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Reclaiming summertime

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WHITMAN — While August by no means signifies the end of summer vacation it is the culmination of seven weeks of the Whitman Park and Recreation summer program.

The summer experience, which has averaged 75 kids weekly, has been a joyous celebration of returning to see friends; engaging outdoors in nature and seeing unmasked   friends reunite after a long evolving school year.

New Camp Director Kathleen Woodward has been with the program for this past year. She emphasized that although recreation is finished this week the pool along with swimming lessons are still open and available.

Families can purchase pool passes and swimming lessons as part of the Town of Whitman. Information on the pool is available on the Town of Whitman website.

Camp Director of Recreation Gabby Callahan has served as both a camper and counselor over the last six years. She is now in her senior year of nursing at Fitchburg State University. She is leaning towards pediatrics.  She loves working with kids and is passionate about the recreation program. Along with her staff in the recreation department it is rewarding to have a hand in generating a positive outdoor experience for campers, she added.

The camp has been around for decades and has hosted countless families who undoubtedly have memories of the park including stories of squirrels that have finagled a lunch or two.

Callahan reminded the campers on Monday during day one of session seven that unzipped, unsealed snacks are fair game to the little critters in the park. The group shared a snicker at the incident in a previous session in which a tricky squirrel carried a brown-bag lunch up the tree before anyone noticed.

Each morning the campers check in, find their age groups, donning bright blue T-shirts they chat with friends until morning circle.

Rotation stations include entertainment such as: crafts, gym time and free play on the playground, swim time and sports with long time camp counselor Sports Director Nick Kardoose.

Themed crafts are always a suggestion as often times creative campers will come up with different ways to use the supplies such as: folding old fashion paper airplanes. The timeless generational pastime has been as popular as the Gimp braids used to make handmade bracelets.

Tether ball during game rotation is a hit as well as board games and free block that it is worked in for a lighter period of structure.

There is disc golf, kickball, relays, dodge ball, to name a few. Swimming is daily and for anyone who decides not to swim they can enjoy board games or sidewalk chalk.

Town Hall is the rainy day shelter when it is a complete washout for outdoor activities. It can be harder on rainy days but a new projector has allowed for movies. Camp counselors will bring in items that will engage or prompt activities such as a toy they had growing up. It can spark interest and is always age appropriate.  The location is in use for town related business so it makes it a bit harder to let go and run wild like the good old outdoors.

Science walks, lava lamps, using nature to create designs have been just a few of the hands on activities over the last two months.

Olympic week kick off during session number four was a build up to the Olympics. Campers created the Olympic ring symbol using paper circle plates among others daily projects.

“We had a huge emphasis on team building and working together so we incorporated mentoring with the older kids assisting the younger kids,” she said.

The recreation program did remain closed over 2020 during the height of the Covid Pandemic.

“We were so excited we got to run this year. It was up in the air and we received the OK. We are so excited. Kids need to be outside, interact and giving them something like this (program) is incredible,” said Callahan.

Reese Cordero a 2021 graduate of Whitman Hanson is also among the counselors this year at Park and Recreation. She was playing football during game time at the basketball courts. Taking turns with runners and hikers the lively group had a lot of energy to burn despite the dampness on Monday and looming rain.

Codero is planning on majoring in criminal justice at Roger Williams University in the fall. Her goal is to become a DARE Officer and work with the youth population.

She grew up in Whitman and said what she loves about Whitman Park and Recreation is seeing the happiness on their faces (campers) having fun and just being kids.

Visit the Town of Whitman website for information on sign-ups for all ages swimming lessons and family open swims which runs through Labor Day.

Wasps force beach closure

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HANSON — With a return to hazy and humid summer heat forecast this weekend, Hanson residents will have to find an alternative method of cooling off — Cranberry Cove is closed for the foreseeable future because of sand wasps.

Tarps are covering the beach and yellow caution tape bars people from the beach and kayak launch areas. Police and fire services have also been notified of the closure.

“The beach is probably going to be closed a week, maybe two, while we wait to see if [tarps laid over nests] are enough to get rid of them,” according to Town Administrator Lisa Green, who said the situation was brought to her attention early last week. “It’s not a seasonal closing as of yet.”

