The Other Kezia

As Sandy remembers: While reading Glamour magazine in 1965 I came across a beautiful model with the name of Kezia (original photo above). So I said to Bob, “If we marry and have a daughter, I would like to name her Kezia after the model in the magazine.” Bob said he liked the name, so Yes!

Two years later Bob and Sandy marry. Four years go by and Sandy gets pregnant. Her name will be Kezia. No thought is ever given to What If It’s A Boy. While lying in bed going over names in the name book . . . Kezia Ann, Kezia Elizabeth . . . the baby gives its first real kick from inside the womb. It will be Kezia Elizabeth.

November 15, 1971: Kezia is born.

Alexandra’s European Skin Care Salon, 1990s: Alexandra's was Sandy's salon, Sandy's baptism name being Alexandra. She said to me, "I want it to be called Alexandra's and I want people to know it features European-type skin care services, which are more hands-on than the American type." A family from New York City summers in Duxbury. First the mother comes in, then the two grown daughters. Marnie (our daughter) senses that one of the daughters, Alexandra (Ali) is a model. Sandy asks the mother, and the mom says “Yes she is.” The next time Ali comes for a service, she asks Sandy, “You have a daughter named Kezia? Can I ask you how you came up with that name?” So Sandy tells the Glamour magazine story. Ali says, “The reason I asked was that my boss’s name was Kezia and she recently passed away. But I don’t think she ever modeled. I’m going to call her husband tonight and ask him.” She did – it was the same Kezia!

November 27, 2000: Bob calls Glamour magazine in New York City (212-286-6667), 4 Times Square, 16th floor. Receptionist doesn’t think anyone can help me. It’s too far back. I’m put through to Lynda in Reader Service. I explain my predicament. Lynda says, “Oh, I get all kinds of crazy requests. Let me look it up now in the computer by her first name.” She comes back on line and says, “There never was a model named Kezia. Let me research it other ways. Give me your phone number.”

November 28: Phone call from Lynda Laux Bachand from Glamour magazine. Bachand – that’s our real last name that was anglicized into Bacon! The message says, “I have really interesting news. Call me!”

November 29: I reach Lynda. She says there was indeed a Kezia. She has passed away. She worked for Glamour magazine. She was very pretty; almost everyone who works for Glamour magazine is. She actually was in the magazine twice, but not as a model. Once in 1965 and again in 1967. The 1965 article was about a party she had. There are photos of her and her boyfriend, who became her husband. His name is Chandler Hovey III. She became a very well known editor. She formed her own public relations firm called Keeble, Cavaco, Duka. Her last name was Keeble. Lynda will send me copies of everything she has.

Lynda is originally from South Dakota. She married Mr. Laux. He liked the Bachand name so much he calls himself Mr. Laux-Bachand. So her name, Lynda Laux Bachand, is her married name, Bachand being her maiden name. The Bachands were from Three Rivers in Canada. They homesteaded in South Dakota. They were associated with the Bismarck Trail. Many times in Bob Bacon’s research did he come across Three Rivers. Lynda has roots info she is sending along. They live on Governor’s Island in New York Harbor. Her commute is twenty minutes from Times Square. Are we related?

Then I called Chandler Hovey III (212-355-3674). He is from Boston originally – Phillips House, Mass General, Gloucester. His best friend was Billy Bacon (not related to us). Yes indeed he was married to Kezia, pronounced Keziah, the way Babci said it! She was a purposeful, determined, driven, nice girl. She was very special. She led the fashion world around 7th Avenue for 7-8 years. She was an assistant to Diana Vreeland. Hovey was her first husband. They were married for four years, no children.. Then she married Paul Cavaco, with whom she had a daughter named Kali.(Hovey’s second wife’s name was Alexandra.) Kezia was an editor for Glamour magazine, Vogue and Harper’s. Her best friend was also named Alexandra – they called her Ali: Ali McGraw!

After her death, there was a big article on Kezia in Vanity Fair (212-286-2860). I received a copy of it through the Marshfield library, via the Boston Public Library, which has every issue dating back to 1868. Truth/fiction thing again.

Postscript:
Letter dated January 8, 2001

Dear Mr. Bacon,

I finally found my tattered copy of the geneaology of the Bachand family. As you can see, a fellow in Massachusetts did the work, but I never received a follow-up and since he was older, I doubt if he’s still living. I’ve had this sheet for years (Elite typewriter, as you can see).

