Vandalism often sounded like kid stuff — tipping over trash cans, waxing windows, letting air out of tires. That was how John Riley and Paula Balerna of Norwood always thought about it, until Saturday.
On Saturday, vandals threw a lighted torch into a mailbox in front of the Norwood Post Office on Central Street. Today, John and Paula were on the phone attempting to invite nearly 125 Norwood residents to their wedding. The mailbox fire burned all but four of the Norwood invitations to their April 23 wedding at St. Catherine of Siena Church.
John and Paula had been going together for 10 years, having gone steady since they were students at Norwood High School. At that time, he was 16 and she was 15. Now he was a salesman at Norwood Dodge, and she was an office manager at Acoustical Contractors in Canton. After John proposed, they set the date, obtained the license, and went through the routine most engaged couples experienced.
Over the weekend, they addressed 225 invitations. On Saturday night, they brought them to the mailboxes in front of the Post Office on Central Street. Since they both grew up in Norwood and had many friends there, about 150 of those invitations were placed in the box reading “Norwood mail.” The rest were put into the box reading “Outside Norwood.”
But Saturday night was a chaotic one in town. Teenagers ran through the streets vandalizing pay telephones, tipping over trash cans, and damaging property. When someone threw a torch into the mailbox marked “Norwood only,” John and Paula’s invitations went up in smoke.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do now,” John said Monday night. “Paula doesn’t even know it yet. And I’m afraid to tell her.”
As John began his calls, Frank Kilduff, Norwood postmaster, said he and his workers had done everything they could. “A motorist saw flames coming from the mailbox and called police,” he said. “We lost almost all of the Norwood mail. The few invitations we found, we gave back to Riley.”
“The police said the kids in the area were up to mischief Saturday night. We’ve done everything we can. I guess the couple will just have to do the invitations by phone.”
John said the invitations were printed at Don Bosco High School in Boston. “I called the priest and he said the plates had been destroyed. Making new plates will take a few weeks,” John said. “And that won’t give us time to address them and get them in the mail before the wedding.”
“All I can do is get the list and call everyone on the phone,” he said.
Source: Boston Globe, March 28, 1977