On Longfellow Road, a quiet dead-end street just off Mount Auburn Street, one 85-year-old woman has lived in the same West Cambridge house her whole life.
Jocelyn Giunta left that house for one year, actually, when her husband, John – they met in the Russell elementary school, which closed in 1972 – serving in the Navy. She stayed to raise her own family.
When Barbara Elfman moved to Longfellow Road in 2013, into the house across the street from Giunta’s, she quickly became the happy recipient of some of Giunta’s myriad stories about “old Cambridge.”
“I often go and have iced tea with her, and she will tell me these marvelous stories about all the people who have come and gone on the street, about growing up here, about swimming in the Charles,” Elfman said.
A couple years back, Giunta told Elfman about a beloved dog named Andrew H. Brown who became something of a local celebrity, and Elfman turned it into a picture book published in December.
“I thought it was such a unique story, and also a bit of a treasure for Cambridge, because Andrew H. Brown was truly a dog known in the city of Cambridge,” Elfman said. “She told me she used to walk down the street and more people would stop to talk to him than to her or her sister.”
“Andrew H. Brown: Favorite Citizen” tells the true story of sisters Jocelyn and Susie, who discovered a dog at Mount Auburn Street and Longfellow Road. When no one came to claim him, their mother let them keep him, and they named him Andrew H. Brown after the “Andy Panda” cartoon that was popular at the time.
This was no regular dog. He rode the school bus, walked a neighbor to Buckingham, Browne & Nichols daily and frequented the Victory Diner in North Cambridge, a couple miles away.
“It’s all totally true. He truly did ride the school bus, he truly did walk Nickie to school and he truly did go to the diner,” Elfman said. “He was a Cambridge citizen in his own right.”
The book, available for purchase at the Harvard Book Store, Magpie Kids and Trident Booksellers and online, was illustrated by Sandy Hall of South Dartmouth, whom Elfman met on a studio tour on the South Coast. The pictures in the book are original watercolors.
Elfman’s goal is to spread Andrew H. Brown’s gentleness and kindness by sharing his story.
“I think he displayed an emotional depth beyond the love a dog gives,” Elfman said.
A stronger
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