Maynard's High Schools 1871-2016

The school that opened for the 2013-14 school year replaced the building next door that had served as Maynard's High School for 49 years. The high school before that one had served for 48 years. The next to last school had a troubled gestation. In 1961 the town vote was against building a new high school. This was short-sighted, as the existing school had an official maximum capacity of 350 students (already exceeded), no library and a too-small gym. One year later the vote went the other way, in favor of spending up to $1.7 million dollars to go forward. 

The project was way overdue. Projections based on the Baby Boom were that the high school population would swell to 600 in ten years. And in truth, it hit 644 in 1971. Junior high school students were already on split sessions due to overcrowding and the elementary schools were averaging 30 to 35 students per classroom. The new school relieved overcrowding across the entire school system.

MAYNARD HIGH SCHOOL sign destroyed along with the building in 2013.

The Class of 1965 was the first class to graduate from the school building that met its demise in 2013. Joseph Mullin was the class president of 124 graduating students. The class motto was "Non est vivere est valere vita," which translates as "Not merely to exist, but to amount to something in life."

As for the newest iteration of Maynard High School - the sixth to serve that function since the town was incorporated in 1871 - construction broke ground in 2011. Classes began with the 2013-14 school year even though the building and landscape were still works in progress.

Enrollment at Maynard High School ebbed from that 1970s peak of more than six hundred to numbers in the low three hundreds for the last ten years, resulting in graduating classes of about 70 students. There has been a recent uptick in enrollment, but still small compared to our neighbors. Acton-Boxborough graduates 450-500 each year. Nashoba (serving Stow, Bolton and Lancaster) graduates about half that number. To the south, Lincoln-Sudbury sees off about 400 each year, while eastward, Concord-Carlisle says good-by to approximately 325 seniors. What all ten towns share in common is that the great majority of their graduates go on to further education.

One bit of history many current residents are unaware of is that Alumni Field became the school's sports site long before the high school moved to the south side of town. In 1928, while Maynard High School was still at the Summer Street location, the town transferred the land that had been the Town Poor Farm meadow to the School department. The football team started using the new playing field for the 1928 season. Within a handful of years Alumni Field gained a cinder track around the playing field, bleachers, hockey rink, field house and tennis courts.

   As for a list of all the high schools:

       Nason Street          1871-1877

       Acton Street           1877-1892

       Nason Street          1892-1916

       Summer Street       1916-1964

       MHS                      1964-2013

       MHS                      2013-

At the time of the incorporation of Maynard in 1871, the new town was served by ten teachers working in four small school buildings. Salaries were in the range of $9-15/week. The small school building at Nason Street became the first high school, with a total enrollment of 35 students. Six years later a new high school was built on Acton Street (site currently occupied by Jarmo's Auto Repair). Then back to the Nason Street site, and then Summer Street before decamping to the south side of town.

The third high school served from 1892-1916. This was a newly built wooden, 12-room schoolhouse at the current site of the Maynard Public Library. The school suffered a minor fire on September 12, 1916, then burned completely on September 20th. Both fires were thought to be arson. 

Maynard's new high school (1916). Click on photos to enlarge.

The fourth high school started out as part of the building currently occupied by ArtSpace. Construction was completed in time for the start of the 1916-17 school year. The school was nameless until 1932, when "Maynard High School" was approved at a Town Meeting vote. A timeline compiled by Ralph Sheridan and David Griffin for the Maynard Historical Society noted, among these many facts, that football was reestablished as a school team for the fall of 1917, after a 12 year hiatus. The team lost the first game by 59-0.

In Memory of Daniel Mark (1984-2009)

Daniel Mark dressed up for a family event

August marks the seventh anniversary of our son’s death. Most people don’t think of epilepsy as a potentially lethal disease. It is. Daniel’s epilepsy was part of his life from an early age. In spite of his epilepsy and his other disabilities, his attitude about life was “I want it all.” His goal was to live his life with as much independence and joy as possible. He was proud to work at a horse stable and a supermarket. He was happy to meet every person he ever met. Daniel lived in Maynard from 2000 to 2008. Then, at age 24 years, he moved to a supported-living house in a near by town, but continued to visit Maynard often. 

