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Date: 1/24/2022
LUDLOW – During the Ludlow 250th Anniversary Committee’s Jan. 20 meeting, the committee discussed its upcoming town hall event on Feb. 28.
To start the discussion around the forthcoming town hall, committee Chair Linda Collette said the event lands right on the town’s 248th birthday.
“That will make exactly two years to go, so our town was incorporated on that date in 1774, so it is kind of a fun thing that we talked about doing it on a Monday when a lot of other people do not have other meetings and we felt that the townspeople would be more open to that evening,” she said.
When coming up with the idea for the town hall, committee member Kathleen Ouimette said she reached out to local historian Bill Koscher about speaking at the event.
“We came up with this open town hall meeting, talked about getting a great speaker up there, somebody that people know and we asked Bill to do the first 200 years of the history of Ludlow,” she said.
Koscher said his plan was to tell the history of the first 200 years of Ludlow as a story, rather than a presentation.
“What I thought I would do is do a little survey of the various periods in the town’s history and highlight it with sometimes humorous, sometimes warm anecdotes that I have discovered along the way that have shed some light on what life like was in different periods, rather than doing a PowerPoint,” he said.
Following presentations by Koscher and Hubbard Memorial Library Director Patrick McGowan, town hall attendees will move into the cafeteria to discuss the plans for the anniversary. Collette stated they will also take suggestions.
As part of the town hall event, Collette said she wanted to provide people with information about the anniversary and the committee through a flyer.
“I know we are going to need some type of pamphlet or a handout, we want them to have a takeaway with them, not just visually seeing and listening to a presentation, but to physically come home with something. It would include eight different pieces of information including our logo, mission statement and a bit about who we are,” she said.
Collette said she wanted to use the town hall to generate excitement for the town’s semi quincentennial celebration.
“We want to really get people excited about this because we all are very excited about this. We want to promote our town’s history and our pride,” she said. “We need to let people know what day is the 248th anniversary and we are actively planning for the 250th.”
She continued, “This will be our first town hall so we want to pack this with as much information as we can but not be overload so they have something to come away with and be excited so that maybe they could go home and start telling their friends. Then we plan to do another one in the spring while school is still open.”
During the discussion, Collette provided some insight into what started the planning for the 250th anniversary.
“It was the beginning of COVID, I had extra time, I was cleaning the house and realized this was in four years. I started putting some things together and then I pitched it to Derek DeBarge, brought it to the Selectmen and here we are,” she said.
The Ludlow 250th Anniversary Committee is still looking for volunteers and anyone interested in joining can reach out to ludlowma250@gmail.com.