Attorney looks to rename city park for Dan Wakefield

A grass-roots effort is underway to rename a city park in honor of Indianapolis-born writer Dan Wakefield.

The park is a small, well-appointed green space at 61st and Broadway streets, just south of Broad Ripple. Since the city acquired it in 1928, the park has had the name “Broadway and 61st Park.”

Patrick Chastain, a 50-year-old attorney who lives in the neighborhood and has read everything Wakefield has ever written, launched the renaming campaign Aug. 11 with a petition drive. He has gathered 347 signatures so far.

Chastain also has lined up some heavy endorsements. Former Sen. Richard Lugar, former Indiana poet laureate Karen Kovacik, novelist and Indiana Writers Center director Barbara Shoup and local literacy activist Travis DiNicola have written gushing pro-Wakefield letters to the parks department. Kovacik and Shoup live near the park.

Wakefield grew up in the neighborhood and a few years ago returned there after spending most of his life on the East and West Coasts. He said when he heard about the effort to name the park for him he was reminded of the time in the late 1990s when he had triple bypass surgery.

“I was home from the hospital and I got a call from a woman who worked at Crown Hill (Cemetery) asking me if I’d made any plans for my monument,” said the 83-year-old author.

Often when something is named for a person, that person is dead (and thus no longer able to screw up, fall from grace and embarrass everybody).

That’s the way it generally works with the parks department, too. But not always. Al E. Polin, a long-time Mapleton-Fall Creek neighborhood leader, was alive when Al E. Polin Park was christened in 2007 (and is alive still).

“I don’t know much about this writer — Wakefield? — but I don’t think anybody is too on fire for ‘Broadway and 61st,’ ” said Maureen Faul, a spokeswoman for the parks department.

Wakefield is the author of 20 books — five novels and 15 books of nonfiction, including memoirs and journalism. Two of his novels were made into movies, “Starting Over,” starring Burt Reynolds (Wakefield hated the film), and “Going All the Way,” starring Ben Affleck (Wakefield loved it). He created the award-winning TV series “James at 15.” In midlife, after a stint as an atheist, Wakefield became a Christian and began writing extensively about spiritual reawakening.

“There aren’t many writers who can do fiction and nonfiction at such a high level,” said Chastain, who met Wakefield once, briefly, at a book signing (Wakefield signed Chastain’s first edition “Going All the Way,” for which he’d paid $100; the novel, about growing up in Indianapolis in the 1950s, is Wakefield’s best-known book). “And it’s frustrating because when I talked to the parks department they hadn’t heard of him. He needs more credit. ‘Going All the Way’ is my favorite book of all time, and I think Dan would be my favorite author even if he was not from Indianapolis.”

There are 144 city parks in Marion County, ranging from Eagle Creek Park’s 5,300 acres on the Northwestside to Alice Carter Place’s 1.4 acres at Meridian Street and Westfield Boulevard. About a third are named for people — local community leaders such as Polin, national heroes such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK Park, 14.3 acres) and sometimes for the people who donated the land, such as the millionaire Holliday family (Holliday Park, 95 acres).

Most parks are named for their geographic location, a practice that has its roots in utilitarianism. “It was to make things logistically simple,” Faul said, “so people would know where a property is located.”

The parks department has shown itself to be open to renaming parks. In the past decade Fall Creek and 30th Street Park was renamed Rev. Charles Williams Park, and Fall Creek and 16th Street Park was renamed Lt. J.G. Graham Edward Martin Park. The precedent goes way back. Indianapolis’ very first park, Southern Park, became Garfield Park, for President James A. Garfield, soon after Garfield’s assassination in 1881.

Chastain hopes to get his proposal on the agenda for the September meeting of the park board.

Call Star reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043. Follow him on Twitter: @WillRHiggins.