I didn’t see her much in all my years – 34 of them – in the neighborhood, even though our homes were not that far from each other. I think she came to the door of her house on trick-or-treat nights on a couple of occasions when I accompanied my kids and grandkids on their candy-collecting outings. But my recollection was that her daughter, Debra, took care of the distributions the vast majority of time.
In our later years, I did see Margie a few times in audiences for “America, We Remember” observances in the MacAllister Amphitheater. She was hard to miss, always seated in the front or second rows and always wearing light blue or pink jackets and colorful short-brimmed bucket caps as shown in the photo above.
As it turns out, she also was in the crowd on the Sunken Garden lawn, in August 2010, for a performance by the Indianapolis Jazz Orchestra that I photographed. I didn’t notice her at that show, but I spotted her on the fringe of an image from that shoot as I pored through my photo archives while doing research for this series.
The photo above is one I took of her in the amphitheater audience during the “America, We Remember” concert by Cathy Morris on Sept. 4, 2010. Behind her is daughter Debra. Below, she is seated at the right of the front row as the Indianapolis 500 Gordon Pipers band marches in front of the MacAllister stage during the 2006 rendition of “America, We Remember.”
She campaigned to have a fire station built in the park, something that came to pass on April 17, 1991, when new Station 29 (above) opened at the park’s north end along Pleasant Run Parkway. She also spearheaded volunteer park cleanup efforts, and on occasions when the fountains in the Sunken Garden (below) stopped working or when the lights ceased to work, she led campaigns to collect donations to fund repairs.
It is said she also helped promote the park’s massive improvements project in the mid-1990s, which resulted in enhancing the Sunken Garden, construction of the Burrello Family and Aquatics Center, and repaving and installing new pedestrian paths. That project, in turn, led to the eventual transformation, in 2006, of the former recreation center and bathhouse into today’s Garfield Park Arts Center (first photo below).
But the
traditional fireworks proceeded after event officials deemed the weather system
had passed through the area.
“She had a love
for that park,” her daughter Debra told The Indianapolis Star for her mother’s
obituary in 2014. “It meant everything to her.”
As noted in Chapter 23, Friends of Garfield Park Inc. in 2017 dedicated a park flagpole in honor of architect Daniel Deupree, who had designed the park’s iconic pagoda. Deupree was the grandfather of Margie’s late husband, John Nackenhorst III. The dedication came 90 years after Deupree’s death in 1927, 10 years after John Nackenhorst’s death in December 2006 and three years after the Nackenhorsts’ other daughter, Cheryl, passed away in October 2014.
Thinking out loud here. … Given all that Margie worked for over the years to preserve and improve Garfield Park, wouldn’t it seem appropriate for the park to install a permanent commemoration in her honor — a statue or sculpture, perhaps — within its boundaries to honor her legacy? And to have it done now … not 90 years after her passing … so Debra could be on hand for the dedication?
End of series
NOTE No. 1: Although this ends the planned series, there will one more post tomorrow with an array of photos that did not make it into any of the 40 chapters. I promise … that WILL be the last word — er, images? — on the park here for a while.
NOTE No. 2: All photos used in this series can be found and perused in an online gallery accessible via the link provided in this sentence. For viewers’ convenience and easy reference, the photos are organized by chapter number as used in this series. Unlike photos used in the blog posts, which were of dramatically reduced sizes to help protect against copyright infringement, photos in the online gallery are of original, high-quality resolution, which is optimum for print reproduction via the online site at SmugMug.com.
Previously in the Garfield Park in Pictures series:
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