May 2010 - Parks & Recreation - 50

Living History Weekend
civil war reenactment
at Knoxville's Fort
Dickerson Park

48 Parks & Recreation

Auburn, Washington, hosts the largest Veterans Day parade west of the Mississippi River. The
44-year-old event is now co-sponsored by the Auburn Parks, Arts & Recreation office. More than 200
groups present for 25,000 onlookers. In addition to
the parade, the parks department also coordinates
other Veterans Day events. A community Veterans
Day breakfast precedes a commemoration attended by 1,000 persons in Auburn's Veterans Memorial Park. Interpretive displays of military equipment
are available and a joyous statewide marchingband competition at Memorial Stadium caps the
event. A luncheon is coordinated by the city and the
the Lions club. Adding to the gala is a flyover from
McChord Air Force Base.
Besides the marching bands, other groups and
organizations contribute to various components of

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the commemoration, including the American Legion, several service organizations, the Department
of Veterans Affairs, the Inter-Tribal Warrior Society,
and the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe. " City departments pull together as a team, " says Julie Brewer,
special programs manager for Auburn's parks department. Costs that are posted to the departments
" are already part of their budgets, so we're not
charged back. We get a bulk price for the port-olets we bring in because they're part of our yearlong budget for all the parks. The Mayor and the
police are committed to this event. "
" People come from all over, " Brewer continues.
" We work with radio stations to cover Seattle, Tacoma, the Olympia market. The American Legion
prepares the program and contacts the speakers
for the ceremony, we print the program, the Muckleshoot tribe donates a large tent. Local car dealers
provide cars to drive state commanders of veterans
organizations to and from the park. "
In Tennessee, the Knoxville Civil War Roundtable, a citizen association, holds a Living History
Weekend at the city's unimproved Fort Dickerson
Park. The authentic fort, which is situated on a
steep, somewhat inaccessible Civil War battlefield,
functions as the memorial. Attorney Norman Shaw
founded the association in the early 1980s and is
its current president. The weekend, which includes
re-enactments of camp life, wraps around Veterans
Day to commemorate both sides of the Civil War. At
the time of the war, local supporters in the city were
split between Confederate and Union persuasions.
Archaeologist Joan Markel, the group's former president, notes that " feelings still run deep. "
Appropriately, the key to the weekend lies in its
educational value. School children attend the events
on Friday. " We teach them when they're young, then
they'll stay with it, " Shaw says. Markel adds that for
the hundreds of adults who come as well, " It makes
people think about how miserable these soldiers
were, how damaging the guns were to them. "
With citizens " taking ownership " for the weekend's program and for much of the park's upkeep,
vitality is generated while the city's expenditures
are reduced.

Marcia Steinberg, Ph.D. , is the former Chair of the
Department of Sociology at Rider University and
initiator of a course on Urban Parks at The College of
New Jersey.
Harvey Steinberg, J.D. , a former manager and

organizational consultant, writes on the natural
environment, urban development, as well as
management topics.

Photo courtesy of City of Knoxville

component, " says New Jersey Deputy Commissioner for Veterans Affairs Stephen G. Abel. His
department is currently working through a set of
instructional elements. Abel says this memorial,
like other War Memorial parks, " needs to be where
people will visit it. And it should be kept pristine. "
In some communities, veterans parks and memorials aid in economic development.
In Trenton, for example, within a one-block area
one can appreciate a coherent tourism theme centering around four wars in American history: the
American Revolution, the Civil War, and World Wars
I and II. There's a remarkable archaeological dig
underway near the Old Barracks that's shedding
light on Revolutionary-era armaments. The state
museum at the far end of the block features an array of Civil War flags. There is a grandly appointed
World War I memorial building down the hill fronted
by a grassy state park and across the street is the
World War II park.

May 2010 - Parks & Recreation

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of May 2010 - Parks & Recreation