As Marilyn Kinney Lee looks out her dining room window and begins to talk about her father, the years fall away. Her face brightens at the memories that swirl in her mind and become the story she wants to share about her father, Alden S. Kinney, the first official police chief for the Town of Mattapoisett. Kinney served in this capacity from 1947 to 1969.
As she talks about bygone days – days filled with joyful memories of growing up in Mattapoisett – she slips between how the town looked, what it felt like, and what her father’s life experiences were as the police chief. With each moment, another memory grabs her attention and flows out in tribute to her dad.
She starts from the beginning.
Kinney grew up on the village streets of Mattapoisett, a native son attending the local schools. By the age of 13, he was helping to provide for his family.
Lee said her father was a hard worker from a very young age, taking jobs wherever he could find them, or by creating them. “When he was old enough, he crewed for J. Lewis Stackpole during the sailing season, and he had a car he used as a taxi, picking people up from the train station.”
During the early decades that Kinney served as the police chief – a title he came to after being elected first as the “constable” – Mattapoisett was still a little community with neighborhoods that had their own names. Enclaves such as Tinkhamtown, Hammondtown, Randalltown, Dextertown, and Cannonville referred to specific locations or collection of homes populated by extended family members.
There were the beach areas with their own unique environments such as Pease’s Point, Crescent Beach, Pico Beach, Brandt Island, and “The Neck.” Lee stressed that her father was not given a cruiser, no real form of transportation by which to patrol the community.
“Well, he had a motorized bicycle,” Lee says, “…and he may have used a horse, too. He was a one-man band,” she added, as he traveled an established route, checking in on neighbors, old folks, friends, making sure that all was safe and secure in town.
Lee shared a particularly precious early memory of her father. “He was always at the front of the Memorial Day Parade and I would be thinking, ‘That’s my Father.’ He was so handsome.” She said she couldn’t wait to become a Brownie so she could be in the parade behind her father as he led the way. “I was so proud … he was my hero.”
The Kinney’s home phone was the police department phone, requiring his wife and daughters to take messages when he wasn’t home. In fact, in the absence of an office or headquarters of any kind, Kinney’s home located at 5 North Street with his wife and children was the de facto police department.
“Viola Winslow was the telephone operator,” Lee recalled. “Mom would take down the message and say, “I’ll start with Minnie Tinkham,” whose home was on Long Plain Road in Tinkhamtown, “…then she’d call from one home to the next along Kinney’s route until she had either tracked him down or found a location to leave a message. “And that message got passed along” in a relay from one resident to the next she said. “Mom most often called the poor farm because he’d always stop there when he was out on his route,” Lee stated.
Before Kinney purchased a car he had a motorcycle. “Oh, that was fun because he’d give us rides in the driveway and mother would call out to him to be careful.” When he did purchase his own car, it too was conscripted, becoming the police cruiser, Lee said. The town fathers did agree, however, to pay Kinney mileage.
It would be years before he’d receive a real cruiser and even then it would be purchased with private funds and donations. “There was always a big ‘thermometer’ in front of Town Hall,” Lee laughed. “Dad was always fundraising.”
Lee said Kinney’s compensation for being the police chief was not sufficient to provide for his family. “He had a second job.” She said Kinney and his brother, Harold, owned a gas station near the corner of Route 6 and Main Street and also supplied marine fuel down at the wharves.
“When Dad was busy, my sister and I would pump the fuel at the wharf. We loved it…. Boats from the New York Yacht Club would come in … now that was fun,” Lee said. She also said her father was a fixture at the wharves when he wasn’t on patrol or handling police business.
It was difficult for her mother, though, a piano and organ instructor, to get around without a car until the day Kinney surprised her with one. “He told me and my sister to go get Mom. We called, ‘Mom, Dad wants to see you outside!’” Kinney had purchased his wife a red convertible. “Mom had always wanted a red convertible. She started to cry, which made me and my sister Jocelyn cry, but we were all so happy.”
Another clear memory Lee shared was when inebriated locals would get anonymously dropped off on the Kinney doorstep, “We’d hear moaning and mother would tell us not to worry and shooed us away from the door as Dad went out.” She concludes now that her father took them home or to the poor farm to sleep it off. “He was always on duty.”
When the fire department moved from its location in the back of Town Hall to Route 6, Kinney finally got a space of his own for his expanding department. By then, through fundraising and other private donations, he had a real cruiser, an ambulance, and a small police force. Mattapoisett was growing.
After the 1954 hurricane, Kinney purchased a fixer-upper in Crescent Beach, a place Lee says he really and truly enjoyed. “Dad frequently commented he couldn’t get anything done because people were always stopping by,” Lee said. At Crescent Beach away from the center of the village, the Kinneys could enjoy a little down time.
“For so many years he did everything and usually alone,” Lee explained. “He was getting tired. He wanted to enjoy his home.”
Kinney retired at the age of 65, but would have little more than two years to relax. He died suddenly in 1972. Lee remarked, “He was just worn out.”
While her memories ebb and flow with each telling of those days spent running down the wharves, watching her father march in parades, and his care and concern for the people in the community, Lee draws the departed close and cherishes once again her father, a man who earned his place in Mattapoisett’s history.
By Marilou Newell