Camp Kiwanee has closed off the entire area, including the boat ramps and the parking area with yellow caution tape.

“There were some type of insects flying around the beach over there,” she said. “We don’t want to risk anyone getting stung and having an allergic reaction.”

Two exterminating companies were called and did come to the beach. One said the sand wasps were not their area of expertise, the other put “some type of powders” down, but it did not impact the insects at all, Green said.

“Health Agent Gil Amado brought me out there on Friday [July 30] and the wasps … were literally swarming the higher beach,” Green said. “It looks like a little tornado that they’re swarming in.”

Town officials purchased some large, industrial-strength tarps, as a lot of organic insect experts suggest online, to cover the area and restrict their access to ground nests.

“They would either die or move out,” Green said her research indicated.

While they bear a resemblance, sand wasps found at the cove (species Bicyrtes quadrifasciata), are not as aggressive as their  “social” cousin the yellow jacket, according to entomologist Blake Dinius with the Plymouth County Commissioner’s Office. But sand wasps don’t like being disturbed or sudden moves, as one makes while swatting them away.

The major concern is such sudden moves by beach-goers could lead to stings, and problems for people with allergies to bee stings.

“I’m working with the board of health on this topic,” Dinius said in a phone interview Monday, Aug. 2.

“They are almost completely harmless,” he said. “I cannot say they are completely harmless, because if you provoke them enough, they could possibly sting you. … The risk is low, but it’s still there. I just takes is one person that’s allergic, sits on the beach and swats at them.”

For such a person, that one sting could be deadly.

Green said one of the Camp Kiwanee caretakers had been stung.

“My first concern is having anybody — adult or child — getting stung,” Green said.

“I think it’s a smart decision for the town to close off the beach for now,” Dinius said.

Another way sand wasps differ from yellow jackets and hornets is that they do not live in large-colony nests they would aggressively defend. But that difference also points to why the beach was closed.

“If they are under a threat of a danger, that is where you could possibly get stung,” Dinius said. “With people who may be allergic to stings, I can definitely see why the Board of Health would be concerned about this kind of situation.”

The sand wasps — as the name suggests — prefer sandy soil free of vegetation.

“I can almost guarantee you that, if I walk into your yard, I’m going to find sand wasps,” he said. “A large aggregation like is going on at Cranberry Cove is a pretty unique situation that I haven’t ever seen before.”

Dinius said he wonders whether their presence is possibly due to nests in other spots — higher along the Maquan Pond shoreline or in nearby cranberry bogs — being too wet.

“With all the rain we’ve been getting, it makes me wonder if possibly some areas where they used to nest, that water level’s higher, or the vegetation has grown up and over,” he said. “I don’t know.”

He said he is not sure about the efficacy of the tarps, but he said he really does not feel chemical sprays are the answer either from a public health, environmental or cost-efficiency point of view.

“You’re not going to spray your way out of this,” he said.

The wasps don’t have an official common name, but he suggested one based on the “service” they provide.

“You can call them stink bug-eaters,” Dinius said. “I saw them bringing [to their nests in the sand] a lot of the stink bugs that invade people’s homes in the fall and winter.”

A native sand wasp, they are supposed to be in this area, according to Dinius.

Nests consist of a single female and offspring. If one can walk over the nest, they would most likely just buzz around you or fly away.

The sand wasp’s life cycle is 27-44 days in length, with 33 days being the average. They come out in late July and usually last until about the third week of August, but some parts of the country have seen them nesting until November, depending on the weather.

They tunnel in the ground, usually only six to eight inches, forming one to three chambers that are provisioned with multiple stink bugs per egg to feed each developing pupae.

They remember where the nest hole is after burying it to find more food.

“One female is going to have multiple burrows,” he said.

SST looking ahead to new school year

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HANOVER — Superintendent-director Dr. Thomas J. Hickey told the South Shore Tech School Committee, at it’s July 21 meeting, that the window replacement project is expected to begin during the third week of August.

Hickey said the school also plans to open on Aug. 31 with a full regular season of sports.

“It will go into the school year, but it will not have an impact as the company will transition to work in the second shift,” Hickey said of the window project’s potential effect on school routine, noting the district is having regular meetings with the design team and the project manager.

