By Rod Hansen
Staff Writer

Goffstown News/Rod Hansen Eric Hastings of Eckman Construction; school board member Helen Dutton; school board member Paul Levandowski, school board Chairman Matt Thomas, U. S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter, school board member Marge Burke, David Rienstra of Team Design, and school board member Judy Lamont break ground at the site of the new Weare Middle School on East Road Saturday, April 8.

School board member Marge Burke called the guest speaker at the Weare Middle School groundbreaking on Saturday, April 8 “the town’s most famous alumnus of this school.”

He’s been a national figure for nearly two decades, occupying one of the most important seats in all of government. However, this renowned native son proved he still has a sense of humor.

“I’m better off breaking ground on the Weare Middle School than the Lost Liberty Hotel,” said U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter at the Weare Middle School groundbreaking ceremony. The remark drew laughter from the crowd of nearly 200 at the site where the new Weare Middle School is set to open in the fall of 2007.

Souter’s offhand remark came a month after Town Meeting voters rejected an effort to seize his land in order to open the so-called Lost Liberty Hotel.

That movement came in protest of Souter’s role in a Supreme Court decision allowing a Connecticut city to overtake private property for commercial development in an eminent domain dispute.

Voters shot down the effort to seize Souter’s land by a margin of 1,167-493 at the vote on March 14.

Souter’s surprise appearance came at the request of John McCausland, a friend who is the vicar at the Holy Cross Episcopal Church. With the Lost Liberty Hotel now reduced to a punch line, Souter used his time at the speaker’s podium to reminisce about his days as a student in the Weare School system.

“I trace back the knowledge and values I use every day literarily to when I was a student across the road,” Souter said, pointing to the building that now houses the Weare Town Offices. That structure was once the Weare High School and included a single classroom where Souter was a sixth-grade student in Miss Betty Purington’s class.

Souter said he remembers studying grammar and history in Miss Purington’s class, two subjects that would follow him throughout his academic and professional life.

“A day doesn’t go by in my work when I’m not influenced by what I learned in Miss Purington’s class,” Souter said.

Goffstown News/Rod Hansen David Souter chats with Betty (Purington) Straw, who was Souter’s sixth-grade teacher in the 1950-51 school year.

He also mentioned former Town Moderator Scott Eastman as an influence on his view of government.

“Scott Eastman was the fairest man I’ve ever met in public life,” Souter recalled. “Whether a person was a wise individual or a damned fool, Scott saw to it that they got a fair shake.”

The former Betty Purington, now Betty Straw, was in the audience for Souter’s speech last Saturday. Now president of the Weare Historical Society, Straw remembers teaching Souter in the 1950-51 school year, when she was a young teacher a few years out of Keene Teachers College.

Although Straw does not remember all the students she taught until her retirement in 1985, she does remember Souter.

“He was extremely bright,” Straw recalls of her former student, who went on to become the attorney general of New Hampshire, an associate justice of the Superior Court of New Hampshire and the Supreme Court of New Hampshire, a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and finally an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, a position he occupies to this day.

Although Souter’s presence at the groundbreaking brought an air of excitement to the bitterly cold morning, the prospect of having a new middle school offered many officials reason enough to celebrate.

“This is an exciting day,” said School Superintendent Christine Tyrie, who noted the current buildings housing the middle school suffered from water leaks, high carbon monoxide levels, no science laboratories and poor ventilation.

School board Chairman Matt Thomas congratulated community members for approving the proposal for the middle school at last year’s School District Meeting. The proposal to finance the project through an $18.5 million 20-year bond passed by a margin of 1,452-560.

“It’s not about what the school board did, it’s about what the community did,” Thomas said of the vote approving the middle school. “What you did will made a difference to this community, and to all the kids who pass through the school.”

Thomas said a single 131,000-square-foot structure will replace the current middle school buildings, which will be demolished.

The new building, located in the shadow of where the current buildings stand at 16 East Road, will contain a gymnasium, an expanded cafeteria and science laboratories, as well as regular classroom space, Thomas said.

The new Weare Middle School will be a two-story building with fifth and sixth grades on one level and seventh and eighth on another, with room for 800 students and 100 faculty and staff members, Thomas said.

Team Design of Manchester is serving as project architect, and Eckman Construction of Bedford is the contractor.

“It’s been a long road, but we’ll be happy when the school’s open,” Thomas said.