Peaslee School students raise money for fire victims
By Ken Powers Community Reporter

Emily Lowe holds up some of the posters Peaslee students made in memory of the stores that burned in the fire of March 25. PHOTO/KEN POWERS

Northborough - In the days following the devastating fire that destroyed O'Brien's Five and Ten, Brown's TV & Appliance, Northborough Desi Supermarket, Garabedian Jewelers and Queen Bead & Gifts, it was with mixed emotions that Emily Lowe accompanied her mother to the family store, Lowe's Variety & Meat Shop, located in the same shopping plaza.

"I used to go in O'Brien's every day, so when we'd go to my dad's store after school it would make me sad to look over and not see it there," Emily said. "I liked visiting [co-owners] Bruce [Terry] and Sue [Wilson], seeing what Webkinz they had, having some candy, playing with the bouncy balls."

One day after school Emily asked her father if it would be okay if she made a poster of O'Brien's to hang in his store window with a jar below it for donations to the Northborough Plaza Fire Fund.

Tom Lowe told his daughter that would be fine, but he suggested she see if her Peaslee School classmates, as well as other students at the school, would like to do the same thing.

"I called the principal at Peaslee, Don Holm, and told him any kids or classes that wanted to make posters about the fire and the stores aff ected by the fire, I would hang them in my store windows," Tom said. "I also talked to all the other store owners in the shopping center, and they all said they were happy to put the posters in their windows, too."

Holm was thrilled by the offer.

"It was such a fantastic idea," Holm said. "When Tom suggested it to me I immediately thought, 'What a great way for the kids to commemorate the experience of shopping in those stores, especially O'Brien's.' I don't know if there's a kid that's grown up in North- borough that hasn't spend a good portion of his or her youth in that store."

Peaslee School is kind of a family affair for the Lowes. Emily is in the fifth grade there while Hailey, the youngest of the Lowe children, is a first-grader at the school. In addition, Kathy Lowe, Emily and Hailey's mother and Tom's wife, works as a paraprofessional at the school.

The idea has been a huge success at Peaslee. There are already a handful of posters hanging at Lowe's and another big stack of posters were in Holm's office waiting to be taken to the shopping center to be hung up.

Kathy, who grew up in Northborough and visited O'Brien's during her youth, said she has realized several times since the fire in the early morning hours of March 25, how often she shopped at O'Brien's and the variety of items she picked up there.

"The other day I needed a button and I didn't know where to go," she said. "O'Brien's is the only store I've ever bought buttons in in my life. It still is. What I need the button for I decided to use a safety pin instead."

Kathy also recalled that O'Brien's was her destination after taking her daughter Hailey, who has type 1 diabetes, to the doctor.

"The deal was, after the doctor visit she'd get to go to O'Brien's and pick out a prize," Kathy said. "Bruce and Sue would see us coming and meet us at the door and ask Hailey how the doctor visit was and how she was feeling, and more often than not, once she picked out her prize, they'd just let her have it."

Through the years, three generations of children made O'Brien's their personal Treasure Island, and the good news is more generations will get to in the future. Tom said the Maney family, which owns the shopping center buildings, has decided to rebuild.