Walter Heath

It was said in the obituary of Walter F. Heath of Jaffrey that in all the seventy-two years of his life he never made an enemy. His gift was the gift of friendship, with which was mingled the gift of song. He began as a child to turn out little poems about little things and about life as he saw it about him. He was a friend to the birds and flowers. He wrote little poems about them. He had a little world of his own where he lived.

It is not the purpose of this section of our History to make a gallery of greatness. It is a true saying that "it takes all kinds of people to make a world." Success isn't everything, and it might be more consonant with life if we wrote more biographies of men who fail, for surely they have a message too. This, we are told, is a land of opportunity, but everywhere there are people who never had a chance.

Walter Heath was always busy with little things, cultivating the flowers he loved, writing little itmes for the local papers in such a friendly way that they never hurt. Nobody taught him any of these things; they were the natural expression of innate kindness. He was born with a lyrical gift that found expression in verse as spontaneous as bird songs. A few were printed in local papers and became so much in demand that a little edition, called "Mountain Echoes", was printed, and people came miles to buy until two thousand copies were sold and a third edition was on the press at the time of his death. Walter was one of the possessions of Jaffrey as was the mountain brook that ran by his door. And in his passing there was to all who knew him a feeling of personal loss, as when the song of the hidden bird that sings at evening has ceased.