Perhaps the man for whom Yakima’s Martin Luther King Jr. Park is named made the right decision all those years ago.
“We will overcome,” the great civil rights leader famously said in a 1968 speech at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. “The arc of the moral world is long because it bends toward justice.”
And last week, justice shone brightly as about 150 government officials and community members gathered to break ground on the construction of a long-awaited pool at a park on South 8th Street.
The area hasn’t had a public pool in 20 years, after the city closed Miller, Eisenhower and Washington pools. Although community leaders are pushing for a pool on the east side, a generation has grown up without one.
One of the people at the forefront of the new pool construction effort is, unsurprisingly, longtime community activist Estelle Huey.
As a child, Huey was excluded from the community pool.
“I might be too emotional to even talk,” she said into a microphone at the groundbreaking ceremony. “This pool will open in the summer of 2025, when the other pools open.”
It wasn’t easy.
Much of the $11 million project is being paid for with a combination of county, city, state and federal funds. But thanks to individual donations, including quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies dropped into collection jars by local children, no one’s tax rate will go up.
“Building a pool without raising taxes is unprecedented in my career,” City Parks Director Ken Wilkinson told an audience last week. “I know that many of you have made personal donations. I want to thank you.”
Organizers hope to set aside an additional $500,000 to ensure they can cover any unforeseen circumstances during construction. Donations to the MLK Junior Park Foundation Aquatic Center are still being accepted at his website at the Yakima Valley Community Foundation — akimavalleycf.org/.
But finally, kids will be able to cool off by playing in the neighborhood pool again.
In these times of global uncertainty and despair, the success of this initiative is an encouraging example of what we can achieve through positive interaction and cooperation.
In times like these, it’s easy to become skeptical of governments, nations and even neighbouring countries, but when projects like this come to fruition, the power of community is undeniable.
This is what unity can achieve. This is how dreams are built.
This is how to overcome cynicism.
Yakima Herald Republic editorials reflect the collective opinion of the paper’s local editorial board.
