RUMFORD — Former Rumford Selectman J. Arthur Boivin said he was surprised Tuesday to find his brother’s Native American silhouette steel sculptures depicted in the latest Down East magazine.

Titled “Where In Maine?” the two-page spread in the July 2011 issue asks readers to identify the town where the photograph was taken.

“I think it’s great,” Arthur Boivin said Tuesday. “I sent them an email yesterday and said that section of the park had been renamed the J. Eugene Boivin Park.”

“They wanted to know if it was in Rumford Point and I said, ‘No! It’s in downtown Rumford.’”

Eugene Boivin died Jan. 30, 2010, at the age of 70 and the park on the banks of the Androscoggin River was later dedicated to him.

From the looks of the photograph by Allan Lavallee, Boivin said he thinks it was taken a year or two ago, because it shows silhouettes that are missing or damaged now.

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Boivin said he’s got an artist lined up to help replace one of the more popular statues, that of the Native American spearing a salmon.

He thinks the river washed it away or someone may have taken it, because he’s searched the riverbanks for it and has yet to find it.

Another is damaged and in the basement of the Information Center that Eugene Boivin helped build.

Now that the river level has dropped, Boivin said he will set out the canoe sculpture depicted in the magazine photo.

And he also must fix the now damaged pole of the teepee.

Early Friday morning, a young Rumford man parked his 2002 Volkswagen Passat in the Information Center parking lot but left it running and didn’t engage the emergency brake.

The car rolled through the unlocked park gate and downhill toward the water before ricocheting off the teepee pole and veering into the river’s Reflection Pool. It was located and reeled in on Saturday.

“Isn’t it amazing?” Boivin asked. “A guy’s car goes down into the river and gets brought up and two days later this magazine comes out showing this.”

tkarkos@sunjournal.com


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