Adele Hale, a lifelong Greenfield resident, has memories of Oak Park going back as far as she can remember.

“Four generations of my family have played baseball in the park,” Hale said. “I remember my father playing there. All my brothers played there, and now my grandkids play there. My dad was born in 1901, and he used to talk about playing there.” 

Adele’s family, the Belmores, have been in Greenfield for about 125 years. Her grandparents, who were originally from Quebec, moved to Greenfield from Nashua, and her grandfather – who was only 18 years old at the time – purchased a large tract of land directly across Route 136 from what is now Oak Park. 

“My grandparents’ marriage certificate is in the town report for 1899.  My grandfather worked on the Highway Department, and he farmed. My grandmother, who I never met, never spoke English,” Adele recalled. “The land is all still in the family.” 

Growing up across the street, Adele has always had a deep love for Oak Park, which has an unusual history. The original 80-acre park was owned by the Oak Park Fair Association, a private group that sold $25 shares to the park and founded Hillsborough County Fair (which is unrelated to the existing Hillsborough County Agricultural Fair which takes place in New Boston). Adele’s collection of historic photos and documents related to Oak Park include an original stock certificate of the New Oak Park Fair Association, signed by George Holt and Etna Fletcher in 1899. 

The “new” association replaced an earlier association from the 1850s. In 1925, the New Oak Park Association shut down the Hillsborough County Fair and dismantled the grandstand and fair buildings at the park, and ownership of the park passed to Mrs. Arthur Goyette of Peterborough. For 60 years, the park was mostly unused, except for the baseball fields and the remains of the old track, which was used for horse racing in the early 19th century . 

Hale recalls her father talking about how Oak Park was used to store thousands of trees knocked down by the devastating hurricane of 1938.

“They stored trees in Otter Lake as well. That’s why the water can still have a brown tint,” Hale said. 

In 1984, the Town of Greenfield purchased Oak Park from the Goyette family for about $51,000.

“That was the smartest thing the town ever did,” Hale said.

In 1985, a group of residents, including Hale, Ray Cilley and Bob Geisel, formed the first Oak Park Committee. According to Hale, volunteers, including Laura and Michael Sparling, put on the Oak Park Festival for six or seven years to raise money for the park. In the mid-1990s, John Hopkins and Dave Corliss joined the committee and started the Greenfield Blues-B-Que in order to fund the playground equipment and to refurbish the ball fields and the old track. 

“The Blues-B-Que would get several thousand people,” Hale said. “The night before, we would all go to the Meetinghouse kitchen and parboil hundreds of chickens to be ready to grill the next day, and then we packed them in ice chests as fast as we could. We spent hours in my kitchen shredding cabbage for all the coleslaw, and making potato salad. I remember Marjorie Vaness doing a lot of the cooking. Volunteers did it all, and we did that for 20 years.” 

Hale, who was for many years the town’s administrative assistant, also remembers filling out the grant application for state and federal funding for Oak Park. 

“My assistant Rachel Courtney and I wrote the application out by hand, and we finished it two hours before it was due, and I drove the grant application to Manchester with a book of Polaroid photos of Oak Park, and we got a matching grant of $25,000,” Hale said. “Thanks to the money from the Blues-B-Que and the grant, we were able to make Oak Park what it is today.”

Hale is thrilled that the town is now looking at ways to redesign and update Oak Park. She attended the feedback session at the Greenfield Farmers’ and Crafters’ Market, and was excited to see new people in town giving input and ideas for the park. 

“People had really great ideas! We need to take care of what we have,” Hale said. “The more we have to offer, the more we can rent the park out, and the more money we can make for the town. The goal is to raise funds and find money from other sources, grants, fundraising, and not burdening the taxpayers. We did it once, and we can do it again.”

If you have an idea for The Greenfield Beat, please contact Jesseca Timmons at jtimmons@ledgertranscript.com.