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Clarksburg Mulling Restoration of Misspelled Street Name

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
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Joseph Pevoski with sign he installed in 1970, from the North Adams Transcript.
CLARKSBURG, Mass. — Fifty years ago, Joseph Pevoski made sure his friend would not be forgotten by naming a road after him.
 
But at some point the road's name was misspelled and Pevoski's son wants to ensure his father's memorial to his friend is restored.
 
Pvt. 1st Class Herbert McLagan was born in Glasgow, Scotland, but raised in Clarksburg and graduated from Drury High School. He enlisted in the Army in 1941 and was wounded at Cassino a month after landing in Italy in 1944. He died two months later from his wounds.
 
Pevoski, also of Clarksburg, was wounded at Anzio and told the North Adams Transcript he had seen his friend die in the hospital. Twenty-six years later, he was given town permission to name the road in front of his house McLagan Drive. The sign was installed on the Fourth of July, 1970.
 
But the sign was evidently replaced with the wrong spelling sometime between Pevoski's death in 1985 and that of his wife, Juliette, in 2007, when the address in her obituary is given as "McLagen" Drive.
 
Their son, Richard Pevoski of Maine and a retired lieutenant colonel, wants the name changed back and reached out to the Selectmen.
 
Edward Denault of the Historical Commission, spoke in favor of reverting to the correct spelling at Wednesday's Select Board meeting. When addresses change, people usually wait until renewals to update information, he said, or when property is sold.
 
"My big worry would be mail delivery but the supervisor said that changing one letter would make no difference whatsoever, everybody would get the mail exactly as they do now," he said.
 
Select Board Chairman Ronald Boucher, who lives off McLagan, said he didn't have a problem with changing it but his concern was how it would affect homeowners who now live along the road.
 
"The first concern was, what about their licenses, credit cards, all that stuff," he said. "My other thought if that became too dicey, why couldn't this town, in conjunction with the VFW, maybe put a plaque up in his memory on the street sign."
 
But Select Board member Allen Arnold, who works at a car dealership, said misspellings and changes in spelling can cause problems with renewing licenses or registrations. Historical Commissioner Jeanne Moulthrop added that "we found on MassLandRecords.com all the deeds were spelled with an E instead of the A."
 
There was also that McLagan is a private way but also now crosses the town line into North Adams.
 
Richard Pevoski, who joined the meeting later, said his wish was for the sign to be restored.
 
"Having been in the military for a long time, my wife and I counted it up when we were moving here to Maine, and we changed addresses and moves 24 times," he said. "To ask the people in that neighborhood to do it once is not excessive, I don't think."
 
The board agreed to do some research into the issue and resume the discussion at its April 28 meeting.
 
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Trump Elected 47th US President

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff

On Wednesday morning, some woke up with a sense of victory and others with a sense of fear.

Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States on Tuesday after a tight race with Democrat Kamala Harris. According to the Associated Press, Trump has secured 51 percent of the vote to Harris' 47.5 percent.

Trump has 292 of the required 270 electoral votes, with Harris garnering 224.

The former president delivered his victory speech in West Palm Beach Wednesday morning while the crowd chanted "USA, USA, USA." He called this the "greatest political movement of all time" and promised to deliver the "golden age of America."

"We're going to help our country heal. Help our country heal. We have a country that needs help and it needs help very badly. We're going to fix our borders. We're going to fix everything about our country," Trump said.

"We've made history for a reason tonight and the reason is going to be just that we overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible and it is now clear that we've achieved the most incredible political thing."

Harris was to deliver a concession speech at 4 p.m. at Howard University in Washington.

AP called this an "extraordinary comeback for a former president who refused to accept defeat four years ago, sparked a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts."

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