At Monday night’s Humboldt council meeting, the future of Walter Johnson Park came up when members agreed to extend water lines to the east edge of town to accommodate the new USD 258 sports complex. IOLAN Jim Gilpin called up Friday morning after listening to a National Public Radio report about the release this week of confidential files kept by Boy Scouts of America on men suspected of child sex abuse.
When the complex opens, Walter Johnson Field, named after the Hall of Fame pitcher born north of Humboldt, will be abandoned by the district. Other uses will be found, likely by the local recreation group.
The older field, ringed by a laid-up rock wall and with a stadium also made of local limestone, has a historical presence: It was a Works Progress Administration project. The original swimming pool, stadium, north shelter house and levee at Riverside Park also were WPA projects.
Several people at the council meeting were unaware of the WPA.
Simply put, it was a stimulus program not unlike what President Obama encouraged during the recent recession. It was part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal to fend off financial difficulties of the Great Depression.
In 1935, $4.9 billion was appropriated to the WPA. That represented 6.7 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). Millions of unskilled workers carried out public works projects, such as those in Iola and Humboldt. The WPA also employed artists, writers, actors and directors in large arts, drama, media and literacy projects.
Gilpin said the commentary made it appear the abuses had occurred recently. In fact, he said, the organization changed the way it operated in the 1980s to assure, as much as humanly possible, that no future abuse would occur.
An abuse lawsuit mentioned in the report was filed 30 years ago, Gilpin noted, when he was a leader.
Changes since then require at least two adults to attend meetings, campouts and any other Boy Scout activities. Also, potential leaders undergo extensive background checks to ensure that they pose no threat, a process that has become more thorough with evolution of technology.
Gilpin remembers the changes because they were accompanied by increases in individual and troop registration fees to deal with the lawsuit.
“We have a small but very good troop in Iola,” Gilpin observed, one that involves itself in many activities to the good of the community.
He doesn’t want it or the many other troops that give boys opportunities to learn leadership and a multitude of other skills to be tainted by misunderstanding.
Stimulus funding nothing new