I’m sure there’s a family connection to yours – probably in that Canadian phase.

Also had a chart that shows my great grandfather, grandfather and dad (Ambrose, who died in ’99).

We’re probably cousins!

If I find out any more, I’ll keep you posted. You do same.

Happy 2001.

Lynda

In March 2001, Sandy and I decide to go to New York to meet Lynda. We are waiting on the very busy ground floor of the Conde Naste building, when Sandy says, "Here comes your cousin." I said, "How do you know?" We had never seen her before. Do we look alike? What do you think?



And here’s a letter I sent later that year to all of my cousins.

October 30, 2001

The Quest to Find Our French Great Grandfather (Charles Frank Bacon or Charles Francois Bachand).

While investigating our daughter Kezia’s first name, which Sandy saw in Glamour magazine in 1960, I was put in contact with a Reader Services representative at Conde Nast, which owns Glamour magazine and many others. Her name just happened to be Lynda Laux Bachand. Albert Bachand mailed his fact sheet to all the Bachands he could find. One of them was Lynda’s mom in South Dakota. After all those years, there was no envelope left. Just the name Albert Bachand, Massachusetts. Truth is certainly stranger than fiction.

I sent this information to my cousins just to inform them on my progress. I was at a dead end. Where in Massachusetts was Albert Bachand? Was he still alive? Was he still living in Massachusetts? My cousin Paula Bacon Gotzens wrote back, "What a small world it is, Albert Bachand is living at Sweet Brook Nursing Home in Williamstown, where I work as a nurse." He was suffering with Alzheimer's Disease but Paula said I could contact his daughter Nancy Bachand Roy, who lives in North Adams, Massachusetts.

Sandy and I took a drive to Nancy's and spent the afternoon pouring over tons of Bachand family history. Nancy had traveled with her father to Canada and France and acted as the interpreter because of her fluency in the French language. Do you know that huge very nice trailer park on the road to Williamstown with the two massive concrete lions in front of it? The Spruces. He owned it.

Albert Bachand had traveled to more than 160 countries in his lifetime and he was in fact the family historian who had contacted all the Bachands including Lynda Bachand's Mom in South Dakota years ago. But still there seemed to be no immediate connection to my Great Grandfather Charles Francois Bachand. The search continues.

Alexandre Bachand was our Great Great Grandfather. He married Angelique Casavant on November 7, 1837.
Their children were:
Pierre 1844
Marie Louise 1841
Philomene (I didn’t have her name or birth date)
Melelie 1845 (I had her; Nancy didn’t).

Interestingly enough, Nancy didn’t have Charles Francois Bachand, but I do, and all the evidence is adding up.

My mission will end when I find where and when CFB died. Started research in 1977 – finished ???)

Cousin Bob

ALBERT BACHAND'S OBITUARY

The Berkshire Eagle, Thursday, February 27, 2003

Albert Bachand, 88; owned The Spruces



WILLIAMSTOWN – Albert Bachand, 88, of 48 Champagne Ave., The Spruces, a longtime area businessman and founder of The Spruces Mobile Home Park, died yesterday at Sweet Brook, where he was admitted Nov. 12, 1998.

Mr. Bachand was a self-made millionaire, world traveler and inventor. During his lifetime, he claimed to have founded more than 30 businesses, from selling government surplus and producing concrete drainage pipes to making grandfathers’ clocks and designing and selling construction office trailers.

Best known for establishing The Spruces retirement community on the North Adams-Williamstown town line in 1954, he built several attractions there, including a windmill, lighthouse, recreation building, lion gates and the 102-foot long covered bridge. In the 1980s, he operated the “Whispering Fountains” in the lighthouse pond, which with 1,500 water jets, was one of the largest water displays of its type in the country.

He owned numerous properties, including the barn on Route 2 that became the former Country Peddlar store. He started World Travelogues Co., Dating Service of Prestige and the Courtesy Club of America, and became the first snowmobile dealer in the area.

“I started a business and quit to start a bigger one,” Bachand told The Eagle in 1980. He said his only failure was the Houghton School, which he purchased from the city of North Adams to sell to a private investor to fund a tourist tower near Witt’s Ledge in the city. But the school was eventually demolished, the tower never built.

