Canton airport park nearing completion
By Jay TurnerAfter a string of construction delays spanning nearly three full years, a new state park at the former Canton Airport site on Neponset Street is just about finished and will soon be open to the public, according to officials at the Department of Conservation and Recreation.
Canton Airport, January 1942 (National Archives, courtesy Marc J. Frattasio Collection)
“Contractors are wrapping up the landscaping work now,” said DCR spokesman Bill Hickey. “We’re looking to do a formal dedication of the park sometime toward the end of July.”
The first phase of the project, which involved the cleanup and off-site disposal of soil contaminated with PCBs, was completed in June 2011. The second phase — consisting of soil remediation and the construction of parkland improvements — encountered repeated delays but is nearing the final stages, according to Hickey.
The park itself is located within a portion of Fowl Meadow South just before the I-95 overpass, in the vicinity of the former airport hangars. Amenities include a 30-car parking lot, scenic overlooks, a shade pavilion, a loop trail, interpretive signage, and extensive native plantings.
Hickey said there will also be restroom facilities and a “small meeting space,” although that portion of the project will be completed separately over the next few months.
“It is going out to bid within the next two weeks and should be completed by October or November of 2014,” he said.
In addition to unveiling a new passive recreation option for local residents, DCR officials will also be giving the park a new name: the 1st Lt. Arthur E. Farnham, Jr., and SSgt. Thomas M. Connolly, Jr. Memorial Park, in honor of two World War II heroes and friends who met while working as mechanics during the heyday of the Canton Airport in the 1930s.
In August 2011, Canton resident Paul Seery, a former co-worker of Connolly’s at Emerson and Cuming, and Connolly’s son, Ted, appeared before the Board of Selectmen and pitched the idea of naming the park in honor of the two men, who ended up on the same B24 bomber crew and both took part in the once top-secret Halyard Mission, described by some historians as the greatest rescue mission of World War II.
As detailed in the book The Forgotten 500 by Gregory Freeman and later retold in a Citizen story in 2010, Operation Halyard involved the rescue of more than 500 American airmen, most of whom — including Connolly and Farnham — had been shot down over Serbia while on bombing runs to the German-occupied oil fields in Romania. They spent the next several months hiding out in farmhouses, aided by Serbian farm families and protected by Serbian Chetnik guerillas, before being airlifted to safety in December of 1944.
Connolly, a Boston native, settled in Canton after the war, while Farnham returned to his hometown of Needham.
Seery and Ted Connolly, who now lives in Connecticut, relayed the story of the Halyard mission and some of Connolly and Farnham’s other exploits to selectmen, who then passed on the request to the DCR.
In late October 2012, former DCR Commissioner Edward Lambert confirmed the renaming in a letter to selectmen.
“We thank you for calling to our attention the important and fascinating history of these two men and the role they played in a significant air campaign in WWII,” wrote Lambert in the letter. “Their memory and heroic actions will also be memorialized in the historic interpretive signage we are developing for installation at the new park.”
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Posted by Jay Turner
on Jun 26 2014. Filed under News.
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