WHITMAN – Who can and should care for and clean old headstones at historic site such as Whitman’s Mount Zion Cemetery?
Whitman resident Leslie DiOrio has asked the Select Board on Tuesday, Aug.1 for official permission to do that work at Mount Zion. The Board granted DiOrio’s request for official permission.
She had pointed out Mount Zion qualifies as a National Historic Site, due to the date on the oldest stone there – February 1733.
“As a result, we can, as a town, obtain funding through the state of Massachusetts and Community Preservation funding for the upkeep of the cemetery, the stones and some of the groundwork,” she said.
She shared with the Select Board on Tuesday, Aug. 1 a copy of a letter she had sent to the Department of Public Works in May outlining her request for formal permission to clean the stones at Mount Zion, which is not far from her residence.
She also advocated a Cemetery Committee for Mount Zion, since it is the only cemetery in Whitman that does not have one.
According to the National Park Service’s website, “Soiling and staining of cemetery gravestones, monuments, markers, and statuary can result from soil splashing, pollution, rusting bolts or other metal features, bird deposits, and berries or sap dropping onto the stone. Biological growth, such as algae, lichen, or moss, can cover the surface, cause the stone to decay, and make reading the stone difficult.”
“The reason I feel strongly that a person should ask the town for permission, and I’m coming to you for permission, is that a lot of damage can be done by just walking in and cleaning with any substance and not knowing what you’re doing,” DiOrio said.
She has sought out the specialized training involved, she said, including attending lots of seminars and work cleaning historic stones in every New England state.
“This is something that I care deeply about, and as I clean these stones, I actually keep a family tree, and go on familysearch.org, which is a free website with a universal tree,” she said. “I have created documentation and pulled the official document for all the residents of that cemetery.”
She offered to take interested officials with her on Friday. Aug. 4 for the next work she planned to do.
Select Board member Justin Evans asked whether there is a level of training they should look for if anyone else came forward to seek permission to clean historic gravestones.
“You never want to hear they are planning to use soap or bleach or any kind of metal brush,” she said. Biologically-based cleaners are used on historic gravestones and markers.
DiOrio suggested asking about techniques and materials they planned to use, noting she has been asked those very questions every time she has sought permission to clean stones.
Board Vice Chair Dan Salvucci asked about liability, but DiOrio said that should not be a concern unless stones were being moved or renovated.
She told the Select Board that she has been cleaning the stones for about a year, having first broached the topic with the late Marie Lailer of the Historic Commission.
Lailer learned that the DPW maintains cemetery grounds, but not the headstones.
“I didn’t receive a response to this, but they did cover it in one of their board meetings,” she said.
DiORio also provided the Select Board with a copy of Terra Firma, a state document which informs about best practices in historic cemetery care.
“The reason I didn’t receive a response [from the DPW Commission] was that they felt that while they were not going to ‘get in my way,’ and were willing to allow me to continue the work there, they were not willing to give anyone ‘official permission,’” she said.
DiOrio’s said her understanding about the DPW Commissioners’ meeting was that headstone care should be families that give permission.
“The challenge with that is, it doesn’t follow best practices in cemetery care,” she said, emphasizing that is not meant to be criticism of the DPW. “But, when you talk about cemetery care and who grants permission, it really is the grounds of the cemetery, which is the town of Whitman in this case.”
Mount Zion is owned by the town of Whitman. Previously a family burial site, it was procured by the town in 1851.
“When you talk about families giving permission, it is down to the third generation,” she said. “For example, I can clean my great-grandmother’s stone, but not my great-great-grandmother’s stone.”
Her family is buried in Mount Hope in Boston, where DiOrio said she couldn’t just walk in and clean a stone, because it is a maintained, private cemetery in that case. Since Whitman owns Mount Zion, she needs town permission to care for stones there.
Historic Commission Chair Molly Schnabel said she agreed with everything DiOrio said, except for one thing.
“The state has the money for preservation and she’s right about these cemeteries,” Schnabel said. “We have money already.”
The Commission has $20,000 through the Community Preservation Act (CPA) and is seeking matching grants from the state.
“This cemetery should be on that group we’re looking to do,” she said. Once matching grants are obtained, they can hire state-approved workers come in and, while they don’t do stone preservation work, she said DiOrio’s idea is a good one, adding that the number of GAR stones [Grand Army of the Republic, the veterans’ organization of Union Army veterans after the Civil War] is remarkable, and that even though the town does not have a GAR building, its Civil War era history is remarkably well preserved.
“But it needs to be discussed, I think, with the historic commission,” Schnabel said of the stone project. “If you want to work with us on [the grant] that would be great.”
DiOrio said she is not applying for grant money.
Schnabel added there are three cemeteries in town that need to be watched, including one on Pine Street as well as Colebrook and Mount Zion.
“You can see some of the work [at Mount Zion] that Marie and I started and I’ve been continuing,” DiOrio said.

HANSON – What’s in store for the Hanson Fire Department now that there’s a new chief in the corner office?
More of the same, if you ask Chief Robert O’Brien – who sees himself as something of a conduit between the department’s past and its future. A 27-year fire service veteran, O’Brien took command officially in June, after some five years as a deputy chief and several weeks as acting chief after the retirement of Chief Jerome Thompson Jr.
“Chief Thompson was always very encouraging,” he said of new ideas he had suggested as he climbed the ranks. “Some of them work, some don’t work, and that’s where encouraging people is valuable.”