Eight things Daniel liked to do in Maynard:

1. Walk around. Maynard is one of the few walk-around towns in the area. Where else do you have more than 40 restaurants, stores and shops within walking distance?
2. Summer concerts in the park. A place to meet friends and listen to the town band work through a Disney medley.
3. Erikson’s Ice Cream. Serving ice cream in Maynard since 1937.
4. Friday night football. Whether you have kids at the high school or not, it’s not the worst way to spend an evening. Sometimes the opposing team has more cheerleaders than Maynard has team members. And still, often enough, Maynard wins.
5. Volunteer to clean up the river. Because where else can you walk around in ankle deep mud dragging out tires with a bunch of friends?
6. See a movie. Maynard has a movie theater. Acton does not. Stow does not. Sudbury does not. Concord does not.
7. Dine at a Maynard restaurant. Oft times Daniel knew wait staff from his high school days. If the food was good he would say “No offense Dad, but this tastes better than your cooking.” If it was very good, he’d say “I can’t stop eating this!”
8. Drinking with friends. Daniel could not drive, but he did have a state photo ID so he could travel by air. And, as he figured out, if he ran into buddies from his high school days while walking around downtown, they could go to a local bar and he could use his “drinking license” to order a non-alcoholic (because of his meds) beer.

Quiet moment at the barn job arranged by Minute Man ARC:  The ARC

mission statement: "Improving the lives of children and adults

with disabilities through therapeutic services, employment,

recreation, housing and community involvement."

 Epilepsy affects one in a hundred people, and impacts the lives of their families and friends. It is our fondest hope that cures may be found - better drugs, better surgery - so that other families will not experience the loss that we sustained. In memory of Daniel, make a point of enjoying life in Maynard.

This is the point in a column where readers might expect a request to donate to a specific health related charity. But the truth is we all have dealt with, or are dealing with, or will deal with disease and death in our own families. There is lots of advice on how to deal with grief, but it always boils down to: Get help. Take care of yourself. Take care of others. So, get help, take care of yourself, and support the charity that is right for you.

Our family toast, before our evening meal, is "To family and friends, with us and gone."

Desolation of the Shire (Maynard)

Cluster of tree stumps, cut for Assabet River Rail Trail

Maynard and Acton, two small towns in eastern MA are in the beginning stages of construction of a rail trail. In Maynard it runs through the center of town, with much consternation about how many trees are being removed. This column touches on tree clearing and urban trees in general. Two columns earlier is a lengthy description of the project, and in June, a history of same. A construction update has been posted in October.

For those who remember the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (the books, not the movies), after Sauron was defeated, Frodo and his Hobbit companions return to the Shire, only to learn that Saruman and Wormtongue, aided by ruffians and abetted by hobbits who had turned to new ways, were cutting down trees to fuel steam-powered mills. From LOTR: "They cut down trees and let ‘em lie." Later on: "All along the Bywater Road every tree had been felled." After the deaths of uncounted numbers of orcs, humans, elves and one HUGE spider, we the readers were to get our undergarments in a bunch over trees. Trees! For Tolkien, this was a semi-autographical touch - he mourned the loss of the agrarian English countryside of his childhood.

And now we turn to 2016, where in preparation for the rail trail construction through Maynard, 609 trees of diameter four inches and greater have been cut down, woodchipped and soon to be stump-yanked. Yes, I walked the dusty trail from one end to the other, counting tree stumps.  A bit of back-of-envelope math puts the count at a bit more than 0.1 percent of all of Maynard's trees.

Wait, wait, a September update! D'Allessandro decided that all of the trees bordering the trail parallel to Railroad Street were surplus, as were others south of Route 117 and north of Concord Street. Let's up the count to 660 trees removed.

Stumps since cleared, so you cannot challenge my count. My town tree estimate derived from one on-line statement that New England forests have roughly 200 trees per acre five inches diameter or larger; 640 acres per square mile; town area of 5.4 square miles; subtract 40% of the total to account for developed area with fewer trees and water-covered area with no trees. Or subtract 50% to get a better estimate for our tree count and what was cut becomes 0.2 percent.

