On Saturday, July 21, at 7:30 p.m., during Clam Festival, all friends and admirers of our daughter, Becky Schaffer, who died last year at the age of 23, are invited to a candle-lit dedication of the granite bench inscribed to her and her passionate love of ice hockey. The bench is at the far end of the pond behind Key Bank in Yarmouth, where pond hockey has traditionally been played.

For Becky, pond hockey epitomized what was so wonderful about the game. As she wrote in a poem about her passion for the sport, “… on a clear winter’s day, pond hockey draws paunchy forty-somethings and timid children to play with town heroes, the varsity boys with their effortless skill and generous good cheer … .” Becky’s determination and persistence earned her a place with those varsity boys on the Yarmouth school team, as well as in pick-up games, showing that girls could play as competitively as the town heroes.

We hope that this bench will allow parents and others to watch their own children learn to enjoy hockey and the pleasures of sharing it with people of all ages and skill levels. We also wish to thank friends who contributed to the bench fund: Marcia Noyes of Community Services, who arranged to have the bench placed on public land, and the Town Parks & Recreation Department, particularly Zac Wiest, who with his crew laboriously and beautifully installed the bench in time for Becky’s birthday.

Janice Cooper and Bill Schaffer
Yarmouth


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