, are they accurate? It shows an inevitability in the need to be tested and the ability to transcend being evaluated. It also brings out the theme of rising to the challenge.”

With 14 actors, a moving, choreographed set of rolling desks, and frequent references to the hell-traversing protagonists Virgil and Dante of “The Divine Comedy,” the mockumentary fluctuates between the fantastic and the comedic, the realistic and the tragic. Test-takers with a range of backgrounds share their stories in a series of vignettes interwoven with passages from the portion of the epic poem by Dante Alighieri in which the author descends into the nine circles of hell with the forewarning, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

The play was prompted, in part, by changes to the SAT that take effect this testing season: obscure vocabulary words are disappearing, there will be no extra penalties for wrong answers, and reading passages will be more relevant to real life. Most notably, a mandatory essay added in 2005 will now be optional, thus lowering the highest achievable score (excluding the essay) to 1,600.

“While it’s grounded in reality, it’s also a journey of the imagination,” said senior Benjamin Rozonoyer, who plays four roles, including a College Board supervisor, a concrete baron, a father of an “average” girl from an overachieving family, and an “angelic” messenger who relays test scores.

“I like that it morphs the external and fantastic circumstances of the test,” said the Waltham 18-year-old. “It’s a lively and entertaining and fulfilling piece of work.”

Orchestral music and two towers emblazoned with “800” set the scene; characters include the serial test-taking tutor, a sparring boyfriend and girlfriend, a middle child afflicted with seasonal affective disorder who abhors math, the “inscrutable” supervisor who refers to students as “untamable wild rams,” a well-meaning proctor, and Dante and Virgil themselves.

The impetus for the repository of characters was a real-life gaffe: The accidental shredding of probation officers’ promotional exams — before they could be graded — by the state trial court in 2015. (Spoiler alert: Tests in the play are shredded and reduced to confetti.)

Senior Liam O’Toole initially proposed that cathartic destruction. “The situation would be funny for the audience, while simultaneously creating conflict and anguish for the characters onstage,” said the 18-year-old, from Arlington, who portrays a skateboarder with an identity conflict who doubles as Dante. “I thought it had a lot of comic potential.”

Meanwhile, another of the characters, “Chad,” played by senior Emma Bergstrom, was also modeled after actual events: She uses a fake ID to sit in and take a test for someone else, much like “test taker for hire” Sam Eshaghoff of Long Island, who was charged with fraud and criminal impersonation in 2011 for allegedly taking the SAT and ACT for paid clients.

“It is an interesting role for me because in reality I am afraid of cheating,” said Bergstrom, of Reading. “In real life I would never say, ‘Sometimes you have to break the rules to do good.’”

Much of “Standardize Me” formed through improvisation and tinkering, allowing students to create a sort of common ground with their stage presences.

“Like my character, I stink at math,” said 17-year-old Ann Rees Berry of the sneezy, wheezy arithmetic-hater who is equipped with an outdated, hand-me-down calculator. “I think my vehement hatred of all things numbers-related determined my casting.”

The Maynard junior added of her love of theater: “By becoming someone else, you’re better able to understand yourself, and that’s always a fascinating experience.”

Meanwhile, the play allowed both the students and members of the audience to reflect on the impersonal nature of standardized testing.

“I do not like that colleges put so much value in the four-digit numbers we receive,” said Bergstrom. Having taken the SAT last year, she recalled that it caused her “so much anxiety,” and “made me feel horrible about myself when I should not have.”

Rees Berry, for her part, will be taking the test this spring, but said she doesn’t yet have a date lined up, and hasn’t begun to prepare.

“A lot of people have told us how accurate our play is, and said it was a throwback to their own awful experiences either with the SAT or other tests,” she said. “I guess the play’s warned me about how terrible the test is, so now I’m expecting the absolute worst. Hopefully it’ll be better than the experience portrayed in the play – but I somehow doubt it.”

Original story link. 

