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By Keith Regan, Standard-Times staff writer
WAREHAM -- Furious over the town administrator's decision to remove a dozen Italian flags
from light poles around Onset Village, several residents say they plan to fight back.
The tri-color flags flew for two days last week before Town Administrator Joseph Murphy
Jr. ordered them removed Friday afternoon.
"This is a blatant act of old-fashioned bigotry and discrimination," Ralph
Grassia, the clerk and treasurer of the Onset Fire District, said yesterday. "The
question now is, where do we go from here?"
Mr. Grassia said residents, with help from a Boston-area chapter of the Sons of Italy,
will contact the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination about the removal.
But Mr. Murphy, reached at home yesterday, defended his decision.
He said the Onset residents did not request permission to use town property to hang the
flags.
"If they had asked permission, it probably would have been approved," he said.
Mr. Murphy added that he would have required them to be removed before the holiday
weekend.
"In my opinion, to fly any flag other than the U.S. flag on Memorial Day weekend is a
disgrace," he said. "The flag is a symbol and this weekend it is a symbol of the
men and women who gave their lives for this country in wars fought during the past 100
years or so."
Outside Mr. Grassia's Onset home, wind whipped the large Italian flag flying alongside a
Stars and Stripes. Inside, about two dozen residents gathered to blast the decision to
take down the flags.
The flags had been put up to coincide with a weekend golf tournament in memory of Louis
Fachetti, an Onset water commissioner for nine years. Mr. Fachetti died in October at age
53.
"We're a melting pot, all nationalities making up one country," Mr. Fachetti's
widow, Cheryl, said yesterday. "Those flags represented the contribution of
Italian-Americans to this country."
Another Onset resident, Grace Campia, said her husband, an Italian-American, was drafted
to fight in the Navy in 1943, at the age of 28. He eventually fought his way up the
African coast and into Italy, where American soldiers were given a hero's welcome, she
said.
"It's not about World War II," she said of the Memorial Day holiday. "It's
the Civil War and World War I. It's all the wars and all the people who fought in them. A
lot of Italian-Americans fought for the United States in those wars."
While Mr. Grassia said the flag controversy had brought together people of all
nationalities, some were seizing on the uproar to revive debate over a recently approved
pay increase for Mr. Murphy.
Joanne Byron, locked in a long-running dispute with the administrator over the demolition
of the family's restaurant, circulated a petition at yesterday's gathering stating
opposition to the recent contract extension and raise that selectmen awarded Mr. Murphy.
He now earns $77,000.
> "These people are paying to be bullied by him? I don't think so," Ms. Byron
said.
She said the petition will serve as "an indication of how the people feel" about
Mr. Murphy's new contract.
Despite the criticism, Mr. Murphy said he would make the same decision again.
He said he ordered the flags pulled after receiving a call from a resident who said her
husband served in World War II, in which Italy aligned itself with Germany and Japan.
"She was irate," he said, "absolutely irate."
Mr. Grassia said Cape Verdean flags flew on the same light poles last year. But those
flags were put up -- with permission from the town -- as part of a summer-long
commemoration of Cape Verdean contributions to American culture.
"That was a partnership with the town," Mr. Murphy said.
In this case, he said, he did not know whom to contact about having the flags taken down
when the resident came forward with her concerns.
"This was a Lone Ranger decision," he said. "I wish I had known about it
from the start."
Reference: The Standard-Times
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Started December 31, 1996