In celebration of Joseph Coolidge Wheeler, The Concord Free Public Library will host a screening of "The Making of Joe Wheeler: A Concord Story" at 2 pm on June 2, 2024. 

This one-hour film was produced and directed by Concord resident Susan Orleans Rieder.

The event will include an exhibition of selections from the Joseph Wheeler Collection, including manuscripts, photographs, and published material from Special Collections. Several Wheeler family members will also be present.

Joe was born in 1926 on Thoreau Farm in Concord, Massachusetts, to Caleb Henry and Ruth Robinson Wheeler (the former a farmer, the latter a local historian and journalist). Joe descended from George Wheeler, an early settler of Concord. He was educated at Bowdoin College (BA 1948), the International Institute in Geneva, and Harvard’s Littauer School (MA/MPA 1951). He served briefly in the Army Air Corps, training as a photo lab technician. Joe spent his working life away from his hometown in international development and humanitarian aid, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Peace Corps, and the United Nations Environment Program. He returned to Concord in 1992, actively engaged in the town's civic life. As a member of the Board of Directors of the Thoreau Society, he was a significant force behind preserving Henry David Thoreau's birthplace on Virginia Road through the formation of the Thoreau Farm Trust, which he served as president. He served on the Concord Historical Commission and led the town's passage of the  Community Preservation Act. Thanks to his efforts, the William Munroe Special Collections holds extensive collections of Wheeler family papers, including the Ruth R. Wheeler Papers, Ruth Robinson (Wheeler) College Papers, the Caleb Kendall Wheeler Papers, and the extensive Joseph Coolidge Wheeler Papers, processed by former curator Leslie Perrin Wilson. These document Joe's life in Concord and his working life, including his extensive travels and residences abroad. You can access a 1995 and a 2008 oral history with Joe on the Library's website. The Library of Congress interviewed Joe as part of their Frontline Diplomacy: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training in 1998.

Relatives and friends are invited to a Joseph Wheeler Celebration of Life Service and Reception on Saturday, June 1, at 10 am at the First Parish in Concord, 20 Lexington Road.