Mini Habitats for Humanity

Project Playhouse

Posted on Feb. 26, 2016 in “Students”

Greek community teams up with Habitat for Humanity in building play houses for veterans’ children

Both sides waited in anticipation, each just as excited as the other. Craning necks, nervous smiles, shuffling feet.

Finally, it came time for the unveiling; the cluster of students stepped aside to reveal brightly colored, freshly painted, newly assembled playhouses. Across from them, the children standing with their parents gasped, smiled, and then did what any kid would when presented with such a treasure: Ran over to explore.

“Everyone was just smiling,” says Jake Rogers ’16, of Alpha Phi Omega.

The event, held Saturday, Feb. 13, was a joint effort of several WPI fraternities, numerous sponsors, and Habitat for Humanity Metrowest/Greater Worcester. Dozens of WPI students spent the better portion of the day building and painting playhouse kits that were then presented and donated to the young children of local veterans. The parent recipients included Chris and Emily Olivo of Southbridge, Brendan and Amy Conlin of Chelmsford, and James and Devon Pallotta of Templeton.

The effort was part of Habitat for Humanity’s Project Playhouse initiative, which serves as both a build and a fundraiser benefitting veterans. As part of the WPI event, which was held in the robotics pit in the sports and recreation center, playhouses were built for three local families, and at least $2,250 (or $750 per house) was raised to help with Habitat’s veteran’s critical home repair program.

“It’s a heartfelt and heart-warming event for everyone involved,” says Seth Jajliardo, community outreach manager for Habitat for Humanity MetroWest/Greater Worcester, which began the initiative in 2014, following the lead of Habitat affiliates in California.

Habitat of MetroWest/Greater Worcester partnered with the national organization Blue Star Mothers of America, Inc., to help identify local veterans with children between ages 3 and 10, Jajliardo explained, and also enlisted students from Worcester Technical High School, who cut and primed playhouse kits that are then assembled by volunteers of sponsoring companies or organizations during an all-day event.

Since launching the effort two years ago, the local Habitat has raised around $80,000 to help with repairs, such as roofing, siding replacement, or installation of wheelchair ramps, at the homes of local veterans. As Jajliardo explained, the organization has done five such critical home repairs over the past six months, and has a target of 10 per year.

Genzyme, UNUM, and several other local companies have sponsored builds over the past two years; 25 playhouses were built in 2015, according to Jajliardo, and the organization is on track to do 40 this year. Each mini house is custom designed based on the recipient child’s interests, with themes ranging from Barbie to the Bruins.

Ultimately, it’s an event that benefits everyone, Jajliardo points out. “It’s really a great team-building exercise, and we’re serving our veterans,” he says.

At WPI’s build, the houses—which are roughly four feet wide by five feet long—were decorated in Disney motifs, including Sofia the First, Doc McStuffins, and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

According to Rogers, students spent about four weeks organizing the event and fundraising for it. The playhouses were sponsored by several campus fraternities, including Alpha Phi Omega, Zeta Psi, Alpha Chi Rho, and Sigma Alpha Epsilon. During the day of the event, more than 70 students were involved in assembling, shingling, painting, and decorating them.

“It was definitely fun the entire time. Everyone was getting their hands dirty,” says Rogers, a biology and biotechnology major. “As the day went on, the energy increased, as people saw the houses coming together. By the end, everyone was ridiculously excited to get to reveal all their hard work to the families.”

Both he and Jajliardo agreed that it was a great partnership, and one that both WPI and Habitat for Humanity would like to establish as a regular tradition.

“We all worked really hard to make sure that this event went well for the families,” says Rogers. “Everyone who participated would love to get the chance to do it again.”

– BY TARYN PLUMB

Original story link.

From the Archives: The Cold Grip of Addiction

Exposure: Victim’s family says addiction killed him

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

By Taryn Plumb TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

WORCESTER— When driving through Worcester, James McKeon often glanced at the pale, downhearted faces milling about on Main Street, hoping — but at the same time not hoping — that he might see his brother among them.

Allen McKeon, his half-brother, spent his life on and off the streets during his 30-year battle with substance abuse.

