The buzzer sounded, unlocking the door at American Legion Post 49 in Northfield.
In more ways than one.
Inside was a smoky bar and tables, beer flowing, conversations blending together. And inside were stories and thoughts about Wes Nicholson, told by Legion members eager to pay tribute to their friend. They pushed through double doors, one by one, leading to a spacious meeting area, where Nicholson had cooked omelets on Mother’s Day and turkeys on Thanksgiving.
“He was one of the most generous people with his time,” said Jacki Newton, the wife of Post 49 Commander Joe Newton. “For any event he was here cooking. Wes did everything for us. He was a godsend, a great man.”
The great man is gone. Nicholson drowned in the Winnipesaukee River, found near the Clement Dam power station in Tilton by a staff member on Jan. 11.
Tilton police confirmed the cause of death, with investigating detective Nate Buffington telling me, “This one was a tragic accident. We did just a background investigation on when was the last time anyone saw him. We think it was an accidental death, but I don’t expect there will be anything more than that.”
Meanwhile, this loss crushed the Legion community, raising questions about the circumstances leading up to Wes’s death. No one knows for sure how Nicholson ended up in the icy river that cuts through Franklin, Tilton and Northfield.
They know he was diagnosed with lung cancer a few years ago, his friends told me. He’d spoken in a gravelly voice ever since and gotten rides from friends to a Veterans Affairs hospital in Massachusetts for treatment.
And he was twice divorced, with no children. Still, he had Post 49 for a home-base of love, and his emotional state seemed fine, his friends told me, while conceding that the status of his illness was more or less a mystery to them.
“He was quite private,” said Dave Nicholson of Effingham, Wes’s nephew who, along with Dave’s daughter, Monica, is Wes’s only living relative.
Dave Nicholson saw his uncle as a good friend, but acknowledged that Wes had been growing a little more reclusive lately, at least toward him. Wes declined an offer to have Christmas dinner at Dave’s in December.
“He got more distant, so I assumed something was wrong,” Dave said. “I thought maybe the cancer was back. I told him he could stay here if something came up, but Wes was the kind of person who did things his way. He did not want to burden anyone.”
The sense of loss now holds the Post 49 community in an icy grip, and moving into the Post 49’s back room to sit and talk with me seemed therapeutic for members.
The reception I received and events that occurred set the tone, from a power failure leaving us in the dark before I could finish my very first question, to the insurance agent popping in, seeking to confirm that Wes had been a member and requesting a death certificate so a $2,000 payout could be made to his estate.
From there, I learned that Wes graduated from Kingswood Regional High School, then served in the Navy, on a submarine. He was an electrician. He attended culinary school and cooked at the Tilton School. He loved reading about war history. He spoke his mind and, if pushed hard enough, could be grouchy.
And Post 49 meant everything to him. He was a member of the drill team, standing guard over a casket after the death of someone who had served. He was chairman of the Post 49 trustees for seven years.
“He would do anything for local organizations,” Joe Newton, the commander, said.
Joe and Jacki Newton remembered all those morning visits to the hall, sometimes as early as 3:30 a.m., to cook for the hunters, bacon and fried potatoes and eggs and something called SOS, or s— on a shingle.
In fact, food wasn’t the only thing Wes fed Post 49. He fed it with energy and loyalty and a sense of purpose.
“Wes loved it,” Joe Newton said. “As chair of the trustees, he was here every day dealing with the operation of the building. He had to check supplies, order materials, make phone calls, make sure contracts were filled out.”
Wes taught Joe Dow how to cook in Wes’s apartment on Main Street, in a building with two apartments sandwiched between a tattoo place and a natural foods store. “He trained me,” Dow said.
Roy Cilley, a longtime Post 49 member, said Wes “always stepped up.”
And this from Toby Locke, also a member of the Post 49 trustees: “People won’t realize how much he meant until now. He wasn’t able to speak well (from the cancer), but he still soldiered on.”
Near the end, Wes texted Joe Newton, asking him for a ride to the Veterans Affairs hospital, presumably to check on his lung cancer. Then Wes texted Newton again, saying he no longer needed that ride.
Instead, he told Newton to look for a box at the Legion hall the next morning. Newton found the box, which included a letter of resignation, plus Wes’s Legion hall keys and his Legion credit card.
It could have been seen as an example of Wes pulling away, into his own head, but Dow told me, “He seemed fine. There was no sign of him being depressed.”
After his death, Dave Nicholson and his daughter, Monica, cleaned out Wes’s apartment, the one with the old blue door that faced Main Street, with its endless stream of cars driven by people lost in thought.
They saw Wes’s American Legion uniform, crisp, neatly pressed, hanging from the closet door. They saw his boots. They found numerous pill bottles, which made them believe he might have been in pain.
Monica found some notebooks, journals no one knew Wes had been writing. They revealed a man who always displayed a hard outer shell, with another side to him buried deep, out of sight.
“I went through those books with my daughter,” Dave said. “She said, ‘Dad, he was so sad.’ One by one they were crying at the Legion hall like they were family, and he thought he had no one.”
And he was very wrong.