Rotary Park Peace Pole project a labor of love that brought together many community partners
Working together to achieve a common goal seems to create more impressive achievements.
I was reminded of that recently when Mark Kulaas gave me a tour of the Rotary Park Peace Pole project on Western Ave. in Wenatchee. Kulaas and Ken Robertson are co-chairing the project that involves three Rotary clubs in the valley. A public dedication of the project will be held at 5 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 21.
Worldwide, there are some 250,000 Peace Pole parks as part of an international effort to promote peace (worldpeace.org). A number of Rotary clubs have chosen to participate in this effort. Kulaas said the original concept was to install a simple peace pole at the park, but the creative souls involved in the project got excited about doing something more significant. “The Rotary Park committee feels very deeply about things that happen here,” Kulaas told me. What resulted was “scope creep,” said with a laugh and the vision blossomed.
The final result is an aesthetically pleasing addition to the park — a monument to peace with elements that reflects the Wenatchee Valley.
The concept was created with a lot of input. The committee contacted one of the original designers of Rotary Park, Kari Bergh, about drawing up a preliminary design.
Committee member Randy Zielinski approached artist Terry Valdez about helping the club create something unique and meaningful. It’s the kind of project that Valdez relishes because it allows him to use what he describes as a “creative chaos” process. Every detail of that portion of the park has been meticulously crafted for maximum effect.
In place of a single peace pole, the park’s focal point includes five basalt columns, which will be etched with “may peace prevail on earth” in four languages — Salish (thanks to the Colville Confederated Tribes language department), Japanese (a nod to our deep relationship with Misawa, Japan), English and Spanish.
Rather than straight pathways to that center point, Valdez argued for treating that point as a confluence of rivers — Columbia, Wenatchee and Entiat. Valdez created powder-coated aluminum salmon to be embedded in those pathways.
When contractors placed the columns or poured the winding pathways that represent rivers, Valdez was on site making sure every detail was correct to maximize the impact of that part of the park.
The Peace Pole part of the park is most easily accessed off of Maple Street, away from the buzzing activity of the splash pad. It’s designed to be a place of reflection and solitude. When we think about peace, Kulaas said, we often think about reducing conflict between nations. But in his mind, we also need to find peace in our households and in our community.
Zielinski, who runs Whitebird Construction and invests a lot of time and energy in community projects, led the effort to convert the basketball court at the park into a half-court basketball facility and use the rest of the space to create two pickleball courts. This will be a wonderful enhancement to the community to meet the growing need for courts to play the sport.
There are three local Rotary clubs involved in the Rotary Park effort — Wenatchee, Confluence and Sunrise. As Kulaas pointed out, it is the nature of all service clubs to work together for the betterment of the community.
Despite the divisiveness of that national political scene and the toxic interactions on social media, it’s projects like the Rotary Park Peace Pole project that reminds us that we have more things in common than separate us.
Rotary still needs about $20,000 to complete the funding for this project. Let’s pitch in and help them get there. To donate, check out wenatcheerotary.org and click on the peace project under the “our programs” tab.
The City of Wenatchee has been instrumentally involved in supporting this project, along with a group of local businesses participating, including: A Central Temp Fence, Airway Excavation & Construction, Central Washington Concrete, G and G Trucking, Graybeal Signs, Lewis Surface Development Co., Murillo Concrete, Perez Irrigation, Wenatchee Sand & Gravel and Wenatchee Quality Welding.
