Remove not the ancient landmark which your fathers have set. ~Proverbs 22:28
My brother-in-law recently shared a little-known history about the names of several streets my husband and I traversed as kids. We didn’t know each other at the time but each of us regularly walked or rode our bikes on Watt, Ohm, Ampere, and Stadium Avenues near the Country Club section of the Bronx on our way to Pelham Bay Park. Pelham Bay Park was the hub of school and community sporting events. It also was home to Rice Stadium where many of us kids pretended to be Rocky Balboa running up the cement bleachers towards the American Boy limestone statue.
Fast forward twenty years: my husband and I were married and working for the same company, still unaware of the connection between the streets of our youth and the place where we spent the majority of our working lives. The link was Isaac L. Rice. He owned and ran a battery factory near those “electric” street names at the southern end of Pelham Bay Park and also started the Electric Boat Company in 1899. After Rice’s death in 1915, his wife donated money to the city to construct Rice Stadium in his honor—the stadium of my Rocky Balboa days. Although its bleachers were demolished in 1989, American Boy still stands in a new location in the park, and Stadium Avenue still leads to one of the park’s many entrances.
Scattered throughout the places where we live, work, and play are memorials large and small, hidden and in plain sight of the people and events that, although now forgotten, were instrumental in forming our families, communities, and an entire nation. When we take the time to stop, notice, and understand the meaning of a simple landmark or the tombstone of a hidden figure of the past, we honor the heritage and preserve the wisdom and values of those who came before us.
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