Next time you’re in the area of the New Rochelle Armory. Stop, park your car and take off your shoes before you step on the property because it is hallowed ground. 300 members of our military from the City of New Rochelle left their loved ones, their hopes and their dreams at this Armory as they went off to battle on our behalf and made the ultimate sacrifice.
Yes, the New Rochelle Armory is hallowed ground. The spirits of 300 brave former neighbors, both men and women, reside there. If you listen with your heart you can hear them wandering through the building. If you close your eyes and focus you can feel their presence and picture them in full military gear marching through the Armory as they prepared for battle for our freedom. Say a prayer for them as you’re standing there and thank them for their selfless sacrifice on your behalf.
If you look very carefully you can see the tears they shed for the neglect this city has shown to their beloved Armory; for the broken windows, the collapsing roof and buckling floors. You can hear their call
to save this wonderful and sacred piece of our history that our city government wants to destroy for a handful of bobbles and trinkets.
I feel their pain. I respect their service and will forever be grateful for their sacrifice. I hear their call to save this sacred place. I will make my voice heard on their behalf. It’s the least I can do for those who have done so much for me, for New Rochelle and for this great country.
Our military hero’s call on us to be their voice; to demand that our city government saves this sacred place. They call on us to make it a special place for all to enjoy, young and old, as we remember how they so selflessly and courageously laid down their lives on our behalf. They call on us to make the Armory a place where our children and grandchildren can learn about the many hero’s that made their freedom, their hopes and their dreams possible.
What they should do with the Armory …
… is make it a proper Museum of the City of New Rochelle…
The Tom Paine Cottage is just that – a cottage!
New Rochelle’s Local History room is locked …
We need a Museum to remind us of the Huguenots, the soldiers of the Revolution who passed through here, the creation of Fort Slocum, the watering hole for the elite that was “45 minutes from Broadway” the Foys , and the Cohans, Teresa Brewer, Lou Gehrig, “Buffalo Bob” Smith and Dennis James, Carl and Rob Reiner, the 250th Anniversary extravaganza from 1938, and much, much more …
Of the Armory, memory and “manufactured crises”
Absolutely beautiful words. Generous and kind thoughts. They should be required reading for the spiritual sloths and moral reprobates who do not appreciate the importance of history and memory in our community. If there is a compelling reason to desecrate the building and its grounds, why don’t the opponents of “memory” just come out and say it? The fact is, there is no compelling reason. It seems only that the council is too lazy to study the site and its potential in depth and come up with reasonable, fact-based limitations on the property’s utilization as exhibited in other communities.
The only reason the space is “in play” at the present time is that it seems to be within the contemplation of the Forest City development company to build apartments in its place and the sitting majority don’t have the knowledge or the “brass” to correct the misapprehension. But the city council has been too generous to this suitor. If we made a simple condition that the hallowed ground be undisturbed, but that other development congruent with the surroundings would be allowed, even encouraged, what would be the complaint? And if this condition were deemed onerous by a reasonable and serious suitor, perhaps a couple of years of tax breaks might be offered THEN. But we do not see this type of back-and-forth with Forest City.
What could be the cause of such perverse and destructive behavior? Could the council be so lacking in confidence in itself or the community as to be unable to conduct meaningful negotiations on our behalf? Or is it something else? Is it depraved? Or is it simply lazy and feckless?
At times like these, the council’s thorough disinterestedness is at its egregious worst. Robert McCaffery speaking at “citizen’s to be heard” last Tuesday seems to understand their problem best. After touring the doomed Department of Public Works facility with city officials, he expressed shock at the atrocious upkeep of the physical plant. He wondered how many of the council have actually visited the place for themselves to form their own opinions. His conclusion (and mine also): the sorry state of the yard and its emergency-like evacuation to Beechwood Avenue seems to be something of a “manufactured” crisis. A classic case of self-fulfillment by nefarious official design.
Perhaps the council thinks it can run the city by “delegation” to bureaucrats without involving itself in the nitty-gritty of site visits and engaging in spontaneous give-and-take with the “hoi polloi.” That certainly is the impression given Tuesday. View the Cable broadcast of the session on channel 75 yourself. If body language means anything, then theirs speaks volumes. Give a look and report what you think this official “body” is saying.
What I see is smug self-satisfaction. And profound laziness.
HALLOWED GROUND
What is hallowed ground? Gettysburg is hallowed ground. Whitehall Street where hundreds of thousands of men went off to the military and tens of thousands died, is not hallowed ground according to those who are empowered to make such declarations.
