News
Two River People Lend Support After Campaign Sign Vandalism
By Eileen Moon
LIKE MANY RESIDENTS of the two rivers, during the recent presidential campaign, the Grayson family of Fair Haven wanted to show support for the candidate of their choice by putting a sign up in their front yard.
After several plastic campaign signs were damaged or stolen, Yvonne Grayson and her husband, Mark, decided to put up a sturdier one. "We really believed in this platform and this candidate that we were putting forward," she said.
Yvonne had seen some nicely built, McCain-Palin signs made of wood along Navesink River Road, and thought she would make something similar.
"I just went to Home Depot one Saturday morning and got the wood and paint and voila!," she said. "I knew that it was going to be a target, so it was well-constructed."
The sturdy sign featuring the Obama logo was hard to miss, sitting as it did at a crest on Ridge Road in the Grayson's front yard.
In the weeks before the election, many people honked their horns and waved as they drove by. But not everyone passing by reacted benignly. The sign elicited some egg throwing, and there were some unsuccessful attempts to uproot it. Someone plastered a McCain sticker on it.
And one night, someone tried to kick it down, leaving a bootprint on the logo. But the sign was so sturdy that the Graysons thought whoever had kicked it might have broken a bone or two doing it. "It's cemented into the ground," she said.
To discourage further vandalism, the Graysons put lights on the sign at night.
That seemed to help, Yvonne said, as did the vigilance of the Fair Haven Police Department. "We didn't call police (after the first acts of vandalism) but they have been driving by and monitoring it."
But after the election, the family turned the lights off, and were planning to take the sign down when the final incident occurred last Sunday night.
Someone had splashed brown paint on both sides of it.
"It was a horrifying thing," Yvonne Grayson said. They weren't the only ones who thought so.
When they spoke with the police, the Graysons learned that a number of people had already called to register their outrage - people the family didn't even know. Fair Haven police responded swiftly. "They've already taken photos and fingerprints," she said.
"People were so upset," she said. "People who saw what happened left notes in our mailbox. More people are outraged (than not)." The family has also received a number of phone calls from area residents offering their sympathy and support. Young people in particular seem to be very upset about what happened, Yvonne said.
In fact, students from Rumson Country Day School wrote a note to the family offering to help them clean and repaint the sign.
"It was a very positive, encouraging, supportive response."
For the Graysons, it demonstrates that the acts of vandalism don't reflect how most people feel or behave when it comes to the expression of political opinions. "You realize that this is a very small segment" who would do such a thing," Yvonne said.
On Wednesday, the sign was covered by a white tablecloth, looking not unlike a tombstone.
But, Yvonne said, because so many people have expressed their support to the Graysons, the sign will definitely be resurrected, at least temporarily.
This Saturday, the Graysons will be rebuilding and repainting their sign and have invited anyone who wants to help to join them in the effort.
This time, however, it won't be just a campaign sign. The Graysons are going to add the letters U.S.A. at the bottom of it.
"He's everyone's president now," she said. "So it's not about Obama-Biden. It will be about the U.S. as a country, coming together."
