A decade of kickflips, community ties and grassroots resilience took center stage in downtown Turners Falls on Saturday, June 13, as local skaters gathered to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Unity Skatepark. The sun-drenched afternoon served as both a celebration of neighborhood activism and a tribute to the local youth who fought for the park’s creation — including those who didn’t live to see its concrete gates open.
“This was the effort of community,” former Unity Skatepark Committee member Anne Jemas said in her remarks on Saturday, telling the group of young skaters in front of her how “this wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for kids who were about your age working to get a skate park built.”
A community-led effort
It was that youth advocacy that got the Unity Skatepark set in stone, 16 years after Turners Falls’ first wooden skatepark opened in October 1999. Jemas noted that the beauty of Unity Skatepark comes from the way it was “completely grassroots” in its development and dedicated to downtown kids who need a free place to recreate together.
“This is something they can do without paying fees for joining a team, and for traveling team uniforms,” Jemas said.
The effort to get the skatepark built was not just supported by local youth. A number of adult volunteers also stepped up to join the Unity Skatepark Committee. One of the members, David Detmold, pointed out the names of the “heroes” and “heroines” behind the project who refused to take “no” for an answer, ensuring that the legacy of the youth advocates would not “end in ashes.”
Recalling a conversation he had with Jemas, Detmold explained how she would tell the committee that whenever the question of where someone was skating arose, the answer should always be “Unity.”
“And so that’s a beautiful symbol for the young people of our town, but for our town as a whole,” Detmold said of the response.
This state-of-the-art skatepark was built using a combination of state and local funding. The project utilized $272,000 from the Massachusetts Parkland Acquisitions and Renovations for Communities grant program, $31,000 from fundraising by the Unity Skatepark Committee and $88,000 from an Annual Town Meeting appropriation, alongside various other grants and donations, explained Parks and Recreation Director Jon Dobosz.
The park was designed by Pillar Design Studios based in Phoenix, and constructed by the Seattle-based company Gridline Skateparks. Notably, the final layout deviated from the original blueprint; water infiltration into the dig site forced a mid-construction design change, leaving the park with one large bowl instead of the planned two. The resulting design features a single bowl on the left side of the park that is slightly larger than the original, two-bowl design.
“I come in Monday morning, and it was like, ‘Hey, Jon, this happened, and there’s a modification of the design,'” Dobosz recalled. “And the rest is history.”
Reflecting on the decade since its completion, Dobosz said in his speech that Unity is possibly the most popular park destination in Montague, calling its impact on the community “substantial.”
That impact is deeply personal for Matt Stiles of Greenfield, who has been coming to Unity Skatepark for more than five years. He described skateboarding as “one of his biggest passions” and noted that he has gotten to know the names of the regulars, becoming close friends with many of them.
“Everyone’s very kind to each other, trying to help each other learn tricks, help each other out. I’ve always found that the community is very nice and very grateful,” Stiles said, adding that he and other skaters try to help out others.
Honoring the youth
While the permanent concrete skatepark opened in 2016, the push for a dedicated space dates back to the 1990s through a cross-generational effort led by local youth. In 1997, Greg Ellis and Jason Page were part of a cohort of local teens who advocated before the Montague Selectboard for a park, wearing T-shirts that read “Skateboarding is not a crime,” according to articles in the Greenfield Recorder archives.
Ellis and Page were joined at the meeting by Great Falls Middle School students Winter Clark and Chris Gallagher, who — along with other local kids — served as fierce advocates for the vision.
“They didn’t represent all of them, but they were part of the core group of young skaters who really worked most of their young lives to try and get a permanent skate park built,” Jemas explained.
Tragically, in 1998, Clark and Gallagher drowned in the Connecticut River, never getting the chance to see their advocacy come to fruition. Furthermore, after seeing the temporary wooden skatepark open in October 1999 — an experience he described as feeling like “the day before Christmas” — Ellis also missed out on seeing the permanent version open in June 2016. He was killed in a car accident in 2014 at the age of 31.
Each of these three local youths was memorialized at the opening of the permanent skatepark in 2016 with a skateboard memorial crafted by students at the Franklin County Technical School. Years later, Page also died unexpectedly in November 2022.
In an effort to honor all four teen advocates, an additional skateboard with “Jason” inscribed upon it was unveiled on Saturday, also created by Franklin Tech students. While currently bolted to the perimeter fence, the board will be permanently moved next to the existing memorial later this month, bringing Jason, Winter, Chris and Greg back together once more.
This push to place Jason’s name alongside his friends was highlighted by Jemas in her speech, noting how there was a swell of advocacy to get his name memorialized. Back in December 2025, the Parks and Recreation Commission approved adding the fourth skateboard to the memorial following a Change.org petition launched by Jason Gallagher, Chris Gallagher’s brother.
To unveil the new addition, Page’s children, Zephy and Gohan Holzhauer-Page, stepped forward to pull the cloth off the skateboard to warm applause from the attendees and a loving gaze from their mother and Page’s wife, Mariah Holzhauer.
“He’d be there if you needed him — he was amazing like that,” Holzhauer said of her husband, recalling his goofy personality and his dedication to his loved ones. “He was really passionate about getting the skatepark built and everything.”
Holzhauer explained that Page was passionate about the skatepark’s creation because local kids used to get into trouble just for riding around town. The prevailing sentiment among the youth was that skateboarding isn’t a crime, and “if you don’t want us to do it here, then give us somewhere that we can do it,” she recalled.
Once the temporary wooden skatepark was built, Page was out riding nearly every day, Holzhauer said. Though he attended the grand-opening celebration of the permanent concrete park in 2016, his move to the eastern part of the state kept him from visiting as often as he would have liked.
“I think he’d be happy about being up there with his friends and everything,” Holzhauer said, reflecting on her husband’s legacy. “I could just imagine he’d be playing it off and making everybody laugh instead of being in their feels and everything.”
Watching her children unveil the memorial brought up a wave of complex emotions for Holzhauer.
“I’m glad that the kids get to see something that is still us behind after he’s gone,” she said, “Something that he helped make happen.”
