Union-News (Springfield, MA)
Author: RICHARD NADOLSKI
CHESTERFIELD, MA – Al Capone’s vault it’s not, but the largely forgotten and locked safe once used by selectmen years ago that is buried in the deepest part of the town’s library is now drawing a great deal of interest among officials.
“Just what is in that safe, anyway?” selectmen have been asking themselves and others.
“It’s an enormous safe. It probably hasn’t been opened in 30 years,” said David Kielson, chairman of the board, at Monday’s selectmen’s meeting.
Just what is inside the safe will most likely be revealed next Monday night when selectmen try to open it at 6:30 p.m. before their meeting.
Selectman Edwin Lawler recently got hold of the combination – or at least what he hopes is still the combination. There is some question of whether or not the safe also has been locked by a key as well as a tumbler lock.
The safe stands five feet high and four feet wide and the mystique surrounding it began to grow as selectmen pondered, speculated and joked about it Monday night.
“We ought to get Geraldo Rivera here,” said Selectman Donald Houghton, referring to the television talk show host who hosted a show a few years ago about a bricked-up section of a building in Chicago that was rumored to have been a vault for gangster Al Capone.
The section was opened up on live television and found to be empty.
Kielson’s curiosity about the safe was piqued when he discovered it recently while checking out moisture problems in the library basement. He asked Houghton and Lawler but neither could offer much help.
“It’d be great if we opened it up and found a picture of Winnie Bancroft in there. I’d give Goshen five points for that one,” Houghton joked at the meeting.
Bancroft is the town’s fire chief, and his picture adorns a scarecrow on the old Goshen fire station, as part of a scarecrow competition between the Chesterfield and Goshen fire departments.
Town Clerk Sandra Wickland admits she too has been wondering about the safe. Wickland keeps town vital statistics such as births, marriages and deaths in a safe next to the vault in question.
“Oh sure. Curiosity will kill the cat. You always wonder about something that is beyond your reach,” said Wickland, when asked if she ever wondered what was inside.
Former Selectman Janet Lafond said she remembered using the safe until the board moved to their present quarters across the street from the library in the mid ’70s. She speculated that there may still be some assessor’s records and possibly historical records.
“We didn’t use it (after moving). It was so wet in there that we had a dehumidifier running all the time. The old town records really took a beating because it was so damp,” she said.
Former Selectman David Healy, who served from 1942 to 1966, said he provided the combination to Lawler. Healy said the safe was moved from the Town Hall and placed in the basement as the library was being built in 1954. It was further encased in a concrete room to protect the records from fire.
Healy said that one time the combination lock became so hard to turn that selectmen used a pipe wrench to move it. A locksmith was called from Northampton and he repaired the problems and kept the same combination, Healy believes.