ROXBURY — It wasn’t enough for a vandal to destroy a newly-installed sign overnight Friday at the Olde Frye Cemetery beside Route 120.
Sometime Monday night, a thief or thieves stole the “Welcome to Roxbury Pond” sign at the triangle where Roxbury Notch Road (Route 120) and Main Street meet in Roxbury Pond village adjacent to Ellis Pond Variety. Locals call it the “triangle sign.”
“Maybe someone’s got it hanging on their wall,” Jean Shaw, Roxbury Cemetery Committee member, said Wednesday afternoon. “It was a beautiful sign.”
Shaw said Mexico businessman Matt Pingree, the owner of Creative Signs and Apparel, formerly known as Low-Key Custom Design, created the sign. Private funds paid for it, unlike the three cemetery signs that Pingree also made. They are the Frye, Roxbury Village and Pine View signs.
Shaw said she believes the triangle sign had been up for about three years.
“You try to do something nice and get something accomplished,” she said.
“Those cemeteries never had any kind of identification, so that was to me a personal affront, because that was my pet project . . . and the triangle sign was the same.”
Whoever took it unscrewed it from its wooden posts, she said. The Frye Cemetery sign was yanked off and ripped apart, based on evidence at the scene that indicated a vehicle was used.
“It’s very discouraging,” Shaw said. “You try to do something good and some SOB comes along and does something like that.”
Selectmen are expected to address both incidents at their regular board meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 23, in the town office.
“We’re all going to miss that triangle sign,” said Shaw, who is using a photograph of herself and another woman posing in front of the sign as her profile image on Facebook.
“We’ve gotten a lot of compliments on that (sign) looking so nice and everybody worked so hard to get it the way it is, (landscaped) with flowers and all,” Shaw said.
In a possible related matter, Oxford County Deputy Sheriff Josh Wyman said Wednesday that he’s investigating a complaint that someone stole the Route 5/Covered Bridge sign on Covered Bridge and East Andover roads around 8 p.m. Friday in Andover.
Wyman said he wasn’t aware that someone had also stolen the “Welcome to Roxbury Pond” sign, but would include that in his investigation.
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- The “Welcome to Roxbury Pond” sign was stolen sometime Monday evening from the intersection of Main Street and Roxbury Notch Road, also called Route 120, at Roxbury Pond village.
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- Less than two weeks ago, Mexico workers installed a new sign at the Old Frye Cemetery beside Route 120 at the Mexico/Roxbury town line. Sometime overnight Friday, vandals destroyed it.
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