Holdernes, NH

In the summer of 1980, late Holderness, N.H., real estate agent Billy Mead tried to sell Katherine Hepburn a summer residence on Squam Lake, where she was filming On Golden Pond. The enterprising salesman took Hepburn to see the home of his friend, Frank Webster.

When Mead and Hepburn entered, Webster offered a welcoming hand. “May I call you Frank?” Hepburn asked. “Sure,” Webster said, “if I can call you Katie.” Sensing “Katie’s” sporting nature, he invited her to a game of pool, which she accepted, to pursue their discussion of life on the lake.

Hepburn never bought property on Squam. But her meeting with Webster illustrates the hospitality she and the Fondas (Henry and Jane) found in Holderness.

“We’re not bowled over by wealth and fame here,“ says Peter Francesco, a longtime real estate agent in the area. “We’re Yankees, after all … and what we say is, ‘You treat us right, and we’ll treat you right.’”

That rule was observed 21 years ago when Hollywood moved in for 10 weeks to do its thing. “Everyone was forbearing and mutually respectful, although you could tell Holderness folk wouldn’t be changed much by the experience of having movie stars in their midst,” Francesco says.

Some weren’t sure they wanted the cast and crew of a Hollywood production in town for the summer, says Selectwoman Susan Webster (Frank’s daughter). “But it didn’t mean the town was unfriendly. They just wanted to maintain something they’d had for more than 250 years—anonymity. They want the work-a-day, small town life where people know each other, yet mind their own business. They don’t have anything to prove or put on display for the world.”

Its current population at 1,735, Holderness was chartered in 1751. By the 1850s, students were coming to observe geological formations in the region’s lakes and mountains, spreading the word about the area’s beauty. It wasn’t long before the town began attracting tourists and summer people. The 7,000-acre Squam Lake is the main draw—and was long before the Academy Award-winning On Golden Pond caused visitors to come experience it for themselves.

“Just keep it the way it is, the way it’s always been,” says Lyle Thompson, 80. “Doris and I are here because of the friendship, because if you’re in trouble, people will help out. And if you’re not, why, we all leave each other in peace, that’s all.”

Thompson is the town’s retired road agent. To honor his four decades of service, the town commissioned an oil portrait of him, now hanging in the town hall. Typical of his hard-working spirit, Lyle has “retired” only in a technical sense. Now he devotes his time to raising Haflinger ponies from Austria—the first enterprise of its kind in New Hampshire.

His wife, Doris, 78, has been busy, too. Having raised five children, she’s now grandmother to 13. “I can’t see any change to speak of as a result of the movie,” she says.

On Golden Pond was not completely without its impact, though, and several businesses in town changed their names after the movie became such a hit, Webster says. Now, Holderness has an Inn at Golden Pond and the Golden Pond Country Store and attracts more summer residents than it did 20 years ago. But the quiet peacefulness along the shores of Squam Lake, together with the independence of spirit that has always marked Holderness, has changed very little.

Jack of all trades Jeffrey Cripps may typify the Holderness ideal of the independent Yankee. With relish, he tells of a fellow townsman who worked for a man who came into town every summer and hired him to do labor around his place. But one year, when the man called ahead and asked that the Holderness native be there to carry his boss’ luggage, the normally reliable native failed to show up. The boss called his home, but the townsman never appeared—until after the job was done.

“Where were you?” the boss asked. “I’ve been calling and calling.’”

Whereupon the good-natured townsman answered, “Well, it just goes to show … a good man is hard to find.”

Bradwell Scott, himself a New Hampshire Yankee, is a frequent contributor to American Profile.

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