Area briefs: B-24 Remembrance Ceremony on Friday; Porter Phelps museum opens; Easthampton cleanup day fills 25 bags of trash

Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum in Hadley has opened for the 2025 season. gazette file photo
Published: 05-19-2025 12:32 PM |
HADLEY — The South Hadley American Legion and Friends of the Holyoke Mountain Range will hold a B-24 Remembrance Ceremony on Friday, May 23, at 6 p.m., next to the Summit House at Skinner State Park, 10 Skinner State Park Road in Hadley.
The ceremony will include a military honor guard, veteran speakers, wreath laying, rifle salute and the sounding of “Taps.” The event will be held rain or shine.
The event will honor the following members of a Westover-based air crew who lost their lives in a B-24 crash in late May 1944 on the South Hadley side of Mount Holyoke: Sgt. Arnold H. Anderson, Cpt. Ronald C. Lloyd, Lt. William M. Ashley Jr., Sgt. Wilburn H. Dechert, Lt. Donald D. Dowden, Sgt. Ambrose D. Griffith, Lt. John D. Logan, Lt. Talbot M. Malcom Jr., Cpl. Robert J. Ohr, CPL Kearney D. Padgett.
A monument near the Summit House was established in 1989, but ceremonies have been irregular. In 2023, the South Hadley American Legion Post 260 conducted a 79th anniversary ceremony in anticipation of planning a fitting 80th anniversary and made the commitment to conduct a permanent annual ceremony in tribute to these American heroes.
HADLEY — The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum, a historic house dating to 1752 in Hadley, is now open to the public, and offers guided tours Saturday through Wednesday from 1 to 4 p.m. Admission is $5 for adults and $1 for children.
The museum commemorates the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution the following events this summer:
■On May 31, a new exhibit opens called “Forty Acres and the American Revolution: Stories of Independence and Servitude,” with a reception at 2 p.m. A Speaker Series will be held on June 29th at 2 p.m. providing a scholarly perspective on Hessian soldiers, enslavement and labor during the Revolutionary War Era.
■ An outdoor concert series begins June 11 in the Sunken Garden with Tim Eriksen, leader of the “shape-note” tradition, experimentalist, and ethnomusicologist, performing traditional ballads from the Appalachians to the Pioneer Valley.
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Other performers include Thea Hopkins, acclaimed singer-songwriter and member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe of Martha’s Vineyard, on June 18; and vocalists Evelyn Harris and Yasmeen Williams with pianist Ailey Verdelle performing a reunion tribute to Horace Clarence Boyer and Bernice Johnson Regan on June 25.
Concerts begin at 6:30 p.m., picnickers are welcome at 5 p.m. Tickets are available at the door, $12 adults, $2 children, cash only.
<sbull value="sbull"><text xmlns="urn:schemas-teradp-com:gn4tera"></text></sbull>The 44th season of Wednesday Folk Traditions, an outdoor concert series featuring global folk music. Concerts are held in the Sunken Garden at 6:30 p.m. The series kicks off July 2 with Rosemary Caine and The Wild Irish Shenanigans; ReBelle on July 9; Afro-Semitic Experience on July 16; Tony Vacca with World Rhythms closes the series on July 23.
■On July 30 at 2 p.m., the museum presents Stories of Enslavement and Freedom, a Reading Frederick Douglass Together event, a commemoration of the six people enslaved at Forty Acres.
The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum is located at 130 River Drive on Route 47.
EASTHAMPTON — More 50 volunteers came together across the city earlier this month for Easthampton’s annual Citywide Cleanup Day, a grassroots effort to beautify public spaces, promote environmental stewardship, and strengthen community bonds.
Volunteers from the City Council, Easthampton Cultural Council, THCC, Nashawannuck Pond Committee, Girl Scouts, and other civic-minded organizations nearly 500 discarded nip bottles and filled over 25 bags of trash from parks, sidewalks, and common areas.
The annual cleanup continues the environmental work Owen Zaret championed during his time on the City Council, including passing Easthampton’s single-use plastics ordinance, leading the effort to designate Easthampton as an official Xerces Society Bee City, promoting nip bottle waste reduction, and advancing other key sustainability initiatives. The cleanup is co-led by Molly Montgomery.