Editor’s note: A version of this letter was presented to the City Council and Mayor Sean Reardon.
To the editor:
I am Mayor Gayden W. Morrill’s granddaughter. My mother, Margaret Gayden Morrill, was his only daughter and her older brother Frank Forrest Morrill was his only son.
During my Uncle Frank Forrest’s career as a financial investment adviser, he made a personal fortune. At the age of 90, gratified in the knowledge that he would bequeath to his three sons and to each of his grandchildren a considerable amount of money, he decided to create a foundation that would give financial support to his native city of Newburyport.
This foundation targets specifically the care of its green parks and the rail trail. He named this new foundation in honor of his father “The Mayor Gayden Morrill Charitable Foundation for the Beautification of Newburyport.”
Mayor Gayden Morrill served the city of Newburyport for two terms during the Great Depression, namely 1932-1933 and 1934-1935.
Despite the dire financial situation of the time, Mayor Morrill ensured in 1934 that for the first time city residents would have safe drinking water when he oversaw the establishment of the Spring Lane water purification plant.
During 1935, Mayor Morrill addressed the serious need for a new high school. He persuaded the City Council to buy Mount Rural; he hired a Paris-trained American architect Edwin Sherrill Dodge to design the new school; he personally stood before the Massachusetts state Legislature to petition it for a grant to help build the school and thereafter also took the train to Washington, D.C., to petition the U.S. secretary of state for an additional grant also to help build the new Newburyport High School.
In November 1935, Mayor Morrill laid the cornerstone of the new Newburyport High School, which today remains one of the city’s most handsome examples of true architecture.
Mayor Morrill accomplished both the Spring Lane water purification plant project and the new high school while staying within the city’s budget.
Clearly, the city’s beauty is provided by its parks, which will receive funding in perpetuity from the Mayor Gayden Morrill Charitable Foundation.
Clearly, today’s City Council and today’s mayor can achieve important accomplishments without eliminating the Parks Department and its director. They just require vision and determination.
MARY GAYDEN WILKINS HASLINGER
Newburyport
