The site of the annual Park Day Reunion and a fixture in a historically Black Springfield park has been renovated. And on Friday, community members came together to celebrate the near completion of the project that included an overhaul of the pavilion at Silver Springs Park and a new amphitheater to the south of it.
The park, just north of Ozarks Tech, was established in 1918 on land known as the old Fairbanks pasture since it had been owned by Jonathan Fairbanks, a former superintendent of Springfield Public Schools. It was later named after a spring on the site, which Charlotte Hardin said flowed into Jordan Creek.
Springfield-Greene County Park Board Director Ron Schneider said the first pool opened in the park in 1934 during the height of the Great Depression and was built by the Works Progress Administration. They also built the park’s fieldstone retaining walls.
In 1952, he said, two park supervisors, Gerald Brooks and Robert Wendell Duncan, established a day of game and sports for residents and called it Park Day. The Park Day Reunion is still held each year on the first weekend in August.
“Since the early 1950s, Springfield's Black community has celebrated Park Day with meet and greets, movies, car shows, sporting activities, a picnic, parade, beauty pageant, scholarship, dance and all types of music,” said Hardin who added the new space will elevate the celebration in the future.
The newly-renovated pavilion includes A/V equipment, restroom renovations and an updated warming kitchen. The Neighborhood Coalition worked with Greene County and the Springfield-Greene County Park Board to implement the improvements to the pavilion.
Greene County approved a $1.5 million grant from American Rescue Plan Act funding through their Community Impact Program to fund the project.
Hardin was excited to see the improvements, which will serve residents well into the future. She grew up at the park and shared memories of that time.
“I've loved it as long as I can remember,” she said. “Silver Springs was my grandparents’ park. It was my parents’ park, and it's definitely my park.”
Most of the Black kids and families in the area felt a sense of ownership of the park, she said.
“We claimed it. We spent a lot of time here, and we loved it,” she said.
The park was a home away from home for her and many others, according to Hardin. She mentioned names of people who she knew growing up – folks like Mary Martin, Nelson Johnson and Edna Thompson.
“They would say hello to us,” she said. “They knew where we were going. They’d tell us to have fun and to be careful.”
Springfield Councilwoman Monica Horton took her time at the podium to remind Black native residents that “they and their descendants ought to be inheriting the fruits of this city, just as you are an inheritance to the city.”
Others who spoke were John Oke-Thomas, whose firm, Oke-Thomas + Associates, Inc., was the architect for the project.
He referred to Hardin’s speech about the history and her personal memories of the park and said, “I think you now know the reason why we feel so strongly that this is or should be respected, should be developed.”
Greene County Commissioner Bob Dixon said he lived just a few blocks from Silver Springs Park for more than 30 years and has attended several events there.
“As my friend Charlotte [Hardin] was speaking and talking about heritage, I couldn't help but look beyond her and see this big, beautiful tree out here and contemplate who planted that tree and the shade that it casts today,” he said. “I contend that what we've done here today together is we've planted a tree that will cast shade for people who will be here long after all of us are gone.”
