HANSON – It may take a bit longer to complete plans, but members of the High Street Park Committee want residents to know they will have a chance to spend a Saturday in the park before too much time passes.
The Select Board helped the process along a bit more by voting to conceptually approve its plan layout.
High Street Park Committee members gave its presentation to the Select Board on Tuesday, Aug. 29 on plans for recreational facilities at the former Plymouth County Hospital property.
“We get lots of questions [about] ‘What’s going on up at High Street?’ and we know you guys are meeting fast and furiously and frequently,” Select Board Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “It’s just that progress is not necessarily visible to people, but that doesn’t mean there’s no progress.”
High Street Park Committee member Marianne DiMascio said she had been thinking the same thing, before presenting an update to the Select Board.
“It wanted to start by saying it’s a beautiful spot and a great place to visit,” she said. “We have an agenda here to look at yesterday, today and tomorrow for people who are not familiar with this spot.”
Infrastructure is being worked on as the first step in plans as well as for traffic flow and parking. They are also looking at where sidewalks, crosswalks and foot traffic would go, as well as where there would and wouldn’t be tree cover, vegetation, wooded area and an initial clearing for play areas.
Committee Vice Chair Don Ellis has been working a lot on utility plans in coordination with town departments which encompass plumbing, irrigation, septic, drainage and electrical services.
“This really is the piece that has taken a while to do,” DiMascio said. “You can’t keep doing things unless you know where the roads are, where the parking is, and so this has slowed us down, but I think we’re in a good spot now to move forward when some of these plans are done.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett asked if there was anything the Select Board could do to help the Committee’s work.
Ellis mentioned the old hospital well flushing and inspection, noting they have been having trouble getting call-backs because it is a commercial-sized well. The Committee is trying to determine if the well is still usable.
An issue raised was the cost of requests for proposals, he said.
One firm was also concerned with prevailing wage law, which does not apply to a survey, according to Town Administrator Lisa Green, but it would apply if any repair or construction work is done.
The Highway Department has cleared trees to enable inspection of the septic field and also took off the well head several times and reinstalled it. Health Agent Gil Amado helped with the Title 5 requirements for the septic system.
FitzGerald-Kemmett suggested the Committee meet with the Food Pantry Board, which was having concerns about placement of public restrooms near the pantry building, out of a desire to protect the privacy of its clients or to make that building an attractive nuisance.
Select Board member Joe Weeks, who also serves on the High Street Committee, said the town is lucky to even possibly have an irrigation source there, which would be crucial for much of what is planned for the site.
“It might feel slow and it might feel like it’s taking forever, but these things are meticulous and we want to make sure we’re doing it right,” he said.
The playground is the next consideration, but Weeks said there, too, they don’t want to “overpromise and under-deliver.”
“We want to do a ground-clearing and focus on that playground area,” he said. If they find the funding and get a playground done, Weeks said the Committee feels they will get a lot of use out of the park.
The former Plymouth County Hospital was razed in 2017. The facility had opened in 1917 as the Hanson Tuberculosis Hospital and was closed for good in 1992. It had changed its mission to that of a general hospital and the name was changed to Plymouth County Hospital when the tuberculosis died out with advances in medicine and, in 1982 its mission changed again to that of a long-term specialty care facility for patients with chronic and terminal illness, such as muscular dystrophy.
The Final Plymouth County Hospital Reuse Committee had been budgeted $1 million for the tear-down and returned $200,000 to the town.
“We did a lot of research about ‘could we keep it,’ but it was in quite a state of disrepair,” DiMascio said of the hospital building. It had also become an “attractive nuisance” to vandals and would-be ghost hunters over the years since it closed.
The site now hosts the Community Garden and lawn area behind the Food Pantry and a meadow with an 8/10 mile perimeter walking trail, part of the 218-mile Bay Circuit Trail that also stretches from Kingston to Newport, R.I. Entrances are located on Pierce Avenue and Bonney Hill Lane near the boardwalk.