It is an approach he is continuing as chief of a department that Thompson had already brought a long way from where it was 16 years ago.
“We’ve got a lot of stuff going on, which is good,” he said. “We have a very young department. Their enthusiasm, their way of thinking, is – I’m going to call it non-traditional.
“That’s what I’m really pushing for the direction of the department now, for the firefighters and the officers to think outside the box … basically throw it against the wall, and if it sticks, great, If it doesn’t, then we continue the way we’ve been going.”
There have already been a lot of ideas they are trying, including use of the experience new hires have until they can go to fire academy. One has fire experience and has been put on shift, another has paramedic experience but not firefighting training, so he is assigned to the first ambulance out the door, which leaves three firefighters and a lieutant available to answer fire calls until he can attend the academy.
“Firewise, we don’t want to put him in a precarious position without being trained,” O’Brien said. It also allows the second ambulance to get out the door faster.
“My mantra to them is, ‘Let’s give it a try,’” he said. “Having a young department, the experience level is different from what I have.”
While maintaining a lot of the department’s traditions and respect for its history, O’Brien said technology is making a lot of changes as it adheres to the department’s tradition of aggressively seeking grant funding for equipment, projects and programs. Emergency management has provided a weather TV system – which, no doubt, came in handy during Saturday’s tornado warnings – and ROCC 911 funding pays for the department’s security and dispatch systems. Those are just two areas where grant funding has been secured for the department.
A lot of information on what to do to prepare for weather extremes, and what resources in town are available, for example, are posted to residents via social media on the department’s Facebook and Twitter accounts.
“We’re really fortunate here that Rob Heffernan is a big technology guru,” he said. “All these TVs and monitors that you see, especially the big one [in the main room which is used for virtual classes and webinars], the townspeople didn’t pay for any of it.”
As he spoke, one of those video screens, which displays a map most of the time, alarms went off as Whitman Fire was dealing with a heat emergency involving a person collapsed on South Avenue. A line of white LED lights was illuminated along the ceiling as well as a shorter line of red LED lights. Had it been at night the red lights would be more prominent at first, so it would be less jarring to the 24/7 crews being awakened by alarms until firefighters’ eyes adjust to the light.
“That’s why I’m encouraging people to come on in,” he said. “Come see your fire station. You paid for it, but what’s interesting is what they don’t have to pay for.”
While most technology equipment is funded by grant money, a majority of that in the apparatus bay is a combination of grant money and the ambulance account. The ladder truck replacement, for example, is being looked at as a 50-percent grant-sourced project.
“I’ve been very fortunate my whole career,” he said. “Other chiefs outside [of town], because of my involvement with technical rescue … I’ve gotten very involved with MEMA.”
It’s been a boon to networking, he said.
Hanson Fire and Mass. Maritime Academy plan to run a big tabletop exercise in April, that the school’s seniors are working.
“It’s going to be a little different for the town,” O’Brien said. “Chief Thompson allowed me to handle all the emergency management stuff, but I’m starting to go through things now of a continuity of operations plan for the town.”
Hanson does not currently have a robust emergency operation plan. A comprehensive plan was developed just about the time Thompson retired.
O’Brien has also presented a training course at Mass. Maritime for the helicopter aquatic rescue team, for which he is a program coordinator. The team specializes in flood and swift water rescues, from a concept developed in North Carolina.
“We’ve been working on it for five years and now it’s up and running,” he said.
O’Brien is also pushing for firefighters to be better educated in their craft and learning from what other departments have done or what they’ve experienced outside of Hanson Fire, to be more valuable members of the department.
Shifts are excited about new training techniques they can learn as a unit, as well.
“Firefighting is changing constantly and what it was 30 or 40 years ago is much different than what it is today,” he said, adding that department leadership is also sitting down with firefighters to discuss their short-term and long-term career goals.
While ambulance receipts also fund equipment like the new amulance being sought at the October Town Meeting, O’Brien said most ambulance costs to patients are handled through insurance.
“We don’t go to collections for it,” he said. “We don’t want people not to call the ambulance because of the cost.”
He also stressed the importance of calling 911 when help is needed, instead of the business line, because there might not be someone available to answer the business line if they are out on a call, prevention or training.
In fact, if O’Brien had an unlimited budget, staffing would be his top priority.
“Right now, we are looking at a SAFER grant,” he said. “It will pay 100-percent [of costs involved with] firefighter hiring – physicals, equipment, training, health care and retirement for three years, which is a great deal … But at the end of three years, the municipalities take ownership of that.”
He’s working with the Select Board and Finance Committee to determine how the department can afford that level of staffing.
More people on ambulances get them out the door quicker and more people on the fire line are important because fires burn hotter and faster than they used to because of chemicals used in buildings.
The May 2022 Town Meeting also approved funds for a feasibility study for the station, which should be going out to bid shortly, but O’Brien is aware a new Highway facility is a more pressing priority in town right now, and rightfully so, but the fire station is approaching 50 years old – and originally shared space with the library and senior center.
“The building was not designed for 24-hour occupancy,” he said. “Our bunkrooms are make-shift and are in the attic.”
It was also not designed for a co-ed fire crew, and the department now has two female firefighters.
“We’re the best-looking building in town, and a lot of that is due to the [maintenance and upkeep] done by the firefighters,” O’Brien said, noting he does not see any reason to move the Fire Department to a different location – which leaves a decision on how to improve the building where it is.
“We’re doing the groundwork,” he said.