As for the potential for continued mask and social distancing regulations, Hickey said in a recent interview that he is waiting for guidance from the state, but he has met with administrators “kind of bracing ourselves for that in view of information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the more contagious nature of the COVID Delta variant.

“The mask part would be easy to implement,” he said. “The spacing part may require us to have to take a half a step back.”

He also expressed concern about the potential transportation impact if there was guidance from the state and some adjustments might be needed for classrooms in such a case.

So far, no new regulations have been received, but the school has already begun to examine increasing classroom capacity.

“At this point, for a lot of districts, it’s going to be kind of wait and see,” Hickey said. “If it [effects] space, I hope a decision is made sooner, rather than later.”

SST is also continuing to work around the building as they “return classrooms to some version of normal” and is making some renovations to the school’s lecture hall.

“You’re all familiar with our space crunch, so we’re going to be making multi-purpose use of our lecture hall to allow for library media specialists to be able to use that and have us use it more often.”

Hickey said the lecture hall is the last part of the school that may be going under-used. While maintaining the current seating, a mezzanine is being added to allow more versatility in use.

The committee voted to encumber a transfer of $1,487,382 in nonresident tuition to be applied to the fiscal 2022 budget and reduce the assessments to the district towns.

The winter budget presentation will outline the anticipated offset numbers.

“This information was predictable,” Hickey said of the presentation that had projected fiscal 2022 town assessments.

“We assume/project we will have this tuition money when we assess the towns in the following year,” Hickey said this week.

The committee also voted to credit $59,293 in surplus revenue for warrants payable from the 2019-20 budget. They also voted to debit $24,238 from surplus revenue to accrued salaries in the 2019-20 budget.

The Committee voted to encumber $398,000 in surplus revenue for building, grounds, equipment and supplies or any other recommendations by the superintendent-director. Another encumberance of $740,000 from surplus revenue for design, renovation and construction costs identified in the 2018 facilities master plan.

A sixth transfer of $134,151 from surplus regional transportation was approved to the regional transportation fund. Another $103,849 was voted from surplus revenue to bus costs and $80,000 was transferred from surplus revenues to the school lunch enterprise fund to cover COVID-19-related revenue decreases.

The committee conducted its year-end reorganization, again electing Robert Heywood as chairman and Robert Molla as vice chairman.

The Committee entered into executive session to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation. The committee adjourned from executive session.

Women’s soccer team plays for bronze medal vs Australia

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The Mewis sisters will not be bringing home Olympics gold medals. The United States women’s national team fell to Canada, 1-0, in Tokyo, snapping a 36-game unbeaten streak.

“Devastated to say the least not to be competing for a gold medal,” said USWNT forward Alex Morgan.

The team will play its sixth and final game of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics on Aug. 5 when it takes on Australia at 5 p.m. local/4 a.m. ET in the bronze medal match. The game will be played at the Ibaraki Kashima Stadium in Kashima, Japan and will be available for viewing in the United States on the USA Network and Telemundo with streaming coverage also available through NBCOlympics.com and through the Telemundo Deportes App.

Grants fund streets work

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WHITMAN — Pedestrians trying to get safely to Whitman Park will now have a fighting chance to successfully cross Park Avenue in that effort, thanks to a traffic island and sidewalk project now underway on the road.

Thanks to a $363,000 state Complete Streets grant, the DPW is making a change to the traffic island between Colebrook Cemetery and Whitman Park, where work had initially been concentrated, but new sidewalks on the opposite side of Park Avenue are now being included in the project.

“There was never any easy way to cross there,” Parks and Highway Superintendent Bruce Martin said of the traffic island, noting that the old crosswalk was more than 70 feet long, from when the East Middle School was there.

While the actual project is expected to cost about $100,000 more when completed, Martin said Chapter 90 funds and town roadwork money will be used for parts of the project not covered by the grant, such as engineering services.

Quite a bit of money was saved, however, by having DPW personnel tear out the old sidewalk and traffic island.

Removal of the old traffic island and relocating it closer to the park will provide safer access via cement sidewalk on the traffic island.

Traffic cones and barrels have been used to get drivers accustomed to the new roadway.

“You’ll have to come down and take a 90-degree turn onto Park Avenue, where before it was almost like an on-ramp to a highway,” Martin said. The change is intended to slow people down and increase safety for pedestrians.

