Tom Largy: A Half-Century of Casting Lines and Serving the Public in Wayland
by Brian E. Moore
I was strolling along Pelham Island Road recently enjoying the view of Heard Pond when I came across a familiar sight: Tom Largy fishing. As I approached him, I asked Largy if he was getting any bites. With a broad smile, he answered “not today, but there’s a spot down the road that looks promising.” Anyone who has spent any time in Wayland is familiar with this 84-year-old optimist. If not fishing at Heard Pond, you may have seen him ringing a Salvation Army bell outside of Stop & Shop. Or perhaps you have seen him attending a lecture on King Philip’s War with his wife at the Wayland Public Library. Tom is ubiquitous in Wayland, and his outlook on the town and its history is invaluable. I sat down with Tom over coffee at The Bagel Table recently to discuss his life in Wayland. What follows are some highlights from our wide-ranging conversation.
Although it’s hard to imagine, you had a whole life before coming to Wayland. Tell me about your background.
I was born in New Hampshire and grew up in the state of Washington. I was in the army in Georgia and then came up to New York City to make my fortune in the publishing business, since I had been an English major in college. I was poor in New York City, but I did have the good fortune of meeting my wife Tonya in 1966. At that time, computers were in their infancy. I saw those advertisements for computer programmers offering high salaries; so I went to work for IBM in Poughkeepsie, New York. Almost immediately, I got involved in a huge airline reservation systems project that swept the world. In 1968, we came up to the Boston area to install the system for Northeast Airlines, which doesn’t exist anymore. Then we went to Rome, Italy for a year where I worked on a project for Alitalia Airlines. We ultimately moved to Wayland in 1971.
What was your impression of Wayland when you first moved here?
We were part of the new wave of Wayland residents. Up until the 1950’s, Wayland was a farming community. By the time we moved here, there were about 4,000 households in town; and I think most of those households were not there 20 years before. I was struck by the Yankee values of service to the community. Wayland has a long history of public-spirited citizens.
What’s your connection to the Wayland Historical Society?
Soon after I moved to town, I got tapped to be the vice president of the Wayland Historical Society. I seem to remember that we didn’t have that much money in our budget. We’d have meetings in the Heard House in a cold, dimly-lit room–I may be exaggerating–worrying about heating oil for the winter. At the time, the Society was predominantly composed of older ladies. I soon figured out that the reason I was named vice president was that the ladies wanted a young guy around who could help out with manual labor. For example, there was a distinguished banker named George Emery, who was the husband of the esteemed local historian Helen Emery. George and I spent a couple of days in the attic of the Grout-Heard House putting in insulation! I read recently that all that insulation was removed as part of a renovation. Oh well!
What’s your opinion of Wayland now as compared to when you moved here?
There are a few things that are different. For example, we don’t have a town newspaper anymore.The Wayland Town Crier in the early years had a cadre of distinguished writers who wrote excellent essays. Today, the Middlesex News is so thin with content that I barely want to subscribe to it. But other things have remained the same. For instance, we still have loads of open space and conservation areas. The fishing here has always been good.
What is fishing like in Wayland?
Wayland is a super place because we have water here. It a great place for a fisherman. In 1975, I bought a ten-foot aluminum flat-bottomed boat at Sears Roebuck for $68. Since then it has been launched innumerable time on all the waters of Wayland–Heard Pond, Dudley Pone, Lake Cochituate, Mill Pond, and the Sudbury River. I still use that boat, and the fishing is as good now as it was back in 1975! I fly fish the Sudbury River, accessing it from Route 20 or Route 27. The Sudbury River is a sensational river for bass fishing. Heard Pond and Dudley Pond are also excellent fishing grounds.
In addition to fishing here, you have been involved in maintaining the waters in Wayland. Tell me about your efforts in this regard.
About 25 years ago, I was asked to be on the Wayland Surface Water Quality Committee. The committee was formed to manage milfoil, a pernicious invasive water-plant species, that was overwhelming Dudley Pond. Our committee spent a lot of time trying to figure out a way to control the milfoil without herbicide, but we just couldn’t do it. So now we have contractors apply herbicide treatment on Dudley Pond every few years to control the milfoil. Another pernicious invasive plant, the water chestnut, is a problem in Heard Pond. In the 1970’s, Heard Pond was free of this species. By the year 2000, Heard Pond was almost a 100% monoculture of water chestnut. Dealing with that has been my project for the past 20 years. It’s much harder than you think. When we started the project, we had these mechanical harvesters, giant aquatic lawn mowers, out on Heard Pond for about eight years and we harvested millions of plants. The science said that after seven years, if you faithfully harvested it, the so-called “seed bank” would be gone and no more water chestnuts would come back. But then the science changed: the scientists said you have to harvest for 10 years, then they said 15 years, then even 20 years in the literature. By 2009, we stopped using the mechanical harvester and contracted a hand-pulling team to pull the plants out. So around 2015 only a few hundred plants appeared. I was very hopeful. Then, in 2016, there were 52,000 plants. The pulling crews were overwhelmed. The seed bank, despite our efforts, still had tens of thousands of viable seeds, laying in the sediment for many years. That was a catastrophe from my point of view. But we continued to harvest the plants every year. By 2017, the population gradually went down. In 2022, there were 700 plants. But then in 2023, there were 32,000 plants! So, I just gave up. In the future, we’re going to use herbicide when an overwhelming number of plants occur in one particular hotspot on the south end of Heard Pond.
Thanks very much for your time, Tom. Do you have any advice to leave us with?
In 2011, I took a fishing trip to Chile. [Tom pulled out a picture of himself on the trip.] This is me on horseback in the Andes mountains in Patagonia crossing a river at 71 years old! So my advice to people is to keep on doing things, keep on moving regardless of your age!