A heated, multi-year dispute in the town of Cornish over the fate of a veterans monument has spread to Windham, following the decision of the Windham Veterans Association to allow the monument to be placed at its center in North Windham.

In late 2011 and early 2012, a Cornish woman named Calista Cross established a nonprofit called the Cornish Veterans Monument Organization and began raising funds from veterans and their relatives in and out of town, with the stated intention of creating a monument park honoring veterans to be placed somewhere in the town of Cornish.

Since then, Cross, the residents of Cornish and the Cornish Board of Selectmen have not been able to come to an agreement on a suitable location for the property. In 2014, voters rejected a citizens’ initiative to place the monument at the Cornish Fairgrounds. While Cross has favored a site next to the local Stone Ridge Restaurant and Tavern, the nonprofit’s former secretary, Sandra Watts, and other residents have called for the monument to be placed at the Riverside Cemetery.

This year, Cross approached people in the towns of Kezar Falls, Limington, Standish and South Hiram, in the hopes of finding a suitable location for the $5,600 veterans monument all to no avail. In the spring, she contacted Mel Greenier, American Legion Field-Allen Post 148 commander, with an offer to place the monument at the Windham Veterans Center. In May, the Windham Veterans Association, which operates the center and represents both the Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 10463, voted to accept the offer.

On July 7, Greenier received a barrage of angry messages sent by Cornish residents through Facebook. They were demanding that the veterans association reverse the decision to accept the monument, since it had been partially funded by Cornish residents and veterans and was originally intended to be placed in Cornish. Greenier said he was taken aback.

“Initially, when [Cross] contacted me, I didn’t know any of this stuff,” he said. “She contacted me and said, ‘I have a monument, we can’t find a suitable place in Cornish.’”

“When I first became aware of angry Cornish citizens,” Greenier added, “I went back to Calista and I said, ‘What is the true story on this?’ I said, ‘Tell me the truth,’ and she said, ‘This is the truth.’”

After speaking with Cross and a veteran named John Bower, who is the vice president of the Cornish Veterans Monument Organization, Greenier determined that Cross had been justified in seeking sites outside Cornish. A relatively small proportion of the donations had come from Cornish residents, and the people of Cornish had been non-cooperative for years, she told him. The veterans association held a special meeting to discuss the controversy, and voted once again to accept the monument. As of the Lakes Region Weekly publication deadline on Wednesday, the association planned to place the monument at the Veterans Memorial Park at the veterans center on Friday.

On July 17, Edna Carr, a Cornish resident who had donated $50 for an ad promoting the Cornish Veterans Monument Organization and is the wife of a World War II veteran, sent Greenier a follow-up email. The two had already spoken over the phone, and Greenier had rejected Carr’s request that he not accept the monument.

“I always thought veterans were persons of honor,” Carr wrote in the email she shared with the Lakes Region Weekly. “It has been a rude awakening to me because of the way you have responded to our request to please do not accept the so-called ‘gift’ of the Cornish Veterans’ Monument. The people of Cornish knew nothing about this transaction. The person who gave it to you, did so out of spite, because she didn’t like the sites offered for the monument here in Cornish. It was not hers to give away, but was purchased from donations given by people and the veterans of this area (two of our veterans gave $500 each). She had no authority to do this, she told no one she was doing it and, more or less ‘stole’ it from the people and veterans of this town. If veterans look after their own, how can you accept and keep this monument with a clear conscience? Please reconsider and do the honorable thing.”

A few hours later, Greenier responded, threatening to forward her emails to a lawyer and initiate a lawsuit.

In an interview, Cross, who is related to a number of veterans, said she had modified the organization’s mission after receiving donations from veterans outside of Cornish. While originally it was intended to commemorate Cornish veterans, she decided to make the monument honor “all veterans.”

“It was going to be Cornish veterans,” she said. “But the money was coming from other places. We didn’t know all these people outside of Cornish were going to donate.”

Cross also said the Board of Selectmen and her opponents in town had repeatedly blocked her efforts to install the monument. She said opponents such as Carr and Sandra Watts, the former secretary of the Cornish Veterans Monument Organization, had also harassed people in other towns who were considering accepting the monument. That’s why she decided to secretly approach the Windham veterans about the monument, she said.

“We weren’t saying anything about the monument going to Windham at that time,” Cross said. “We were going to post it in the shoppers guide once it got placed. Because we didn’t want the Legion to get harassed like they are being harassed now.”

Cornish Selectwoman Karen James, speaking on behalf of the three-person board, said Cross had found it difficult to follow basic municipal permitting procedures.

“She didn’t like going through the process so she tried to place it on private property and that entailed Planning Board and permitting requirements so she felt that the town was throwing up road blocks,” James said. “However, you can’t just place whatever you want where you want without having support in place for that.”

James, who said she donated money to the organization, also said she thought that the name of the group was a sign that the monument would be in Cornish.

“A lot of townspeople have donated to the cause because we support it in theory,” James said. “I don’t know how it could be ambiguous. It would be ambiguous if it were the Cornish-Windham veterans monument organization. Then you could question maybe where it was going to end up.”

In an email, Greenier said Cross would consider raising money for a second monument in Cornish “once a suitable site has been approved by the town.”

Watts, who served as secretary of the Cornish Veterans Monument Organization for three months in early 2012, said such a fundraiser would not likely be a success.

“This town is in an uproar, I tell you,” she said. “If she thinks she’s going to raise money for another monument, these people will tar and feather her. I don’t think there’s a soul here that would either speak to her now. And the worst thing is that people didn’t even know they were doing it.”

The Windham Veterans Association has accepted a monument that is at the center of a heated dispute in Cornish. Cornish residents are demanding that the association reject the monument, which they say should be placed in Cornish. Photo courtesy of Calista Cross