Over the past three years, the Marion Board of Health has banned ‘vaping’ in addition to smoking in public spaces and raised the minimum age to buy cigarettes and nicotine products to 21 before the state mandate. And even today, the board is still bent on pursuing a town-wide prohibition of flavored nicotine and tobacco products. But there remains one Marion resident who the board was unsuccessful in preventing from enjoying her smoke and that woman is Elizabeth Taber. Well, the life-size bronze statue of her, that is.
The ghost of Elizabeth Taber can take another puff off her pipe and breathe easy knowing that the Sippican Historical Society’s statue committee voted unanimously to follow the original design of the Taber statue portraying her seated on a bench clutching her smoking pipe in her hand. In her other hand she holds a book.
On January 22, the Board of Health sat down with Sippican Historical Society member and Celebrate Elizabeth Taber Committee Chairman Judith Rosbe and committee member Amanda Stone, who is also the public health nurse in Mattapoisett. During this meeting, the two women acknowledged the board’s request to remove the pipe from Taber’s hand because of a concern that the pipe would encourage smoking. Nonetheless, as Board of Health member Dr. John Howard put it, “I guess you could say they told us to go put that in your pipe and smoke it.” Which is, in a more a respectful tone, exactly what the two women told them – because the pipe stays.
“We appreciate the letter that you wrote to us,” Rosbe told the board. “I immediately thought, okay, we don’t want any controversy. We really don’t want her to be holding a pipe if that’s going to encourage somebody to smoke.”
During a recent meeting of the statue committee, Rosbe said the artist, New Bedford-based sculptor, Eric Durand, brought in two small-scale 3-dimensional sample arms for the committee to view – one arm’s hand cupped the pipe, and the other would simply sit on Taber’s lap.
“We had a long discussion … and most of the people on the committee woke up one day and said ‘Pipe,’ then woke up the next day and said, ‘No pipe,’” said Rosbe.
Ultimately, the committee’s vote was unanimous – Elizabeth Taber keeps the pipe.
“We really felt in the long run that we wanted to portray her as historically accurate, and she was a very unusual woman,” Rosbe said. “She was a very unusual woman.”
Taber, who lived to the age of 97, was a savvy investor who gained much of her wealth from railroad and whaling ship investments, Rosbe said.
“She had some eccentricities,” said Rosbe. “She was eccentric. She didn’t really care too much about what other people thought of her, and she did smoke a pipe.”
In its December 11 letter to the Sippican Historical Society, Board of Health Chairman Jason Reynolds wrote, “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.”
In her written reply to the board, Rosbe initially indicated that the statue committee would consider the request. “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,” Rosbe wrote.
But once the smoke cleared and the matter was out in the open, the public responded to the board’s request on social media and approached members of the Historical Society with their own opinions.
On behalf of the statue committee, Stone said, “We certainly didn’t want to draw any attention to the pipe. That was never our intention … but we’ve seen that through social media, and people have come up to us and spoken about the pipe – those that are supportive of keeping the pipe and encouraging the committee to do so.”
Capturing the essence of who Taber was during that time period is important, Stone said, since that context is what made Taber so different from other women – which is why the pipe should stay. And also, Stone added, “… to support artistic expression, which, as a committee as whole, determined that was also a very important aspect of our decision making.”
Stone said the committee did some research on how behavior can be influenced by certain elements like violence on TV (or a statue with a pipe, perhaps), “and the fact that the committee voted unanimously to keep the pipe … spoke volumes, so that’s the direction that we’re moving,” Stone said. “The decision’s been made.”
“I don’t know if you’re happy about it or unhappy about it,” said Rosbe, “but thank you for letting us come in today.”
The board sat in silence as Rosbe and Stone left the Town House.
After adjourning the meeting, The Wanderer asked the board if it has any comment on the statue committee’s decision.
“I was always told that if I didn’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all,” said Reynolds.
“I don’t think that the kids will even be able to tell that it’s a pipe, so I don’t think it’s going to make a difference,” said Board of Health member Betsy Dunn.
And as for Howard, he simply had fun coming up with puns involving the words “pipe” and “smoke” for the press to use and credit to his name.
The bronze statue honoring Elizabeth Taber will be unveiled during the summer of 2020 to mark the 100th anniversary of the passing of the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote. It will be located in Bicentennial Park overlooking the Town House and the Elizabeth Taber Library, two of the six buildings Taber has bestowed onto the Town of Marion.
The next meeting of the Marion Board of Health is scheduled for February 12 at 4:30 pm at the Marion Town House.
Marion Board of Health
By Jean Perry