A standout at the French King Bridge on Saturday is intended to draw attention to the ongoing problem of the bridge being a site for suicides.
Specifically, safety improvements planned by the state Department of Transportation (MassDOT) have been scheduled, rescheduled and delayed since 2019, to the disappointment of town officials in Gill and Erving. Saturday’s standout hopes to maintain public awareness of the need for the improvements, according to event organizer Stacey Hamel.
Demonstrators will be at the bridge from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Signs are welcome, but participants are asked to be respectful, Hamel said. Information will be posted on Hamel’s Facebook page for the event, “French King Bridge Suicide Prevention Barrier Project.”
Hamel hadn’t heard of the French King Bridge until only a few years ago. She lives nearly an hour and a half away, in the town of Oxford. She first heard of it in 2018, in a phone call from a State Police trooper. Her stepson, U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Bryan Hamel, was suspected to have jumped from the bridge.
Bryan Hamel’s car had been left at the bridge with the front door open, and police had found a set of hand prints on the bridge railing. But his body was not found, even as friends and family spent months searching in a boat, from the bridge all the way down the river to Unity Park in Montague. He is still counted as a missing person.
This spring, the bridge was in the news again when 34-year-old Caroline “Morgan” Bren went missing in April. Over a month later, her body was found downstream from the French King Bridge. After Bren went missing, her partner found out she had researched the French King Bridge online.
“When I saw that, I just said, ‘Enough. I’m going to add my voice to this,’” Hamel said.
MassDOT, which manages the French King Bridge, has made some progress toward installing safety barriers on the bridge, with input and approval from town officials of Gill and Erving. The project was listed in MassDOT’s four-year rolling infrastructure plans published in 2019 and 2020. But this year, in the draft of the 2021 update that was circulated to town officials, the installation of the safety barriers had been removed.
This may have been because the 2021 plan only represents a one-year outlook, rather than the normal four-year outlook. But still, Gill Town Administrator Ray Purington and Erving Administrative Coordinator Bryan Smith both expressed concern that the project, which both consider to be their top transportation priority, may have been cut from MassDOT’s budget.
“I’m sure our project is not the only one that came off,” Smith said at the time. “But if the bridge was able to come off the plan so quickly, how can we ensure that it will be added back on when the department (MassDOT) returns to a four-year plan?”
Some locals complain that safety barriers would diminish the beauty of the bridge and its views of the Connecticut River. Although Hamel doesn’t live in Franklin County, she said she can sympathize.
“It’s a beautiful bridge. But it needs not to be a destination for that anymore,” she said. “My goal is just to raise awareness that this is an issue.”
Reach Max Marcus at
mmarcus@recorder.com or 413-930-4231.