Column: Who speaks for the Pages?
Comments (...)DIXON – How does the Dixon Park District know what the Page family would want?
It’s a question a reader asked following a story I wrote about the Dixon school board’s offer to take ownership of a small triangular tract of Page Park that borders the high school.
The Dixon park board rejected the proposal last week, deciding to retain ownership while it continues to look for solutions to parking issues and a possible connection of the bike path to the high school’s riverfront sidewalk.
“The consensus was that the park was given by the Page family as a green, linear park space along Rock River, and to convert it to a paved parking lot would not be within the wishes of the original gift,” park district Executive Director Deb Carey said in an email.
The only way to guarantee that, the reasoning went, was for the park district to own the property while coming to some other sort of agreement with the school district.
The 45-acre stretch of land along the Rock River was donated to the city in 1933 to be used as a park, according to my caller, Dana Fellows of Dixon.
He’s got his own Page family connection: His great-great-grandfather’s sister, Julia Fellows, married John Ham Page.
Fellows isn’t arguing that he knows what the Page family would want, but he has come to the conclusion based on his conversations with descendants of the donors.
“We have come to the conclusion that the Page family of 1933 and earlier would have wanted what was best for the Dixon community as a whole, and that would include donating that land to the school district,” Fellows wrote in a letter to the editor.
The park district has been in touch with some of the descendants, although it hasn’t broached the subject of the triangle, Carey said.
The district was approached by John Talley Cunningham, who lives near Chicago, and some of his family members.
(Carey didn’t know how the group was related to each other or the 1933 Pages, but the family members identified themselves as “descendants” of the Page family.)
“He and the consultant came out here one day, and they were very pleased that it was still pretty much the same, though, of course, the baseball diamond was different,” Carey said. “Their concern was there was no sign saying Page Park.”
Cunningham, Alix Laager of New York, Roland and Sarah Hope of Concord, Mass., and Steven and Jane Hope of Chestnut Hill, Mass., wanted to donate entrance signs.
There now is only one small signing near the tennis courts denoting the space as Page Park.
The proposed signs were designed by Kate Friedman, an award-winning graphic designer and art director for the Chicago Reader who died last week.
They’re to be reminiscent of the stone bridge and mark the entrances near Peoria Avenue, the Dixon Armory and the tennis courts, Carey said. There also will be a large sign – 6-by-4 feet – telling the history of the milk company and the park.
The park district is awaiting an estimate, then it will put out a request for bids. It hopes to have the signs up by the Petunia Festival in July, Carey said.
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