North Reading Girl Scout Updates Parish Park

NRHS senior Colleen Fitzpatrick updated Parish Park on Route 62 in North Reading for her Girl Scout Gold Project. She spent 100 hours working on various aspects of the project from fundraising to working on the park. She also created a plaque dedicated to veterans and held a ceremony in their honor. 

Fitzpatrick held various bake sales and took donations to fund the repairs to Parish Park. She replaced the swings and gravel, trimmed the hedges, stained the picnic tables and swing set, sanded the fence, created a sign that shares information about maintaining the Ipswich River and installed a garden.

"I have put in about a hundred hours of work so far and have reached out to the community at large for assistance," she said. "Basically I updated Parish Park in order to make its appearance more attractive and to make the town more aware that this [is a] park."

She also created a plaque acknowledging local veterans, which will be out as soon as the stone is made.

"The plaque tells us to recognize and honor our veterans and to not take them for granted because they deserve more than we can give," she said.

Fitzpatrick organized a ceremony on Sept. 30 to honor local veterans. Director of Veterans Services Susan Magner delivered a speech, Janelle Yull sang the National Anthem and Kristen Shevlin and Jenna Crawford read stories from two veterans. The veterans stories were incorporated into the ceremony "to show that war affects more than the one in the war."

Fitzpatrick concluded the ceremony by speaking about the event and expressing her gratitude for the help she had received while working on the project.

"I just wanted to get a small portion of the community together just to take some time and remember those who served our country," she said.