Published: August 30, 2008 09:54 pm      

Locals look for ways to save park

DANVILLE — More than 200 citizens voiced their heartbreak at a meeting Friday night over the news that Kickapoo State Park will close.

The park near Oakwood was one of 11 state parks and 13 historic sites targeted for closure once state officials begin making layoffs Nov. 1. Kickapoo currently has three full-time employees.

Among those at the park meeting were Fred and Catherine Fred Hubbard, who were married there 32 years ago.

“It’s part of us,” Fred Hubbard said. “It’s part of our kids, part of our grandkids. The place is just wonderful. There’s nowhere else you can go out and enjoy as much as you can there.”

The Hubbards frequently go on motorcycle rides through the park to enjoy the wildlife, although Hubbard now wishes he took more trips to the park.

As the news sinks in, the Hubbards and many others in the area are beginning to take the next steps to combat the closure.

“People are totally up in arms. That place means a lot to us. There’s no way we’ll allow it to close,” Hubbard said.

The Hubbards are trying to organize a motorcycle rally that will take riders to Springfield.

In the meantime, Hubbard invites all locals to voice their support for new legislation that could transfer the 2,800-acre park back to the county.

Hubbard hopes citizens will voice their concerns at the Sept. 9 county board meeting.

“If they (the state) don’t want it, give it back to us. There’s no way we’ll get the governor to change his mind.”

State Rep. Bill Black (R-Danville) plans to fight for Kickapoo, but his interest in the park goes beyond serving his constituency.

“I learned to hike, camp and fish out there,” he said, adding he earned many Boy Scout and Eagle Scout badges there.

“I’m going to fight this with everything I have,” Black said, including working with other legislators like Sen. Mike Frerichs (D-Gifford) and state Rep. Naomi Jakobsson (D-Champaign) to come up with a solution.

Black hopes to draft legislation that would put the park’s operation in the hands of the Vermilion County Conservation District.

Black said the park closure announcement made by Gov. Rod Blagojevich uses downstate Illinois like a political pawn. Black said it is the a way the governor tries to manipulate and embarrass Michael Madigan, the Illinois House of Representatives Speaker.

Black pointed out that the state gives plenty of money to Chicago’s museums, but parks like Kickapoo, and other sites on the list are those whose funding is cut.

“I’m sick of downstate Illinois being used as a football,” he said.

Middlefork Fish and Wildlife Preserve as well as Harry “Babe” Woodyard State Natural Area and historical sites like Lincoln Log Cabin near Charleston also will close.

Jeanie Cooke, executive director of the Danville Area Convention and Visitors’ Bureau, also is angry.

She encourages people to contact the governor’s office.

“I invite all citizens to express their concerns to the governor’s office. You never know what a letter from a schoolchild or concerned grandmother can do,” she said.

Kickapoo is a huge draw for area tourism, she said, just judging by the amount of e-mail and phone inquiries her office receives each year.

“It has great significance,” she said. “It was the first park in the country built from reclaimed strip mines. It was purchased with money from the residents from the county as well as the school children. It’s comprehensible there would be such a unilateral decision made.”

The news of the state park closures broke late Thursday night with a press release and little fanfare.

Cooke said the citizens’ outrage will only grow.

“As the uproar grows and grows, and other parks shut down as well, we’ll see how it turns out.”

ACT NOW

-- Danville resident Fred Hubbard is organizing a motorcycle rally to Springfield that will voice area residents’ concern over the closure of Kickapoo State Park. Contact him at (217) 446-8672 or cathyrandyhubbard@comcast.net.

-- Danville Area Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director Jeanie Cooke encourages citizens to call or write the governor’s office.

Two copies of any letter should be sent, she said. One to 207 Statehouse, Springfield, IL 62706, and one to James R. Thompson Center, Floor 16, 100 W. Randolph St., Chicago, IL 60601. If you would rather call, the Springfield office of the Governor is (217) 782-6830 and the Chicago office (312) 814-2121.