The Park Avenue sidewalk installation is part of that project.

“We have many sidewalks that aren’t great, but that one was really bad. It was falling, it had big chunks taken out of it, the fact that there’s the church there and they don’t have any off-street parking …” He said curbing had been chunked off.

ADA-compliant curb cuts will be located at each intersection and one from Alden Street to the park. There will also be a “bump-out” in front of All Saints Episcopal Church — where the sidewalk will extend into the roadway about five feet — providing an oasis for pedestrians crossing from the church to cross over to Hayden Avenue where they may have parked.

The competitive grant is one that the state awards to make roads more pedestrian and bicycle friendly.

“We actually put in for the grant for, like, four years in a row,” Martin said. “We got denied and then, finally, we got it.”

While the town tweaked their application a little bit each time, Martin said it comes down to the fact that it’s a competitive process, with every city and town in the state putting in for funding that can only fulfill a few applications each year.

“They might have liked our proposal year one, but they might have also liked somebody else’s,” he said.

With the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill now before Congress, Martin said he hopes that means money will trickle down to the town, and asked state officials about that likelihood.

“Their answer was they don’t know,” he said, noting it is still too early to say.

Another, $185,000 Shared Streets grant — more tied into COVID funding — received the first week in July, will be used to upgrade sidewalks for greater safety in Whitman Center, according to Martin.

Originally, the town had been interested in upgrading the town parking lot off Washington Street, but that was rejected last year. When the town reapplied this year, the focus was on bump-out areas on all four corners of the Washington-Temple streets and South Avenue intersection to reduce the distance pedestrians have to walk and allow some green space in the center, Martin said.

He admits it might be a little controversial as people are confronted with the change. No parking spaces are expected to be lost to businesses, Martin emphasizes.

“In order to receive the grant, we had to have the work done by December of this year, so we’re scrambling a bit right now,” he said, noting that there is also the usual paving projects and curb work to do as well as the two grant-funded projects.

A bridge of love

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HANSON — There may only be two bridges in town, but as the song says, they’ve got a name.

One of those names, Mary “Gret” Lozeau was honored at noon on Monday, July 26 as a salute to her life of gratitude and connection to others.

After working to name a bridge connecting Hanson and Hanover after the late state Rep. Charles Mann, who had also served as Hanson’s Town moderator, state Rep. Josh Cutler, D-Pembroke, worked with state Sen. Mike Brady, D-Brockton to name the small bridge over the Shumatuscacant River on West Washington Street after Gret Lozeau.

Gerard Lozeau offered a reading of his late wife’s favorite gratitude prayer during the event as her extended family and friends in the community joined the legislators for a brief dedication ceremony. A reception followed at the Old Hitching Post.

“I am reminded always that the most important things are without a price — health, happiness and relationships,” he read. “With this attitude, every day becomes a day of Thanksgiving.”

The prayer pointed to gratitude as one of life’s greatest gifts that is free for the choosing. He said his wife not only advised kindness to those who need it, but she modeled it in her daily life.

“A bridge brings people together, Gret was someone who brought people together,” Cutler said in opening the dedication during which her grandchildren helped her husband, and her children unveil the new signs.

Lozeau thanked Cutler and his staff as well as Brady for their efforts.

“It was a pleasant surprise and an honor that would greatly please Gret,” he said. “Tonight, all she would be talking about would be the people involved, who participated prior to today, doing the ceremony and the reception.”

He said that Gret would have touched base personally with everyone involved — one of her most endearing qualities.

“We know how much Gret meant to all of you,” Cutler said as the midday traffic on the roadway picked up. “She was one of the first people I met in Hanson. She was such a welcoming person and had done so much for the community over the years.”

Brady also addressed the gathering as he and Cutler presented the official parchment declaring the bridge name to her family.

“I’m grateful to be here,” Brady said. “I know Gret meant a lot to this community and it’s great to see the turnout and for the family, as well.”

He noted that the past year and a half have been difficult for many families, including his own. Brady’s brother, who had been diagnosed with COVID, had passed away from a heart attack last year.

