After more than three years of TLC, including planting new grass, trees and flowers, and installing a new stone and memorial plaque, Edna Struck Memorial Park is looking beautiful again. On Thursday May 9, a dozen local officials gathered to officially rededicate the 130-year old park in honor of the village’s “neighborhood gardener.”
Edna Struck Park is the little grassy median on the east side of the village where Lapham Park makes a slight jog at the corner of Elm St. Those of us who live in the village and walk those streets have come to take the pleasant little green space for granted. But not everyone knows the park’s rather interesting history, or that at one point many years ago, it was almost eliminated altogether.
Back in the 1890s, where the park now stands was actually part of a baseball field. Russell Lapham owned the property, which he rented to local businessmen for a baseball diamond, complete with a grandstand and ticket office. Home plate was located about where Edna Struck Park is now, and the pitcher’s mound was in the front yard of the home at the southeast corner of Lapham Park and Elm.
The Town of Webster team used the village field for four years, hosting teams from all around the county, until the Lapham family decided to convert the tract into building lots.
As the neighborhood grew, so did the little traffic island park. Early photos show a peaceful green space shaded by stately elms, with a sign warning drivers to “go to the right.”
Even with that warning in place, the island has been known to befuddle drivers. In the late 1960s, Curt Gerling, then editor of the Webster Herald, wrote an article suggesting the island be removed after he had trouble negotiating the curves one night. Concerned about the article, several neighbors came together and decided the best way to save the park was to make it more attractive, planting crabapple trees and petunias.
One of those neighbors was Edna Struck, who lived on Park Ave. and became known as the “First Lady of Lapham Park.” For years, Edna carefully tended to the trees and flowers. She also took care of many gardens on Park Ave. and Lapham Park and the flowers at the United Methodist Church. After she passed in 1991, her neighbors erected a marker in her honor, identifying Edna as the “Neighborhood Gardener.”
The unpretentious little green space quietly beautified the Lapham Park neighborhood for more than 25 years, and in 2005 was designated an official local landmark. Then, in 2019, it once again befuddled a driver.
In February of that year, someone was driving down Lapham Park much too fast and, instead of navigating the jog in the road, plowed right through the park, mowing down the trees and plants, and inflicting significant other damage.
Once everything got cleaned up, efforts began to bring the island back to its original beauty, led by the village’s Historic Preservation Committee. It was slow going, but eventually a new design was drawn up, trees and shrubs were planted, and the stone and memorial plaques replaced.
And on May 9, Edna Struck Memorial Park was officially rededicated in honor of “our neighborhood gardener.” So next time you stroll by, pause a moment to appreciate this little park’s long history, and remember Edna.
Many thanks to Karen Buck and Webster Town Historian Lynn Barton for the photos and background information for this blog.
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(posted 5/24/2024)
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