One more time for Tom Joyner
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St. LouiS AmericAn The
91 years of serving the St. Louis community
CAC Audited JULY 18 – 24, 2019
Vol. 91 No. 17 COMPLIMENTARY
stlamerican.com
“The Playscape will be a place for kids to imagine themselves. They can enjoy the beautiful spirits out here.”
HarrisStowe says good-bye to President Warmack
– Larry Thomas, chair of the Forest Park Forever Board of Directors
Larry Thomas, chair of the Forest Park Forever Board of Directors, and Lesley S. Hoffarth, president and executive director of Forest Park Forever, show the inklings of site preparation for the Nature Playscape that will open in 2020.
Gardner: ‘We have to protect this university’ By Chris King Of The St. Louis American
Photo by Wiley Price
Coming soon to Forest Park: nature St. Louis’ great city park breaks ground on new Nature Playscape By Chris King Of The St. Louis American Breaking ground on nature would appear to be something only God could do, but on Monday, July 15 Forest Park Forever broke ground on a new feature in St. Louis’ great city park that is made out of nature. The new Nature Playscape will not open until 2020, but some of its elements are already
on view and, in fact, available for interaction. As ground crews are felling trees to open up 17 acres for the new experiential playground, they are leaving the trunks on the ground for later use. “This is the kind of playground where, instead of having a constructed fort, you would have the logs laying there to play on,” said Lesley S. Hoffarth, president and executive director of Forest Park Forever, which is
Mike Brown’s stepmom Cal Brown and local artist Dail Chambers glued old St. Louis American newspapers onto the chest of Michael Brown to build a paper mache cast of his chest to create a life-sized replica of his son for the fiveyear anniversary of Mike Brown’s death on August 9.
funding the project through donors. Using a natural space like a park to showcase nature seems a basic idea, but Hoffarth and Larry Thomas, chair of the Forest Park Forever Board of Directors (and a partner at Edward Jones), said the Nature Playscape will be the first of its kind at this scale.
When Dwaun J. Warmack said, “I was happy here,” the past tense was startling. Since August 2014, he has led Harris-Stowe State University as its 19th president, and on Thursday, July 11, the university and wider community bid him farewell. Warmack is off to Orangeburg, South Carolina, where he will lead Claflin University as its ninth president. He acknowledged that Orangeburg (population about 14,000) “is not a destination,” but credited God with his decision without further explanation. To say the least, he was not pushed out. Ronald Norwood, who has chaired the HarrisStowe Board of Regents for the same period Warmack was president, listed Dwaun J. Warmack Warmack’s many accomplishments. In five years, Warmack spearheaded dramatic increases in student enrollment, retention, graduates and degree programs. Tony Thompson, the Kwame Building Group president who served on the committee that offered Warmack the job at Harris-Stowe, said to him, “You did everything you said that you were going to do.” The respect Warmack commands in St. Louis’ black community may be judged from the fact that one speaker imagined Warmack in dialogue with Jesus Christ and another compared him to a superhero. James Tyson, vice president of Institutional Advancement at the university, imagined Warmack in a scene from the Gospel of John, with Jesus eliciting from Warmack his devotion to education. Alderwoman Marlene Davis
See FOREST PARK, A6
See WARMACK, A6
‘The main goal is to humanize him’ Mike Brown’s father and stepmom work with Activists on memorial art show By Rebecca Rivas Of The St. Louis American
Photo by Rebecca Rivas
HEALTH
Michael Brown Sr. is unapologetically quiet and introverted. “I’m not trying to be mean towards anyone, but sometimes I don’t have anything to say,” he said. His son, “Mike Mike,” was much the same way, he said, and it also made him a “believable” prankster. One day, Michael got a call from his son, telling his father that he had a baby on the way.
“I said, ‘What?!’ and he hung up the phone,” Michael said. “I’m calling him back and he ain’t answering.” Cal Brown, Brown’s wife and stepmother of Mike Brown, chimed in, “We had made a whole plan of how we were going to deal with a grandbaby.” Michael laughed and said, “Then he just happened to call us later on, not knowing that that’s still on our minds. I said, ‘What was going on with that conversation when you said you got someone pregnant?’” It was April Fool’s Day, 2014. And it was Mike Mike’s last practical joke on them. Michael was remembering stories about his son on Thursday, July 11, while he lay on the hardwood See BROWN, A7
LIVING IT
SPORTS
Organ donations are ‘last act of selflessness’
Stunning, yet not emotionally satisfying
Bradley Beal wins NBA Cares Community Assist Award
It is estimated that 1 in 7 adults in the United States have chronic kidney disease. Kidney diseases are the ninth leading cause of death in the U.S.
Though still a joy to watch, lovers of the original film will experience disappointments by way of the hyenas and Rafiki.
Beal earned the award for his charitable work in partnering with the Ron Brown College Preparatory High School in Washington, D.C.
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