“A lot of families have gone through a tough time,” Brady said. We’re still not out of it … I’m just happy that we can gather here publically with all our good friends and family members,”

Lozeau also noted that one of Gret’s college classmates had written to him that, after the death of a beloved spouse, one’s viewpoint of the future evolves — often with unfamiliar signposts.

“After today, I will be able to respond to her that at least one signpost in Hanson is a very familiar one, and it’s helping me to find my place, wherever that is,” he said.

Hanson eyes Town Meeting articles

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HANSON — The Board of Selectmen, on Tuesday, July 27 voted to propose articles for special Town Meeting consideration to codify services to examine town by-laws and streamline the one-day liquor license approval process.

Town Administrator Lisa Green said there had recently been discussion about the status and condition of general and zoning by-laws and thinking about possibly having a company come in and codify, update and index them, as well as placing them on the town website.

Green said she contacted General Code, a company she had worked with through her former employer.

“I was absolutely pleased with them in the work that they put forward,” she said. “At the end of this process we will have by-laws [in which] the language is correct, there’s no question, there’s no guessing, there’s no dead end, so to speak.”

Green said she has seen some zoning by-laws, especially, that direct you somewhere but, “You get there and there’s nothing there, so it’s anybody’s guess as to what that means.”

Codification will address all that, she said.

General Code’s proposal would cost under $10,000, according to Green. The firm would also keep by-laws up-to-date online for an annual fee of $11.95.

“We can use our best judgment as far as procurement,” she said. “This is probably a two-year process.”

It would have to come back before Town Meeting in 2023 for adoption when the codification process is complete.

“I think this would be a great thing for the town of Hanson to move forward on,” said Selectmen Chairman Matt Dyer. “If anyone has gone onto our town website, all our by-laws are kind of different sections, different links that you have to click on, and you can’t even do a control-find and try to find anything, because it’s just a scanned PDF.”

He did ask how the company would work with existing by-law committees.

Green said the firm would probably work through her, and send her a copy when they complete their legal analysis. She would separate and give to each committee the by-laws that pertain to them. The committees could decide how they want to proceed.

Selectman Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said the codification process could look at existing by-laws for outdated language while the Zoning By-law Committee continues to look at what the town has, not through the lens of existing regulations, but by the feedback from people trying to locate businesses in town.

“It doesn’t make sense [for the Zoning By-law Committee] to start meeting in any material way until this exercise is done,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.

Selectman Kenny Mitchell also noted there has been a suggestion to bring a name change for the board to Select Board, and asked how difficult that would be.

“There’s a lot of by-laws that would have to be changed as a result of that,” he said, asking if the company could help with it.

“I will say that’s a really easy fix,” Dyer said, noting that a search and replace function on a computer could make that change.

Green said gender-specific language would be changed to gender neutral at the town’s request.

Selectman Joe Weeks asked about coverage for zoning workload.

“The key in that is how are they defining ‘new laws?’” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “I presume they are defining that as new state laws.”

Weeks said he wanted to be able to realistically budget for any changes.

“If it’s reasonable, then we just budget for it and it just becomes part of our cadence going forward at Town Meeting,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.

Green indicated she would obtain information on the cost going forward once the project is complete and the town enters the maintenance phase.

The board also voted to support special legislation that would allow the town administrator to sign one-day liquor licenses.

“[Over] the last couple of weeks, it just seems that us meeting biweekly, isn’t sufficient enough to get one-day liquor licenses signed off on,” Dyer said.

His motion was intended to allow Town Counsel Kate Feodoroff to draft special legislation for Town Meeting to consider, allowing the town administrator to approve such licenses.

I think it’s a good idea, it’s very ministerial,” Selectman Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett. “It’s not like we really have a discussion about it. … We get the paperwork from the Camp Kiwanee guys and they’re listing what type of event it is and they’re using a prescribed … bartender. There’s not a lot of variety.”

Selectman Jim Hickey said he thought the idea was a good one in light the recent situations where license were approved after the fact.

Mitchell also suggested placing an application deadline prior to an event to prevent the need for retroactive license approvals for weddings and similar events.

In other business, Police Chief Michael Miksch informed the board that officer Kevin McCarthy is retiring Saturday, July 31m but has agreed to remain as a part-time officer, to help with details and events, as of Aug. 1.

