ABOUT JON

My Heritage - The Andersons

My father died when he was 59 from colon cancer. He suffered at least two ulcers and weighed only about 120 pounds at his heaviest. My brother and I believe he suffered from the effects of malnutrition as a child. He contracted pneumonia twice before he was six months old.

My father was lucky. A brother and a sister – an uncle and aunt I never knew – died before reaching adulthood of diseases that today are readily curable.

My father’s mother left Sweden in 1903. I found her passage in cleaning out my mother’s papers after she died a few years ago. My grandmother took the cheapest way from southern Sweden to America in the year the airplane was invented – a ferry from southern Sweden to Newcastle on the east shore of England, a train ride across northern England to a ship departing from the west coast of England to New York. She traveled on the White Star Line, which less than a decade later launched, and sank, the Titanic. Reaching New York, she took a train to Rhode Island where, presumably, she met her fiancé, my grandfather, and they were married.

So why did they come to America? In those days, to marry in Sweden a couple had to own property. They had no prospects for owning land anytime soon.

About three years after arriving in America, my grandparents bought a small house without central heat in West Rutland, Vermont on the edge of what is still called the “Swamp”. My grandfather worked as a laborer for the Vermont Marble Company until he was 65 and then as a custodian for Howe Scale until he was 82 shortly before he died in 1953.

My grandmother Hinckley was born in 1898 and lived until she was 96. She was the kindest, most team-building person I have ever known. My grandmother’s mother was 15 when my grandmother was born. My great grandmother’s family could not support her so she was boarded out as a servant at 13. Because my great grandmother was so young when my grandmother was born and because my family is so long-lived, both my great grandmother and my grandmother were able to attend my high school graduation in 1971.

The Hinckleys

My great grandmother was an Eddy. Her father and uncles were famous spiritualists. When they were not being abused on their show trips through Europe, they conducted séances at their farmhouse in Chittenden, Vermont. See Olcott, Henry Steele, People from The Other World 1875.

My grandmother and grandfather Hinckley lost the one house they owned in the depression. My grandfather died from complications of sugar diabetes in March, 1953. He was 57. My grandmother moved to Springfield, Vermont where my parents had built their first house shortly after I was born. My grandmother never drove and depended on WHEELS for transportation. She lived in senior citizen housing, and regularly attended senior citizens’ of which she was President for many years..

My grandparents had five children. In the mid-1950’s, the Hinckleys began gathering every August to celebrate my grandmother’s birthday. After more than fifty years, we continue to gather even as my aunts and uncles die off. The ten Hinckley cousins are friends, and our kids are bonding as well. My cousin’s daughter, Heather, married Roger Boissonneau. They live next to the school on Main Street, and Heather designed this web site
About My Life
I was born on January 5, 1953 in Springfield, Vermont. I was premature and my parents did not expect me to be born. They had a stillbirth between my brother, who was born in 1946, and me. My mother had Rh-negative blood, a risk factor that was discovered only after my brother was born. This condition is treatable today, but not until after I was born. As a pregnancy reaches term, white blood cells from an Rh-negative mother attack the more common Rh-positive blood cells of a baby as if the baby were a disease. Only when I first gave blood in college did we discover that the reason I was born at all is because I too am Rh negative. My mother’s white blood cells did not attack and kill me.
Shortly after I was born, my parents moved from crumbling-down emergency housing slung up during World War II in Springfield to the house where I lived until I was 15. The house comprised 732 square feet divided into four rooms including a bedroom I shared with my brother. My father was a data entry clerk at the Fellows Gear Shaper Company.

I attended Elm Hill Elementary School with John Tracy who ran for Lieutenant Governor last year and now works for Senator Leahy.

I hated school. My parents let me quit private kindergarten so they could save the few dollars per week tuition. I wanted to quit first grade, and I was a problem student. They gave me an IQ test. The scores were surprisingly high for the son of a factory worker and a stay-at-home mom struggling to get by. I was accelerated in math, I began to like school, and I guess you would say I began to excel.

My mom taught for one year in a one-room schoolhouse in Wardsboro in 1942. She married and stayed at home until the early 1960’s when she resumed teaching. Due to people power shortages during WWII, she had been allowed to teach with only three years training. Beginning in the mid-1960’s, she took courses including summer school at Castleton to finish up her degree. She graduated a week before my brother in 1968.

