Vol. 37, No. 29 3 WEDNESDAY, JULY 17, 2019
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Champs Frozen
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Page 32 Page 12
w w w .W V T I M ESON L I N E . c om
Building Montgomery remembers Marion
dept. woes
Long-time Montgomery historian passes away at 95
Montgomery’s Interim building
inspector reveals inadequacies
By LAURA FITZGERALD
[email protected]
The Town of Montgomery’s interim
building inspector painted a bleak picture
of the building department at Thursday
night’s town meeting when he described it
as understaffed, underfunded and unable
to keep up with growing commercial
development in the town.
“You have big projects going on, and
they’re going on unmonitored,” Interim
Building Inspector James Farr said.
Farr said the town is failing to keep up
with its commercial inspections. Building
code requires “special inspections”
be performed by third-party testing
agencies retained by the project owner.
The inspections include items such as
concrete testing, steel inspections, fire
code inspections and more. Farr said
these inspections are currently not being
performed on the 22 active commercial
site plans under review.
“They need to be reviewed properly,”
Farr said. “It protects everybody. It
protects the owner; it protects the town to
get these things down, and it’s going to get
paid for by the applicant.”
The town has also failed to complete
its basic stormwater inspections. The
town is responsible for enforcing its
own stormwater and erosion control
regulations and should be inspecting all
ongoing construction projects to ensure
the owner is implementing proper
stormwater controls in compliance with
the Stormwater Pollution Prevention
Plan (SWPP).
While Farr said the town engineer
Continued on page 5
By LAURA FITZGERALD
[email protected]
If you want to learn more about
Marion Mohr Wild’s legacy, look no
further than the Montgomery Village
Museum. Her legacy is in the pages
and pages of notes written in elegant,
slanted cursive, detailing every piece
of Montgomery’s history. It’s in the
exhibits, some bearing her own
memorabilia. It’s in the village itself,
every facet of which was touched by
her life.
Montgomery’s historian for more
than 20 years, Wild passed away on July
9. She was 95.
A prolific writer who shunned
computers, she preferred to hand-
write notes that were tucked into filing
cabinets and books and exhibits. The
notes detailed the most momentous and
the most mundane: a World War II-era
cake recipe; the price of milk on Jan.
21, 1911; all the businesses who occupied
the building formerly known as the
Palace Hotel, with dates and owners; an
account of a game from the 1930s known
as donkey baseball.
Wild could find any note or artifact
from memory; ask her any fact, and
she could point to the exact cabinet
and file among a wall of them. Many
people who knew her talked about her
extraordinary memory and quick wit.
“She really was one of the most
intelligent people in Montgomery,”
long-time friend Michael Mont said.
She was passionate and dedicated
to the village in which she spent her
entire life. She was instrumental in
establishing the Montgomery Village
Museum in the former Methodist
Church, along with the help of girl and
Marion Mohr Wild was the grand marshal of the 2015 Saint Patrick’s Ramble.
boy scouts earning their gold and eagle
awards.
Wild’s successor, Brian Fitzpatrick,
knows he has big shoes to fill. Fitzpatrick
and his wife, Charlene, are currently
sorting and compiling Wild’s notes so
they can be preserved.
While Fitzpatrick has his own plans
for the village museum, he said Wild’s
passion and dedication for the museum
and the village and her breadth of
historical knowledge will remain
unmatched.
“I’m 6’5” but I always looked up to
Marion,” Fitzpatrick said. “I wear size
13 shoes, but I will never fill her shoes.
It’s impossible.”
Long-time friend Marianne Mont
said Wild went out of her way to collect
information for anyone who asked,
whether they wanted to learn more
about their family or other historical
information.
That was the type of person she
was; she was kind, outgoing, generous.
She knew everyone and made friends
Continued on page 19
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