Tree stumps bordering the planned route of the Assabet River Rail Trail

None of this was a surprise. From the beginning the plan called for a twelve foot wide paved path through the wooded areas, flanked by two foot wide shoulders of either grass or packed stone dust, and in some locations a swale, which is a fancy term for a drainage ditch. The great majority of trees had grown up after the railroad stopped running, in the 1960s. Prior to that the railroad had used cutting and controlled fires to keep a wide swath of land to either side of the tracks vegetation free.

Before we get too deep into this rationalization qua apologia that it was OK to cut all these trees for the trail, I readily admit that some trees are more equal than others. Two healthy London Plane trees at the corner of Nason and Main (both still with us!) are much more valuable aesthetically than a dozen maple trees across from Christmas Motors. The four trees that bordered Main Street near where the Farmers' Market sets up will be sorely missed (as will the hedge); likewise other trees that bordered streets, parking lots, the footbridge, and the back yards of many houses. As compensation, the rail trail project includes in its budget over two hundred thousand dollars for landscaping, including the planting of more than 500 trees. Homeowners wanting even more visual privacy may consider that this is the time to plant a hedge.  

Yellow hauler drags trees to end of section, where orange-armed crane stuffs
trees into blue woodchipper. Click on photo to enlarge.

Maynard has tree work to do separate from remediation of rail trail construction. Nason Street, part of Main Street and the south end of Walnut Street collectively have 36 sidewalk cutouts for trees. Current status is 23 healthy, five sickly, five dead and three empty spaces. Additionally, the grassy strip across from the Fine Arts Theatre recently lost two of four trees and one of the five maple trees planted back of Library has died.

Replacement trees are needed. New sidewalk cutouts could be added farther east and west on Main Street. My point here is that summer shade is an essential part of a walkable downtown. If people are expected to walk between downtown and the mill complex, trees will make that walk more inviting. Worth a mention here that Mill & Main plans call for removing 40 existing trees and planting 88 new trees.

What a TREE CITY USA
sign looks like.

Another ambiance-improving town project would be to purchase a strip of land between the now empty Gruber Bros building and the Assabet River in order to create a river overlook green space and pathway connecting Main Street to the rail trail.  

Maynard may also consider applying to be certified as a TREE CITY USA community, a designation established by the Arbor Day Foundation. This non-profit, non-government organization sets qualifying criteria as 1) maintaining a tree board or department, 2) having a community tree ordinance, 3) spending at least two dollars per capita annually on urban forestry and - wait for it - 4) celebrating Arbor Day. Neither Maynard nor Stow nor any of the surrounding towns are currently certified, but roughly one in four Massachusetts towns and cities are. Lexington has qualified for 27 years. Cambridge 24, Boston 20. Concord, not. The idea of being a TREE CITY USA is not just having trees, but rather having a government program that manages on streets and in parks.

History of Assabet River Rail Trail

Maynard rail road station, photo taken 1910.
Courtesy of Maynard Historical Society.
Click on any photo to enlarge.

Same site, once auto shop, later dry
cleaner's, now empty. Potentially a
site for a Maynard visitors' center?

See articles related to construction in July, August, October and November 2016.

People with long memories can recall the end of Maynard's railroad passenger service in 1958. Less noted was the decline and end of freight service in the 1960s. After decades of disuse the railroad and MBTA each gave up on resurrecting rail service. The 12.4 mile long right of way was deeded over the five communities (Acton, Maynard, Stow, Hudson and Marlborough). Some of the land was subsequently sold to private owners. And there it lay, a broken-up ghost of a railroad spur dating back to the 1850s, once traveled by as many as twenty trains a day, crossties rotting and trees growing up between the rails.

The concept of converting obsolete railroads to pathways for non-motorized use, i.e., "rails-to-trails," began in Wisconsin in 1967 with the opening of the 32 mile long Elroy-Sparta State Trail. Important milestones were the National Trails System Act, which allowed for conversion of government-granted railroad right-of-ways be converted to trails, and the Transportation Equity Act (TEA-21, passed in 1998), which permitted federal funding for transportation improvements other than in support of planes, trains and automobiles. The law has gone through name changes but the goal of federal support for non-motorized transportation remains. 