Mr. Bachand left school at the age 14 to begin working in the former Hoosac Cotton Mills. A $50 loan started him on his first venture, a junk business, at age 21. He joined the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933 as a forester and worked on the Mount Greylock campground, and opened an Indian Cycle Shop in North Adams in the 1940s.

His enthusiasm to try new things covered a wide range. In 1942, he made a one-day canoe trip down the Hoosac River from North Adams to the Hudson River in New York. He took a 48-state tour on an Indian motorcycle in 1948 as a promotion for the former manufacturer, completing the trip in 45 days. He became interested in spelunking, and claimed to have explored every known cave within 50 miles and was cited in Clay Perry’s book “Underground New England.”

Mr. Bachand fulfilled his prediction to retire at age 50 in 1965 by “retiring” from active business. He sold The Spruces in 1968 and, over the next several years, toured more than 160 countries, making narrated slide travelogues that he later showed to area groups. He later donated more than 300 mementos from his trips to the North Adams Public Library.

Born in Adams on Feb. 8, 1915, son of Albert and Albina Cyr Bachand, he moved to North Adams as a child with his family and attended the former Notre Dame School. Mostly self-educated, he later attended 15 years of evening classes at Drury High School, taking courses in drafting and human relations and other subjects, and graduated from four Dale Carnegie courses, the Reppert School of Auctioneering, the Weber School of Hypnotism and the American Institute of Hypnosis. He was an avid reader.

He joined the Navy Seabees in 1943 as a petty officer, first class with a machinist’s mate rating. He was stationed in New Guinea and the Philippines, and took courses through the Armed Forces Institute in typing, psychology and business administration.

He established the Berkshire Motorcycle Club and originated the Phantom Tire Hunt, an annual event at the Fall Foliage Festival. He also made a narrated slide history of the city of North Adams for the festival.

In 1963, he took U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy to the top of Mount Greylock so he and his guide could ski down the Thunderbolt Trail. He followed them on his snowmobile in case of problems. He promoted snowmobile racing up Mount Greylock in the early 1960s, and later advocated for a tramway and skyline trail along the Hoosac Mountain range.

He enjoyed genealogy, tracing his family back to the 1600s in France and was a well-known contributor to the “Letters to the Editor” section of The North Adams Transcript.

Mr. Bachand belonged to numerous organizations, including the North Adams Kiwanis Club, Mohawk Trail Association, Williamstown Board of Trade, North Adams Chamber of Commerce, and the Steering Committee of the New England Mobile Home Association. He was appointed to two terms as a Massachusetts Mobile Home Commissioner by former Gov. John Volpe and was a 45-year veteran member of the Williamstown Grange. He spent a short time as a volunteer officer with the Williamstown Police Department and was a member of the American Legion, VFW, Founders Club of Assumption College and several travel clubs.

His first wife, the former Beatrice Champagne, died in the early 1940s.

He leaves four daughters from his marriage to Teresa Champagne Bachand Roberts of North Adams: Nancy Roy and Alice Vigna, both of North Adams, Celeste Daniels of Heath and Annette Dudley of Succasunna, N.J.; nine grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

FUNERAL NOTICE – The funeral for Albert Bachand will be Saturday, March 1, at 10 at AUGE-SAN SOUCIE-SIMMONS FUNERAL HOME, 46 North Church St., North Adams. A Liturgy of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 11 in Our Lady of Mercy Church, North Adams. Burial will follow in Southview Cemetery, North Adams. Calling hours at the funeral home will be Friday from 5 to 8. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations in his memory be made to the activities program at Sweet Brook Care Center through the funeral home. Two brothers, Alcide and Noel Bachand, and three sisters, Edna Charron, Delina Hickey and Lorianna Richards, predeceased him. He leaves nine grandchildren, Stephen Roy and Laurie Palmer of North Adams, Matthew Vigna of Brattleboro, Vt., Gregory Vigna of Williamstown, Sarah Alves of Adams, Jacob and Jonathon Daniels of Heath and Benjamin and Julie Dudley of Succasunna; four great-grandchildren, Toby and Timothy Alves of Adams, and Olivia and Isaac Palmer of North Adams.