BELFAST, Maine — Two years ago, local veterans groups reacted with vigorous opposition when they heard about a proposal to add benches and lighting to the Belfast Armistice Bridge, better known locally as the footbridge.
“Armistice Bridge is a place of reverence,” one veteran said at a heated Belfast City Council meeting in Nov. 2012. “We oppose any changes to it … protect the memorial as it stands now and forevermore.”
Fast forward to this week, and a lot has changed — namely, those who wanted to protect the bridge’s war memorial aspect seem to have found common ground with those who would like to sit down on it and gaze at Belfast Harbor. Without fanfare, city councilors voted Tuesday night to authorize the placement of up to eight granite benches on the bridge, one of which they will accept as a donation in the memory of Peg Worth, a resident and real estate agent who died in January and who loved the harbor and the footbridge.
“I’m just hoping that all the discussion has finally ended,” said Councilor Mary Mortier, who was a newly elected official the night two years ago when the veterans came to protest the benches. “That was my very first council meeting. It was quite an eye-opener.”
The 2012 battle over the bridge began over a misunderstanding that the downtown booster group Our Town Belfast was seeking grant funding to place whimsical, artistic benches and lighting on the bridge, as they had done elsewhere in the city. The footbridge spans the Passagassawakeag River and was built in 1921, when it was dedicated as a memorial to local soldiers who had fought and lost their lives in World War I. However, over the years its maintenance was neglected and pieces of its deck had begun collapsing into the harbor before it was repaired and reopened to pedestrians and cyclists in 2006.
Tammy Lacher Scully, one of the leaders in the effort to save the bridge, said Wednesday that she and the veterans groups had discussed the type of seating that would be acceptable to them in 2012, and that the proposal for backless benches fit the bill.
“These aren’t the kind of benches that encourage people to linger,” she said. “It was important to us that they become places of respite rather than places of congregation.”
This week, no area veterans came to the meeting to speak in favor of or against the benches. City Councilor Mike Hurley said he had written letters to the local American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars commanders to alert them of the new plan for seating on the bridge.
“There’s not 30 commanders in here yelling at us. That’s a pretty good indication” that they are not opposed, Hurley said at the meeting.