This is the last day of the Merry Month of May and with Memorial Day this past Monday, the “calendar date” of the first day of summer is in just three weeks. It will be busy with graduations from high school and college and hopefully not too hot, or rainy, on those special days.

Now, a bit about the “walkway”, that some of you may have sat on during the Memorial Day celebration outside at the library, on Sean’s property across the street.

It was the entrance to the Union Church, pictured here, which was built and used by Free Will Baptists who united with a group of Methodists to build this church. Ministers were rotated, and Methodists sat on one side of the aisle and Baptists on the other.

But as families moved out of town to follow business pursuits elsewhere, membership dwindled and the church was deeded to the Village Improvement Society. Later it was sold to Hamilton Cornwall in 1941. On July 27, 1943 an explosion occurred taking out the windows in neighboring houses and resulted in a fire that destroyed this 76-year-old building.

This photo, is in the “I Remember When – A Weld Family Album”, was one of my grandmother’s, Dorothy Winter.

In the mid 1960s, a group of Free Will Baptists withdrew membership from the Congregational Church and joined a group of Methodists to build the Union Church. SUBMITTED PHOTO

The Weld Public Works Dept. is seeking a motivated, reliable individual to work on various projects alongside of the Road Commissioner . Including but not limited to repair of various pieces of equipment, mowing along the roadside, running chainsaws, operating heavy equipment such as back hoe, dump trucks, rock rake and any other snow removal equipment in winter.

Manual labor is an integral part of the job as well. In addition, you would be working alongside of the Road Commissioner with traffic control, clearing brush, installing culverts, clearing ditches, hauling gravel, sign repair and replacement, and other road maintenance.

Applicants must be at least 18 years age and hold a valid Maine CDL license. The position requires you to work some nights, weekends and holidays during snow events and winter emergencies. Pay is $20.64/hour for a 40-hour week with overtime during the winter. For more information and application contact the Weld Town Office at 585-2348 Mon., Tues. and Thurs. 8:30 a.m.-1 p.m. plus Thursday 3-6 p.m.

For about the last year or so a committee of townspeople has been working to recognize the Veterans of Persian Gulf conflict. Funds were approved at the March town meeting for engraving those names on the back of the Korean War Veteran’s stone.

There are 3 stones at the library, the original one in the center with WWII veterans on the roadside and WWI veterans on the library side. Two flanking stones were added some time ago, one for Korean Veterans to the right of the center stone on the roadside and one for Vietnam Veterans on the left from the roadside. Persian Gulf Veterans were recently engraved on the library side of the Korean Veteran’s stone.

The Memorial Day celebration, held at the Weld Public library Veteran’s stones annually, included a formal dedication this year of the newest edition of names, the Persian Gulf Veterans, on a rainy May 27 at 1 p/m.

This year the Fire Dept. members also marched in wearing navy blue dress uniforms and hats.

To begin the ceremony, “Taps” was played by bugler Paul Harnden in front of the library with an echo of taps by his young bugler son, Stanley Harnden, behind the library. This was Paul’s 25th year playing taps in Weld on Memorial Day.

As “Sean’s luck” of no rain, was challenged – the rain that had been intermittent throughout the morning, held off until the last of Veteran Mike Pratt’s remarks, but really rained during Margie Fish’s, Persian Gulf Veteran, Thank You to the Veterans of all the conflicts, and as she stated, was more like the actual weather the veterans dealt with for their days were not always bright and sunny.

The event was well attended though, with at least 20 local Vets standing up front in the rain, and I know of at least five who weren’t there. Quite a percentage in a town with a small population of 350. There were at least 35 in the audience across the street on Sean’s lawn and on the walkway, which is all that’s left of the Union Church. Some with lawn chairs, some standing, some prepared with umbrellas.