Letters to the Editor - History is important - History is important

History is important

This is an open letter to Joe Mullery about his letter to the editor in the August Camden News. I’m concerned about where he got his idea that the pool and then library were built during the New Deal. A quick search finds that you couldn’t be more wrong: minneapolisparks.org/ documents/parks/Parks_Lakes_Trails_Much_More.pdf has this excerpt about Webber Park: In April 1909, Charles and Mary Harris Webber offered to construct a recreation building in the park at their expense, which was to include an outdoor swimming pool fed by the water of the creek. Their proposal, complete with a design for the building by architects Long, Lamoreaux and Long, included an offer to build a second floor onto the building only if the Library Board would use it as a branch library. The Webbers asked that the building be named in honor of their son, John Deere Webber, who had died at the age of nine. 

Now I’m 40. I remember as a very young child going to the library with my mom and seeing the large painting/photograph of the Webber’s child that died, and my mom telling me the story that the Webbers built the pool in his remembrance. I remember trudging up the winding staircase to the second floor, the smooth railing and how disappointed I was when there was no second story on the new, ugly, modern building that replaced it.

What Mullery remembers is a totally different story, and is false. A government program didn’t build those buildings; private money did. The WPA did build picnic tables and benches, but had nothing to do with the pool or library. And if you read the excerpt it took one year to build that pool and library. How long has the area been without a pool? And now a library? And why? Because of lack of organization at the MPRB.

So just like Theodore Wirth Park (regional park) they lump Webber in North Mississippi Park to get the funding for the pipe dream of a “natural” pool. Let’s be honest here. That idea should be scrapped. It’s another crazy idea that is way too expensive to build and maintain. We need functionality not a “one of a kind” in the US. Someone that lives in Northern Minnesota shouldn’t be on the tax hook for a swimming hole in North Minneapolis. State money should go to into large state parks and the counties should pay for the “regional” ones. I don’t disagree that other more affluent areas are getting huge sums of cash; I disagree that it’s fair and right to do such a thing in principle. If the city wants that pool the city should pay for it and the MPRB should go grovel to whomever they need to. Be it private, public or otherwise.

Stephen Jester,

McKinley