In response to the Marion Board of Health’s objection to a statue of Elizabeth Taber holding her smoking pipe, the Sippican Historical Society has decided to consider the board’s request and extinguish the plan to include the pipe in the life-sized bronze statue of Marion’s benefactor.
In a letter to the Board of Health, Judith Rosbe, chair of the Celebrate Elizabeth Taber Statue Committee, acknowledged the board’s concern that Taber’s “signature” pipe, which was to be featured in Taber’s hand as she sits on a bench at Bicentennial Park, might convey a negative message, especially to the children of Marion.
“We certainly do not want to cause any negative controversy about our plan to honor Elizabeth Taber and all that she did for Marion,” Rosbe wrote. “Therefore, we will discuss your request that we reconsider the design at our next board meeting on January 15, 2019. I suspect that because of your input, we will recommend a change in the design, so that she will hold something else in that hand (or maybe nothing at all) instead of a pipe.”
The Board of Health decided to send the letter to the Sippican Historical Society on December 11, as reported by The Wanderer in its December 13 edition. The letter, which expressed the board’s objection to the pipe, read, “The Marion Board of Health has promulgated regulations banning smoking from all public places. … We feel that if [Taber] is depicted holding a pipe, it would not be compliant with the Marion Sanitary Code.”
By Jean Perry
You people are insane.
“We feel that if [Taber] is depicted holding a pipe, it would not be compliant with the Marion Sanitary Code.”
They should probably stop operating on misguided “feelings”, and realizing that sanitizing history for the sake of political correctness is stupidity on parade.