"STANDING IN the midst of smooth lawns a short distance from the street, a perfect beau-ideal of a gentleman's home. Trees and shrubbery artistically trimmed and clipped, partially conceal a mansion from view from the street but there are wide smooth carriageways and paths that afford the visitor ingress to the delightful grounds." (Woburn Journal, 1881).
In the mid-1930s that beautiful mansion was left abandoned by its trustee and burned to the ground, uninsured.
That is just one early example of how the trustee, the City of Boston, has mishandled the trust left in its care by Mary Cummings ("Boston's 210 acres in the suburbs," City & Region, July 29).
The city claims it has given up trying to sell the parkland, while spending its endowment for development plans instead of recreational programs. Yet it will fight to remain as trustee? A campground once enjoyed by many children is silent on this warm summer day, yet Boston's Treasury Department knows best how to manage this park as it was intended?
Mary Cummings stipulated in her will the creation of a trust to keep the land "forever open as a public pleasure ground." The City of Boston has made it clear that it does not want to do this.
DAVID C. CUMMINGS
Woburn
The writer, a descendant of John and Mary Cummings, is a member of the board of Friends of Mary Cummings Park.
