July 31, 2026
Annette Szpila
Chair, Bridge of Flowers Committee
Montague, MA
Re: Final Request for Correction, Accountability, and Governance Reform
Dear Ms. Szpila:
I am writing one final time to request that the Bridge of Flowers Committee address several concrete matters of process, accountability, and the public record.
My first contribution to the Bridge was the Trolley Gate. When a prior chair was preparing to install ordinary chain-link fencing, I proposed and fabricated an artful gate instead. The Committee agreed, provided $200 for materials, and I donated my labor. The gate remained in place for approximately ten years. It has now been removed without notice to me and replaced by stock fencing inconsistent with the Bridge’s historic character. I have requested the gate’s return or its respectful display elsewhere on the Bridge. That request has gone unanswered. The result is the quiet erasure of one of my three permanent works from the site.
After the $3.2 million renovation, the growing medium installed on the Bridge failed to support plant growth. Corrective soil replacement required the movement of truckloads of material. I have been given information that the cost was approximately $60,000 and that the Committee provided the soil specification. No clear public accounting has been given of who specified the original soil, who authorized the corrective expenditure, or how the cost was funded. I am formally requesting the records that would confirm or correct these points.
These recent events occur against a longer pattern. The Bridge of Flowers Committee has operated since 1928–1929 as a subcommittee of the Shelburne Falls Area Women’s Club, a private membership organization that has excluded men and persons of other genders from membership and control for nearly a century. The Bridge itself is a publicly owned cultural asset of the Shelburne Falls Fire District. The Committee solicits and manages donations through the Friends of the Bridge and Area Business Supporters programs. Donors contribute under the understanding that their gifts sustain the gardens and the Bridge’s reputation as a peaceful, well-managed public treasure. A private, sex-exclusive group exercising control over a public cultural asset without public elections, term limits, open meetings, or formal accountability to the Fire District raises serious questions about equal access, transparency, and stewardship — questions that sit uncomfortably with the principles of non-discrimination that have guided the management of public resources since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In 2020 the Committee publicly aligned itself with a petition seeking removal of my commissioned artwork and installed an anti-racism memorial while never contacting me for comment or explanation. You were quoted in the June 19, 2020 Greenfield Recorder as stating that the Committee “wanted to honor the anti-racism spirit of the petition.” Those statements were widely understood to suggest that my artwork—and by implication I as its creator—represented values inconsistent with public display. On August 18, 2025, when I asked you about those statements, you denied making them. I later provided the published articles. No correction or acknowledgment has followed.
The Committee’s own public descriptions of its role focus exclusively on day-to-day garden maintenance, plant sales, and related fundraising. Publicly endorsing contested petitions and installing temporary signage on social or political themes fall outside that described purpose.
These structural concerns are the same ones I raised in my February 10, 2026 Greenfield Recorder “My Turn” column. That half-page piece was widely read. Neither you nor any member of the Committee offered any response of any kind. That continued institutional silence is itself evidence of the absence of accountability the current structure permits.
I am requesting that the Committee take the following steps:
- Account for the disposition of the Trolley Gate and either return it to me or arrange for its respectful display on or near the Bridge.
- Provide the records concerning the soil specification, the decision to replace it, the cost of the corrective work, and the source of the funds.
- Acknowledge that the June 19, 2020 statements were published and accurately attributed to you.
- Clarify publicly that those statements did not establish that I hold racist beliefs or that my artwork was created with racist intent.
- Correct the public record regarding the purpose of my work on the Bridge, particularly the Black Stones of Africa as an intentional memorial to mixed-race representation and inclusion.
- Recognize that the Committee’s existing structure — a private, sex-exclusive subcommittee controlling a public cultural asset for nearly a century — contributed to the absence of due process, and support reform toward a more transparent, equitable, and publicly accountable model open to the broader community.
For nearly a century, volunteers have given their labor and donors have given their money to sustain this Bridge — in good faith, on the understanding that it is held in public trust and cared for with honesty and openness. They are the people to whom this Committee truly owes its answers. And they, far more than I, are the ones failed each year these questions are met with silence.
I would still prefer to resolve these matters directly and in good faith, and a response within thirty (30) days would be welcomed. If the Committee chooses not to engage, I intend to pursue public accountability through the appropriate channels: formal public-records requests, a formal inquiry to the Shelburne Falls Fire District as the public owner of the Bridge, and a submission to the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Division of Public Charities concerning the stewardship of a public cultural asset and donor funds by a private subcommittee. I will also continue to document and discuss these issues in the public record.
Nothing in this letter constitutes a waiver of any rights or claims.
Sincerely,
John F. Sendelbach