Just before the Bourne Bridge, on the way to Cape Cod, a white sign streaked with a bit of rust bears green lettering and a familiar symbol.
“As you can see, … there’s a four-leaf clover, with four ‘H’s,” says Sandi Shepherd-Gay, who runs Barnstable County 4-H. “And those ‘H’s stand for head, heart, hands, and health.”
She has walked up close to the sign, just outside the bridge fence.
Around the clover is a message for all who pass over the bridge, resident and visitor alike: “CAPE COD 4-H CLUBS Welcome You.”
Other community-oriented signs have been placed here, too, one of which honors a local winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
All of the signs will be moved in the coming years, when the Bourne and Sagamore bridges are replaced with larger bridges, at an estimated cost of $4.5 billion.
(The iconic topiary bushes that spell out “Cape Cod” will be removed, too.)
Right now, there’s no firm plan about where the signs are going. Each one has a story.
The 4-H sign dates to the 1990s, when Judy Vollmer of Cotuit was the Cooperative Extension educator running the program. She got the idea for the signs when she saw similar ones in other communities.
“As we traveled to other places … we saw these welcoming signs for ‘4-H welcomes you,’ from wherever you were,” she said. “And so I thought, ‘Oh, wouldn't that be great?’”
But — how to get permission? Long story short, it came down to the help of who else but Tom Cahir, a well-known member of the Cape community before his death in March.
Back in the ‘90s, Cahir was a state representative chairing the Joint Committee on Transportation.
Judy Vollmer got in touch.
“And he was like, ‘Oh my God, I think that's a great idea.’ You know, ‘Let's work on this.’”
She asked the local 4-H Advisory Council if they’d support buying the signs, and they did.
Then came the actual installation. Vollmer enlisted some help.
“So my husband got roped into going and digging the holes,” she said. “Actually, Tommy Cahir did help us with one of them, too. Met him at the bridge. We had to dig the holes.”
And with that, the 4-H welcome signs at both bridges were complete. At the Sagamore, the sign was later removed during a construction project, she said.
Another sign at the Bourne Bridge boasts that Bourne is the hometown of a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, Deanne Fitzmaurice.
The sign gives no hint as to the content of her winning photographs.
Her brother, Scott Fitzmaurice, who lives in Pocasset, recalled the story.
Deanne was working at the San Francisco Chronicle in 2003 when she began documenting the life of a boy injured in the war in Iraq.
Nine-year-old Saleh Khalaf had picked up something from the ground. It exploded, fatally wounding his older brother and nearly killing him.
The blast tore off his right hand and part of his left. One eye was destroyed and his abdomen ripped open.
“And this doctor from Oakland decided to put him on a plane,” Scott said.
In California, the boy endured dozens of surgeries and survived.
This was not a one-day story for Deanne Fitzmaurice.
“She has been on the story for over 20 years now,” her brother said. “She's been almost a part of the [boy’s] family, in the background, for many years.”
The photographer’s brother says the signs put up by the Bourne Select Board to recognize her Pulitzer are an honor for the family, and he says the whole Cape can be proud.
“I think it's really nice when the town that you live in decides to recognize positive things that are happening that bring people together,” he said. “It’s really what life is about in so many ways.”
Approaching the Cape Cod bridges gives drivers a look at other signs, as well.
Some, from the Samaritans, show the phone number for the suicide and crisis hotline. These days, the Samaritans also answer 988, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
A sign at the Bourne Bridge, for Heart Safe Cape Cod, recognizes advanced response to cardiac arrest. That, too, has evolved, now run by a different group than it was originally.
Back at the Bourne Bridge, Sandi Shepherd-Gay is explaining how 4-H has also changed.
“4-H has evolved from, as Judy used to say, a ‘cows and cookin’ program’ to a program that is focused on a variety of the interests — or sparks, we call them in 4-H — that youth have,” she said.
Time marches on — for the people and organizations behind the signs, and for the Cape Cod bridges themselves.
When the new bridges open, perhaps some well-placed signs will, once again, let everyone know a bit about the people of the Cape.