The trail was funded by the state Division of Conservation Services as well as the town’s Community Preservation and Conservation committees.
“We’re hoping to have a grand opening in mid-October,” DiMAscio said.
A parking lot on Pierce Avenue can accommodate 10 to 12 cars and additional parking is available at 252 High St. There is no parking on Bonney Hill Lane.
The remaining goals are: building infrastructure, prioritizing features and projects, creating a phased plan, apply for the funding, build it and enjoy.
The playground will be the main project on the “tomorrow” list.
“We’ve been doing the research,” DiMascio said. “We really want to make sure that it’s designed for different ages, different abilities, different development levels and has interaction between people of different ages.”
While playgrounds are designed with children in mind, the Committee is also keeping parents in mind as well as the elderly.
“We’re thinking more broadly about it than 2 to 3-year-olds only,” she said.
An event area for events such as farmer’s markets, community events and gatherings and picnics and a stage area for concerts and performances as well as a pavilion or covered area could be included. Additional features in the thinking states are additional walking trails, a veteran’s memorial, a picnic area near the Bonney House, an orchard, avenue for picture-taking for events such as proms, weddings and family reunions. A Native American history and acknowledgment space is also being discussed.
In other business, Green announced the board is looking for volunteers to serve on a Master Plan Steering Subcommittee.
The town received a $60,000 grant through the Massachusetts One Stop for Growth Program to update the town’s master plan. The Steering Subcommittee will represent Hanson while Old Colony Planning helps guide officials through the process.
The number of volunteers needed is unclear at the moment, Green said, noting they “just want to get it out there” that they are looking for volunteers.
“Does anybody feel passionate – well, maybe not passionate, maybe just inclined – to be a [Select Board] member of the Master Plan Steering Subcommittee?” FitzGerald-Kemmett asked.
Select Board member Ann Rein said she would give the post a try.

HANSON – The members of First Congregational Church in Hanson took a look back at the church’s first 275 years on Sunday, Aug. 27 as they look ahead to what the next 275 years might bring.
After the regular Sunday services, the congregation gathered in the Fellowship Hall for a roast pork dinner, and conversation over shared memories, before the second half of the program took place.
The church welcomed three new members – Jacob Searfoss and Joanne and James Levine – during the morning services, which member Phil Clemons said was “always a great time in the life cycle of the church.”
Smith’s sermon, dealing with how making adjustments has been essential to being “the Church” for 275 years.
“There’s a change taking place in the church landscape in America,” he said. “The role of the older, more established church fellowships – once called mainline denominations – is receding.”
As mainline denominations are the heritage of First Congregational, Smith, quoting a former pastor, said the church is open to appropriate change and well-suited to it by its guiding conviction that wherever two or more are together Jesus is among us, enabling us to adapt to those changes all around.
“Change has always been part of the Christian journey,” he said, advocating the use of the church’s 275th anniversary to consider the path to the future. “We can learn from our predecessors.”
He noted how less than 300 years after Christ had died on the Roman Cross Christianity had become the official faith of the Roman empire.
“We would do well to learn how they reached a pagan world, creating a community that provided unprecedented equality, regardless of social status, nationality or gender,” he said.
That message of learning from the past, was visited by Pastor Susan Webster Gray in her sermon after the fellowship hall dinner, on the significance of the 1774 Election Day Sermon of First Congregational’s first pastor The Rev. Gad Hancock, who criticized the “Devine Right of Kings” in the presence of Royal Governor of Massachusetts, Gen. Thomas Gage.
Ministers at the time were among the most educated in the colonies at the time.
“These sermons were life-changing to those who read and heard the spoken word,” Gray said.
Founded in 1748 during the Great Awakening, the First Congregational Church in Hanson, it’s pastor Hitchcock had been invited to Boston and “ignited a key spark that helped ignite our American Revolution,” Smith said earlier that morning.
“Civil authority is the production of combined society – not born with, but delegated to certain individuals for the advancement of the common benefit.”
