"Uncle" Vito F. Maranzano Glendale Playground

The Daily Plant : Friday, April 13, 2001

RIBBON CUTTING EN FRANÇAIS

Photos by Spencer (Flasher) Tucker

Thanks to $257,000 in requirements contracts from Mayor Rudolph (Eagle) Giuliani and Council Member June M. (Mainland) Eisland, Parks just completed improvements to French Charley Playground in the Bronx. While the students at Fordham University and Fordham Prep swing into the baseball season on the four neighboring ballfields, kids can test out the playground's improved swingsets and play equipment, made safe with new surfacing. The asphalt has been repaved and a spray shower installed to keep kids cool this summer. Capital touched up the playground's French frog and the parks' two gated entrances.

French Charley Playground, where kids delight in the physical pleasure of play, was once a bistro. French Charley's Restaurant stood there in the late nineteenth century, serving up treats from the European continent. On Wednesday, April 11, with French coffee, croissants, and joie de vivre to go around, Parkies and community residents celebrated the playground, its history, and the new improvements.

IN TIME FOR THE BASEBALL SEASON PARKS DEDICATES A NEW BALLFIELD

The ballfield formerly known as Glendale was renamed on Saturday, April 7 for a child who played in the ballfield and the community leader he grew up to be. Richard Koehler was born in Glendale, Queens in 1940. A sports enthusiast, he spent 20 years of his adulthood coaching young people in the games and at the neighborhood haunts of his childhood. For his commitment to the fun and friendship that team sports foster, Parks dedicated a ballfield in his honor.

Glendale Playground is enriched by teamwork on and off the field. Baseball leagues promote a spirit of cooperation that gets carried into local civic work. Glendale Cowanus, the Glendale Civic Patrol, and Community Board Five work with Parks and local officials to make Glendale Playground an outdoor gymnasium where people of all ages recreate and a green town square where residents of varied backgrounds meet and form friendships. In honoring Richard Koehler, Parks honors the spirit of teamwork and the people who make Glendale Playground a winner among parks.

Commissioner Henry J. (StarQuest) Stern; Richard (Ricardo) Murphy, Queens Borough Commissioner; Joanne (Wildfire) Amagrande, Chief of Staff to the Queens Borough Commissioner; Eric (Clouseau) Goetz, Park Manager; Thomas (Tomcat) Panzone, Outreach Coordinator for Partnership for Parks; and other Parkies joined Thomas (Always Good) Ognibene, Council Member; leaders in the community; and Richard Koehler's friends and family to celebrate.

THIRTEEN YEARS AGO IN THE PLANT
(Friday, April 22, 1988)

BROADWAY STARTS AND SCHOOLCHILDREN SING AND SOW SEEDS FOR GREEN-UP DAY

In preparation for the eighth annual Parks "Green-Up Day," over 150 Manhattan middle school students huddled around Commissioner Stern and Broadway stars Maureen Davis and Ben Wright yesterday to sing sons and sow seeds at Columbus Circle in Central Park.

Commissioner Stern quizzed the students in attendance on the history of the nearby Maine Monument and Columbus Statue, however no one knew that the U.S. battleship Maine, the monument's namesake, was sunk in 1898 in the port of Havanna, Cuba.

QUOTATION FOR THE DAY

"I'll tell you how the sun rose- A ribbon at a time-"

Emily Dickinson (1830-1866)