Rails were removed in 2014 and sold for scrap steel. A few
pieces were left behind where trees had grown over the rails.

According to the Rails-To-Trails Conservancy organization (railstotrails.org) there are now more than 22,000 miles of official ex-railroad trails in the United States. Another 8,000+ miles are in building or planning phases. Lengths range from the 253 mile John Wayne Pioneer Trail, Washington, to the 1.5 mile Manhattan High Line, New York. In Massachusetts, two of the best-known are the 22 mile Cape Cod Rail Trail and the 10 mile Minuteman Bikeway.

Trails take two forms, either packed crushed stone or paved. The first has a much lower construction cost, but higher maintenance. The second can easily exceed $1,000,000 per mile, especially if bridges are needed. In all instances the majority of the cost is federally funded. The remainder is divided between states and towns crossed by the trails.

Locally, the vision of a rail trail on the Acton to Marlborough right of way was begun in 1992 by a few interested residents acting in concert with town employees. A plus for potential funding was the intermodal nature of the concept - with the north end anchored at the South Acton train station, users could walk or bicycle to Acton to commute by train, or the reverse, commute by train to Acton to get to work in neighboring towns. To this end, the Acton train station rents enclosed bicycle lockers for $75/year, soon to go to $100/year.

ARRT sign put up by volunteers years ago, to
promote awareness and use as a walking trail.

The Assabet River Rail Trail organization (ARRTinc.org) was created in 1995 to coordinate volunteer activity. The five towns voted to approve the trail in 1998. Jeff Richards was the first ARRT president, followed by Thomas Kelleher, who has served in that position since 2001. Duncan Power has been clerk for as long. ARRT members have been instrumental in fostering awareness of the proposed trail. For Acton and Maynard that included literally hundreds and hundreds of hours clearing and maintaining the right of way for hikers and bikers. While a few people have been ambivalent about the planned trail ("It's right behind my house!" or "Why does it have to be paved?"), most of the comments have been positive.

Trail construction in Maynard and Acton is to start July 2016 and be completed by May 2018 (all but the final landscaping and fencing should be done by late 2017). After this 3.4 miles is completed at the northeast end, to go with the years-old 5.8 miles at the southwest end (in Hudson and Marlborough), what is planned for the middle?  Negotiations are underway for Track Road, the two miles between the Maynard/Stow border and Lake Boon. Beyond that, the trail would require two (expensive to build) crossings of the Assabet River, and a wide swath of land between the bridge sites is in private ownership. An alternative would be to detour south across the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge before turning west. This would add many (scenic) miles to the originally proposed length, but obviate the need for bridges and the repurchase of the original right-of-way. Either way, the next phase of the trail is years and years away before any possible funding.

An oft-asked question is whether the Acton end of ARRT will link to the Bruce Freeman Trail, currently being extended south through the east edge of Acton, toward West Concord. There is no rail right-of-way between the two, and thus no good option for an off streets connection. One possibility would be to create a three mile long bicycle lane on School Street and Laws Brook Road.

June 2013 has a long write-up on walkability of all of ARRT. Visit www.ARRTinc.org for maps, etc.

Display of railroad rail mounted on cross tie

An exhibit on the history of the railroad and transition to a rail trail was put on display in the Maynard town building on June 28, 2016, in anticipation of construction beginning on the Acton and Maynard portion of the trail. The display case on the main floor includes ten photographs, five pages of text showing the timelines of the railroad and the trail, and explanatory captions. One text panel explains how Amory Maynard's teenage son - Harlan - took the train to Concord to attend school at a private school run by Frank Sanborn. Harlan's classmates included Ralph Waldo Emerson's children and one of his teachers was Henry David Thoreau. The lower part of the case contains a section of original rail, baseplate, spikes and cross tie, plus extra spikes painted in Maynard school colors of black and orange. The exhibit was removed in October but it may be installed at the library in November.    

Fire Hydrants - Oldest in Maynard

New Mueller hydrant, all red, dated 2015.
There are two Muellers dated 1959 on Nason Street.

