Walter R. White Square

Have you ever had something named after you? A person, a place, a thing? One summer I was working as custodian for the LDS Church - - this was a paid position, and in the spirit of full disclosure, my father's lay, unpaid Church assignment at the time included physical facilities and the hiring of custodial staff. One bishop, Clarence Osborne, was unhappy with a huge patch of weeds near the parking lot of the chapel. I jokingly suggested to my father that he tell Bishop Osborne that we should simply leave the weeds there, and name the patch of weeds the "Clarence Osborne Memorial Garden." Imagine my surprise when I learned my father had actually shared that suggestion with Bishop Osborne. Bishop Osborne was not amused . . . On Saturday I participated in a huge Serve-A-Thon event in Boston. The City Year service organization deployed volunteers throughout the Boston area. My team was sent to New Boston Middle School on Columbia Road, and then joined a team that cleaned up a triangular piece of land at the intersection of Columbia Road and Ceylon Street. This strip of land is at the center of an intersection of three streets and beneath a train bridge. Our team found overgrown weeds, an abandoned car, numerous whiskey bottles, hypodermic needles, a discarded passenger seat of a car, two solidified bags of concrete, and variety of other refuse. After we had been working on the project for some time, I looked toward the opposite end of the area, and saw a marker indicating "Walter R. White Square." I am not sure who Walter R. White is, but I imagine he deserves a much better honor than being associated with what we hauled out of that intersection. Hopefully our efforts helped restore some dignity to the site, but I'm sure it is difficult to keep an intersection like that clean. Of course, Walter R. White appears to have been short-changed given that his square is actually merely a triangle - - maybe someone else will tackle that issue. Find information on the City Serve program at www.cityyear.org.