THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 15, 1996 TAG: 9601130088
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
IRAN ACROSS a touching story on the New York Times News Service wire a few days back about a green park bench with a brass marker on the back.
The bench is in faraway Sevastopol in the Ukraine. The brass marker bears the names of a young couple killed in an airplane crash. Friends leave flower petals on the bench in tribute to the couple.
That's a very nice custom. Pity we don't use more public benches as memorials in America.
To give credit where it's due, we do have more benches in Hampton Roads' public places than when I came here - way back before the oceans settled and the lava cooled.
The Virginia Beach Boardwalk has plenty of them. They attract odd mixes of people, men in slingshot briefs, and old women with paper sacks in their laps shelling beans, to the same bench at times.
Ditto for Waterside in Norfolk and at Town Point Park. Portsmouth has lot of them: at Portside, and along the seawall, and in the Olde Towne business and residential sections.
We've come a long way with benches since the 1960s when artist Kenneth Harris campaigned to have them placed in downtown Norfolk near the water.
Harris believed the Norfolk city fathers at that time were more concerned with revenues than the comfort of people. ``We could put parking meters on the benches the way we do with parking spaces for cars,'' he joked.
Harris, who captured the beauty of Hampton Roads in his many paintings, lived long enough to see at least a partial realization of his vision.
I remember interviewing Jackie Gleason, the star of the old TV hit ``The Honeymooners'' when he visited Norfolk many years ago. Gleason, who carried so much weight he must have wanted to sit often, mentioned his fondness for benches. He told a story about a friend who sometimes couldn't find a bench exactly where he wanted it in New York's Central Park.
``He had someone build one for him,'' Gleason said. `` A green job. Even had a stencil painted on it that said it was property of the city. But it was his. He paid for it and kept the receipt.
``When he finished sitting and thinking he simply walked off with the bench,'' he recalled. ``One day a cop nabbed him for stealing a park bench, but he had the receipt. The judge kicked it out of court. Made the New York papers.''
The world owes a lot to the first person to suggest a public bench. Sitting on one which offers a pleasing view is one of life's finer comforts, very close to scratching where it itches.
A person can think and dream on a well-placed bench whether it's near a sheltering live oak, near a sprinkling of flowers, in sight of a mockingbird in a bush, or simply overlooking a parking lot, the way our new benches do at the newspaper.
Our newspaper building may be one of only a handful to have a park bench inside. A miniature likeness of Ben Franklin seated on a park bench while reading a newspaper, is on the windowsill of Linda Hyatt, executive director of The Landmark Communications Foundation.
Linda says it is a replica of a lifesized sculpture at the University of Pennsylvania. ``Tourists love to have their photos taken on the bench seated next to Franklin,'' she said.
Like the bench in Sevastopol, benches with markers can become lasting memorials to ordinary folks.
I guess the most touching bench with a marker I ever saw was outside a museum in Edinburgh, Scotland. Placed on a bustling corner, it was painted green, with a marker which, roughly, read as follows:
``This bench is given in loving memory of my husband, Fred, who was always tired.''
Poor Fred, I know the feeling.
Be nice if we had more benches around here and cities encouraged relatives to donate them as memorials to their departed kin. My friends say I'm a romantic, that winos and bums will use them for beds.
So what?
Well, I'm jumping off this soap box because there are better things to do. There's a vacant spot on one of those green benches outside the newspaper building. Think I'll sit awhile. by CNB