Pupils strive for healthful Howland

HOWLAND – The Howland Memorial Park playground will be smoke-free just as soon as town workers can put up the signs, First Selectman Frank Kirsch said Thursday.

The three signs declaring the park a “Smoking-Free Zone” came thanks to the efforts of 59 Hichborn Middle School pupils who wrote letters to the Board of Selectmen and Town Manager Glenna Armour urging that the park be converted.

Accompanied by the school band, several hundred pupils unveiled the signs with Kirsch, Town Manager Glenna Armour and other town officials on Wednesday.

“We’ll be putting a lot of signs up, and we have three signs going up in the park,” Kirsch said Thursday. “We just have to get poles for them and get a work crew out there.”

The letter-writing campaign was part of the students’ health classes and an organization called SPRINT For Life – Supplying the Penobscot Region with Information on Nutrition, Tobacco and Physical Fitness. The letters showed the children had learned their lessons.

Pupil Leslie Theriault wrote Selectman Fred Ireland that secondhand smoke kills over 50,000 people – including 6,000 children – annually and that chewing or spit tobacco causes lip, gum and tongue cancer.

Keith Drost wrote, “Which is better as a role model, a smoking adult or a sport player? Kids look up to their parents and if they smoke, the kids will want to.”

Myranda Tash wrote that secondhand smoke triggers as many as 26,000 new cases of asthma annually. She estimated that seven people would die in Maine daily from spit tobacco.

Kirsch said he expected that that the signs would go up within a few weeks. He didn’t know, however, exactly who would enforce the anti-smoking regulation, given that Howland has no police force of its own and Penobscot County deputies visit it infrequently.