Marking its 50th anniversary, the Chester Historical Society kicked off its opening program on Nov. 17, “Fifty Years of Chester Graphics by Cummings & Good.”

A retrospective tour de force, the slideshow by nationally recognized artists and long-time Chester residents Janet Cummings and Peter Good, offered five decades of brilliant, whimsical, and distinctive graphic designs that uniquely document Chester’s history and its spirited cultural, social, civic, and temporal life.

Seeing the Goods’ images—on posters, flyers, logos, cover art, calendars, and historical exhibits—one realizes how indelibly these designs are imprinted on our hearts and have permeated our subconscious. Their designs have been everywhere, daily surrounding us for half a century—as ubiquitous and all-encompassing as the universe’s background radiation.

With a generosity of spirit and immense talent, the Goods have always provided their designs gratis to the town’s anchor organizations—the Meeting House Players, National Theatre of the Deaf, Rotary, land trust, library, town government, the historical society. It was stunning to realize how so much of their work provided key marker posts for our shared local history.

Through their successful designs, we have been inspired to experience great theater, raise money for good causes, volunteer for boards and commissions, educate ourselves, save open space for conservation, celebrate, and make our town the wonderful place it is to live.

We at the Chester Historical Society salute Jan and Peter Good as an intrinsic part of Chester. We cannot imagine the town without them. As writer MFK Fisher fittingly said: “Wine and cheese are ageless companions, like aspirin and aches, or June and the moon, or good people and noble ventures, they go together.” Fortunately for us, the Goods go together with our town, and we have all been the better for it.

Marta Daniels, Trustee

Chester Historical Society