Gray spoke of how the Election Day sermon is currently used by institutions of higher learning, including Hillsdale College in Michigan, as important because it presented the First Principals – the principles of freedom, equality and self-government.
“If I am mistaken … all America is mistaken with me,” Hitchcock had said.
While America had to fend off the British again in 1812, but a greater attac came from within, Smith noted.
“It is difficult for us to imagine now that our nation’s founders had not settled thre issue of slavery at the beginning,” he said. From abolition of the slave trade to emancipation, to removing the deceitful practices that have allowed prejudices to continue, “makes, indeed, for a long road to freedom.”
In the 20th century, the work has become a task of building the nation’s moral core.
“The wisdom gained from our past history has helped us to guard the flock during times of crisis,” he said, including the COVID pandemic. “Will we ever forget drive-in Easter? Live-streamed worship? Zoom-based Bible studies and church meetings?”
Challenges continue, including the distortions of the truth of Jesus, Smith sermonized.
“We are not an historical organization,” he said. “We have a history, but even more so, we have a present mission.”
Three guiding thoughts should guide the church into its third century, Smith said: We belong to each other; we care for one another; and together, we testify with the word of God’s grace.
Select Board Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett attended the event, presenting a proclamation from the board of Sunday, Aug. 27 as First Congregational Church in Hanson Day, as well as a citation from the General Court sponsored by state Rep. Josh Cutler, D-Duxbury and supported state Rep. David DeCoste, R-Rockland.

Lifelong Whitman resident Heather Fernald is a woman on a mission.
While she has a fundraising goal of $1,500 – the Pacesetter Goal – when she again takes part in the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk on Sunday, Oct. 1, she said this week that she’d really like to double that.
“I would dream of doubling that,” she said.
When asked where fundraising sits at the moment, she let out an ironic chuckle and said, “Like, $350.”
“My goal is $3,000 and we can say I’m halfway,” she laughed. “Most people end up donating the last couple of weeks.”
Besides trying to fit in more training and boosting her fundraising efforts, she is also devoted to the color pink because of their support for breast cancer fundraising, she said, noting people walk to support research in all forms of the disease.
“She’s fantastic,” Heather said of her mother’s condition. “She uses a Rolator because outside of the house she’s nervous.” Chemotherapy has left her mom occasionally with a situation where her legs go out from under her.
Her mom, who had back surgery two years before she was diagnosed with cancer, also makes sure to keep up with her exercises.
“She gets a couple thousands of steps a day,” she said.
While her mom is an inspiration, Heather said she doesn’t train for the walk, but she’s kicked it up a notch and is back at the gym three days a week, doing a lot of cardio on the treadmill.
With Heather’s work schedule, fundraising has proven challenging, but she does a lot of it through Facebook Fundraising. And she also does some fundraising on the Whitman 02382 Facebook site, where she has received good encouragement and some donations, too.
“I try not to be too pushy – that’s my problem,” she said, noting she ads posts from her training walks to keep interest fresh.
Fernald has participated in the walk, presented by Hyundai, five times before in honor of her mother, who was diagnosed with breast cancer. Last year the walk returned to the Marathon route after two years of “Walk Your Way” events at participants’ homes.
She did hers around town, receiving some friendly horn-beeps and waves, but it doesn’t compare to the Marathon route walk.
“The support from the people just along the route, it’s more encouraging,” she said.
An added boost for this year is that participants will end the route at Fenway Park because of construction going on at Copley.
“My mother is my main reason I walk,” Heather wrote in an announcement run by the Whitman-Hanson Express on Aug. 10. “She is a Breast Cancer Survivor thanks to Dana-Farber and, of course, her own strength and courage!” 
Her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017 and was treated at Dana-Farber.
“I’ve been going there since I was in my early 20s,” Heather said of the
preventive care she has received there herself. “They were just so amazing. They’re so amazing to the family members.”
She said Dana-Farber staff have kept up with her on how she’s training for the Marathon walk and have people who visit patient while they undergo treatments and some of the items in the center’s gift shop are free for patients.
