Fall River Rising
for the sons and daughters of mill towns who carried the dream forward
We were raised among steeples and smokestacks,
between the salt of the bay
and the whisper of looms long fallen silent.
We were French Canadian, Portuguese, Polish,
Italian, Jewish—
white in name,
but each with our own story,
our own music of vowels and prayer.
We belonged to neighborhoods
stitched from lace and labor,
where last names told you
what parish you came from,
what holy day you kept.
The schools we entered
were not palaces,
but they were cathedrals of hope.
Built by hands that scrubbed, lifted, stitched,
who gave us their trust
and the little they had.
They believed learning was light,
and they lit it in us.
We studied trades and theories,
wires and words,
not out of brilliance
but out of belief—
the belief that knowledge
was a door,
and someone before us
had turned the key.
We rose, not alone,
but side by side—
in classrooms,
in shop floors,
at kitchen tables late into the night.
Some of us went to college,
some into the skilled world,
some stayed,
some flew.
But all of us carried something—
a dream shaped not in silence
but in the murmur of elders
who taught us that effort was sacred,
and that dignity
could be earned in pencil strokes,
in soldered joints,
in showing up every day
and choosing not to quit.
So let it be remembered:
Fall River taught us how to rise—
not by lifting ourselves above one another,
but by lifting together.
Would you like a version of this adapted for public reading—perhaps for a school reunion, community gathering, or local heritage event? I’d be honored to shape it further to match the occasion.