Until my mom began working outside the home, our family struggled. My dad was paid on Wednesdays at noon. We shopped for groceries Wednesday night. My parents listed the price of each item as they put it in the basket. Before checking out, they added up

We moved from Springfield to Brattleboro in 1968 so my dad could re-enter teaching. He had quit teaching in the early 1950’s because it was impossible to support a family on a teacher’s salary before teachers unionized. In Brattleboro, I was chosen to attend Boys’ State.
In 1970, Bill Cody and I were chosen to represent Vermont at Boys’ Nation. It was my first airplane trip. Bill and I dined in the Senate dining room with Senators Aiken and Prouty and Representative Stafford. What an experience for two seventeen year olds to watch foreign ambassadors greet Senator Aiken, who was then the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee. Over lunch, the Vermont delegation kidded Aiken for being so well trusted that the majority Democrats had that morning let him preside over a committee hearing by himself. I have sought Lola’s advice about how to be so trusted. She tells me to simply tell people what’s on your mind.

On the same trip, Bill and I shook hands with President Nixon and walked around his office. Bill and I are on some of the White House tapes that have yet to be released.

In 1971, I won a National Merit Scholarship and was designated as one of 121 Presidential Scholars.

I attended Worcester Polytechnic Institute where I earned a degree in Chemical Engineering – which is generally regarded as the toughest engineering major. I earned almost five years credits in 3 ½ years. I graduated with a 4.0 average (first in my class) a semester early so I could live at home and wash dishes in the food service operation at the Brattleboro Retreat to save money for law school.

I shall always remember the day my father brought me the sloppily resealed acceptance letter from Yale Law School. I asked my father what it said and, with tears in his eyes, he said I was accepted. Then, as now, Yale Law School was regarded as the top law school in the country. It is also small – only 160 positions, about a third the size of Harvard or Columbia. Curiously, that year my mother was teaching the grandson of the last Proctor to own the Vermont Marble Company where my grandfather Anderson worked as a laborer for so many years. An uncle of my mother’s student also applied to Yale Law School and did not get in. For my parents, the world had turned upside down.

After Yale, I clerked for a federal judge in Wilmington, Delaware. Among other things, I assisted the Judge in deciding the patent rights for crystalline polypropylene and a man-made rubber (an ethylene-propopylene-terpolymer). I wanted to return to Vermont. My best offer was at Paterson Gibson and Noble in Montpelier where I moved in August, 1980. Betsy and I were engaged at Christmas time and she moved here in March, 1981. Beginning in 1982, I served as Special Counsel at the Department of Public Service trying utility rate cases on behalf of the public. In 1985, I joined my present law firm. I met Betsy when we shared an office at Governor Connolly’s law firm in Houston where we had worked in 1977. I worked in Houston partly to see Texas and partly to see what it would be like to have a lucrative practice as a big city lawyer. It seemed an empty life. I returned to Vermont because I love small town life and because I wanted to commit a part of each day of my life to helping people

the cost. They put items back until we were down to the $20 budget. On Tuesday nights when we were low on groceries, we often had tuna wiggle on crackers.
About Helping People

A partial list of the public service positions I have held is as follows:

· Vermont Department of Public Service, Special Counsel (representing
  ratepayers), 1982-1985
· Special Assistant Attorney General, 1984
· Vermont Board of Architects (appointed by Governor Kunin), 1987-1990
· Blue Ribbon Task Force on Hazardous Waste (appointed by Governor
  Kunin) Chairman (by committee election), 1990-1991
· Technical Advisory Committee on Solid Waste (appointed by Governor
  Kunin), 1990-1993
· Governor Kunin’s Interim Legal Counsel, 1990-1991
· Montpelier City Council, 1988-1996 (elected three years as Council
  President)
· Montpelier Planning Commission, 1985-1988
· Delegate, White House Conference on Travel & Tourism (appointed by
  President Clinton at Representative Sanders’ recommendation), 1998
· Law Clerk, U.S. District Court (D. Del.), 1978-1980
· Vermont Bar Association, Environmental Law Committee—Vice
  Chairman,
  1995-1998; Chairman, 1998-2001
· Vermont Lodging and Restaurant Association Innkeeper of the Year,
  2004 (with my wife Betsy)
· Montpelier Travel Information Council—Chairman, 1996-
· Montpelier Downtown Community Association—Board Member, 1999- ;
  Chairman, 2003-2006
· Carr Lot Redevelopment Committee (appointed by Montpelier City
  Council)—Chairman, 2002-
· Pyralisk Arts Center—Board Member, 2000- ; Secretary, 2000-2004;
  Treasurer, 2004-
· Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce—Member, 2000- ;
  Environmental Permitting Policy Committee, Chairman, 2004
· Vermont Lodging and Restaurant Association—Board Member, 1992-
  1998; Vice President, 1997-1998
· Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce—Member, 1996- ; President,
  1998-2000
· Green Mountain Boys State—Counselor, 1973-