Her mom was practical to the soft, handmade hats available. A crafter herself, who creates inspirational rocks to sell at craft fairs. Fernald left about 40 or so of the message stones at the shop for other families when he mother was released.
“The terrible part, but the amazing part is that so many people from all over the world come here for top-of-the-line care,” Heather said.
Heather is the Team Captain of the Journey For Janice team and hopes to raise $1,500. 
She said her mother still goes to Dana-Farber for checkups and any needed treatments.
“She doesn’t mind going to the doctor’s when she has to go,” heather said.
“It’s a life-long thing now,” she said. “So [Dana-Farber] is a life-long extended family. It’s not necessarily the family you want, but if you have to have one, they’re really the one to have.”
The 2023 Jimmy Fund Walk will take place on Sunday, October 1, and raises funds to support all forms of adult and pediatric patient care and cancer research at the nation’s premier cancer center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Whether participating for themselves, loved ones, neighbors, or co-workers, each walker shares a common purpose: to defy cancer and support breakthroughs that will benefit cancer patients around the world. 
Participants have the flexibility to choose from four distance options: 5K walk (from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Longwood Medical campus), 10K walk (from Newton), Half Marathon walk (from Wellesley) or Marathon walk (from Hopkinton). Walkers can also participate virtually by “walking their way” from wherever they are most comfortable—whether that be in their neighborhood, on a favorite hiking trail, or on a treadmill at home.
The Jimmy Fund Walk has raised more than $167 million for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in its 34-year history. The 2023 Walk will be held during the Jimmy Fund’s 75th anniversary year and will aim to raise $9 million in the effort to prevent, treat, and defy cancer. To support Heather’s walk go to http.//danafarber.jimmyfund.org/goto/Journeyforjanice.

By Linda Ibbitson Hurd
Special to The Express
In the Summer of 1960 when I was 13, I spent a lot of time with my best friend. We were the same age, and both named Linda. She was the youngest of six siblings and I was the oldest of four. We lived in Hanson, I on upper Elm Street and she down the end where it went into Halifax. She and her sister had the choice of attending school in Hanson or Halifax as the town line went through the middle of their house. They chose Hanson. The house, a big two-story old Colonial was on a beautiful plot of land where there was also a barn with a second story which housed a wrought iron workshop where her grandfather worked and a kennel for Golden Retrievers attached to the rear of the house.
One particular Saturday night when I had been invited for the weekend, Linda and I were having supper with three of her sisters, her brother in-law, their small daughter and Linda’s parents and grandfather. The conversation turned to a situation the married sister and her husband were going through. From the beginning of summer when their vegetable garden started producing, they found some missing when they got up in the morning along with shoe tracks in the garden soil. Then one morning they found a few items missing from their barn, which was a good distance from the street but right beside the house. They lived down the end of Elm Street near Hudson Street and not too far from Linda’s house. Their garden was in their side yard not far from the street. The police were investigating.
When supper was over, Linda and I helped watch her 2-year-old niece until her parents took her home. After they left and everyone headed for the TV set, we went outside to walk around until her mother called us in, saying it was time for bed. With lights off in every room and the house so quiet, we stayed up talking for a while in whispers. We were sitting on her bed when she looked at me and said, “Let’s go catch that burglar!”
“How’re we going to do that without waking everybody up?,” I asked. “I’ll show you,” she said.
We dressed in dark colors, took the sheets off the two beds in her room, tied them together then put them around the bed post closest to the window and took out the screen. She dropped the sheets down, only a few feet from the ground and we climbed out. We moved quickly to the road before anyone could see us and hoped her grandfather wasn’t up. It was a beautiful, still, summer night and the moon wasn’t quite full. We walked the distance to her sister’s house. The garden was full except for the bare spots where things had been taken and the lettuce and squash were closest and rather large. Linda whispered, “lie down between the rows of lettuce and don’t make a sound!”
