Clarksburg Mulling Restoration of Misspelled Street Name
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Joseph Pevoski with sign he installed in 1970, from the North Adams Transcript.
But at some point the road's name was misspelled and Pevoski's son wants to ensure his father's memorial to his friend is restored.
Pvt. 1st Class Herbert McLagan was born in Glasgow, Scotland, but raised in Clarksburg and graduated from Drury High School. He enlisted in the Army in 1941 and was wounded at Cassino a month after landing in Italy in 1944. He died two months later from his wounds.
Pevoski, also of Clarksburg, was wounded at Anzio and told the North Adams Transcript he had seen his friend die in the hospital. Twenty-six years later, he was given town permission to name the road in front of his house McLagan Drive. The sign was installed on the Fourth of July, 1970.
But the sign was evidently replaced with the wrong spelling sometime between Pevoski's death in 1985 and that of his wife, Juliette, in 2007, when the address in her obituary is given as "McLagen" Drive.
Their son, Richard Pevoski of Maine and a retired lieutenant colonel, wants the name changed back and reached out to the Selectmen.
Edward Denault of the Historical Commission, spoke in favor of reverting to the correct spelling at Wednesday's Select Board meeting. When addresses change, people usually wait until renewals to update information, he said, or when property is sold.
"My big worry would be mail delivery but the supervisor said that changing one letter would make no difference whatsoever, everybody would get the mail exactly as they do now," he said.
Select Board Chairman Ronald Boucher, who lives off McLagan, said he didn't have a problem with changing it but his concern was how it would affect homeowners who now live along the road.
"The first concern was, what about their licenses, credit cards, all that stuff," he said. "My other thought if that became too dicey, why couldn't this town, in conjunction with the VFW, maybe put a plaque up in his memory on the street sign."
But Select Board member Allen Arnold, who works at a car dealership, said misspellings and changes in spelling can cause problems with renewing licenses or registrations. Historical Commissioner Jeanne Moulthrop added that "we found on MassLandRecords.com all the deeds were spelled with an E instead of the A."
There was also that McLagan is a private way but also now crosses the town line into North Adams.
Richard Pevoski, who joined the meeting later, said his wish was for the sign to be restored.
"Having been in the military for a long time, my wife and I counted it up when we were moving here to Maine, and we changed addresses and moves 24 times," he said. "To ask the people in that neighborhood to do it once is not excessive, I don't think."
The board agreed to do some research into the issue and resume the discussion at its April 28 meeting.
