Page 12 - January 2017

HISTORY OF NATION’S OLDEST AND

FINEST ON DISPLAY IN GRAFTON

By Craig Sandler
Printed with permission from the
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

GRAFTON, MASS., OCT. 18, 2016.....The history of built a barracks in Millbury near the new Mass. Pike
America’s oldest State Police force finally has a proper exit. That made it a fitting candidate for the museum;
headquarters. the ribbon-cutting was sped up so an ailing Montague
could attend. He passed away in 2015, well before
In an unassuming brick barracks in Grafton, Charlie collections were fully moved in and displayed. The
Alejandro is slowly transforming the State Police artifacts still have a somewhat jumbled feel, a delight
Museum’s first wave of priceless criminal-thwarting to anyone who likes historical surprises.
knickknacks from a haphazard labor of love into a
solidly-run non-profit. For 40 years, the smallish brick Grafton barracks, like
the others, was a combined office, jail and dormitory.
Do not form the wrong mental picture as you read On one side downstairs was a dispatch desk staffed
“Charlie!” Far from the jut-jawed, crew-cut he- by a duty officer, with a two-cell steel lockup off a work
man trooper of stereotype, Alejandro’s a small but area for doing paperwork. The lockup looks as solid
powerfully-built woman who won Mrs. Petite America and grim today as it did in the Depression. On the other
Massachusetts 2011. end downstairs was a kitchen and mess hall.

Having proven herself up to assignments like the Nowadays, a fascinating hodgepodge of police
Major Crimes Unit and serving undercover in Revere paraphernalia sprawls in display cases arrayed around
- and terrifyingly, as a road tester, facing the very real the rooms. The window sills do duty as display shelves
peril of finding out whether random 16-year-olds can - here a radar gun from the 60’s, there a wooden shield
drive without killing themselves and her - Alejandro of the Registry Police. The Registry force, now defunct,
definitely comes across as someone who can whip was one of the four agencies merged into the State
the outpouring of officers’ attics and photo boxes and Police during a controversial Weld-ian consolidation in
document files into a coherent collection. 1992. Alejandro would like them each to have their

Other, younger state forces have long had their own own space in the museum someday.
museums, repositories for electronics and guns and In the back rear corner, where troopers used to bring
badges and uniforms and above all, stories of bravery in suspects they’d arrested through the kitchen, is
and tragedy and service. But Massachusetts’ version a mock-up of maybe the most famous image of any
was a only a corner of State Police HQ in Framingham Mass. state trooper - the Norman Rockwell painting of
for years, as a cadre of veterans tried to figure out how a trooper and a runaway eight-year old encountering
to get the funding and space for a proper home. each other at a lunch counter in Pittsfield. Alejandro

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the museum’s has brought “The Runaway” to life with a mannequin, a
founding director Ed Montague lobbied for the cause, real counter and lunch stools.
and eventually he and other history-minded police In the alcove leading to the diner mock-up are a
vets got a check-off approved on troopers’ paychecks negotiator’s vest and a Bomb Squad suit, across from
allowing them to fund museum operations and its a canvas and metal stretcher from a time when every
only paid staffer, Alejandro, a part-timer. The Grafton every trooper had a stretcher in his cruiser - most of
barracks was decommissioned in 2006 when the state

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