Friday, May 28, 2010

Blog Question

What do you think should be the legacy of Thomas Wortham IV for Chatham? Leave your comments on the comment line.

4 comments:

ifiworld said...

First, you must get the National Guard in to get the riff-raft out.
Second, you must bring in earmark investment by the federal goverment to rebuild the public infrastructure damaged by the riff-raft.
Third, you must build facilities like a health club with aquatics or L.A. Fitness at 79th & Rhodes vacant lot, a ice skating rink at 84th & King Drive, a multi-story hotel of 5-star status at 79th & State, 76th & State and 86th & Lafayette near the Chatham Market; Fourth, you must build a senior citizen community center at 82nd & King Drive open space.

Freddrenna M. Lyle said...

Some have suggested street re-namings, others renaming the Park. There is some consensus building on getting a new field house built with room for substantive programs and naming that after Thomas. This would be a living memorial.

Of course there are countless ways to honor his memory and improve the quality of life in our community, in both large and small ways. But an immediate legacy would be for each of us to extend ourselves just a little more to involve ourselves in activities and programs that work with our youth.

ifiworld said...

Further, fifth, you must invite idea-based, knowledge-based, R&D (research and development)-based, high technology firms like Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, and Google to set up shop and build a high-tech industrial park right next to the Chatham Market and bring in high-tech people from India and China to bring in start-up entrepreneurial capital for new companies and economic growth for Chatham. Sixth, you must invite and put a bank branch on every block of the Chatham perimeter. Seventh, you must invite the investment banking firms that bailed out ShoreBank, like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, GE, Chase, etc. to open up branch offices in Chatham. Eighth, you must invite professional people like lawyers, doctors, and business executives to buy the foreclosed and boarded-up homes and aparment buildings and rehab them and turn them into office space for professionals. Ninth you must set up a Chatham Financial and Economic Roundtable, bring in all of the executives of the financial sector. Finally, you must provide for the expansion of outreach, meaning setting up comedy clubs, art storefront exhibitions to bring the outside crowd with disposal income into Chatham, and sports clubs and field trips for the youth, like ski trips to Colorado, or skydiving in California, or something all the lines of an activity the youth here would not normally be exposed to, if at all. All of this would serve Thomas Wotham IV's memory quite well, indeed.

Levois said...

His legacy should be to inspire other people to take an interest in their communities. Or to otherwise make a difference in their communities.