“It grabbed him. He was just stuck in it,” James McKeon, 44, of East Brookfield, said of his brother’s drug and alcohol problems. “We knew this was going to happen someday. We waited for the telephone call.”

It finally came a week-and-a-half ago, when Allen McKeon, 55, was found dead at the Washington Square rotary, an apparent victim of the cold.

His death has sparked outrage among local human rights activists, who are calling on the city to deal with its vagrancy problem.

Family members, meanwhile, didn’t consider Mr. McKeon to be homeless — they said he was a man who just didn’t come home. His severe addiction governed his life, and he would steal, lie and sabotage relationships to keep it going, they said. Thus, when faced with the choice of a warm place to sleep or the ability to drink, he chose the latter, they believe.

“The city of Worcester is not responsible for Allen’s death,” his sister-in-law, Linda McKeon, said in an e-mail to the Telegram & Gazette. “Neither is his family. The disease of alcoholism is responsible, just as surely as if Allen had died of cancer.”

The trouble started early — Allen grew up in an abusive household in Rochdale and his father often poured hard liquor into his bottle to placate him, according to Mrs. McKeon’s e-mail. One afternoon, police found his mother, Betty, badly beaten and tied to a chair. His father was ordered to stay away, the e-mail said. He did, and never returned.

Betty remarried and had seven more children — three girls and four boys.

“Allen was always surrounded by love and laughter in his home,” Mrs. McKeon explained in the e-mail. “(He) was offered and given everything he needed to grow and become whatever he desired in life.”

As a youth, he worked at his stepfather’s general store, and was described as a meticulous dresser who spent long hours in front of the mirror. According to his family, he was good looking, clean-cut and popular with young ladies.

Things changed, however, when Allen and one of his brothers, Paul, enlisted in the Air Force during the Vietnam War. Allen, because of his asthma, was honorably discharged, his family said. He began drinking and, at age 21, tried to rob a gas station. He was sent to jail for several years.

“Allen’s (step)father and mother were broken hearted,” his sister-in-law explained in the e-mail. “Yet, he would pile his other children into his big, old station wagon and make trips to prison to visit his son. They visited and wrote Allen all the time.”

After that, Allen served two other prison sentences, and frequently lived on the streets, family members said. He periodically reappeared and had “very short” periods of sobriety. Ultimately, though, he’d disappear again. His last known place of residence was Brockton, his brother said.

“Even if we found him, he just wanted money to drink,” James McKeon explained. “He’d tell me right out, ‘I need money for a drink, that’s what I want to do.’ ”

It was a hard cycle, his brother admitted, because the family was moved to help, but untrusting. Allen would often steal from them and, on one occasion, smoked crack cocaine in front of his young nieces and nephews, James McKeon explained.

“Every time we put our hand out, we just got bit again,” he said.

The last time his family saw him was in November, when he showed up unannounced and claimed to be living in a halfway house. James, who also suffered from alcoholism until 15 years ago, told him to get help and offered to bring him to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

“That’s what you gotta do,” James said. “Some people just can’t grab on to it.”

Despite his struggle with alcoholism, James described his brother as a handsome man with a great sense of humor.

“(He was) just a nice guy,” he said. “We didn’t get to see much of that.”

2016 Business Leaders of the Year: Atlas Travel

FEBRUARY 15, 2016

2016 BUSINESS LEADERS OF THE YEAR

Large Business Leader: Elaine Osgood

TARYN PLUMB

As the saying goes, the third time's a charm. That's particularly true in Elaine Osgood's case.

Thirty years ago, after a short career as a teacher in Worcester schools and another as an investigator with the Massachusetts Department of Department of Children & Families, Osgood was armed with a master's degree in psychology, casting around for a new, fulfilling livelihood.

Intrigued by franchise Uniglobe Travel, she soon opened a Milford office.

"Ok, sell the world?" she recalled of her piqued interest. "What's a better product than the world?"

And sold it she has.

