By JIM KEVLIN

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A generous $1.5 million bequest from the Applebaugh family a dozen years ago started a process that is expected to reach fruition next spring in a whole new look in Neahwa Park.
The older roadways on Neahwa Park’s south end are in line to be replaced by a pear-tree-lined Memorial Walkway, connecting the three most significant monuments in the park.


Two of them – the one honoring members of the Brotherhood of Trainmen killed in World Wars I and II, and a second honoring nurses – have national significance.
This phase of the project – David Miller of the LA Group, Saratoga, the city’s park consultants, reviewed it for Common Council in mid-October – will cost an estimated $650,000, much of which is covered by state grants.
Work will start as soon as the weather clears next year, but Joseph Bernier, the city’s community development director, thinks completion by Memorial Day may be “a little aggressive”; perhaps a formal ribbon-cutting on Veterans Day would be a better bet.


While Mayor John S. Nader is championing this latest phase of the city’s park improvements, Bernier has been nudging the process ahead since 1996, when the Applebaugh money arrived.
“We thought at the time, that’s a lot of trees to plant,” he recalled. “Why don’t we try to get a plan to use the money in the most beneficial way – a master plan for all the parks.”
The city has several parks – the system’s a “gem,” said the mayor – but the two majors ones – Wilber, for passive recreation, and particularly Neahwa, for active recreation and thus most-used – got the most attention.
Dave Miller, who was involved in the master plan development, said it was soon apparent that Neahwa had a major design flaw: roads and pedestrian – “kids running in and out” – were in too close proximity.
One of the goals of the Memorial Walkway, he said, will be to separate the two functions, a step made possible by the construction in recent years of a new road, north of Hodges Pond, that diverts traffic from the area of Damaschke Field to the park’s west end.
“It’s a very powerful concept,” Miller said of the current plan. “This linear walk will give more precedence to the monuments that are there today. And we improve safety, we improve connectivity.”
Plus, the walkway will allow “connectivity” to the nearby Susquehanna Greenway Trial now under development.
While the popular Bradford Callery pears have fallen out of favor in recent years because of their susceptibility to storm damage, Miller said new hybrids are gaining favor.
They tend to grow more compactly, providing less opportunity for breakage from heavy snows. They flower in the spring – always a selling point – and keep their leaves, which turn a bright red, late into the fall.
If the Memorial Walkway is Phase I, Phase II would be construction of a gazebo near the entrance.
Phase III would be “to enhance the whole caboose area,” said Bernier. The caboose, now in a glass enclosure, is where the first labor agreement was signed between a major railroad and a labor organization.
That was in 1883, between the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen and the Delaware & Hudson. Phase I, however, will also feature additional interpretation, as Bernier observed that many of the historical events that the monuments memorialize have been largely forgotten.
Interpretive signs are planned along the Memorial Walkway, and Skip Beijen of the Joint Veterans Council has been participating in the discussions.