The Community VoiceI have to take issue with the headline for your front-page article about the planned skatepark for Forestville in the Friday, January issue, “Creating the ultimate skatepark for all ages.” My issue is with the last three words, “for all ages.” Concrete is unforgiving. My late husband, a former college football player, […]
The Community VoiceI have to take issue with the headline for your front-page article about the planned skatepark for Forestville in the Friday, January issue, “Creating the ultimate skatepark for all ages.” My issue is with the last three words, “for all ages.” Concrete is unforgiving. My late husband, a former college football player, took up recreational skateboarding after having a hip replacement at age 65. Two years later while skateboarding at the Petaluma skatepark, just tooling around, not doing any fancy jumps, he fell off his board and shattered the femur of the leg with the hip replacement, since his hip joint was now titanium. Two surgeons spent three days figuring out how to piece his leg back together, and over the following 16 years he had five more hip replacement revisions as the glue they used to repair the damage kept failing until a specialist at Stanford finally installed a titanium femur. He lost some range of motion and had to use a walker for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, he published a poem in Thrasher Magazine imagining building an unskateable skatepark in the manner of Rock 3, i.e., Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Third piano concerto, considered by some pianists to be so difficult as to be unplayable.Karen KesselCotatiDear editor, Skateparks are not for all ages
