By Ken Hamilton Niagara Gazette The Niagara Gazette Thu Aug 25, 2011, 10:18 PM EDT
NIAGARA FALLS — One of the golf balls that I had chipped on the grassy, but empty part of Legends Park lay near the edge of the track where Jamal Moore was running his laps.
He stopped to toss it back to me and we began to chat. In that discussion, he explained to me that he was running his laps to get in shape for the annual Niagara Falls–LaSalle High School Basketball Reunions; his son thought that his thirty-something year-old dad was old and out of shape, and Moore wanted to both impress the audience that will be turning out for that event tomorrow at the new high school and his son, who should look up to his dad.
As we chatted, we watched the scores of young men, and some very talented girls, shoot hoops on the three, new, downtown courts and a mother walk the quarter-mile laps as she chatted on her cell phone and continuously shouted for her child on his bicycle to keep up with her. But he was more interested in watching me chip golf balls than biking with his disengaged mom. I thought to myself about the wonderfulness of this park and its location, and how it lends itself to satisfy the physical needs of a community and to fulfill the dreams of its residents; and I was thankful to those who worked to put it there.
Our conversation was soon over, Moore continued his laps, I chipped a few more balls and the little boy on the bicycle continued to pause and watch me as his mother shouted for him to catch up. That was all last week, before the members of the defunct board of directors of the Niagara Community Center had what is likely to be their last hurrah going away party — a fiasco to which they still refer as the African-American Family Festival on Highland Avenue.
By all accounts, it was poorly planned, poorly executed and poorly attended; and I had to wonder why an event that had taken place in one iteration or another since the mid-1970’s could have degenerated to an event that could only attract two vendors and a handful of people.
There were other vendors there, but they were not a part of the event. They set up their venues across the street on property that they owned and did their business.
The entertainment complained of the sound man not properly setting the mikes and not balancing the sound. Even entertainer Ernie Bivins, the master of ceremonies for the event, thought that the event was so heavily politicized and so poorly done that he wanted to know how he could put the event on, himself, next year. When he posted to his Facebook page, it exploded with negative buzz.
And it was bad. While some of the sponsors wondered why the three-day event was canceled on Sunday, most others wondered why the entire three-day event wasn't canceled altogether.
But, how could it have been any better. After all, these were the same people who closed the Community Center. But, while they plea to the public that they are working to get the Center back open, according to a letter from them to Ellen McTyre, they claim that their proceeds from the event will go to pack backpacks with school supplies for the kids. So, why did they cancel the Sunday gospel event?
According to Tony Newsome, the man who planned the last 13 of them when the center was opened, board members came to him a mere week before the event’s scheduled start and asked him to get things together. Staying away from the politics, Newsome did the best that he could with such short notice, and he understood the organizers wanting to cancel because of the prediction of rain for Sunday.
And rain, it did. But the planners of the Griffon Manor Annual Reunion had theirs in Hyde Park on Sunday, despite the rain — and I had a great time there, as I did at the Annual Pioneers reunion Picnic at Hyde Park the week before.
So next week, after the Luv-4-Self annual basketball classic at NFHS Wolvearena, and after I chip a few more golf balls, a group of us, Newsome, Bivens, some of my African friends and others, will do like Moore did and start our warm-up laps early enough to be effective in satisfying the dreams of the community, instead of the last gasps of some individuals, by getting together to plan next year’s event — at Legends Park. That’s where Councilman Walker and Memorial Hospital had a wonderful, similar event a few weeks before. But this one will have African culture in it.
Ken Hamilton is a Niagara Falls resident. Contact him at kenhamilton930@aol.com.
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