Over the last three decades, Osgood has grown that initial franchise into the global, increasingly-expanding enterprise, Atlas Travel and Technology Group, Inc. – she dropped the franchise 20 years ago to branch out on her own. With hundreds of virtual offices and thousands of clients, that umbrella corporation comprises of Atlas Travel and Prime Numbers Technology, which together emphasize not only on the logistics and details of travel for corporate and private customers, but the analytics and metrics behind it.

"It's a very exciting, evolving industry," Osgood said. "No two days are the same. We don't know from one year to the next what we will be doing."

Atlas Travel, which is headquartered in Milford, has an office in London, hubs in New York and Washington, D.C., as well as roughly 200 virtual offices across the United States and the United Kingdom. Agents offer private vacation planning services, as well as management for corporate clients that includes meeting planning, and incentive, reward and recognition programs.

The company will soon roll out a division focused on consulting and fulfillment, Osgood said, that will involve back-end work on various travel apps.

Meanwhile, Prime Numbers Technology, which was launched eight years ago, offers data analytics, performance metrics and benchmarking tools that enable corporate customers to track and report travel spending, supplier usage and policy compliance.

The travel management industry is ever-developing along with technology, Osgood said. The information-gathering and reporting shifts based on what travelers want and how they want to receive it; today's travelers have a myriad of apps and devices on which to keep up-to-date on every aspect of their trip.

"Technology is critical," she said. "We have to make sure that as the world evolves, we have the technology so that, from start to finish, we're supporting our travelers, helping them travel the way they want to travel."

Part of Osgood's goal going forward is to re-attract younger people to the field. She stressed perceptions the Internet would eliminate the need for travel agencies have simply not come true.

"We're on a crusade to tell the world that the travel industry is alive and well," she said, "and can provide a very wonderful, fulfilling career."

Atlas partnered with Milford Public Schools in 2014 to create a hospitality management program. The two-year program is the first of its kind at a non-vocational high school, said coordinator Katie Maloney. Students come in as juniors, learning both in the classroom and onsite at partner companies including Atlas, and organize pertinent events.

Maloney said interest has greatly expanded in two years; the first class was nine students, the second of 13, and the incoming 2016 class will have to be whittled down from 50 applicants to 20.

Atlas is an "all-encompassing, great company to be partnered with," she said. "They are helping these students make connections outside of Milford."

As it helps to infuse the next generation, Atlas' evolution will be determined by the needs of tomorrow's travelers.

"Our growth is really very strategic," said Osgood. "It's not ego-driven. It's not about reaching a certain number on the top line so we can say 'We're X millions of dollars.' It's about growing and expanding based on our customer needs."

Original story link. 

From the Archives: Aging Like a Fine Orchid

IMMORTAL BEAUTIES

By Taryn Plumb / Globe Correspondent

April 19, 2012

The lanky man with dirt-caked gardener’s hands and the twinge of a Texas drawl points to a small round nub at the base of a potted flower.

“See this?” He leans down in the muted light of the greenhouse, rubs it gently with his thumb. “New growth.”

Giving the unbloomed orchid an approving look, he nods. “Look at that growth. That’s healthy.”

As far as Jim Marchand, 63, is concerned, orchids are the “ultimate plant obsession.” The Hopkinton resident and Texas native has been collecting, cultivating, and hybridizing the elegant, diverse, and vibrantly colorful family of flowers for nearly 20 years.

And now, he has a whole lot more to care for: He recently came into possession of one of the area’s most prized private orchid collections. Formerly owned by Victor DeRosa, who in his late 80s has retired and recently moved to Florida, the flowers are what remain of what was once one of the most successful cut flower businesses in the Northeast, DeRosa Florist in Natick.

The collection includes roughly 400 hybrid cattleyas, members of a prolific genus known for its variety of colors and large blooms (as well as its long-held position at the center of corsages); several dozen Paphiopedilum examples (most commonly known as lady’s slippers, featuring wild, unusual, and often spotted flowers); and a handful of other genera.

Most of the plants, which are housed at a private estate in the area, will be transferred to a greenhouse on Marchand’s property sometime this summer. He will sell off the duplicates.

