If you lived in central Massachusetts and wanted to freshen up your home or office with a clean, colorful coat of paint, there’s a good chance that you called the Carl G Bottcher & Sons painting company.
If a church needed to spruce up its rectory or a pharmaceutical lab needed to make those gray walls grayer, Carl G Bottcher & Sons would often get the bid call.
If a color or stain needed to be perfectly matched, Carl G Bottcher & Sons had the expertise and eye to do it, before the age of computer generated color matching.
The Carl G Bottcher & Sons painting company was renowned throughout central New England for painting the interiors and exteriors of fine homes, offices and churches. It was a union shop started by my immigrant grandfather in the early 20th century.
From Grandfather, to father and uncle, to brother, the Carl G Bottcher painting name survived and flourished, adding color and beauty to neighborhoods around the Worcester area for more than a hundred years.
My last surviving brother, Carl, recently passed. He was approaching 89 and was a proud successful 3rd generation painter using the same surname, Bottcher, a name that had been well known and respected in the local painting scene.
At various times, all four of my sibling brothers and I worked for the painting company. Upon learning the trade, Carl ventured off to begin his own company, propagating the painting Bottcher name into the 21sf Century.
Other Bottchers, including brothers, uncles, cousins and nephews, dabbled in the painting trade, as well, in Massachusetts and on the west coast, Oregon, but the Carl G Bottcher name was the progenitor of all to follow.
With my brother Carl’s passing, the name may have ended its run. However, when the Northeast fall season blesses us with its full palette of colors, I like to think the painting Bottchers in Heaven were enlisted for advice. And when the ‘pearly gates’ open to greet you, you might just see a few angels in painters overalls. Carl would be the newest with the cleanest pair.
R.I.P., brother…
Steve (022223)
S'amusing 