MAY GREEN GARDEN DEDICATION SET SUNDAY; PARK DESIGNATION POSSIBLE

A small piece of Cape Girardeau's history will be dedicated Sunday, as residents celebrate what could be the city's newest park.

May Greene Garden, a small tract of land on Themis Street near its intersection with Fountain, dates back to the Civil War but three years ago was on the verge of becoming a parking lot.

It was then that a group of volunteers formed the May Greene Garden Association to try to save the tract and restore it. The property is owned by the federal government, but association members are hoping the city council Monday will designate the site a city park.

During the past two years, a group of volunteers has planted trees, shrubs and flowers in the garden to try to restore the site to some of its early distinction.

On Sunday, those volunteers will host a ceremony to dedicate the garden. The event will begin at 2:30 p.m., and the public is invited to attend.

The garden first was a cluster of attractive if somewhat disheveled trees, flowers, shrubs and weeds, maintained by Ruth Greene O'Donohue. She started the garden just after the civil war and continued its maintenance until her death in 1914.

Her eldest daughter, May Greene, a beloved Cape Girardeau school teacher who was crippled by a childhood fall, took over maintenance of the garden until her death in 1948, at which time her half-sister, Nell O'Donohue Nicodemus, continued to maintain the garden until her death in 1962.

Various garden clubs then worked on the garden, but in recent years it had deteriorated to the point that it was little more than a vacant lot, and in 1987, the federal government proposed converting the garden into a parking lot for the Cape Girardeau federal building.

But through the grass roots efforts of the May Greene Garden Association and other interested citizens, U.S. Rep. Bill Emerson's office, and nearby Trinity Lutheran Church, the garden has been restored and will be maintained as such.

Congressman Emerson's office lobbied the federal General Services Administration, which manages the property, to change their parking lot plans. Also, Trinity Lutheran gave the federal building permission to send any overflow parking to the church's parking lot on the corner of Themis and Middle.

The Cape Girardeau Parks and Recreation Advisory Board has recommended that the city council designate the garden as a city park and assume mowing and other general maintenance of the site. The council will consider the matter when it meets Monday.

Park board Chairman Jim Grebing said that although many people and organizations have contributed to the May Greene project, he noted the particularly "tireless" work of Jim Logan, Larry Bohnsack, Judy Crow and Maxine Davis.