Bridgewater resident Ryan Shaugnessy, an EMT who has put himself through a part-time police academy, has been forwarded to be offered the conditional position as a student police officer effective Sept. 20. Shaugnessy is currently a Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department deputy and part-time correctional officer. When the department became part of the regional dispatch center, five dispatchers were lost and put on four full-time officers.

Whitman board to meet on strategic plan

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WHITMAN — The Board of Selectmen on Tuesday, July 20 discussed the need to set up a meeting on Aug. 24 with the town’s consultant on strategic planning.

Town Administrator Lincoln Heineman had emailed Selectmen ahead of the July 20 meeting, indicating consultant Ann Donner would like input from the board.

“What she requested was the board’s sense of the ‘long-term primary strategic initiative over the next five years,’” Heineman said.

“Frankly, I think she’s been given a lot of information already,” Selectmen Chairman Dr. Carl Kowalski. “I hope she’s been given our community survey we did two years ago. I hope that she’s been given the report of the override budgetary committee that [Selectman Randy LaMattina] ran. I know she’s been given the report of the Capital Planning Committee. There’s a lot of material we have that she should have had by now. She should have it.”

Heineman said Donner has been forwarded the constituent survey, job classification information, Housing Production Plan that has not yet been adopted by Town Meeting, the most recent Town Report, the most recent (through fiscal 2022) budget and the most recent capital plan.

He said he would like to see some progress made by the Aug. 24, meeting, noting she has already set up meetings with department heads.

“It’s a good start,” he said. “Strategic planning is important — it takes some energy, it takes some time,” Kowalski said, noting he had done quite a bit of it at Massasoit.

He said he also looks forward to some discussions similar to those recently undertaken by the School Committee in recent weeks.

LaMattina also said the town has been specific that the schools should be involved in strategic planning discussions.

Heineman also reviewed the MGL 40R and 40S provisions.

Local zoning, specifically density and whether it includes affordable units was reviewed.

“In one law, it’s built around a transit-oriented area — in our case a commuter rail operation,” Heineman said. “It’s certainly a complicated topic that govern this.”

He explained that the state Legislature had passed, and the governor recently signed, a bill called the MBTA Communities Act, which requires communities that have a transit station to have a particular zone within a half-mile of the station with a zoning ordinance providing one reasonably-sized district where multi-family housing is permitted as a right. Each such district must have at least 15 units per acre.

The state’s Department of Communities and Development is tasked with implementing regulations that govern the issue.

“They haven’t done this,” he said. “We not know yet when they will do that. We do not know yet when they will do that, but we do know that, at some point, they will have to, according to this new law.”

Noncompliance with the new zoning regulation would render a community ineligible for three different types of state grants MASSWorks, the Housing Choice initiative and the Local Capital Projects Fund. None of the zoning areas within the Commuter Rail zone in Whitman currently allow that kind of population density.

“This is the stick vs. the carrot,” Heineman said. “The carrot, that has previously existed for 40 years is MGL 40R, 40S and that allows … for increased density either/or and around the commuter rail station or, in our case, around our downtown business district.”

Density bonuses would be available to the town for creating more housing in the business district if the town is preapproved by the state for its plan.

Selectman Randy LaMattina said he would prefer to see something from the Planning Board on the issue before he considers any action on the proposal. Kowalski agreed that such a request made sense.

Selectmen also discussed redesigning the town website to make it more user-friendly.

“People are constantly complaining on Facebook on issues like that,” Selectman Dan Salvucci said of information residents request about notification on changes to trash schedules and the like.

“I personally don’t want people going to Facebook for answers about the town,” LaMattina. “They should be able to go to the town website to get their answer.”

2 hurt in Whitman collision

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[Editor’s note: This version corrects an error in which the drivers were connected to the wrong vehicles. The Express apologizes for the error.]

Two local men received serious injuries following a motor vehicle crash in Whitman on July 22 at approximately 9:30 p.m.

A medical helicopter air-lifted Jesse D. Farra, 31, of Whitman the operator of the motorcycle, to Tufts Medical Center for multi system trauma following the crash.

In a joint press release through the offices of Police Chief Timothy Hanlon and Fire Chief Timothy Clancy, the accident which occurred in the area of Bedford Street route 18 involved, a 2017 Subaru BRZ, which had collided with a motorcycle, a 2020 Harley Davidson FLHCS.

