The Suffield Observer (https://thesuffieldobserver.com/author/lester-smith/)
A small crowd gathered at the Suffield Veterans Memorial on a bright, cool, sunny, Sunday morning at 11 o’clock on the 11th day of the 11th month. They were there to celebrate the armistice ending World War I and honor those who served in all wars.
By mid-November, the grit blasting to remove ceiling paint judged to be the primary cause of the airborne PCB in Kent Memorial Library had been completed, and attention was directed to the floor, from which all the carpet squares and faux wood flooring had been removed, leaving adhesive residue. With all the windows blanked out by plastic to protect the glass, library aficionados couldn’t watch the work, but it’s certainly been gratifying to hear reports on the progress.
Kindergarten and first and second grade children of Spaulding School invited about 70 veterans, including a few active reservists – parents, grandparents, etc. – to be honored in an assembly program early on Friday before Veterans Day.
At Bruce Park on November 10, the Suffield Elementary School’s PTO held their third annual Harvest Hustle, whose events began encouragingly at 10 o’clock in increasing sunshine and concluded at noon in strong wind gusts following darkened skies and a cold, very windy sleet storm. Something like 150 kids participated, and of course there were lots of young parents, along with a bunch of high schoolers who helped set up equipment and put things away hastily in the final wind.
McAlister Intermediate School and Suffield High School both held observances for Veterans Day on November 12, with very different approaches appropriate to the very different maturities of the schools’ students. McAlister’s, for grades 3, 4, and 5, was akin to the observance three days earlier at Spaulding School for Kindergarten and grades 1 and 2.
For many years since the Laureno Stevenson Lumber Yard and fabrication shops on Ffyler Place closed, Suffield planners have been looking at the Town Highway Garage on the other side of the street with critical feelings. If the garage were gone, they felt, the desired commercial development of the 27-acre combined properties would become more likely, with good consequences for the town in land values, tax revenue, and convenient new services.
In a three-year program started in September, the Suffield Garden Club is creating attractive gardens in two little no-ceiling spaces, or atriums, within Spaulding School and a third out by the playground. The work is being supported by a memorial donation from the family of Garden Club member Priscilla Wabrek, who died in 2015.
That’s what Puck proclaimed when William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream reached one of its delightfully confusing peaks in Suffield High School’s fall production on November 1, 2, and 3. The audience loved it all, and many spots had this reporter in stitches.
The Town’s process toward providing decent quarters for its administrative departments has been long and uncertain. The existing Town Hall opened in 1962 as an improvement on the previous building, which was built during the Civil War.
Town officials carefully explained the four issues to be decided at the October 10 Town Meeting. With an attendance of only twenty, including the officials, each of the four resolutions was approved with no “Nays.”