WESTFORD — A new monument will be placed on Connell Drive in honor of a late marine and former police chief.
The Select Board voted unanimously to support the proposal during a June 13 meeting.
Joseph Connell served in the Marines until his discharge in 1951, earning a Combat Action Ribbon, a United Nations Korean War Medal, a Presidential Unit Citation and a Korean Presidential Unit Citation.
He later served as Superintendent of Streets for Westford in 1952. He later joined the Police Department as a patrolman in 1958 and was promoted to Chief of Police in 1963 until his retirement in 1993.
The monument will consist of a granite post topped with a bronze eagle head and informational sign honoring Connell. It will be placed in the median of Connell Drive, approximately 15 feet from Main Street.
Officials raise concerns over monument criteria
Members of the board raised concerns over the criteria in which monuments are recommended from the Monuments and Memorials Committee, as the committee’s charter does not set forth criteria about how to decide where a monument should be placed or who a monument should honor.
“We want to encourage anybody to do it [submit an application for a marker or memorial]. Yes, we don’t want to have a monument farm, but we did what we though we’d do is pass the decision on to the Select Board,” Committee Chair Terry Stader told the Select Board.
“The process is that anybody [can] apply, we open it up, please let us know who [we should select],” Stader added.
The process currently allows anyone apply for a monument for review by the committee, which later reports its recommendation to the Select Board with no specific criteria for the nature or purpose of the monument.
“The charge says to recommend, it doesn’t say to be the gatekeeper. But we give them no criteria on which to make a recommendation. So effectively it becomes, yes, it [the monument] meets regulatory guidelines,” Select Board Vice Chair Scott Hazelton said.
A ‘monument farm’
Members of the Select Board also raised concerns over a “monument farm,” with a concern of having too many monuments in town.
Select Board Chair Tom Clay praised the “artistry” of the monument but raised concerns over town policy regarding approval of future monuments.
“There’s a policy question for us in town. I know it’s not the mandate of the monuments committee as currently constituted but do we want to think about who we’re recognizing,” Clay said.
He added, “I want to make sure we are being deliberate about who we’re recognizing.”
Hazelton says he “would like to broaden the field” of non-traditional monument candidates.
Committee member Marilyn Day raised concerns over the placement of the monument, citing concerns of clutter on the common.
“I thought there was a policy in place on cleaning up the common, uncluttering it, simplifying it and that applied to more than just the common, it applied to the historic district in Westford Center,” she said.
She added, “now, we’re adding this monument, we’re getting it off the common but its just a few feet away. I just don’t see it there.”
Day expressed support for a monument for Charlie Hildreth, who served as Westford’s Town Clerk for 58 years between 1915 and 1973.
“We should be doing a monument to him,” she said.
Others, such as Ellen Swallow Richards, the late resident and first woman to graduate the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1873, were mentioned as a potential candidate for a future monument in town.
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