Flashback: A Who's Who of Local Buildings
Unlike an earlier attempt to honor a former Park Board commissioner, the naming of the Cathy Mahoney Recreation Center wasn't controversial.
(Editor’s Note: Most of our public schools and park district properties—including the new Cathy Mahoney Recreation Center—bear the names of illustrious citizens. But in 2005, Downers Grove Park Board members couldn’t agree whether to bestow that honor on a long-serving former commissioner. Let’s just say the kerfluffle inspired some snark.)
A certain segment of the community was pretty miffed following the April 21 Downers Grove Park Board meeting.
It was the residents who favor naming a district facility in honor of former commissioner William “Bud” Sherman Jr., who served 38 years on the board and shepherded the growth of the district from eight park sites in 1963 to 48 sites before he stepped down in 2001.
In addition to his other achievements, Sherman was instrumental in forming the South East Association for Special Parks and Recreation (SEASPAR) and was named 1994 Commissioner of the Year by the Illinois Association of Park Districts.
Now, it may sound like Bud Sherman is the kind of public servant any board would be clamoring to honor.
But there is another side to this issue, which is laid out in detail on the Downers Grove Citizens Alliance On Park Spending website. Under the headline, “We don’t support naming a park facility after Bud Sherman,” CAOPS states: “Any Park Board commissioner sours their entire career when they vote to spend over $12 million to build something the majority of the people voted against twice. This is not a matter of ‘a political nature,’ but a matter of right and wrong.”
Park Board commissioners Janis Sleeter and Mike Salazar apparently share the conviction that Sherman torpedoed his public service career by spearheading the Belmont Road recreation center and attempting to build a public pool at that site. Sleeter, citing input from citizens on both sides, suggested a bronze plaque as a compromise measure.
Salazar offered an arrangement straight out of the smoke-filled rooms of lore: He’d vote in favor of honoring Sherman in exchange for votes to name a park after Ronald Reagan and to rename Patriots Park for Officer Richard Barth, who was killed in the line of duty 31 years ago. The park’s Barth Pond is named for him.
I think both sides of this controversy are missing the larger point. Public servants should indeed be held to a higher standard if their names are going to grace our public facilities into perpetuity. But how high? If zero controversy is the expectation, let’s see if the luminaries whose names live on throughout our town would pass muster.
Previous Park Boards profligately named facilities, not only for former commissioners such as Doerhoefer, McCollum, Powers and Whitlock, but for district employees and attorneys, too. Not to cast aspersions on the legal community, but what’s the chance of a lawyer steering clear of controversy?
Then there’s the Lincoln Center, named for the man many Americans consider our greatest president. Excuse me, but wasn’t he also the president who sent hundreds of thousands of American boys to their deaths in the Civil War? Speaking of which—a park named after Grant and Lee? Let’s see, one made his reputation by annihilating the enemy and the other was the enemy.
And by all means, the board must steer clear of naming anything after Ronald Reagan. Didn’t his trickle-down economics result in a 25 percent unemployment rate? And then there’s that pesky Iran-Contra controversy.
While we’re at it, maybe we should ask the District 58 School Board take a hard look at the names of its facilities. Pierce Downer? Wasn’t he just the first in a long line of local developers who sacrificed trees for houses? And is it even remotely possible that William Herrick managed to speak for 100 percent of the public during his 30-year tenure on the District 58 board?
Lottie O’Neill? After 13 terms in the Illinois House and three terms in the state senate, it’s hard to believe Illinois’ first lady legislator could have escaped casting her share of controversial votes. And did anyone bother to vet the poetry of Longfellow and Whittier before they slapped those names on elementary school buildings?
No, it’s clear that few of these names will pass the Bud Sherman test for public facilities. But no matter, there’s an even better alternative. Naming rights! That way, no mere human is held to an unattainable standard of public service, while park, school and village coffers could soon overflow with the largesse of deep-pocket corporations hankering for brand immortality.
Either that, or in the words of one resident who hotly contested some of Sherman’s decisions over the years, the Park District board can just “get over it” and do what’s right. It can bestow Bud Sherman with the honor he richly deserves.
Endnote: Bud Sherman finally got his due. You will find his name on the William F. Sherman, Jr. Interpretive Center at the Lyman Woods Nature Center and Preserve, 901 31st Street.