I have worked hard and been effective in all of my public service positions. For example:

· The State’s Blue Ribbon Task Force on Hazardous Waste, which I chaired, produced a report recommending the State’s hazardous waste policy and adoption of the toxics reduction program, resulting in legislation. The then Governor called our activities a model for the way the process should work.

· As a member of the Montpelier Planning Commission, I led in rewriting the zoning ordinance to provide for an increased level of review for major projects and the creation of the Central Business II zoning district and to allow increased housing construction.

· As the Chair of the Montpelier Travel Information Council, I led in developing the visitor information booth and the State information center, the production of the Visitor’s Guide to Montpelier, and the placement of that guide in many locations around the State.

· As President of the Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce, I led in helping to enact legislation creating the downtown program, supporting bike paths between Montpelier and Barre and then on from each City, the creation or supplementation of walking tours in Barre, Montpelier and Waterbury (I personally led in permitting the historic markers that you see on many buildings in downtown Montpelier, enabling self-guided walking tours).

· As Chair of the Carr Lot Committee, I have led in attracting $7.5 million so far in federal grants for the project. I personally gathered about 500 of about 800 signatures needed to petition a bond vote for the project onto the Montpelier ballot. I continue to work on designing the project and resolving the hazardous waste issues that are delaying construction. (A significant portion of my law practice involves the resolution of hazardous waste issues. I attended a national seminar in preparation for working on the hazardous waste issues, and I have taught a number of seminars in Vermont on the issue.)

· As Chair of the Vermont Bar Association’s Environmental Law Committee, I led in producing the State’s only Environmental Law Practice Manual. My contribution was the chapter on zoning and subdivision law, which my firm continues to update and republish (a copy is available on request). I routinely testified on environmental issues before the Legislature.

· The resolution of the City Council recognizing my contributions as a member for eight years is as follows:

WHEREAS, Jon Anderson served on the Montpelier City Council for eight years, 1988 to 1996; and

WHEREAS, Jon was instrumental in economic development in his support for new construction including the Chittenden Bank, the Vermont State Employees Credit Union and First in Fitness; renovation of the Capitol Plaza and the Vermont Center for Independent Living; implementation of redevelopment of areas along the Winooski River; a river walkway over the North Branch; creation of the Visitors Center; and elimination of the inventory tax; and,

WHEREAS, Jon was instrumental in expanding the City’s role in culture and recreation in his support for increased funding for the Kellogg-Hubbard Library, tripling the size of our parks, increasing the Hubbard Park budget, creation of the Basement Teen Center, renovation of the City Hall Arts Auditorium, and implementation of Alternative Transportation Paths; and,

WHEREAS, Jon was also instrumental in controlling spending through his support for downsizing city government, increasing the Ambulance Service share from surrounding towns, persuading the State to take over maintenance of Route 302, and investing heavily in computers to enable greater efficiency in the future; and,

WHEREAS, Jon improved operations of municipal services through his support for the new Public Works Facility, implementation of renovations to the Fire Station, creation of the Terrace Street Water Reservoir, implementation of the Water Filtration Plant, and implementation of the Storm Sewer Separation Project; and,

WHEREAS, Jon supported opening city government to the people by televising City Council, Planning Commission and Zoning Board meetings, establishing many citizen committees, and conducting the Anderson-Sherman Poll; and,

WHEREAS, Jon helped bring hundreds of affordable and elderly housing units to the city through his support for the Prospect Street Apartments, Heaton Woods, Franklin Square, and the rehabilitation of North Branch Apartments, and many Barre Street Apartments; and,

WHEREAS, while on the City Council, Jon served on innumerable committees including the Recycling Committee, the Parking Committee, the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission, and the notorious Budget Ad Hoc Committee,

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that a special “thank you” is also extended to Jon’s wife, Betsy, and their son, Tyler, for their support for Jon’s public service; and,

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that a copy of this Resolution be presented to Jon Anderson, as a measure of our appreciation, and be spread upon the permanent records of the City of Montpelier.