After penning last week's fire hydrant article I got a few tips. A Mueller hydrant dated 1958 was sighted at Driscoll Avenue. This is now the oldest Mueller found. Pre-1975 Muellers are identified as being made in CHATTA TENN, not CHATT TENN (still meaning Chattanooga). Other brands of hydrants found in Maynard include American Darling, in the Presidents' street district, one hydrant at Main and River Streets branded the Eddy Valve Div of James B Clow Valve, and a couple of Traverse City Iron Works hydrants on mill&main property. A second  Rensselaer hydrant labeled THE COREY, stands on O'Moore Avenue. According to firehydrant.org, this model dates to 1900-1930. The street itself dates to 1921, so this may be an original hydrant, new in 1921.

Being in a neighborhood where the nearest hydrants are red-topped, meaning low water flow, is not as scary as it sounds. First responder trucks carry 500-1000 gallons of water, which is often all it takes to knock down a house fire. Even if not extinguished, time is gained for other water-carrying trucks and hydrant pumper trucks to arrive.

Chapman Valve fire hydrant.
Click on photos to enlarge.

The apparent winner for oldest hydrant is on an unpaved portion of White Avenue. Buried under uncounted layers of white paint, the hydrant has an emblem of a "C" entwined with a "V" which stands for Chapman Valve, A raised circle surrounds the emblem with the faintly legible words CHAPMAN VALVE on the top and BOSTON on the bottom. Outside this ring is a stylized snowflake design. All this detail dates the hydrant's manufacture to 1890-1900. However, Winter Avenue itself and neighboring streets were created in 1921. The possibility remains that this is one of Maynard's first hydrants, installed at the same time as the beginnings of the town's water system, in 1890, later relocated to Winter Avenue.  [Here's hoping that when the hydrant is retired it will turned over to the Maynard Historical Society.]

Chapman Valve Manufacturing Co. was located in the town of Indian Orchard, near Springfield, MA. Chapman had its own complex history. During World War II it supplied valves to the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Energy Commission. After the war, Chapman machined enriched uranium rods into reactor fuel slugs for the Brookhaven National Laboratory. The company may also have conducted rolling operations on uranium metal as late as 1949. The hydrant and valve factory was still active under various company names until 1971.

Twenty-five years later a radioactivity examination found evidence of enriched uranium contamination throughout the buildings and grounds. Remediation actions were taken, the buildings razed, the site capped with concrete and declared safe. A fund was set up to make payments to workers who had developed cancer in the interim. Or to their families if they had died of cancer.

Chapman Valve fire hydrant close-up. Center is letters "C" and "V" with
"MFG" in center. Top of ring reads "CHAPMAN VALVE" and bottom of
ring reads "BOSTON." Outer ring is eight-point snowflake design. 

Much closer to home, Nuclear Metals Incorporated, later named Starmet Corporation, processed depleted uranium (DU) to create armor-penetrating shells for military use. The NMI/Starmet site is in Concord, on the south side of Route 62, about half a mile east of Wendy's. The company operated from 1958 to 2002. Clean-up and remediation efforts, which began in 1997, continue.     

Depleted uranium is 67% denser than lead and only slightly less dense than gold. DU's military use advantage over lead (and gold) is that after penetrating tank or other vehicle armor the pulverized uranium is pyrophoric, meaning that the sparks of impact will set it afire. "Depleted" in this context means that most of the highly radioactive uranium isotope 235 was removed to make power plant or weapons-grade uranium. The problem is that depleted or not, uranium is chemically toxic if inhaled as dust or ingested from a contaminated water supply. Decades of processing DU and other exotic metals at the NMI/Starmet set left buildings and grounds and an on-site retention pond heavily contaminated with metals and chemicals such as PCBs.

Only now - 2016 - are the buildings being torn down and removed from the site, as part of a $100+ million dollar process of final remediation. The previous year saw removal of 4,000 tons of contaminated material, shipped off to Utah and Idaho. In addition to all the above ground and near-surface contamination in a holding pond and on-site dump pit, there is concern that contaminating materials have seeped deep into the earth, and are spreading beyond the boundaries of the property. In time, contaminated subsurface water could reach the Assabet River, some 300 feet to the north.