List,
As a candidate for the Minneapolis Park Board, District 4, I was
humbled this past Tuesday night as a very distinguished audience
member attended and sat in the front row of the Park Board Candidate
Forum at Kenwood Rec Center, none other than Ted Wirth, grandson of
our park's great visionary, Theodore Wirth.
I was pleased to see him there, and at so many Park Board events of
late. He is back in Minneapolis and carrying on the great Wirth
family legacy of spirited involvement in our Minneapolis Parks. Just
two weeks ago, he loomed large at the Open House of his family's
former home in Lyndale Farmstead Park in South Minneapolis, and
enthusiastically greeted visitors (over 800 of them!) as they toured
the historic house and learned more about the history of our
incredible park system, from a landscape architect's and a prominent
family's point of view.
As a fourth-generation Minneapolis parks user and enthusiast, and as
2005 is the 100th anniversary of the beginning of Theodore Wirth's
tenure as designer and head of our park system, I am surprised that
more candidates this year are not talking about how influential
Wirth's legacy has been, and how important it is that we, as city
residents and avid park users, know and understand our parks'
history. The idea of creating a museum at Lyndale Farmstead
documenting Wirth's drafting ideas, land use proposals and policies,
and outlining the generous land donations to the City in the early
part of the 20th century, would help our kids and all of us better
understand what Minneapolis used to look like and how the parks
evolved. A Wirth Museum would also serve to remind us what is truly
worth preserving in a park system and city as dynamic as ours.
I encourage everyone who uses and loves our parks to get to know the
Theodore Wirth House, and the history therein. There is also a great
book called "The Lake District of Minneapolis" by David A. Lanegran
and Ernest R. Sandeen that illustrates the dramatic changes that took
place in our city's landscape before, during, and after Wirth's
tenure. The photos alone in this book are worth the purchase price.
And I wonder: How DID those folks manage to swim in wool bathing
suits that covered them from neck to knee?
Here's to living history in our parks, for kids and all of us,
Tracy Nordstrom
East Calhoun, not far from Cloudman's Village
and the cabin where H.D.Thoreau wrote his "Minnesota Journals"
Tracy Nordstrom for Parks!
www.TracyNordstrom.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
612.386.6257
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