image description — The wind blew down the half-completed shed.

Williamstown Rotary Club Helps Build Cal Ripken League Shed

11:20AM / Wednesday, May 11, 2022Print Story | Email Story

The completed shed, with Adam Hall (L) and Jim Easton (R)

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. Over several weekends this April, the Rotary Club of Williamstown donated funds and labor to help the Williamstown Cal Ripken League build an equipment shed next to its newly reconditioned softball field behind the former Broad Brook School.

In early 2021, league board members Jim Easton and Chris Johnson approached Jim Mahon, grants chair of the Rotary Club of Williamstown, and requested help. In order to better establish a new softball, program a shed was needed to store equipment on season and off.

The Rotary Club board agreed, and last August the club obtained grant funding from its Rotary District (7890, which includes most of western Mass and central-western Connecticut). Work was to begin in early spring 2022.

Apart from the steep rise in prices over the year since the grant was funded, conditions looked favorable as construction started. Easton and Mahon started on April 9, setting concrete blocks onto stone pads and leveling them; the following Friday afternoon, the two of them framed a foundation of 2x6 lumber with a plywood floor. The next day, April 16, a crew of five Rotarians and four parents from the league set to work erecting a metal shed from a kit they purchased.

Unfortunately, later that day a rainstorm forced them to pause work. The following Wednesday, the half-erected shed blew down in a spring storm.

Nevertheless, with the help of Adam Hall, son of Rotarians Allen and Valerie Hall and a recent engineering graduate of Union College, a small crew re-erected and repaired the structure in late April.

Easton then tasked some of the softball parents with the assembly of four plastic shelf units, also donated by Rotary, to place inside.

Opening day for the girls' softball league was May 7.

Tags: Cal Ripken, softball,

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Williamstown Board Hears Concerns About 'Hometown Heroes' Banners

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
05:32AM / Wednesday, September 16, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Kurt Durocher told the Williamstown Select Board that he had received nothing but positive feedback from the North County communities where he proposed participation in the Hometown Heroes banner program.

Then Williamstown residents started to weigh in.

Durocher was before the board Monday evening to seek its blessing to put banners recognizing living and deceased military veterans on utility poles in Williamstown, an initiative that has been embraced in all but one of the other municipalities in the district where he serves as Veterans' Service Officer.

"The only negative I've had right now, and it's not really negative, [the Town of ] Florida doesn't want banners to go on Route 2, the Mohawk Trail, for safety reasons, understandably," Durocher said. "So we're trying to figure out an alternate way to make that work in Florida."

By and large, though, the reception to the program has been encouraging, Durocher said.

"I'll use Adams as an example," he said. "They've had a program for many, many years, but it's only for [military personnel] killed in action. Now that I've been allowed to take over that program … there's been a huge outpouring of support, because now we get living veterans on the poles as well.

"The only negative I've had is certain people want their banners in certain locations. So what we did in North Adams is we just did a random draw. I can't please everybody. I've got people who want a banner in a certain location, but three other people want that same location.It was a straight random draw for them."

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