Ignoring the wishes of 109,817 Massachusetts online voters, the federal government has rejected Gloucester's Man at the Wheel for engraving on the back of a series of U.S. quarters.
Chosen in a landslide over hundreds of other sites in Massachusetts in Internet voting this spring, the Gloucester Fishermen's Memorial and its iconic image of the man at sea was deemed ineligible for the quarter program because it is not federally maintained, according to a Mint spokeswoman.
With the Fishermen's Memorial out of the way, the spot on the Massachusetts quarter will go to the second place site in online voting, the Lowell National Historical Park.
"It has to be supervised or managed or conserved by a national agency," said Jana Prewitt, a spokeswoman for the Mint yesterday, "based on the criteria and legislation in the America the Beautiful Coin Act of 2008."
When the quarter program began, the governor of each state was asked by the Mint to recommend a preferred site and three alternates for the federal agency to work with.
Like the chief executives of many other states, Gov. Deval Patrick decided to put the matter to a vote and had his office create a ballot based on the sites in the state appearing in the National Register of Historic Places.
But Prewitt said that the National Register of Historic Places "are not in and of themselves eligible."
Kimberly Haberlin, a spokeswoman for Patrick, would not discuss the discussions that took place between the governor's office and the Mint over the quarter site, but provided this statement:
"Massachusetts is blessed to be home to countless historic landmarks and sites — and the Gloucester Fisherman Memorial is one of them. Unfortunately, the U.S. Mint has made the decision that this site is ineligible for this program."
When news of the site switch came down, Congressman John Tierney attempted to intervene on Gloucester's behalf, Catherine Ribeiro, a spokeswoman for the congressman, said in a written statement. But the Mint had already acted.
"When informed that eligibility was an issue, this office offered to file corrective legislation," Ribeiro said. "Apparently, before local government could respond to that offer the second choice that had been submitted by the state had been selected by the U.S. Mint. We continue to stand ready to assist the state if there is some way we can be helpful."
Although a list of all of the first-choice sites for the 56 states and territories slated for quarters was not available yesterday, Prewitt said Massachusetts was not the only state to have its preferred site changed.
In addition to thwarting the effort to choose the quarter image democratically, the decision to deny the Man at the Wheel is a disappointment for a city that's endured more than its share of unwanted national notoriety in recent years and has just finished a nearly monthlong drinking water crisis.
"My reaction is like that of everyone else — disappointed," said Gaspar Lafata, chairman of the committee that brought the cenotaphs bearing the names of lost sailors to the Memorial in 2000, "I don't understand why it can't be done. They don't tell us what the guidelines are despite all the effort put in by the people who support it."
State Sen. Bruce Tarr, said he was going to do "whatever we can to fight this," although he was not sure there was hope of overturning a federal decision, he agreed was a "outrage."
"How we could get this far along only to be rejected on a technicality, I don't know," Tarr said. "The people who acted in good faith are the citizens and governor of the Commonwealth. If there is a mistake, it is with the federal government."
The fishermen's monument was sculpted in bronze by Leonard Craske in 1923 for the city's tricentennial.
In voting over three weeks completed in March, the Fishermen's Memorial pulled in 109,817 votes, more than four times as many as Lowell National Historical Park, the second-place finisher at 26,582 votes.
Third place was Salem's House of Seven Gables, with 10,028 votes and fourth place went to the U.S.S. Constitution in Boston, which pulled in 8,890.
When the quarter program was announced, the Mint made it clear that it held the final decision on the sites chosen along with Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, although a spokesman then would not discuss what could get a state's recommendation rejected.
In a news release yesterday announcing the sites that would appear on quarters, the Mint said the final list had been approved "in consultation" with the governors of each state and by Salazar and Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner.
Patrick Anderson can be reached at panderson@gloucestertimes.com