All of the bombast in the world; and plenty of this comes from me, will not make this hallowed ground or move the council in the direction stephen suggests it goes. It is just a waste; actually a waste of a potential meaningful asset for the City and an invitation to repeat the DPW yard scenario for New Rochelle.
what do we know?
1. One, you need to win community support; veterans and non-veterans alike. Actually the Armory should literally be a no brainer. It has great value for the Community: architectural value, commercial potential, and yes, it is about time to create a proper space to serve the memory of a time when veterans were truly honored as they once were in New Rochelle. As I said earlier, the Armory committee has found its voice in Ron Tocci and put together a radically improved proposal but it has no power to change what is law and the City has the cards and the law on its side.
The eloquence behind the hallowed ground speech on TOTS is there. I strongly believe there should be a preserved Armory. But someone must carefully and dispassionately INFORM the citizens what role the Armory played in the shipping out of veterans from this site. Where did they come from? What did they do once they reached the Armory? How long did they stay? And, while 300 men died in service of our country, they were not 300 New Rochelle citizens.
We need the Armory as a memorial a chapel, a senior center, a youth center, a museum, and more. It can bring in revenue as a lead-in to a well designed future RFP once Ratner and his shifty organization are voted down.
But they will not be voted down if we continue to separate from the City. The time is for change, not separation. I am convinced that some of the new voices will work to heal, not divide. Did you read Peggy Godfrey’s interview of Mr. Hydin in the Westchester Guardian? Didn’t that convince you of anything?
We don’t want or need another set of entitled voices in the City. We have a too long of a history of a group of people who ran this shop from up North and we are paying the price now.
There are many places of demarcation from here to there. Fort Lewis, Fort Benning, Fort Dix to name a few. You want to change the way service men are looked at, you change the society we live in here through position, not bombastic action. During the Viet Nam years service men were spit upon. Prior to that service men and women were honored, most did their service honorably, and came home to build a country and not to form into single issue groups. This is a painful truth and the community is more responsible than the service people who join organizations to promote their service and some now run for office on a single agenda item.
We lose if we become a nation of entitlements. You see it all of the time now. We want our fat union or company pensions, social security, medicare and we fight against big government. We want a small government but we don’t understand the implications this has on employment of so many Americans.
And we toss around words and do not understand that a large segment of our population from throughout the City are living through trying times and are cynical, distrusting, skeptical, and very willing to cede power to those who hold power.
Stop beating them to death. I want an Armory so I want the City to see that it happens and the only way to do that is convince at least four council members that this is important. There are many reasons why this is important. Promote these and the possibility exists.
Bob McCaffrey was one of the most effective speakers at the council meeting. He saw what everyone should have noted years earlier. Why the hell was this thing swept under the rug for 20+ years and now, based solely it seems on Echo Bay, it becomes important? The mechanics, choices, and interpretation of the engineer and other documents are quite open to question. The failure to consider other possibiilities for both sites as simple, good development process, lack credibility for an urban planner. What is the value of lands for potential commercial and residential use for both sites? So Martin Sanchez is right!
If you want to lose, behave like the power elite. Do the same things. Separate, divide, use false logic, sophist language. The facts legally are there as Jim Maisano states them.It is as Stephen Mayo says, truly a Council responsibility. Alienate them, you lose, move them to act on behalf of the City because it is good for the City, you win and win is possible.
My generation for the most part left the military as it went into the military. It went in for God, country, family and community and that is the way it came out. In olden times, the Romans gave each member who left the legion a plot of land to farm. We have some VA benefits and they are not what they were. We did not, for the most part, join anything else, but always supported our service men and women through the ballot boz, contributions, legislation.
We did not become arrogant nor unmindful of our responsibilities to the Community. If this place is worth saving, you put your butt on the line. You positively confront, you don’t frag. You put in your name. I was pleased to see Jen Parente do exactly that.
I think this can be a win win for all parties concerned if handled the right way. Again, Ron Tocci is the man to lead it and he only has one issue to overcome. It is a personal issue concerning a relationship with the Administration. But he has shown me at least that he is a good strong man, well schooled in civility and service, smart and committed.
I want to see the Community put one up on the board. It is time to defeat the Forest City folks through the Council, get off of the idea that a committee will, in and of itself, become empowered to get the Armory turned over to them, and figure out how to work with the people involved in governing the City.
If that doesn’t work, there are alternatives, but we will have to put it really on the line like others are doing the world over.