INSIDE, PAGE A6
ECLECTIC, PAGE B6
Tallassee celebrates state championship
Kindergarteners learn teddy bear healthcare
Dedicated to the Growth and Prosperity of the Greater Tallassee Area
Wednesday, March 12, 2025 | Vol. 127, No. 10 | tallasseetribune.com | $1.00
Raising funds, awareness for animal shelters
By CLIFF WILLIAMS News Editor
It’s not often you find people volunteering to be cramped into a kennel, threatened to be pied or slimed. But it was the case
Saturday and all for a good cause. Jordan’s Way visited the Humane Society of Elmore County to help raise funds and awareness for shelter
See FUNDS, Page A2
FROM TITUS TO STRAWBERRY FIELDS
FOREVER
CLIFF WILLIAMS | TPI
Humane Society of Elmore County volunteers cheer from a kennel at the shelter during fundraising efforts with Jordan’s Way.
Baby shower benefits pregnancy center By CLIFF WILLIAMS News Editor Life Choice Pregnancy Center in Tallassee was the beneficiary of a baby shower recently. Director Sharon Mason
and other volunteers walked into Tallaweka Baptist Church expecting to speak about the nonprofit center that supports mothers who experience unexpected See BABY, Page A2
Elmore County native crucial to Central Park preservation By CLIFF WILLIAMS News Editor
N
o one has to say where Central Park is located. Far fewer people know the New York City park was originally designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in the 1850s to provide a rural escape from city life. Even fewer know Titus native Bruce Kelly was the landscape architect who, along with a small group of people, brought the park out of disrepair in the early 1980s. Kelly’s sister Phyllis Kennedy told the story of the park’s history during a presentation at the Elmore County History Museum
Sunday. “By the mid-1800s people were really getting restless,” Kennedy said. “On Sundays, they were found in New York crowding into any open space that they could find, particularly cemeteries. Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn was covered up with people every Sunday and everything was absolutely trampled to the ground.” Civic leaders found a way to purchase 700 acres of rock, swamp, small farms and settlements and portions of Kingsbridge Road that lies from 59th to 106th streets and between Fifth and Eight avenues. The idea was to create an urban park. It is now more than 800 acres. Officials held a design
competition and selected the plan of Olmsted and Vaux. Their plan was largely inspired by Birkenhead Park in England. They proposed large rural landscapes and wooded areas with roads hidden below. “After the construction of the park, it literally became an oasis for New Yorkers,” Kennedy said. “It offered some respite from city living. It became the backyard for hundreds of thousands of people. But by the 1960s and 70s, it had fallen into terrible disrepair.” Kelly was born in Montgomery and raised in Titus until he was 5 years old. The Kelly family was generations See FOREVER, Page A6
SUBMITTED | TPI
Members of the Tallaweka Baptist Church in Tallassee pose with staff of the Life Choice Pregnancy Center at a Baby Shower the church held benefiting the center. Items included infant clothing, diapers and baby wipes.
CLIFF WILLIAMS | TPI
Phyllis Kennedy, left, delivers a program about her brother Bruce Kelly who greatly contributed to the renovations of Central Park in the 1980s.
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