GOLD STAR PARK RENEWED
Lindsey Arsenault and her brother Brian played in Northboro’s Ellsworth McAfee Park as kids without really knowing why it was called that.
It took the harsh realities of adulthood in wartime — paratrooper Brian Arsenault’s combat death in Afghanistan at age 28 in 2014 — to teach Lindsey what the names on the monument were really about. The park’s dilapidated condition, so many years later, inspired her to reach back 50 years, find those older Gold Star families and undertake a project to honor her town’s Vietnam War dead.
“Brian and I, growing up, just called it ‘the park,’ ” said Lindsey Arsenault, now 23. “It was kind of there, but I never felt any connection to it. After Brian was killed, it was just eye-opening to realize what it was for. That there’s two other families just like us in this community.”
Neil Ellsworth, also a paratrooper, was 19 when he was killed in April 1967 soon after arriving in Vietnam, leaving a pregnant wife behind.
“That war, as all the wars turn out to be, was a war where young men and women are killed,” Ellsworth’s older sister Maureen Sargent told the Herald last week. “He was very likable. He was very jolly. He had red hair and, Northboro was a very small town back then, everyone knew if you had red hair you had to be an Ellsworth.”
The park on Route 135 was named for Ellsworth and Marine Pfc. David McAfee, who died a year later.
“Even though it’s a different time,” Arsenault said, “They know the pain we’re going through.”
Massachusetts Fallen Heroes — the group formed by post-9/11 veterans and Gold Star families — had been in contact with Arsenault since her brother was killed, just weeks before he was due to return home for Thanksgiving. The organization offers support to Gold Star families, whose loved ones are killed in service to the nation. When Fallen Heroes executive director Dan Magoon asked if anyone knew of a community project the group could tackle, Arsenault immediately thought of the place she and her brother spent so much of their childhood, a place that now meant so much more.
“My house backs right up to the park. That memorial hasn’t been kept up. The railroad ties had gotten worn out. It really needed a cleaning,” she said. “We wanted to give them a beautiful memorial ... This is so Brian. He was such a selfless person. He would have been so excited to get this done.”
It was inside that sprawling complex, home to soccer fields and walking trails where Brian and Lindsey went out every day to ride their bikes, walk their dog, play on the playground and meander along the paths.
She and her brother explored every corner of the park, but they never paid much attention to the memorial to the soldiers it was named for, and the plaque that recalled their sacrifice.
After phone calls to town government and help from Blue Water Landscaping, a veteran-owned Northboro company, the work went ahead, and last week, the Ellsworth, McAfee and Arsenault families gathered to rededicate the cleaned-up and landscaped memorial.
“Neil has been dead now 50 years, but it doesn’t seem like 50 years to us. We’re just thrilled they thought enough of us to do this,” Sargent said. “My family was very pleased that they rededicated the park.”
Arsenault said her family and the families of the other men killed are connected by the bond of sacrifice across generations.
“That’s what the whole day was meant to capture. As a post-9/11 Gold Star family, for me, I just think about where my family would be. What we would be going through,” she said. “We’ve been supported and the town has always been there for us from the beginning. I want to make sure we remember all of those who were lost.”