As we crouched to lie down in the dirt between the rows of lettuce, she stepped on a dry twig which snapped, making a louder than usual sound in the stillness of the night. In the dirt we were lying flat with her nails dug into my thigh when she whispered, “don’t even breathe.”
All of a sudden, the back door slammed open under the overhead light and her brother-in-law Ray stepped out with a shotgun bellowing, “Who’s there!?” A shot rang out and we could hear it whizzing over our heads. Before another shot was fired, Linda stoop up screaming, “Ray, it’s us, me and Linda, don’t shoot!!” He made an anguished sound and broke the shot gun in half over his thigh, yelling, “Get in here right now, both of you!”
In we shuffled, heads down and were ordered into the spacious living room with wide speckled gray floorboards. We sat and awaited our fate. We got the third degree and answered all their questions. Ray was shaking and his wife Florence was white as a sheet.
“Do you know I could have killed you, what were you thinking?!!! “That we wanted to catch your burglar”, Linda said. He looked at me waiting for an answer “I wanted to help”, I said.
He put his head in his hands. After almost an hour and all the lecturing, he looked at Linda and said, “I’ll take you home and talk to your mother.” He looked at me and said, “You call your father right now!” Oh my God, I thought, I’m dead. I didn’t want to do it but I knew there was no way out of it. Linda argued for me but both Ray and Florence were adamant. I called my dad.
When my dad came and talked to Ray and Florence and we headed for home, he was very calm and never said a world. I could sense he wasn’t mad, not even lecturing me. I was relieved. The drive home was barley 2 minutes, we weren’t far from where they lived.
My mom met us at the door, intensely upset chiding, “Do you realize a policeman could be carrying you home dead in his arms? Do you know that!?” I looked at her and said, “well, he isn’t and I’m not”. “Go to your room!!” She shrilled. I went.
Linda and I weren’t allowed to get together for a while, we knew things had to cool down first. We both realized we were wrong and learned the valuable lessons of noninterference, that well-meaning intentions can go terribly wrong, and consequences can be irreversible. These have held us in good stead.

Eighth graders at Hanson Middle School have been awarded $1,000 grants for charities that they partnered with to complete their Civics Project this past spring. “Explore. Act. Tell.” is an experiential learning program that specializes in teaching students how to understand and act on solutions to fight food insecurities in their communities, selected two student groups from Mr. Merritt and Mr. Lopes’ Civics classes, respectively. 
Eighth graders Camryn Walsh, Sami Masker, Keira Phinney, Siena Murphy, Tayla DeLue, Lilly Jones, Camryn MacCallum, Presley Giannino, and Riley Walsh completed Civics Projects working with local businesses, and partnering with the Hanson and Hanover Food Pantries as part of the eighth-grade Civics Projects. The students worked on the projects throughout the winter and spring, inside and out of the classroom, where they raised funds and donated food to the local food pantries. 
Project presentations were then submitted to Explore. Act. Tell. and they were selected from hundreds of submissions. The grants will be awarded to the food pantries, and a ceremonial check presentation is in the planning stages for the coming school year. 

WHITMAN – A gas station at 79 Temple St., was damaged by fire Thursday, July 13.
Whitman Fire crews extinguished a structure fire at a gas station on Thursday night, according to Chief Timothy Clancy after the department received multiple calls at about 7:30 p.m. regarding a structure fire at the gas station and
were on scene in less than a minute because the scene was about 250 feet from the station.
The fire was brought under control by approximately 7:45 p.m.
Mutual aid was provided by the Abington, Bridgewater, and Hanson Fire Departments, and a Halifax Ambulance aided at the scene. Hanson Fire provided station coverage.
The gas station building and its contents were damaged, with a total loss estimated at $750,000. The cause of the fire is under investigation by the Whitman Fire and Police Departments and the Massachusetts State Fire Marshal’s Office.

The cause of the fire is under investigation by the Whitman Fire and Police Departments and the Massachusetts State Fire Marshal’s Office.