Chase J. Siereveld, 21, of Halifax, the driver of the Subaru was also injured. Both vehicles sustained serious damage. A State Police Reconstruction C.A.R.S. unit was summoned to the scene as part of the investigation in the area of 674 Bedford Street.

“From the initial reports it appears that the motorcycle was heading southbound on Bedford St. and had passed the intersection at Temple Street,” according to Hanlon.  “The car was heading northbound and turned in front of the motorcycle attempting to enter the parking lot at Papa Gino’s/Whitman Liquors.”

The accident is still under investigation by the MSP C.A.R.S. unit, according Hanlon.

 

 

 

 

Eagle Scout focuses on family

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WHITMAN — Sometimes it helps to be able to laugh at yourself, or at least at  the problems life puts in your way.

Whitman’s newest Eagle Scout Danny Kenn of Troop 22 evidently has that ability, and it came in handy as he provided the leadership, planning and fundraising needed to complete his Eagle project, the demolition and removal of an old utility shed at Colebrook Cemetery as well as the construction of a new shed.

One such joke gift was a white plastic megaphone with “Foreman in-Chief” written on it for his grandfather.

“For anyone who was at my project, you would have heard him,” Kenn said. “He’s very vocal about his opinions and how things should be done.”

Kenn also admitted to some humorous miscalculations in the project, in giving a pair of metal saw horses — to replace the ones he sawed through — to his dad, inscribed “You supported me” and “When I needed it most.”

“You can have the ones you sawed through,” his dad James Kenn Jr., said.

In addition to a bouquet of flowers, he presented his mother Tracey with a framed photo — a close-up of their clasped hands with the inscription: “Behind every great Eagle Scout is a great mom.”

Such sentiments of the inspiration provided by family and friends, and attainment of leadership goals, were the real themes of the day.

“Long trip, huh?” Eagle Project Committee Chairman Geoff Youngman said to Kenn, noting he wasn’t sure if COVID disruptions wouldn’t interfere in completion of the project. “Success in this effort will become evident in the way this Eagle Scout will set a social pattern for all the lives he may touch.”

Scoutmaster Shawn McCollem stressed the responsibility of achieving Eagle rank.

“This is a great undertaking,” he said before administering the Eagle Scout oath to Kenn. “As you live up to your obligations, you being honor to yourself and to your brother Scouts. If you fail you bring down the good name of all true and worthy Scouts.”

His mother Tracey and father Jim Kenn Jr., pinned on his Eagle badge and he, in turn presented pins to his parents and grandparents, as well as mentors’ pins to those people he selected to honor for the advice and inspiration through his Eagle project work, including one for his father.

Kenn earned the 21 Merit Badges, 13 required, that are needed to attain Eagle Scout rank.

His Eagle Court of Honor — divided in two, with the ceremony at The Spellman Center of Holy Ghost Church and a collation at the Knights of Columbus, because of COVID restrictions — was also filled with humor in the form of good-natured ribbing and gag gifts to his family and friends.

“America has many good things to give you and your children after you, but these good things depend on qualities instilled in her citizens,” McCollem said. “She has a great past and you are here to make her future greater.”

Senior Patrol Leaders Scott Brodie and Samantha Kenn served as masters of ceremonies for the event.

Troop 22 Scouts participated in the ceremony with Brodie and Samantha Kenn lighting the candles that symbolize the three facets of Scouting that Scouts pledge themselves to — duty to: God and country, to others an to self — and the 12 points of the Scout Law. Members of the Troop also described the rank advancements and how Kenn personified them through his Eagle project.

Among the honors he received in recognition of the Eagle rank were: a congratulatory letter from former President George W. Bush; a proclamation and designation of Saturday, July 17 as Danny Kenn Day in Whitman; and a Good Citizen Citation from American Legion Post 22.

Warner spoke of Kenn’s propensity for taking time to decide to take on a leadership role and how he excelled at leading once he made up his mind.

“Sometimes that’s what it takes,” he said before presenting Kenn with a Native American possible bag as a gift. “It’s just something that gets you to that point. … Something clicks and you say, ‘This, I can do,’ When you make that decision — not parents, not friends, not your boss — that’s when the magic happens.”