There are at least several reasons why it can be said that Ballou and his horse were buried beneath his statue is total nonsense, but I’ll just go with this. Ballou died in 1890. The statue was erected in 1900. The dedication was well covered in newspapers. Why no mention of the burial beneath the statue in those articles? Because it didn’t happen.
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I asked for permission from Yankee to post this article. Permission granted, “… providing you give full credit to Yankee, and indicate that no one else can use the article without our permission.”
The Hopedale Council on Aging
Meeting Minutes
September 17, 2026
Formalities:
Attendees
Present: Claire Hill, Department Director, Cheryl Moreci, Chair, Dan Malloy, Secretary
Additional Board Members: Dave Guglielmi, Julia Manning, Judy Pagnini, Arlene Williams,
Not attending: Bob Casali, Charles Duczakowski, Eileen Milaszewski
The meeting was called to order at 1:40 pm.
Previous Meeting’s Minutes – The July minutes were accepted, amended to add that the committee had not voted on the proposal to send a letter to the Select Board about our concerns involving dealing with the town office on financial matters
Finances – Claire continues to have problems having bills paid in a timely manner, having instructors paid, and getting checks. She described the multiple steps she took to make sure a check to pay the post office for the mailing of the monthly newsletter. Nothing serious has happened so far because of the situation, but she’d like to see it improved.
Events – Clare gave the board a list of events that have been held since she started her job in April. They were given in categories including congregate meals, (65 participants), fitness/exercise, (79) and recreation/social (114), for a grand total of 195.
Budget – There are five categories of spending items. Claire reported that our newsletter spending and ??? are not in good shape. We had $3000 in the line for newsletter mailing with $1864 left. It costs us almost $400 per month to do that.
Pets – Sometimes people find themselves unable to care for their pets. Recently Claire took on the very sad job of taking an 18-year-old cat to Tufts to be put to sleep.
SMOC – Nancy has handled 22 calls about heating assistance since the beginning of September and had more scheduled to talk to.
Outreach position – Claire has found two job description papers on the computer. She gave committee members copies of them and asked us to take them home, look them over and get back to her with our opinions and suggestions about them. There was a discussion about how many hours we could give when advertising for the position. Claire is still waiting to hear from Gene as to whether we can split the funding for the position.
Grant possibility – Claire described a grant available for $10,000 to fund a position that is essentially an outwork position. It was voted unanimously to have Claire apply for the grant.
October meeting – After some discussion it was decided to hold the next meeting on October 29.
Adjournment – The meeting was adjourned at 2:05.
Daniel Malloy, secretary