Lawrence, Mass. - A City's Better Days - NYTimes.com "After Seeing a Dismal Reflection of Itself, a City Moves to Change" (news article, May 30) captures the 21st-century flavor of Lawrence, Mass. But there is so much more that the city of Lawrence could be. From the 1950s through the 1970s, my father, Rocco Schiavone, designed shoes there. On Saturday mornings, he would take me and my brothers to a French pastry shop for scones, then to his office. We would charge up three flights and enter the production floor, rich in the aroma of leather, fabrics and machine grease. Later, this would be a frequent weekday stop on our way home from high school. As we drove home, down Essex Street at sunset, the windows of fine clothing shops would broadcast the best of the area's textile offerings. The Duck Bridge over the Merrimack River offered a cinematic-quality vantage point for miles of factory lights and belching smoke stacks. There were no McMansions, but there was broad prosperity, great hope and generations of upwardly mobile, accomplished citizens. The writer is a journalist at National Public Radio.