EFPS is Forgotten

Mar 23, 2006 Author: Meredith | Filed under: media

My mom (sunnydale47) sent me a link to a Baltimore Sun article called Defunct park’s admirers seek a storybook ending. The article included this:

The storybook park sat decaying for years, until Martha Clark of Ellicott City resolved to change that.

Clark’s quest began in August 2004 [...]

I made a post about the Enchanted Forest in 2002, and I started the Enchanted Forest Preservation Society in 2003. It was originally on Yahoo Groups, and in April 2004 it got its own website. I was even interviewed by the Baltimore Sun in November 2003. And yet they’ve forgotten all about us, and attributed everything to Martha Clark.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate everything the Clarks have done. But they were not acting alone, and I wish there could have been acknowledgment of that fact. The only comment was:

Clark was aware that interested groups had tried to reopen The Enchanted Forest and she believed a lack of parking space would prevent the storybook park from ever reopening.

This might refer to EFPS, but it more likely refers to Friends of Enchanted Forest, an earlier, ill-fated group that never really got anywhere. I posted in the EFPS forum about how we were left out - I wonder if anyone else feels the way I do, or if it’s just because this feels like “my baby” even though I’m no longer as involved as I used to be.

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One Response for "EFPS is Forgotten"

Amanita.net » Blog Archive » Enchanted Forest E-mail March 27th, 2006 at 10:08 pm 1

[...] I’m home today because I injured my back this weekend somehow. Anyway, as a followup to my earlier post, I went ahead and wrote to the Baltimore Sun. I read your recent article about Enchanted Forest with great interest, but I was a little surprised by the incompleteness of the reporting in the article. The article seems to indicate that Martha Clark was the sole interested party in saving the Enchanted Forest pieces, and that her “quest” began in August 2004. On the contrary, your own newspaper, in November 2003, interviewed me about the newly-established Enchanted Forest Preservation Society, and published an article about our efforts. Although this recent article indicates Martha Clark mentioned “interested groups” trying to reopen the park, it seems to take her word as gospel - that such groups could never have been successful because of the parking issue. Perhaps Mrs. Clark has forgotten the hours of labor donated by members of the Enchanted Forest Preservation Society, both before and after the opening of Enchanted Forest pieces at Clark’s Elioak Farm. In particular, Monica [last name removed] has been a major driving force since late 2003, and her devotion to the park definitely deserves some recognition. As for myself, although I founded the EFPS in fall 2003, I have not been involved lately due to family issues, and presently I am primarily the webmaster for the enchanteforestmd.org website. But I was quite disappointed to see that the Sun’s own reporting from 2003 was discarded in favor of Martha Clark’s own version of events. I hope future stories about Enchanted Forest will dig a little deeper. [...]