WHITMAN – While encouraging Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter to continue exploring Select Soccer’s proposal for a youth soccer field complex at the Camp Alice Carlton property, Select Board Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski agreed with a resident’s request that the process slow down while a committee is formed to explore other options.
After Town Meeting, the town had agreed to continue analysis of the Carlton property, Carter reminded the board, pointing out that meant continuing surveys of the Whitman and Rockland parcels in order to determine if the matter should be pursued further. Carter stressed that she was not presenting a proposal, only seeking board consensus to direct her efforts.
“We are still awaiting the results of the Whitman tract,” she said, noting she, Assistant Administrator Kathy Keefe and former Town Administrator Frank Lynam met with Select Soccer’s owner, reviewing the results of the Rockland land. “The survey they had done reveals areas of wetlands that would limit what could be developed in Rockland.”
Select Soccer is still interested in the property, but there is still a question as to whether it can be used for soccer fields will depend on the Rockland Conservation Commission.
It might also depend on potential opposition from a group of Whitman residents who question whether that use is in line with the intent of the Carltons when the property was bequeathed to the town.
Select plans to lay out soccer fields, but they also mentioned walking trails around the property which would be open to the public and connecting to the Whitman parcel – one of the uses opponents preferred.
Carter suggested if the soccer facility was something Whitman would consider, a long-term lease of the Rockland property to Select Soccer would permit the town to retain land ownership while providing revenue that could improve the Whitman parcel for recreational use.
Carter was seeking a consensus from the board on whether to continue exploring the option, but the four board members present were divided – Laura Howe and Shawn Kain saw merit in the opponents’ objections, while Kowalski and Vice Chair Dan Salvucci favored continued exploration of the Select Soccer proposal. Member Justin Evans was away on vacation.
Pine Street resident Eric Joubert voiced objection to the proposal as counter to the Carlton family’s intent when the land was bequeathed for recreational purposes.
“You think putting a commercial business on that land is what the family planned?” he asked.
Salvucci said soccer fields were recreational, but Joubert objected to the fields benefitting a commercial business. He compared it to baseball fields already in place in Whitman because families pay a fee for their kids to play in Little League.
“They’re not putting up buildings and they’re not restructuring the land,” Joubert retorted about the baseball fields. “How are you going to level [the Carlton property] for fields without doing major damage to the forestry area?”
He warned it would destroy woodlands and noted that the natural purpose of trees is to clean carbon dioxide from the air and produce oxygen – and people enjoy hiking in the area. A 1988 plan had outlined using the forest area on the property as green space, with a Girl Scout camp tying into it.
“I think the potential of the town [using] it as greenspace, as the family intended, would be a much better option for the future of the town,” Joubert said. “We could have a committee and we could work on it.”
“I 100-percent agree with you,” Howe said. “I hope, maybe, we can figure out a way to do that, because Peaceful Meadows is now, obviously moving on and I respect that, also there is a lot of other land being donated for different things, and we don’t have a lot of greenspace.”
She said wildlife is also running out of habitat because of that trend.
“I just saw land sitting there unused, and thank you for enlightening me,” Salvucci said. “I didn’t realize people were walking there.”
Kain said Joubert had changed his mind.
“You certainly won me over,” he said. “[Keeping] this either open space or conservation, greenspace, it is really what I would like to see happen with it.”
Carter said she had not yet seen specific plans, but synthetic turf fields, hard court and a small playground area and a parking area had been discussed by Select Soccer. She said the only intent at this point was to explore the issue further.
Joubert said the proposal seemed like it was being “pushed through rather fast” and did not pass the “smell test” with him. While Kowalski challenged the suggestion that the Select proposal was being rushed and agreed that a committee could be formed while the exploration of Select Soccer’s proposal continued.
“There’s been a big time out on that,” Kowalski said.
Resident Gloria Knox also argued that the Carlton’s intent was to provide an opportunity for young people to “get into nature” and enjoy the recreational opportunities provided by the properties.