It was his devotion to the little things about Salem that made Nelson Dionne Jr. stand out among his friends and peers.
Take Tom Dalton, a former reporter both at The Daily Item and the Salem News. He once went to Dionne’s house for a story about an old Salem restaurant. Not only did Dionne remember the restaurant, “he walked over to a file cabinet and pulled out its menu. That was Nelson. He had everything.”
Dionne died Sunday, Jan. 23, at the age of 74, after having held off Parkinson’s Disease and cancer for as long as he possibly could, said his wife, Bonnie Hurd Smith.
“His doctors used to call him a medical miracle,” she said. “Parkinson’s, cancer, knee replacements, eye surgery … there were so many things he was treated for. He’d always say ‘we have to get through this. I work too.’ He was incredible.”
Dionne, a retired Salem police officer, may have lived in Peabody but he was Salem through and through, say those who knew him best.
“He had a way to get into the real ephemera about Salem, not just in its history but in what was going on now,” said John Andrews, founder of the Creative Collective.
“His view was that everything that happens in the city matters,” Andrews said. “His passion for telling the story of what Salem is, and where it’s going, was so inspiring and hopeful. Plus, he always had a quick quip or a story about a building, location, a park, or some building where I was doing an event. It was great to have access to such history.”
Dionne’s love of local history was first sparked in a Salem High civics class.
“What started as a postcard hobby grew over 60 years into a massive collection about Salem’s industrial century to the present,” his wife wrote in his obituary. “He generously provided these items plus his significant store of information to reporters, students, authors, and Salem organizations. He was frequently seen around Salem picking up present-day paper items (“Save today for tomorrow!” was one of his favorite expressions).”
He was especially generous to Salem State University, to which he donated his massive archive.
“He came in 2012, before the new library opened, and we discussed his collection,” said Susan Edwards, Salem State’s archivist. “It sounded like a great addition. So he handed it over when we opened our new library, and it became the first starting point for Salem history.
“It’s an extensive collection,” she said. “It’s amazing what you can find. We’ve used it for classes for high school students (and) college students; faculty members have used it for books. When he handed it over in 2013, he’d keep coming in with new things. It kept growing.”
And, said Edwards, he was relentless in buying things on eBay.
“It seems like no matter how he felt physically, he’d get on that computer and buy things,” she said. “It was a little like Christmas when he’d come in to see us.”
Unlike what one might think, Dionne’s focus was not on the witches. Nor was it on the waterfront.
“His focus is on the industrial century, after the Civil War. Everything that happened in the 1880s, 90s, early 20th century,” she said. “Also, he was really big into collecting things that were going on now. ‘Saving today for tomorrow,’ he called it.”
He and his wife did a book series on Salem history together.
He and I started a book series together a few years ago,” Hurd Smith said. “He provided the information, the material, and ideas, I did the writing, design and publishing. We had a long list of books we wanted to do.”
He may not have gotten to everything he wanted to do, but Dionne kept active right up until the end, she said.
“It was only the last couple of weeks where I couldn’t get him into the car,” she said. “He just had an incredible spirit, and he had a dry sense of humor that was unfailing right up to the end.”
“Nelson,” said Dalton, “was our own little Smithsonian.”
