FARMINGTON — Today is Oliver Mangham Day in Farmington. Tomorrow is Liam Morrell Day. The Town Council said so on Tuesday night, in two proclamations read out before it got to the sidewalks and the culverts, and both young men were in the room to hear it.
They are the newest Eagle Scouts out of Troop 170. Mangham rebuilt the bullpens and fields at his high school. Morrell rebuilt a bridge.
The bridge on Mountain Spring
Morrell's project is the one you can walk on.
A bog bridge is the plank walkway that carries a trail across ground too wet to hike. There was a 60-foot one on the Mountain Spring Nature Trail, the Farmington Land Trust's path up the ridge off Mountain Spring Road, and it had reached the end of its life. Morrell identified that, and he did not replace it in kind. He extended it at both ends, so the 60-foot crossing came back as a 125-foot one, more than twice the length of what it replaced.
The council's proclamation lists what that took: "planning, designing, securing permits for and constructing." That is the sequence of a small public works project, run by somebody who is still in high school.
He is also not the first Scout to leave something on that trail. The Land Trust's own page for it credits the birdwatching blind at the southeast corner of the property to Chris Moreno, a Farmington resident who earned his Eagle rank by building it.
He plays violin and piano. He plays football and lacrosse at Farmington High School. He works in the performing arts, coaches youth basketball and volunteers at the Farmington Food Pantry.
He also led the Pledge of Allegiance at Tuesday's meeting, which is the sort of thing you get asked to do on a night when the council is about to name a day after you.
The bullpens in Bristol
Mangham lives in Farmington and goes to school at St. Paul Catholic High School in Bristol, which is where his project went.
The baseball and softball teams there now have bullpens and practice areas built to last, regraded fields, and new pitching mounds and rubbers for the home side and the visiting side. He built the visitors' half too.
He is captain of the St. Paul swim team, a two-time all-conference selection and a two-time Connecticut state finalist, and he swims for the University of Saint Joseph next. He was selected for the Boy Scouts of America's High Adventure Sea Base program, an outdoor leadership program run out of the Florida Keys.
The list of what else he has turned up for runs long: Farmington town cleanups, the Knights of Columbus Christmas Fair, church beautification, landscaping, and the BARC prom, run by the Bristol Adult Resource Center, which has been working with adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in that city since 1957.
Two citations from the legislature
State Representative Mike Demicco, who represents Farmington, then did what state legislators do at moments like this.
"As usual, I come with hardware from the legislature, Mr. Chair, and I'll be brief," he said.
He read out an official General Assembly citation for each of them, introduced by Demicco along with Representative Rebecca Martinez and Senators Derek Slap and Rick Lopes, and signed by the Senate president, the House speaker and the secretary of the state.
Citations are written to be read aloud to the person standing there, and this one is in the second person the whole way through. "You can be proud of the good work you have done for your community, which will benefit from your dedication and your perseverance," it reads. "The personal qualities that have enabled you to reach this goal will serve you well in your future endeavors."
The rest of the evening
Then the room thinned out, as rooms do.
"If anyone would like to leave before we begin with the rest of the evening, you are welcome to do so," Council Chair Brian F.X. Connolly told the families, "but it is going to be a riveting evening. But feel free to go off and celebrate."
Most of them went. Somebody else at the table said, "You know how to clear a house, Brian."
What followed was the sidewalk report, the culvert, the e-bikes and the tax exemptions, the ordinary business of a town, all of which comes back next month in some other form. The proclamation says the new bridge makes the trail easier to navigate and enjoy "for years to come." That is boilerplate in most proclamations. Here it is describing lumber. 🏛️
This coverage is supported by Farmington Storage, 155 Scott Swamp Road, the only storage facility in Connecticut with Museum air, which is their way of saying the temperature and humidity are held at museum conditions. Two proclamations and two state citations went home with two families on Tuesday night. Paper keeps, if you keep it somewhere with a stable climate. 860.777.4001 📦
Jack Beckett has covered Farmington long enough to know that the first fifteen minutes of a council meeting are usually the best part. He is on his fifth coffee and would like the record to show that he has never pulled a permit for anything. ☕
The Farmington Mercury covers the town nobody else is covering: the proclamation nobody outside the room hears read, the committee meeting that runs to 10 p.m., the police log you would never find on your own. We publish slowly and without apology. Our motto is "Always last to breaking news" and we mean it, because by the time you read this the applause has died down and somebody has checked the spelling. Find us at farmingtonmercury.com and tell your neighbors. #WeAreFarmington 📰