Advisory board wanted for park

My family and I are relatively new to the Gurdon community, but I have always felt like Gurdon was home. We moved here about a year and a half ago after searching for two years for that perfect home all the while driving our then 4-year-old to Gurdon pre-school from Arkadelphia. A lot of folks thought we were crazy for wanting to move to such a small town that to many was ‘one shut-down away from turning into a ghost town’ (not my words mind you).

From the time I left my hometown of Nashville, Gurdon has fallen into my life in many ways. The first friends I met while in school at Henderson were from Gurdon. Some of my favorite college memories are of that group of people who became my support away from home.

With all that said, I have come to love this small town and I feel that it has a lot more to offer. I have heard countless times from my neighbors about how Gurdon used to be a busy as a bumble bee or my personal favorite coming from my neighbor Mr. Bones, “You use to not be able to get a parking spot on Main Street, now you could shoot a cannon a not hit a soul.”

Recently during a lunch with my good friend Leah Rhodes we began discussing some ideas on what we could do bring some of that back. We had been discussing the parks and recreation issue in Gurdon mainly because we both have kids who played t-ball last year.

I asked whether or not Gurdon had a board or group of people that represented the park as a whole. It’s really hard to get something going without a good support group.

Gurdon has a wonderful start to some pretty good programs, but they aren’t able to go as far as possible because of a few things holding them back.

Cabe Field is in dire need of some repairs. Just recently the baseball association had to pay to have the plumbing reworked and now is trying to get the electrical problems fixed.

There is money out there to help with these issues.

So Leah and I set out to find what we could do. We called a quick meeting to discuss founding a Parks and Recreation Advisory Board made up of individuals in town willing to work together to benefit the park as a whole and the community as well.

The idea is that if we all work together we can build something that will work for all programs, old and new, instead of everyone pretty much fending for themselves. During our research we have discovered that the city has land that has been donated to the park for several different programs. There are several different grants that are available to help with our goal. We just need the board in place to move forward.

We have even solicited the outside help of Mike Voltz, the interim parks and recreation director in Arkadelphia and we were met with enthusiasm. We were told that Arkadelphia has been trying to get a program together with Gurdon for some time and would love to help out. He even said there could be county funding.

I believe that with a little of the same enthusiasm we could create something to build on. We just need a clear goal and direction for where we want to go with all the great ideas we’ve been getting.

At press time, we had plans to talk to the city council. Hopefully it’s the start to bigger things to come for the community of Gurdon.