4th Finglish trip September 2006 #8
Seppo J. Pakkala came to Brockton, Massachusetts at the age of 12 in 1957 with his parents Pentti and Aino Pakkala from Jyväskylä in central Finland. His father first worked as a carpenter in the Brockton area.
In 1969, the family bought the Finland Steam Baths on Copeland Street in Quincy from another Finnish family. This sauna had already been founded in the 1920s. Seppo has run and developed his parents’ sauna business since 1991.
The biggest wave of Finnish migration to Quincy occurred between 1890 and 1920, and the city’s Finnish population reached some 1,200 at its peak. The number of Quincy residents born in Finland slowly declined over the years, and today there are very few native Finns living in the city.
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