Marchand purchased the collection last September, but declined to say how much he paid, noting that it has much more than monetary value. DeRosa was not available to be interviewed for this article.

“They talk about that orchid obsession,” said Marchand, an assistant professor and researcher in the anatomy and cellular biology department at Tufts University who left his hometown of Houston more than 25 years ago. “I’ve got it.”

As, said Marchand, does DeRosa, an old friend who sold Marchand his first orchid decades ago, and who entrusted the collection to him with the express purpose of keeping it largely intact.

“He still thinks of it as his,” Marchand said. “It’s his love.”

After emigrating from Italy in the midst of the Depression, DeRosa started his business in 1941, according to past Globe stories. His biggest business was in cut orchids and corsages. For decades, according to Marchand, DeRosa controlled the Northeast orchid market, and won top awards for his plants from the Massachusetts Orchid Society and the American Orchid Society.

But the game changed in the 1990s, when competition started coming from overseas, and orchids could be had for much lower prices at home improvement and department stores.

When things were going well, the collection was five times its current size; but DeRosa whittled it down over the years, keeping the prize-winners and his personal favorites, Marchand said. In a 2001 interview, DeRosa told the Globe he had 25,000 orchid plants in many varieties that he started from seed, cloned in his Natick lab, and sent in bottles to be grown in Hilo, Hawaii.

“These are the special ones that Victor’s collected over 30 to 40 years,” Marchand said of his new collection. “Some are unique. No one else has them.”

Sheer diversity is one of the hallmarks of the orchid, according to expert William Cullina, author of “Understanding Orchids.” No one knows how many varieties there are, he said, with new ones are being discovered all the time, but he put the ballpark figure as 25,000 to 35,000 species.

“You never run out of orchids, there are always new ones,” said Cullina, who lives on Southport Island in Maine. He also described an “elegance and sophistication” that are not found in other flowers. “There’s an almost infinite variety of form and color and size. For a collector, it’s perfect.”

Marchand certainly feels that way. His first green-thumbing was crossbreeding rhododendrons; when he tired of that, he moved on to orchids, which he called the most highly evolved flower, and also the most difficult to grow, requiring a perfect amount of water and sun exposure.

But, he noted, “they’re immortal, as long as you take care of them.”

Ultimately, DeRosa’s collection will accentuate Marchand’s own assemblage of a few hundred flowers, his favorite being the lady’s slippers, which he likes for their “weird” look.

“These orchids are part of Victor,” Marchand said as he stood in the greenhouse housing them. But after 15 or 20 years watching his friend cultivate them, seeing them bloom, he added, “the collection has become part of my life, too.”

The potted orchids sat all around in various levels of rows; none were in bloom. Patches of clover grew in pots with some of them; others had outgrown their confines, their spaghetti-like roots hanging out in tangled protrusions.

Marchand walked around to inspect them, rubbing his fingers over their thick leaves, testing the dampness of their soil. As he worked, he explained that the collection has its biggest bloom in winter, although it can bloom all year round, lasting anywhere from three weeks to three months.

Many of them, though, he has never even seen bloom. And, because most of the flowers are not labeled — DeRosa was so familiar with them that he could tell what they were just by looking at their foliage — Marchand doesn’t know what many of them are.

“There are some beauties I haven’t seen bloomed,” he said. “It’s a big mystery.”

Twisting a dead leaf off a plant, he shrugged. “They all need work.”

He noted that some were recently infected by scale insects; he sprayed them with insecticide. He will eventually repot all of them, and divide others that have overgrown their pots.

He pulled one off a shelf, carrying it to a work table that was a bramble of tipped pots, clippers, scoops, and screwdrivers. Leaves lay scattered on the floor, blown in from outside through the open entryway.

He set to work on dividing the flower, removing it from its pot, cutting off its dead roots, then repotting it with a mulch-like mixture, broken clay bits, and foam pieces that aid with oxygen and drainage.

“It’s very peaceful, having your hands on plants,’’ Marchand said.

“This is why I do it.’’

Original story link.

Photos by Bill Greene/Globe Staff, and Jim Marchand