BeeLines - May 2, 2018
By Marybelle Beigh, Westfield Town & Village Historian
We have the Dan Reed Memorial Pier in Barcelona, but WHO was Dan Reed?
…was a question asked by a faithful BeeLines reader some months ago.
“Oh, he was a congressman back when the pier was built,” replied your Westfield Historian, “or at least he had something to do with it being built. I will try to research that and get back to you.”
But, (historian heaves a big sigh), that question disappeared from visible reminders with the various upheavals in location of office and computer hackers and so on… well…you know how easy it is to rationalize when caught “red handed” so to speak… as the originator of the question appeared on historian “radar” last week and asked, “Did you ever find out about Dan Reed…???”
The name of Congressman Dan Reed was quite prominent when I was a Westfield school girl back in the 1940s and 1950s. Not only was our pier named for him when it was built and dedicated between 1957 and 1960, but I recalled that Dan Reed had sent a huge American Flag to be flown over Sheridan #3 rural school on the occasion of the school’s centennial on June 3, 1951, when my mother, Frances Blackburn, was teaching there, and my brother and I were among the approximately dozen or so students in Kindergarten through Sixth Grade.
Also, the late Billie Dibble, who was Westfield Historian prior to me, wrote a Dibble’s Dabbles entitled, “Reed Pier Is Fitting Memorial” that was first published in the August 30, 1990, Westfield Republican. This was some 30 years after the dedication ceremony of the pier on July 21, 1960.
According to several biographies found online, Daniel Alden Reed, born in Sheridan, Chautauqua County, NY on September 15, 1875, was an American football player, coach, and US Representative from the state of New York. He was first elected in 1918 and served 20 successive terms in Congress until his death in February 1959.
At the ceremony in 1960, Hon. Charles Goodell, Representative, US Congress, 43rd District, State of New York, gave the dedication address in which he said, “May this pier and this harbor keep us close to our faithful friend” and he described that many of Congressman Reed’s ancestors, “went down to the sea in ships,” noting how appropriate this memorial was to Reed. Daniel Reed’s grandfather, who was the pioneer of the Reed family, produced six lake captains beginning in 1830. Billie Dibble commented that “Daniel Reed himself went to sea at age 17 with his father, and had it not been for his father’s death, congressman Reed might have spent his days as a Great Lakes Captain.”
A 1997 article in the Chautauqua Mirror describes the push for improving the harbor at Barcelona following World War II when the commercial fishing industry began declining, and the harbor filled with sand. “Through the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1945 Barcelona Harbor was authorized a harbor of refuge by the federal government. In 1949 the State of New York passed a special law permitting the Town of Westfield to construct a pier. In the late 1950s, Rep. Daniel Reed of Dunkirk successfully sought appropriations from the federal government to revamp the harbor with an eye toward restoring the fishing industry and reinstating Barcelona as a viable harbor of refuge.”
A surprisingly earlier article in the February 7, 1934 Westfield Republican headlines: “LET’S PUSH! – For the Improvement of the Barcelona Harbor and Our Fishing Industry” in which Cecil J. Weatherup, Com., John W. Rogers Post No. 327, and others wrote a letter of resolution from the post urging “the proper Government authorities to make adequate appropriation and the inauguration of a program sufficient to preserve said Harbor in a navigable condition and preserve the industry connected therewith.” The resolution was forwarded to federal, and local authorities named in the article, including Congressman Daniel A. Reed.
Daniel Reed apparently knew Westfield very well. According to another Dibble’s Dabbles – Applications of a boom town…for today, Billie Dibble quotes from the Westfield Republican newspapers of 1924, that a member of the Chamber of Commerce then recently organized in Westfield, J. M. Culver, had written a letter to Daniel A. Reed, our Congressman in Washington, for suggestions on how to improve and build up Westfield, to which Reed had replied with many excellent ideas, stating that, “Westfield has a splendid reputation and is known as one of the most beautiful towns of its size in our state. It is highly important that this reputation be sustained.”