PORT ANGELES — The recent city parks, recreation and beautification commission meeting was more than 5,600 days removed from Sept. 11, 2001.
To more than one person at the session, what has become 9/11 in our consciousness seems like yesterday.
On the commission members’ agenda last Thursday was a recommendation by community activist Alan Barnard to rename the city’s waterfront Francis Street Park east of downtown the 9/11 Memorial Waterfront Park.
Barnard, chair and founder of the Clallam County Public Safety Tribute Committee, was instrumental, along with Coast Guardsmen Andrew Moravec and Sam Allen, in obtaining a portion of an I-beam from the World Trade Center that rises skyward at the park.
One of 2,000 artifacts from the World Trade Center distributed nationwide to fix the day in the memories of cities and towns, the steel appendage memorializes the 2,996 public safety personnel and private citizens who died during that day’s horrific terrorist attacks on the U.S.
The monument, dedicated on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, represents “what we lost, what we learned, how we recovered from Sept. 11, 2001,” Barnard told the commissioners in the Vern Burton Community Center meeting room.
“Francis Street Park doesn’t say much, doesn’t say what’s there. It’s very vague recognition that we have a beautiful park down there that the city spent money on to build.
“Why not rename it in a way that describes what is there and encourage people to utilize the park and recognize the monument?”
Commission members unanimously approved his request to recommend that the City Council give Francis Street Park a new name.
They also unanimously approved Bruce Skinner’s application to rename Georgiana Park at 1006 E. Georgiana St. as the Quinn Redlin Kintner Park.
Before Kintner, a woman who was disabled, died at age 20 in 2010, she spotlighted the lack of Americans with Disabilities Act-access to city parks in a way that rarely fails to choke up Parks and Recreation Director Corey Delikat when he speaks publicly of her impact, as he did Thursday.
“Quinn meant a lot to me and my career at the city,” said Delikat, a longtime city parks employee.
Shane Park’s wheelchair-accessible features were inspired by a senior project she did on accessibility in city parks.
And they recommended, at Skinner’s request, that the Civic Field press box be named the Howard “Scooter” Chapman Press Box for Chapman.
The indefatigable sportscaster for Port Angeles High School sports on KONP-AM radio is a former sports editor at the Peninsula Daily News and its predecessor, the Port Angeles Evening News.
Chapman, who was involved with high school sports for 66 years and started his radio career in 1950, is still calling games.
But commissioners Penny Pittis and Iris Sutcliffe focused their emotions on Barnard’s proposal.
Sutcliffe recalled living in New York City on 9/11 and watching the towers collapse in those giant clouds of debris.
Sutcliffe, who lives near the park, said she passes by the I-beam several times a week while using the adjacent Waterfront Trail.
For her, 9/11 “was more than just a day,” she said. “I love the idea of renaming the park. It’s the right and honorable thing to do.
“I wonder if there might be a way that we might find a name that might reflect that wider perspective for first responders where we also [honor] the middle and last responders and also those who survived, another name that might more broadly affect the meaning of that time,” Sutcliffe said.
More than once insisting on thanking Barnard for his efforts, Sutcliffe suggested forming a subcommittee to find an alternative to his recommendation.
In the final tally, Sutcliffe was part of the unanimous vote to suggest renaming Francis Street Park.
But not before commission member Pittis recalled her own connection to 9/11.
“I feel lucky to be alive,” Pittis said.
She and her husband, the late Jack Pittis — the former Port Angeles public works director who died in 2006 — were in Philadelphia in September 2001.
“I was supposed to go up the tower that day,” Pittis recalled. “At the time that plane hit, we would have been in the tower on a tour,” adding that a change in schedule changed her plans.
Her children had thought she had gone into New York City that day before finding out she was OK.
She recalled people buying vehicles to travel home to distant cities from New York who were afraid to fly on planes.
“I was terrified to get on a plane,” she recalled.
“I think the name is good,” she said of the new moniker. “It encompasses the day, the memorial and our waterfront.”
A plaque on the monument “speaks to the length and breadth of the commemoration,” Barnard said.
“You can read that and there’s not much else one needs to say to recognize the impact of why it’s there and what it means. I don’t know how you can encapsulate that in a name.
“I defy you to touch that beam and close your eyes and stand there for 10 seconds and feel it move through your veins.”
Commissioners more quickly recommended renaming the other two parks.
In recommending the name change, Skinner, Olympic Medical Center Foundation executive director, recalled that Kintner communicated through a computer and imparted words of wisdom.
“Life is not a matter of holding good cards but of playing a poor hand well,” Skinner recalled Kintner saying.
Sutcliffe said it was “a perfect time, a perfect park and a perfect person” to rename Georgiana Park after Kintner.
“That’s a huge honor to name a park after someone who sort of helped the city learn these lessons,” she said.
That Chapman, in his 80s, is still alive for the proposed renaming got some discussion.
“It’s kind of nice to get something named after you when you’re still alive,” Pittis quipped.
But, added Commissioner Bill Peterson, famed Los Angeles Dodgers announcer Vin Scully recently retired, is still alive, and not only had the press box named after him but also the street leading to Dodger Stadium.
Peterson said Chapman, who was not present at the meeting, was worthy of the honor.
“He’s a constant between this community and Port Angeles sports, especially the Roughriders sports program,” Peterson said.
Delikat said he expects the City Council to consider the name changes at a regular meeting in March.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
