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When Marblehead's Board of Selectmen endorsed a chair honoring prisoners of war and service members missing in action on Dec. 10, 2014, the motion left one item open: the location of the chair was "to be determined at a later date."
The chair finally arrived in Abbot Hall on Sept. 23, nearly 12 years later. Its location is still being determined.
The Select Board voted that night to accept the memorial and to coordinate its placement in Abbot Hall with Town Administrator Thatcher Kezer. Select Board Chair Dan Fox and members Rossana Ferrante and Jim Zisson approved the motion; Erin Noonan and Moses Grader were absent.
The chair is more than 200 years old, which makes it at least half a century older than Abbot Hall, completed in 1876. It came from the Masonic Hall, where Veterans Agent Roseann Trionfi-Mazzuchelli said it was one of the few chairs that had not been damaged. She refinished it herself in her side office.
"It's a chair of honor. No one is supposed to sit in it, hence the stanchions and the flags," she told the board.
Such memorials, known nationally as POW/MIA Chairs of Honor, stand empty for service members who cannot fill them because they never came home. Trionfi-Mazzuchelli told the board that more than 83,000 military members, men and women, have not made it back.
A plan that went quiet
The 2014 request came from then-Veterans Agent Dave Rodgers, who asked the board for approval to buy a chair of honor. The minutes describe a chair that could be placed anywhere and would remain empty permanently, a daily reminder of those still unaccounted for. The board voted unanimously to support the program.
It is unclear what became of that plan. Trionfi-Mazzuchelli said that when she raised the idea with Kezer during an earlier appearance before the board, his answer was no.
Fox called the new memorial overdue and thanked her for bringing it forward.
"This is one of the oldest town halls in the Commonwealth. Why don't we have that?" Trionfi-Mazzuchelli recalled telling Kezer.
"Well, now we're about to," Fox said.
This time the approach was different. Rather than buy a chair, Trionfi-Mazzuchelli secured an old one with help from Fire Chief Jason Gilliland, according to minutes of the board's May 13 meeting. She said she passed on the type offered online because this one suits the building. Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Post 2005 donated the stanchions and flags, Veterans Services paid for the plaque and the chair itself was donated.
"It didn't really cost much at all," she said.
The question of placement surfaced again minutes later. Historical Commission Chair Pam Peterson presented four donated portraits of 19th-century Marblehead women, which she said would be the first portraits of women in Abbot Hall. The commission wants to hang them in the Select Board meeting room, the same room that displays "The Spirit of '76" and the town's original deed.
To make space, Peterson proposed taking down a faded photographic image of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, a Marblehead native, until a better reproduction can be found. She said the commission will also have to work out where the chair might go.
"Obviously, we're going to have to do some rearranging in this room in general," she said.
When Trionfi-Mazzuchelli previewed the project in May, she told the board she would return to ask it to accept the chair and "identify where in Abbot Hall the Chair will reside," according to the minutes. The Sept. 23 motion accepted the chair and left the choice of spot to be worked out with Kezer.
Built for the building
The Architect of the Capitol, which oversees the POW/MIA chair in the U.S. Capitol, notes that a town hall's chair of honor often matches the building's architectural style or historic period. The Capitol's own chair is one of 262 ordered in 1857 for the House chamber.
Trionfi-Mazzuchelli said most chairs of honor look nothing like Marblehead's, which she said fits the decor. It did not come from Abbot Hall, but it was built before the hall was.
A formal dedication is planned for Veterans Day, Nov. 11, she said. Where the chair will stand has not been settled. What it will do there was decided in 2014: remain emp
