Thoughtful people have written thoughtful letters to the editor concerning the location, or relocation, of the 18-foot-tall granite monument dedicated to the volunteers who built the 1986 Winter Carnival ice palace at Lake Phalen.
The monument is at Lake Phalen. It goes largely unseen. If initially I suggested that it cannot be easily found, I was wrong. More accurately, you can find it; there just really isn’t any reason to. I mean, you would have to decide one day to go visit it, and as lovely as it is, it isn’t exactly like making a trip to the Washington Monument or anything celebrating fallen solders or noble presidents.
It got put there for a simple reason. It sounded good at the time.
But times have changed.
Charlie Hall, the 47th King Boreas, was behind the building of that fantastic 1986 colossus, and it is Charlie who most reasonably believes that the volunteers, whose names are etched into the granite that Charlie shopped for and brought to St. Paul, should be more easily recognized. Charlie and others wish for the monument to be located in Rice Park, urgently, to take advantage of the upcoming Winter Carnival as it might be associated with the Super Bowl.
And Charlie and the pals he has rounded up will pay for the relocation. They will pay for everything, the move, the planting of it in a new spot, the lighting and the landscaping. For the longest time, he couldn’t get an audience with the mayor’s office.
Only a government could dawdle on such an offer.
Ah, but Charlie finally has his meeting. The ball is rolling. The mayor’s scheduler, Christine Rider, came through as promised and got Charlie a meeting with the mayor’s office in mid-July. We don’t know what will come of that.
Time is of the essence, as it probably isn’t easy to move a monument of such weight and height.
As for thoughtful people writing thoughtful letters we have, first, Greg Cosimini, who proudly noted recently that as a life-long East Sider, he wishes for the monument to remain at Lake Phalen. He believes the monument should be featured on a Lake Phalen park website and that there should be signage directing visitors to it. Cosimini believes that would take care of the monument’s relative obscurity.
Donna Peterson Limoseth, “an East Side kid,” wrote most recently that she believes Rice Park is the ideal location for the monument. Limoseth included her family’s Carnival history dating to the 1930s with an impressive roster of King’s guards and a West Wind Princess.
“Landmark Center and Rice Park,’’ Limoseth wrote, “have been named during the Carnival as the King’s castle and Courtyard. What more ideal location can there be for the monument than Rice Park? It will be seen, along with the ice sculptures and the downtown festivities, by our out-of-town visitors during our ‘Super Bowl’ carnival.”
The monument should not become an “East Side” controversy, as I suspect it has. I have my East Side résumé. I went to school on the East Side and got married on the East Side. I know what is meant by the East Side, but it means many things to many people. I have always thought it a misnomer. The East Side is not the intersection of Payne and Arcade. The East Side is geographically vast. We don’t identify other directions on the compass, but the East Side has always been tagged as rough and ready, blue collar, industrial. Well, so is the north side and the south side. The west side, there being no such thing, is almost unanimously residential.
But I can read the tea leaves and they are saying that some East Side pride is at stake here.
There is not a bone in Charlie Hall’s body that intends to offend anybody who believes the monument should remain where it is. He wants the monument relocated so the people who built it, many of whom are East Siders, can get the recognition they deserve.
Copyright 2017 Pioneer Press.