Annual Meeting
The Friends’ Annual Meeting occurs in the fall and includes an invited speaker. The public is welcome to attend and enjoy the speaker’s presentation, which takes place after a brief business meeting.
THIS YEAR’S EVENT
The 2025 Annual Meeting will take place on Saturday, November 15 at First Parish Church United. The speaker will be Massachusetts native and well-known journalist and author Ted Reinstein.
The business portion of the afternoon will begin at 2:00 pm, and Ted will speak at 2:30. The public is invited to attend and enjoy the speaker; only members and donors can vote.
The slate of officers will be available for review in advance of the meeting.
Ted will discuss his latest book, Travels Through the Heart and Soul of New England. After the presentation, Ted will take questions from the audience and sign copies of his book. (A limited number of books will be available for purchase at the event.)
About Ted
Since 1995, Ted Reinstein has been a reporter for Boston/WCVB’s celebrated “Chronicle,” the nation’s longest-running, locally-produced nightly newsmagazine. He has been a contributing member of the WCVB editorial board since 2010.
Elsewhere on television, Ted has hosted specials for the Discovery Channel and HGTV. For the Travel Channel's photo/adventure series, “FreezeFrame,” he explored Hawaii's volcanoes, the caves of Puerto Rico, and the South Pacific islands of Tahiti.
In 2002, he was part of a Chronicle team that received a prestigious National DuPont-Columbia Broadcast Journalism Award for Chronicle’s coverage of Boston’s Big Dig project. In 2018, he received an Emmy Award for his story on the “Good Night Lights” phenomenon in Providence, Rhode Island.
His first book, New England Notebook: One Reporter, Six States, Uncommon Stories, was selected by National Geographic Traveler as one of its “Best Picks.” He’s also the author of Wicked Pissed: New England’s Most Famous Feuds, Before Brooklyn: The Unsung Heroes Who Helped Break Baseball’s Color Barrier, and co-author, with his wife, Anne-Marie, of New England’s General Stores: Exploring an American Classic.
His newest book, Travels Through the Heart and Soul of New England was released in July 2024 by Globe Pequot Press.
Ted is a native of Winthrop, Massachusetts, and lives with his family just west of Boston.
PAST SPEAKERS
The Friends have hosted authors on a variety of fiction and non-fiction topics over the years.
2024: Dan Souza (America’s Test Kitchen 25: 500 Recipes That Changed the Way America Cooks) [Read Bog Post or View Photos]
2023: Marcella Pixley (Trowbridge Road) [Read Blog Post]
2022: (Speaker unable to attend)
2021: E. Dolores Johnson (Say I’m Dead: A Family Memoir of Race, Secrets and Love) (Held virtually on Zoom)
2020: Stephen Puleo (Voyage of Mercy: The USS Jamestown, the Irish Famine, and the Remarkable Story of America’s First Humanitarian Mission) (Held virtually on Zoom)
2019: Marianne Leone (Ma Speaks Up)
2018: Kate Clifford Larson (Rosemary)
2017: Brunonia Barry (The Fifth Petal)
2016: Joe Bagley (A History of Boston in 50 Artifacts)
2015: Lylah Alphonse (news collection & reporting in the digital age)
2014: Hank Phillippi Ryan (Truth Be Told)
2013: Bridget Lancaster (The Science of Good Cooking)
2012: Andre Dubus III (Townie)
2011: Charlie Pierce (Idiot America)
2010: Elinor Lipman (The Family Man)
2009: Matthew Pearl (The Last Dickens)
2008: Elizabeth Royte (Bottlemania)
2007: Eric Jay Dolin (Leviathan)
2006: Jim McAllister (of Derby Square Tours, on Salem witch trials)
